Flying first/ business class

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Planning a birthday/belated honeymoon to California next year and budgeting for first class. We have kids, we have debt, but life is short and I want to fly first class, dammit. We work really hard and are on the right track so wtf. Some people need to live a little!

That's OK to pay for this experience in celebration but it sounds wild to me to do that while you're in debt!!!

Yes, it is rather stupid to do that. Most likely they will still be in debt and not on track for retirement or college savings in 5 years with that financial mentality. Once kids are college age, they will complain about being "donut hole" family and how it's just not fair they don't have $100K+ per year for college per kid and "how could I have possibly saved for that on my income"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Planning a birthday/belated honeymoon to California next year and budgeting for first class. We have kids, we have debt, but life is short and I want to fly first class, dammit. We work really hard and are on the right track so wtf. Some people need to live a little!

That's OK to pay for this experience in celebration but it sounds wild to me to do that while you're in debt!!!

Yes, it is rather stupid to do that. Most likely they will still be in debt and not on track for retirement or college savings in 5 years with that financial mentality. Once kids are college age, they will complain about being "donut hole" family and how it's just not fair they don't have $100K+ per year for college per kid and "how could I have possibly saved for that on my income"

Oh FFS! (NP here.) If you don't relax just a little, you may never live long enough to enjoy your retirement. Have a great time in California and enjoy that campaign when you board the plane, PP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Planning a birthday/belated honeymoon to California next year and budgeting for first class. We have kids, we have debt, but life is short and I want to fly first class, dammit. We work really hard and are on the right track so wtf. Some people need to live a little!

That's OK to pay for this experience in celebration but it sounds wild to me to do that while you're in debt!!!

Yes, it is rather stupid to do that. Most likely they will still be in debt and not on track for retirement or college savings in 5 years with that financial mentality. Once kids are college age, they will complain about being "donut hole" family and how it's just not fair they don't have $100K+ per year for college per kid and "how could I have possibly saved for that on my income"

Oh FFS! (NP here.) If you don't relax just a little, you may never live long enough to enjoy your retirement. Have a great time in California and enjoy that campaign when you board the plane, PP.

It is definately that mentality that gets people to be at the "donut hole" stage and wonder how they got there. Go on the vacation, just do it in economy plus and save the $1K extra and put it towards debt. It's a 5-6 hour flight, not a 24 hour flight to India/China.
Most financially stable people cannot imagine flying first class when you have debt and young kids (and all the expenses that will come with them). You can enjoy life within a budget

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Planning a birthday/belated honeymoon to California next year and budgeting for first class. We have kids, we have debt, but life is short and I want to fly first class, dammit. We work really hard and are on the right track so wtf. Some people need to live a little!

That's OK to pay for this experience in celebration but it sounds wild to me to do that while you're in debt!!!

Yes, it is rather stupid to do that. Most likely they will still be in debt and not on track for retirement or college savings in 5 years with that financial mentality. Once kids are college age, they will complain about being "donut hole" family and how it's just not fair they don't have $100K+ per year for college per kid and "how could I have possibly saved for that on my income"

Clearly you didn’t read same PP who said they invest heavily in retirement funds and kids college savings accounts, and other investment vehicles.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People who only fly business must not travel very much or they enjoy lighting money on fire. Tickets to biz class to Europe are 8-12k which is sometimes 11200 per ticket more than flying in economy. Maybe a spouse flies so much you have a ton of points, but if you’re spending full freight 11200 more per person for a 7 hour flight you need to get an examination. I, too, have paid out of pocket for business class tickets but would never be so frivolous.

How many of you business class only passengers delight in bragging about driving a 15 year old Camry because the millionaire next door book is your bible?

Absolutely no one paying cash for business class seats subscribed to the Millionaire Next Door. It goes against everything the book stands for. Points and miles hacking would fit in though. However we are big on points and miles and still fly mostly economy just because anything under 6-7 hours I don’t find BC worth unless it’s an overnight. That leaves us more points for even more trips. The extra points I would spend on 4 BC tickets would pay for 8 nights in a high end hotel.

Except for the poster above paying 6k per ticket (which doesn’t even exist anymore) to go on business class but drives an 11 year old car - a thing that actually serves a valuable utility in your life and that will eventually break and need to be replaced, a cost that the poster has spent a high multiple of just buying airline tickets.

I just did a few searches for random sets of dates this July/August round trip direct from IAD to Paris, London and Madrid on United and found numerous options for each in the $4000.

Yes there are significantly higher exceptions for peak/last minute flights but most people are greatly exaggerating the average cost.

I often fly peak because of my kids’ school and sports. I don’t want to go to Europe in August. I would go in June. Same for if we go to the Caribbean. We want to go right after Christmas, not mid or end of January. I remember when my kids were younger, we may have flown back on a Monday instead of Sunday. The price of the ticket would me much cheaper if my kids missed one day of school. My oldest is now in high school so we don’t want him to miss the day even if it may be 5000 cheaper for our family of 5.

Before I had kids, I’m sure I would look at flights and it would matter less if I went in the beginning of May or mid April. We also have to pay peak surge spring break prices.

July/August are peak to Europe. June prices are similar. Different PP, but just looked June 20-30 to Paris, business class is $4200 nonstop on United. Where/when are you going that it's double that?

I was talking about winter break prices, not summer. We flew economy plus to Europe and business on the way back for $3k per person.

The extra 5k I mentioned on my post is $1k pp extra to fly back on a Sunday vs Monday where kids would miss a day of school. This is economy, not even first class. All I was saying was there is a big difference between peak and off peak.

