Budgeting for Rest: Rethinking Vacation in a World That Doesn’t Stop
The Paradox of Vacation
School is out and summer is here. When I was a child, that often meant a road trip from my hometown of Chilliwack, BC, out to Manitoba, visiting relatives in Winnipeg and small communities in the south like Grunthal and Arnaud. In our teen years, I remember summer trips to Osoyoos and Penticton, BC, staying in a trailer and having fun at the lake. With our own kids, summer trips included places like Vancouver Island when we were living in BC, and out east to Prince Edward Island within the first few years of living in Ontario. This is the season when many Canadians are either heading off on vacation or dreaming of doing so.
Vacations are supposed to offer rest, but I think it would be fair to say that for many, they bring stress, financially, logistically, and even emotionally. The costs of travel have risen, and there is often pressure to make the most of summer, to make it “count,” so to speak. I suspect there is also some not-so-subtle competition that we often feel drawn into, thanks to social media comparisons or fear of missing out.
It seems we have forgotten the rest component of a vacation. Vacation is, I think, supposed to be a kind of opportunity to relieve stress, but compounding the stress of daily life by adding to it in the way we vacation may cost us even more than money.
Rest as a Commercial Product
It seems to me that one of the problems with vacations is that there is this cultural tendency to equate “rest” with consumption. We want to travel to exotic destinations, have high-end experiences, or set up elaborate itineraries for ourselves. All of these cost money.
To be clear, travel can be deeply enriching. I yearn to go back to Japan as often as I can, but given that it is my wife’s homeland, and we as a family lived there for a decade, it doesn’t qualify as exotic in my mind. However, I must admit that the long hours in the air plus the time zone difference make the trip a bit of a physical struggle. However, if we think of vacation as an opportunity for rest, travelling that far may not be the best example. And again, does spending big money on a vacation give us the rest that we require to recharge our physical and emotional energies?
I think that one reason we seek a vacation is to escape from the constant demand to be productive. When I worked at a discount broker, our productivity goals revolved around the number of calls we were to take from account holders phoning in, or probing these callers for additional investment assets that were outside of our business that could be transferred in. All the while, we were being measured on customer experience. It was relentless. Oddly enough, a vacation often seems to bring that same productivity pressure. We’re spending money, so we need to make the most of it. We over-schedule ourselves, we are in constant motion, and with the advent of Instagram and other social media, an element of competition has been added to the vacation mix. It’s all rather stressful.
So, we have stress from work. We want to get away from that and rest. We go on vacation. But we think vacation means spending money and being overly active. What does this lead to? Financial stress! After we come back home, we find ourselves with credit card bills, sometimes to the extent that we have to put our savings goals on hold. Have you ever thought that you need a vacation to recover from the vacation you just took?
A Broader Ethical Lens on Rest
This is a financial planning blog, but I want to expand the idea of vacation, understood as rest, beyond money matters. To rest from our daily patterns of living is also a human, cultural, and even spiritual need.
When I was younger, most businesses were shut down on Sundays. This practice was based on something called the Lord’s Day Act. In 1985, the act was found to be unconstitutional. “To the extent that it binds all to a sectarian Christian ideal, the Lord’s Day Act works a form of coercion inimical to the spirit of the Charter and the dignity of all non-Christians. It takes religious values rooted in Christian morality and, using the force of the state, translates them into a positive law binding on believers and non-believers alike.” Now, I am a committed Christian, but I have to agree with this legal ruling. We don’t want people to be coerced into acting, or not acting, based on a law that favours a particular religious tradition.
The sad part, though, I think, is that in practice, it has not so much meant that people are free to take their time of rest or religious observance in keeping with their convictions. Instead, it is that work invades every day of one’s life. And this has only been abetted by the rise of the cellphone and email, which means work often can and does continue even on one’s formal day off.
Maybe some ideas from the “Lord’s Day” or Sabbath deserve to be brought back into our lives. Consider:
The Jewish Shabbat is a 24-hour stop from work, beginning on Friday at sunset. It is a pause from labour, but it is more than that. It is a time to reconnect with one’s family, community, and with the sacred. It is a time when people are valued not for what they produce but for simply being.
The Christian “Sabbath” or Lord’s Day has been historically linked to worship, rest, and being with family and community. It is not just a day off, but rather a way of being.
Indigenous traditions honour natural cycles of rest and renewal. They remind us that rest is not a luxury but a necessity to restore balance in our lives and with others. A vacation becomes not so much an escape from life, but a return to a fuller life.
Secular practices like mindfulness (although this has its roots in Buddhism) and slow living are, in their own way, a kind of rebellion against economic demands for speed and productivity. Given increasing instances of burnout – this is very anecdotal, but I heard that many people at my former place of work were on leave due to burnout – our health demands that we take time to rest and “re-create,” simply to survive.
