That's interesting. I think it's going to vastly depend on where you live and what you do. I know many Americans who like to spend money!
I've got some Danish friends. They don't have much in the way of houses or cars (maybe 1 small car per family, and either an attached home or an apartment), but boy do they travel. They get a lot more time off. It's not uncommon for our friends to take off a month or three and travel the US or Asia for that length of time.
You're right about our time off. We love it :) I think many danes actually deliberately choose the small attached house so they can afford to travel more. I know we made that exact choice 8 years ago. We bought a small 700 sqft house and are now on a path to ER and more travelling. We try to balance the two things.
Also it is very common to only have 1 car here simply because they are taxed at 150% and that means that only the well off people can afford more than 1 car. This is changing with the micro-class cars that are priced at about 100.000 dkk but it is still somewhat unusual to see a family with 2 cars. Hence the reason why e-bikes are very popular here.
Personally we are taking a month off this year to tour the US starting in Florida and ending in Seattle, I can't wait :)
My MIL is Danish, so my husband has some relatives there and several friends.
We visited and we chatting with our friends. Lise was noting how expensive cars are and that they *really* admire the size of American cars (a bigger trunk would be great!)
But their work hours were better too. Her husband got the car and took their daughter to school. Lise would put their son on the back of her bike and would bike him to daycare, then bike to work, then repeat at the end of the day.
In the last 10 years -
- They took 3 months off, spent about a month in the US (four days with us), and then 2 months in Asia.
- They came just last year with another family for two weeks, rented a house not far from here. Spent some time with them.
- They came back again for 2 weeks this year, and we got to meet up with them again.
It's really nice to see them. I just wish I had enough vacation time to return the favor. My last trip to Copenhagen was 2002, before I had kids.