It’s not a surprise that more of us traveled in the last year as we emerged from the pandemic. But how much did we worry about the expense of that travel? How much did we actually spend?

The latest research shows that Americans planned about four trips in 2019 and spent about $6,500. But this year, the budget jumped to more than $8,400. The culprit wasn’t just gas prices.

The average cost for a domestic round-trip ticket was up 40% in 2022, and hotel prices were up 23% over the same period in 2019.

And with travel costs rising, we paid for those increased costs with credit cards. But at the same time, the amount of time we traveled or the money we spent didn’t diminish. Instead, many of us made a choice to forgo either retail purchases — new clothing, for example, or dining out.