Who pays airfare for your family to visit your parents for Christmas/holidays?

[Anonymous]

Wow. The PPs who expect their parents to pay their airfare must be millennials. Entitled even as adults. I’m Gen X and we just don’t have these kinds of expectations of our parents.

[Anonymous]

We pay of course. We are happy to pay our own tickets and happier to see them.

[Anonymous]

You pay and you don't go every year if you can't afford it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow. The PPs who expect their parents to pay their airfare must be millennials. Entitled even as adults. I’m Gen X and we just don’t have these kinds of expectations of our parents.

I'm gen x, parents paid when we were young and starting out. At some point it flipped to us paying for ourselves. Now we pay to fly them out or take them on vacation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:just curious.

DH, I and our 4 young kids go visit my parents every year around Christmas. The airfare costs around $1500. The rest of the siblings live close and drive there.
My parents only come visit us every 5 years or so, despite us giving an open invitation to the whole family. We wish the 2 of them would visit more, rather than us schlepping our family of 6 on a plane.
I also wish they would offer to pay for all/part of our airfare sometimes. (We both work, and my Dad still works, so we all have some disposable income)

So, when you visit your parents for the holidays or whenever, who pays for tickets? or do you alternate who visits whom?

You moved away and decided to contribute to overpopulation of the planet and you expect to be subsidized?

[Anonymous]

Uh, we do.

And when my inlaws visit us WE often pay for a hotel (when we had a too small guest room and when SIL also comes and stays with us and the guest room is occupied). It's maddening.

And when we order dinner and they "insist on paying" they either fold at DH's first "oh you don't have to do that" or "forget" to pay or do something like MIL hands me a credit card for an order that has to be paid at pick up 2 hours later, then FIL grabs the card back 20 minutes later. It feels like such a weird charade I just wish they wouldn't offer to pay for anything ever because they don't.

[Anonymous]

Um, we do? We are adults and we choose to travel sometimes. When we choose to travel, we pay for the travel we choose to do.

There are two times over the age of 21 that my parents ever paid for my travel: a ticket to fly to the Midwest for my grandmother’s funeral, which happened just two weeks after I had already flown out on my own dime for Christmas, and a trip for my entire family to Yellowstone in 2016 to celebrate my parents’ milestone anniversary.

Do I love the amount of money I’ve spent on tickets to places like Sioux Falls, San Francisco and Chicago that I’ve spent over the years to see family? Not always. But traveling to them has AWAYS been my choice. I am responsible for my choices.

[Anonymous]

We have family in another country. Every 3 years my ILs will pay for one DC’s airfare for a trip to get everyone together. That is their Christmas gift to all of us (or SILs family) for the year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:just curious.

DH, I and our 4 young kids go visit my parents every year around Christmas. The airfare costs around $1500. The rest of the siblings live close and drive there.
My parents only come visit us every 5 years or so, despite us giving an open invitation to the whole family. We wish the 2 of them would visit more, rather than us schlepping our family of 6 on a plane.
I also wish they would offer to pay for all/part of our airfare sometimes. (We both work, and my Dad still works, so we all have some disposable income)

So, when you visit your parents for the holidays or whenever, who pays for tickets? or do you alternate who visits whom?

Is this a serious question?? Of course you pay to visit your parents. They pay for everything else in your life previously. You are an grown adult. To me, this question is as dumb as "should I charge my daughter for her stay at my home when she brings her family to visit?"

For us, not only would I pay to visit my parents, I would pay for my parents' airfare to visit me! Also, when we go out to eat, I also take the dinner bill. My parents have sacrificed so much of their comfort to see me through adulthood that this is the least I could do.

[Anonymous]

You pay, OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow. The PPs who expect their parents to pay their airfare must be millennials. Entitled even as adults. I’m Gen X and we just don’t have these kinds of expectations of our parents.

I’m new to this thread and am a millennial whose parents pay for my family of 5 to come visit. But … they moved away from my home town somewhere cheaper to live, but not easier to get to and not necessarily somewhere we would choose to visit if not for them living there. We do pay airfare once every 2-3 years. But at $400-500/person it adds up and basically blows a bunch of our travel budget. Since they want to see us and have the disposable income, they offer to fly us out there. There is no expectation they pay though. But realistically they’d see the grandkids less often if they didn’t help defray the cost.

[Anonymous]

We split it. They want us to come and are too old to travel easily. It helps us see them more often. Not sure why it’s a big deal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow. The PPs who expect their parents to pay their airfare must be millennials. Entitled even as adults. I’m Gen X and we just don’t have these kinds of expectations of our parents.

This post is 6 years old. So probably not millennials, also because hardly any of them have kids let alone 4.

[Anonymous]

My parents pay half, which I appreciate.
They offer this on their own. If they didn’t, we would pay the whole thing. We pay for our hotel while there. To visit dh’s folks, we pay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow. The PPs who expect their parents to pay their airfare must be millennials. Entitled even as adults. I’m Gen X and we just don’t have these kinds of expectations of our parents.

Do you even know what Millennial means, without Googling? Doubt it. I’m a millennial and I am 42. My parents have never bought me a single airline ticket or paid for a single hotel stay. Likewise my ILs have never paid for travel for us. Nor would we ask or expect it. My parents and ILs have never given us significant amounts of money. If anything, WE are the ones buying dinners, paying for hotel stays if our house is full of other people at the holidays, etc. WE are the ones buying expensive presents.

Shall I drone on and on about putting myself through college, living with roommates and riding the Metro in my early 20s? Do you need to know that I only get Starbucks about twice a year?

You talk about “Millennials” like they are all in their early 20s. It is time for you to get with the times, and at least know what you’re talking about when you throw around generational terms.