Pricey, 'fun' spring-break trips take students deeper into debt

By Michelle Singletary

Typically, when people talk about "March Madness," they're referring to the NCAA basketball tournament.

But I want to discuss another March Madness. It's the madness that must afflict the thousands of college students who take spring break trips they can't afford.

I did a search on the Internet for spring vacation deals aimed at college students and was floored at the places these young people are traveling to — Jamaica, the Bahamas, Cancun, Costa Rica, Miami, Las Vegas and South Padre Island, which is off the coast of Texas in the Gulf of Mexico.

I know two-income couples who have full-time jobs who haven't been to some of these vacation spots. And yet college students with little or no savings, considerable student loan debt and perhaps unpaid credit card balances are taking off for fun in the sun.

National Lampoon Tours began this year offering all-inclusive trips to Las Vegas and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. One spring break package included a four-night stay at a four-star hotel and airfare from Los Angeles to Cabo San Lucas. The cost: $860.

Rather than spend $860 for a four-day vacation, what could a college student do with that amount of money? Buy all their books for the year, perhaps? On average, students spent $898 for textbooks last year, according to the California Student Public Interest Research Group.

Unless all of these young people taking spring-break trips are getting a free ride to college and won't have a financial worry in the world about paying for their books, fees, clothes, or transportation to and from school, they ought to be vacationing at home.

Am I making too much of this March Madness?

Not when you look at the massive amount of debt students (and their parents) are taking on to pay for college educations. Not when you look at surveys of the growing number of college students racking up credit card debt.

Here's what one freshman student planning on vacationing in Miami said to me: "When exactly do you expect me to have fun? I am young and will only be this way for a little while longer. I have learned a lot about sacrificing and responsibility. I do understand that going to Miami may not be a wise decision, but I have rationalized the decision."

I couldn't get this young woman, who is funding her education largely with student loans, to see that her reasoning was flawed. She rationalized that because she had paid cash for the trip, she therefore could "afford" to take a break.

But it doesn't matter if you are paying cash for a luxury item if you have consumer (or in this case, student loan) debt. Any money you have to spare — say for a vacation — should be applied to that debt or saved for necessities.

Let's suppose a college student who had $860 to spend on a vacation to Cabo San Lucas instead saved that amount every year for 10 years. At a rate of return of just 2 percent, compounded monthly and taxed at a marginal rate of 28 percent, he would end up with $10,178. That's a good chunk of change that could be used to buy a car or go toward the down payment on a home.

Now what if that student instead put that $860 spring-break vacation on a credit card with an interest rate of 18 percent, and he only made the minimum-due payment of 2 percent? It would take him nearly 17 years to pay off that debt. In that time, he would have paid more than $1,500 in interest.

Students had better learn now that they aren't entitled to fun at the expense of handling their finances in a mature way.