Author’s Note: This is the first article in a short series on the rising and unsustainable costs now facing the middle class in America.
This year, I found myself with a very big financial problem and its name was: summer.
You see: I have a job during the summer — just like most Americans — but I also have two school-age kids with a three-month break and I needed them out of the house.
Naturally, I wanted to fill their time with basketball camps, adventure camps, ballet camps, swim camps, STEAM camps, and all the other assorted time-fillers that now exist in the United States so that adults can essentially pay extra to keep working their usual jobs.
The problem was the price: $500 per week for a camp per person on average. So I was facing $1000 per week and $4000 per month — just to have my children doing the usual activities they do at school for free.
Why did I need all these summer camps in the first place?
In the old days — like the 1980s — kids in America had bicycles and skateboards and they wandered around their neighborhoods playing with other kids while being unsupervised by adults — and that’s basically illegal now. If I allowed my kids to wander around our leafy neighborhood for more than an hour, I would probably be reported to Child Protective Services the next day. By my neighbors.
It’s weird but it’s true. As American parents, we are all now paying extra for summer.
Of course, I still wanted to take my children on vacation myself for a week or two somewhere this summer too — I’m not a monster after all. I wanted to keep it simple. Keep it local. You might say: quaint.
That’s when the price-tag for my summer really escalated.
What were seven days at the beach in the Outer Banks of North Carolina going to cost? Or Virginia Beach? Or Maine? Or anywhere in the United States?
My research astonished me: one week of vacation in 2026 for a family of four in America now costs (on average) about: $7,964.
That’s more than $1,000 per day.
Quaint and local was the most expensive option of all.
Pictured: A typical beach condo rental in America is more than $5,000 per week.
