Poll: 40% of Americans Are No Longer Going for Their Summer Trips, and the Reason Behind It Should Concern All of Us

Nearly 40% of lower-income American households now say they have no summer trip planned at all this year, according to the Bank of America Institute’s 2026 Summer Travel and Entertainment Outlook. On the surface, the national numbers look fine: 77% of Americans say they intend to travel this summer. Underneath that figure sits a sharp income divide, and the households falling out of the picture are not simply choosing to stay home for fun.

Willingness to travel rises steeply with income. 93% of higher earners plan trips this summer, compared with 86% of middle-income households. Among lower-income Americans, that figure drops to just 62%, the lowest rate among baby boomers of any generation surveyed. Researchers describe this as a K-shaped pattern: the top of the income ladder is climbing while the bottom is falling away, and the gap between them keeps widening.

This divide is not an abstract data point. It shows up in neighbors who used to take the same annual road trip and no longer do, in coworkers who quietly stop mentioning vacation plans, in family members who once hosted a summer gathering somewhere new every year. The real question is not who still wants to travel. It is what has happened to the households that no longer can afford to.

This article was created with the assistance of AI and reviewed by our editorial team for accuracy and clarity.

Personal Savings Rate Drops to 2.6%, the Lowest in Nearly Four Years

The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that the personal saving rate fell to 2.6% in April, down from 5.5% the same month a year earlier. For a household bringing home $6,000 a month after taxes, that rate leaves roughly $156 in reserve. One car repair, one medical bill, or one missed paycheck is enough to wipe that cushion out completely, according to economists tracking the decline.

A Navy Federal Credit Union economist called the reading among the lowest in two decades. More Americans are defaulting on loans and pulling from savings, including retirement accounts, just to keep pace with rising costs. Fidelity data shows that more workers tapped their 401(k) accounts during the first quarter of 2026 than a year earlier, with 19.2% carrying an outstanding loan against their retirement savings, up from 18.8%.

These withdrawals are not funding vacations or luxury purchases. Workers are drawing on decades of retirement savings to cover groceries, rent, and utility bills. When the cushion built over a career gets spent on the basics, discretionary spending, including summer travel, is often the first thing to disappear. What pushed household budgets to this point in the first place traces back to a shock at the gas pump.

Gas Climbed Above $4 a Gallon After Brent Crude Nearly Doubled in Three Months

Brent crude opened 2026 at $61 a barrel and closed the first quarter at $118, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the largest inflation-adjusted quarterly jump the agency has recorded since it began tracking prices in 1988. The spike followed military escalation in the Middle East and disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. For households already stretched thin, a fuel shock of that size erased whatever margin was left for spending on travel.

Fuel was only one piece of the squeeze. Inflation rose 3.8% in April compared with a year earlier, the highest reading since May 2023, driven by rising costs for groceries, utilities, and healthcare. Economists have noted that even with recent tax relief, paychecks are not keeping pace with the price of essentials, a burden that lands hardest on households with the least room to absorb it.

Estimates suggest that 2026 tariffs added between $570 and $2,500 to the average household’s annual expenses on top of these pressures. That is money that once might have covered a domestic flight and a hotel stay. With wages lagging behind these combined costs, families increasingly turned to borrowing just to keep their monthly budgets functioning.

More Than a Third of Last Year’s Vacationers Still Owe Credit Card Debt From It

More than a third of Americans who charged last summer’s vacation to a credit card have not paid off that balance. About one in six travelers this year plan to fund their trips through buy now, pay later services, while others turn to cash advances and payday loans. 29% of buy now, pay later users now use installment loans to buy groceries, more than double the share from two years ago.

Nearly half of those buy now, pay later users made at least one late payment in the past year, up from 34% the year before, and more than half say they could not make ends meet without the loans. For a growing share of Americans, borrowing has become a way to eat rather than a way to travel. Cancelling a summer trip, for these households, is simple arithmetic rather than a choice about priorities.

 88% of Americans report some form of financial stress this year, according to survey data cited alongside the travel findings. A cancelled vacation is the visible edge of that pressure, but the savings drained, the retirement loans taken, and the groceries bought on credit sit underneath it, unseen by anyone scrolling past a headline about summer travel. The story was never really about vacations. It has always been about how much room American households have left to absorb the next shock.