how many trips is normal?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How often does his family visit you?

If the budget it that tight, can you find some part time employment to supplement? (Not a dig about sahp, I am also, but if our travel budget were only $1000 per year, I would be back at work- at least part time- $1000 doesn't go far).

I forgot to answer your original question. We travel to see family 5-6 times a year (not the same family as some are north and some are south, but we see my parents at least times per year). We can drive the 400+ miles though.

[Anonymous]

Why don't you host?

[Anonymous]

You don't really like his family, do you?

[Anonymous]

I can see why he wants to go and would be sad, but it really doesn't seem like spending that much money on airline tickets is in your budget.

[Anonymous]

I just think it is really sad that a man who earns $120,000 a year is being told by his stay-at-home wife that the family cannot afford to visit his family four times a year. Wow. It's not the same if the kids go only once a year. They should have a chance to see their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins on a regular basis. What is more important than family?

If you all can't afford it, then I echo the others in wondering what you can cut back on. They are suggesting minor stuff like cable. Maybe you could consider something bigger like moving to a smaller house or one that is in a less expensive location. Don't live beyond your means and then try to tell your husband that he (and your family) cannot visit his family four times a year.

Who made this budget? If you were affording the trips until now, why all of a sudden does your budget prevent it?

Flash forward 30 years. Would you want the spouse of one of your children telling your grown child that he or she cannot bring the family to see you and the rest of your extended family four times a year? And would you want your grown child just to lie down and say, "Oh all right, I guess you are right that it is too much money"...? - even if your grown child were making a very respectable income... and the spouse was earning nothing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just think it is really sad that a man who earns $120,000 a year is being told by his stay-at-home wife that the family cannot afford to visit his family four times a year. Wow. It's not the same if the kids go only once a year. They should have a chance to see their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins on a regular basis. What is more important than family?

If you all can't afford it, then I echo the others in wondering what you can cut back on. They are suggesting minor stuff like cable. Maybe you could consider something bigger like moving to a smaller house or one that is in a less expensive location. Don't live beyond your means and then try to tell your husband that he (and your family) cannot visit his family four times a year.

Who made this budget? If you were affording the trips until now, why all of a sudden does your budget prevent it?

Flash forward 30 years. Would you want the spouse of one of your children telling your grown child that he or she cannot bring the family to see you and the rest of your extended family four times a year? And would you want your grown child just to lie down and say, "Oh all right, I guess you are right that it is too much money"...? - even if your grown child were making a very respectable income... and the spouse was earning nothing?

Do you even live in the DC area? $120,000 is not a lot of money around here. They are probably already stretched thin raising a family on one salary, and you're suggesting that they move to a smaller house in order to afford visiting family four times per year? Yes, family is important, but so is saving for college and retirement, feeding and clothing everyone, and paying bills. Nowhere did OP suggest that they are living beyond their means, so I'm not sure on what you're basing this assumption.

OP, maybe you guys can compromise that you'll visit them twice and they'll visit you twice? And if your husband wants to visit beyond those times, he can go himself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just think it is really sad that a man who earns $120,000 a year is being told by his stay-at-home wife that the family cannot afford to visit his family four times a year. Wow. It's not the same if the kids go only once a year. They should have a chance to see their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins on a regular basis. What is more important than family?

If you all can't afford it, then I echo the others in wondering what you can cut back on. They are suggesting minor stuff like cable. Maybe you could consider something bigger like moving to a smaller house or one that is in a less expensive location. Don't live beyond your means and then try to tell your husband that he (and your family) cannot visit his family four times a year.

Who made this budget? If you were affording the trips until now, why all of a sudden does your budget prevent it?

Flash forward 30 years. Would you want the spouse of one of your children telling your grown child that he or she cannot bring the family to see you and the rest of your extended family four times a year? And would you want your grown child just to lie down and say, "Oh all right, I guess you are right that it is too much money"...? - even if your grown child were making a very respectable income... and the spouse was earning nothing?

Do you have basic math skills? OP says they can't afford it, that the trips are too expensive. I agree with the immediate PP that $120k a year doesn't go that far in this area. You're not going to buy 4 $1000 plane tickets by cutting the cable.

[Anonymous]

4 times a year is a lot. I don't have kids yet, but I only fly to see my parents 2x a year. They also come visit us probably 2x and then we go somewhere half way once a year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I haven't seen my family in 15 years but then I'm married and have my own family. Some people need to grow up.

With that attitude, I doubt your family misses you. They're probably glad you've stayed away.

[Anonymous]

I now live in the city my ILs are in while my family is a plane flight (1600 miles) away, and I am very close to my family, but 4x a year is still a lot of money, not to mention there are other vacations I want to take with my nuclear family.