We have a $2-3m HHI and we upgrade sometimes. I’m going to the west coast in a few weeks and decided to just do economy plus. It was still $1k. Maybe I will decide to upgrade. I’m fine watching a movie or two in economy plus for 5 hours.

[Anonymous]

Pp again. I just checked and it would cost 3500 to upgrade to first class from economy plus. I would do that for Asia and maybe Europe but not to California.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Planning a birthday/belated honeymoon to California next year and budgeting for first class. We have kids, we have debt, but life is short and I want to fly first class, dammit. We work really hard and are on the right track so wtf. Some people need to live a little!

That's OK to pay for this experience in celebration but it sounds wild to me to do that while you're in debt!!!

Yes, it is rather stupid to do that. Most likely they will still be in debt and not on track for retirement or college savings in 5 years with that financial mentality. Once kids are college age, they will complain about being "donut hole" family and how it's just not fair they don't have $100K+ per year for college per kid and "how could I have possibly saved for that on my income"

Clearly you didn’t read same PP who said they invest heavily in retirement funds and kids college savings accounts, and other investment vehicles.

The PP stated they "have debt". Nowhere in that post (maybe another one) did they state they invest heavily in retirement and college for kids.
I stand by if you "have debt" you don't spend an extra $1k+ on first class, you put it towards the debt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Planning a birthday/belated honeymoon to California next year and budgeting for first class. We have kids, we have debt, but life is short and I want to fly first class, dammit. We work really hard and are on the right track so wtf. Some people need to live a little!

That's OK to pay for this experience in celebration but it sounds wild to me to do that while you're in debt!!!

Yes, it is rather stupid to do that. Most likely they will still be in debt and not on track for retirement or college savings in 5 years with that financial mentality. Once kids are college age, they will complain about being "donut hole" family and how it's just not fair they don't have $100K+ per year for college per kid and "how could I have possibly saved for that on my income"

Oh FFS! (NP here.) If you don't relax just a little, you may never live long enough to enjoy your retirement. Have a great time in California and enjoy that campaign when you board the plane, PP.

It is certainly possible to enjoy your life without flying first class. Domestic first class isn’t even every fancy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Planning a birthday/belated honeymoon to California next year and budgeting for first class. We have kids, we have debt, but life is short and I want to fly first class, dammit. We work really hard and are on the right track so wtf. Some people need to live a little!

That's OK to pay for this experience in celebration but it sounds wild to me to do that while you're in debt!!!

Yes, it is rather stupid to do that. Most likely they will still be in debt and not on track for retirement or college savings in 5 years with that financial mentality. Once kids are college age, they will complain about being "donut hole" family and how it's just not fair they don't have $100K+ per year for college per kid and "how could I have possibly saved for that on my income"

Oh FFS! (NP here.) If you don't relax just a little, you may never live long enough to enjoy your retirement. Have a great time in California and enjoy that campaign when you board the plane, PP.

It is certainly possible to enjoy your life without flying first class. Domestic first class isn’t even every fancy.

+1

Cannot imagine paying for first class (I get economy plus type) if I have debt. Then again, it's likely that mentality that got them "into debt". I define debt as anything other than mortgage and car loan but in reality, I wouldn't personally pay for first class until I could pay cash for my cars (unless the loan is 0.9% or less).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pp again. I just checked and it would cost 3500 to upgrade to first class from economy plus. I would do that for Asia and maybe Europe but not to California.

You would do that traveling solo or for your whole family?
We travel as 4 and when we flew to Asia, the economy plus was an amazing price and first was exorbitant (>6k). Sure maybe we would have considered it at a lower price but I think we'd need to plan our trips a year in advance for best pricing and it's impossible with sports and school schedules often coming out last minute. We also travel too much so it would add up a lot. I certainly don't judge if that is your spending preference though!

[Anonymous]

We will pay for Premium Economy, but ONLY on an overnight and overseas flight which is longer than 6 hours. We then will try to upgrade from that using miles, but those upgrades are very much a dice roll.

Shorter than 6 hours, daytime, not overseas, or within the 49 states gets economy. Hawaii varies on route and time of day - daytime via LAX no, but non-stop from IAD and overnight then yes to Premium Economy.

[Anonymous]

Maybe if you really like working? We are trying to retire ASAP and would not be willing to work longer just to buy first class tickets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe if you really like working? We are trying to retire ASAP and would not be willing to work longer just to buy first class tickets.

I have calculated my retirement based on our need to afford four international round trip tickets a year. To me that is worth an extra year or so of work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe if you really like working? We are trying to retire ASAP and would not be willing to work longer just to buy first class tickets.

I have calculated my retirement based on our need to afford four international round trip tickets a year. To me that is worth an extra year or so of work.

We love to travel but first class just isn’t important to us on most trips. When it is important we use miles.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Planning a birthday/belated honeymoon to California next year and budgeting for first class. We have kids, we have debt, but life is short and I want to fly first class, dammit. We work really hard and are on the right track so wtf. Some people need to live a little!

That's OK to pay for this experience in celebration but it sounds wild to me to do that while you're in debt!!!

Yes, it is rather stupid to do that. Most likely they will still be in debt and not on track for retirement or college savings in 5 years with that financial mentality. Once kids are college age, they will complain about being "donut hole" family and how it's just not fair they don't have $100K+ per year for college per kid and "how could I have possibly saved for that on my income"

Clearly you didn’t read same PP who said they invest heavily in retirement funds and kids college savings accounts, and other investment vehicles.

The PP stated they "have debt". Nowhere in that post (maybe another one) did they state they invest heavily in retirement and college for kids.
I stand by if you "have debt" you don't spend an extra $1k+ on first class, you put it towards the debt.

Even mortgage debt?