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

[Anonymous]

My parents pay - I’ve declined and they just end up adding it to my Christmas gift. I’ve stopped “fighting” them about it.

[Anonymous]

I have one small child and one on the way and I don't visit my parents, who live out in the PNW.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately because I get sick of spending all the holidays with my ILs, but my H does not fly, I don't really want to shell out for the plane tickets, and the biggest factor of all is my parents live in a barely inhabitable place that I cannot stay in with small children. They don't really ask for us to visit as they understand these are the circumstances, but it makes me a little sad that it's not even an option. I think if I REALLY wanted to come they might offer to help with the tickets or at least an AirBnB near their house, but it's just such a stretch. They are always welcome to visit us but mostly choose expensive cruises (my mom) or to stay home instead (my dad, who then boo-hoos about never seeing his grandkid). Not much else I can do, though.

[Anonymous]

We split it.

[Anonymous]

I hope that when I'm older I'm in a position to pay for our children to come visit us if we live a plane ride away.

OP, next time I would tell your parents you can't make it next year bc of the cost. They may help out. They don't have to but it would be wonderful if they did.

[Anonymous]

If you moved away it's on you.

[Anonymous]

Are you for real??

[Anonymous]

It’s so bizarre that as a full time working adult you expect your family to pay for your plane tickets!

Visit less of you can’t afford it or don’t want to pay. But don’t expect your family to pay for you. Grow up.

[Anonymous]

How do you get round-trip airfare for six people for $1,500???

[Anonymous]

My parents pay for us to fly and visit. They have a lot of money, we do not, we both want to see each other and its sometimes better for my family to travel rather. Its not a source of stres and I hope in the future I can take over these expenses, but right now that is not possible.

[Anonymous]

When I was in college my mom paid for me to come home once when I couldn't afford it otherwise. Now I am an adult and I pay my own way. If someone in the family was going through a hard time everyone else would pitch in, but I can't see paying for another adult's tickets as a matter of course.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How do you get round-trip airfare for six people for $1,500???

Seriously??? I fly home every Christmas cross country and I almost always pay between 600-800 for 1 round trip ticket .

[Anonymous]

We pay if we drive or fly to our parents. We still pay for our oldest child's plane tix home. She is 26, and we don't want money to be the reason that she doesn't travel home, so for now we still pay her airfare.

I do get annoyed at my own family. My sister and I both moved away from our hometown. My parents chose to retire very near my sister, so now their collective expectation is that we should be the ones who travel to them for family functions and get-togethers. My sister is completely unwilling to bring her family to visit us since we can "just come home to visit" as she calls it, even though their town is not and never was my hometown. Either way, we all pay our own travel costs.

[Anonymous]

We pay or we don't go. My husband would never accept a gift like that; although I probably would.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How do you get round-trip airfare for six people for $1,500???

Even at the holidays you can get to plenty of places east of the Mississippi for around $250-300 per ticket. My guess is that it's a location far enough away, and the days allotted for the visit are few enough, that driving 600 or 800mi with four young kids doesn't make sense logistically even if it is cheaper. One of those kids could still be an infant and a lap child so that's 5 tickets for $1500.

[Anonymous]

We pay but occasionally my parents will give us an airline gift card as a gift. It’s their way of offsetting some cost so we can visit more often. We all enjoy the visits and they know it’s a gift we can use. We never expect it but certainly put it to good use.