So can you talk to your husband in a way that makes it clear you are on board with maintaining the close ties to his family but just want to figure out ways to do so more cheaply? For us this means things like:
- going less often but for longer (8 days at holidays + 3 weeks in summer - last year DH had to work so it was just kids & me for summer)
- not flying together so that family members without time constraints fly on the cheapest days
- having grandparents come to us, it's only 2 of them and they're retired so can schedule flying for cheapest days

[Anonymous]

OP, I think "you can't afford it" is always relative.

You need to convince DH of the reality. Now that you've made a budget, share it with him. You can have a conversation about if there is anything you could cut to make the visits he wants a reality. If it's cutting Ferragamos for you, that's probably doable, but if it's cutting nursery school for the kids, I expect he will come around to your way of thinking that this is unrealistic.

Let the numbers do the talking. Don't make this a power struggle. And yes, 4 visits is a lot but not crazy. That's not the point here. The point is what you and he want and can actually afford.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I haven't seen my family in 15 years but then I'm married and have my own family. Some people need to grow up.

With that attitude, I doubt your family misses you. They're probably glad you've stayed away.

[Anonymous]

4x a year is too much if it's putting a financial strain on you. I love my family and they are awesome people and I love to visit them, but we're cross country and can't afford to go all the time. I went twice this year but recently had to wait 2 years to go visit.

Agree it's fine to send your DH by himself once in awhile. No reason why your whole family should spend major $$ to visit 4x a year if you can't afford it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you have basic math skills? OP says they can't afford it, that the trips are too expensive. I agree with the immediate PP that $120k a year doesn't go that far in this area. You're not going to buy 4 $1000 plane tickets by cutting the cable.

I'm not the PP who made the "I think its sad" post, but I agree with it. "Can't afford" is certainly relative; OP strongly implied that they had in fact been making the trips four times a year for at least the past few years. Presumably, if they have managed to do this in the past, the issue is not that they literally can't afford it, but that OP thinks it is a waste of money she would rather spend in other areas. Obviously, I've never gone through OP's budget, but I can't help but be a little skeptical of the fact that she's fixated on this particular expenditure as the thing that is preventing the family from being financially secure. I think she probably didn't love the trips to begin with and is trying to give teeth to her complaint by focusing on the financial burden. I seriously doubt that if their HHI jumped by $4,000 tomorrow she would suddenly be ok with the trips because it was now clear they were not impacting her previous budget. She just doesn't really want to do them to begin with.

I also can't help but feel there is a gender component at work here, because I'm very confident that if OP had posted that she wanted to visit her family more often but her husband insisted that it would kill their budget even though they make in the low six figures, there would be at least a half dozen posts in this thread saying that if DH doesn't care about her family he doesn't care about her and she is better off without him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you have basic math skills? OP says they can't afford it, that the trips are too expensive. I agree with the immediate PP that $120k a year doesn't go that far in this area. You're not going to buy 4 $1000 plane tickets by cutting the cable.

I'm not the PP who made the "I think its sad" post, but I agree with it. "Can't afford" is certainly relative; OP strongly implied that they had in fact been making the trips four times a year for at least the past few years. Presumably, if they have managed to do this in the past, the issue is not that they literally can't afford it, but that OP thinks it is a waste of money she would rather spend in other areas. Obviously, I've never gone through OP's budget, but I can't help but be a little skeptical of the fact that she's fixated on this particular expenditure as the thing that is preventing the family from being financially secure. I think she probably didn't love the trips to begin with and is trying to give teeth to her complaint by focusing on the financial burden. I seriously doubt that if their HHI jumped by $4,000 tomorrow she would suddenly be ok with the trips because it was now clear they were not impacting her previous budget. She just doesn't really want to do them to begin with.

I also can't help but feel there is a gender component at work here, because I'm very confident that if OP had posted that she wanted to visit her family more often but her husband insisted that it would kill their budget even though they make in the low six figures, there would be at least a half dozen posts in this thread saying that if DH doesn't care about her family he doesn't care about her and she is better off without him.

It sounded to me like her husband had a need for them to have exactly equal time with his family who is not local as they do with her family that is local. It also sounds like for whatever reasons, they have recently put together a budget, and spending thousands of dollars a year on travel to see his family is not in that budget. She said that he won't even have a conversation about her not going on one of the trips because he thinks that means she doesn't care about his family.

Maybe she doesn't. Maybe they could afford the trips by cutting down on expenses in other areas. But it sounds to me like the basic issue is that he believes that his family should get equal time when it is logistically much more complicated and impractical for that to be the case. When I was first married, we lived in the same town as my mom. We saw her every week. My husband's family lived 900 miles away. Sometimes you see more of one side of the family due to proximity. It's not about equal time all the time.