Rest Needs a Financial Line Item
If rest is essential, it deserves a place in your financial plan. It shouldn’t just be an afterthought; it needs to be a deliberate category.
Perhaps we could call it a “Rest Fund.” By using this term, I intend to include but go beyond vacation savings.
How do you set up a Rest Fund? It can be a variation of a sinking fund, that is, an account that is identified for a specific expense that you know is coming. It could be used for travel, including the cost of flights, hotels, food, etc., but it could also be a kind of revolving fund, not in the sense of a loan, but as an account that holds savings that are set aside for “rest.” It could be used not just for travel expenses but also for other breaks, like a weekend retreat. In other words, you are taking some of the money earned from your productive time to allow you to freely be “unproductive” for a period.
What kind of account would be best to use for this purpose? If you have a TFSA with lots of unused room, I might be inclined to suggest that. However, multiple cycles of contributions and withdrawals in a year would probably cause most people to be confused as to the contribution history of the account. And messing that up could land you in hot water with the CRA if you over-contribute. With those concerns in mind, I would suggest a high interest savings account held outside of a TFSA. It may go without saying, but using your RRSP for a rest fund would be an even poorer choice because taxes would have to be withheld when money is withdrawn, and the contribution room that was used for the initial contributions would be lost if withdrawn, the Home Buyers’ Plan and the Lifelong Learning Plan being the only exceptions.
The strategy for contributing to a rest fund is quite straightforward. You may have set up automatic payments to come out of your account to cover water, gas, or electricity utilities. In the same way, you can set up a figure of your choosing to transfer into your rest fund. The most important thing is that you be intentional about what you are doing, about what rest means to you, and then set aside the money necessary to achieve your intentions.
Rethink What You’re Actually After
What do you hope a vacation will give you? A sense of peace? Connection with another part of our world? Reconnection with family? Maybe it’s as simple as novelty or time away from the screens that seem to demand our attention.
Whatever it may be, many desired outcomes from a vacation don’t necessarily require distant travel or high expenses. Less costly alternatives could include nature-based activities like camping, hiking, or days at the beach. Taking opportunities to rest at home could be expressed in technology “sabbaths,” gardening, or spending days engrossed in books.
With all this being said, I want to acknowledge that for some, especially those with caregiving duties or lower incomes, even low-cost rest takes effort, and planning probably matters more than money alone.
Rest Isn’t Laziness; It’s Wisdom
Our culture seems to have developed a strong, but unwarranted, association between rest and laziness. Or, to the extent that you are deemed to be justified in taking some form of rest, it is earned because you have been productive. On the contrary, it is a part of being human. We need sleep every night, or we cannot function. In the same way, I would argue, periodically we need longer, more substantial opportunities for rest to restore ourselves.
There are health implications of overwork. I mentioned burnout before, but others can include anxiety and sleep loss. I talk about Japan all the time, but one of the unfortunate aspects of Japanese society is its excessive emphasis on long hours at work, usually associated with loyalty to one’s co-workers and one’s supervisor. This doesn’t necessarily mean productivity, however, as there may not even be anything to do. But staying at your work station is required, or at least expected, nonetheless. This has led to unfortunate situations of 過労死 (karōshi) or death from overwork.
Because busyness and productivity are so deeply woven into our culture, it is all the more important to model what it means to rest well.
Parents can teach their children the meaning of “enough,” not just in material terms, but in time, activity, and expectation. Of course, this begins with practising it themselves. When parents choose to slow down, say no to over-scheduling, and prioritize presence over performance, they create a family culture that values balance and contentment.
For many retirees, whose identities were once closely tied to their professions, retirement offers not only rest but renewal. Freed from the pressures of productivity, they can embrace a rhythm of life that honors their experience while modeling a deeper wisdom: that rest is not idleness, but a vital part of a well-lived life. Staying active can be fulfilling, but so too can being present, reflective, and rooted in community. In this season of life, their role is not to prove their worth, but to embody it, offering a living example of balance, perspective, and peace.
Professionals, managers, and business owners play a critical role in shaping how rest is perceived in the workplace. By fostering cultures where rest is respected, through healthy boundaries, meaningful time off, and open conversations about burnout, they send a powerful message: that well-being is not a barrier to success, but essential to it. When leaders model rest for themselves, they grant permission for others to do the same.
A Rest That Renews
What if this summer, rest weren’t a reward to be earned or a luxury to be purchased, but a deliberate and generous choice for our good, and the good of those around us? To budget for rest, both financially and emotionally, is not to retreat from life, but to step more fully into it. It’s an act of care for our bodies, a reclaiming of our agency, and a quiet expression of gratitude for the lives we already have. In a world that doesn’t stop, choosing to pause may be the most radical and restorative decision we make.
This is the 294th blog post for Russ Writes, first published on 2025-06-30.
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