Are upper middle class family gatherings now just luxury travel pissing contests?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My extended aunts/uncles all just got their inheritance and retirement and it’s nauseating - we were solid MC families who did road trip vacations and maybe one flight a year… now they’re planning month- long tours of a continent

I’ve been a traveler my entire adult life, I’m not jealous just annoyed by it all

yes you sound jealous. They are excited to be able to travel, and likely want to do what they can while they are still healthy and physically able to do it all. I'd be excited to to get that at any age.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“Guys you'll never believe what I saw. It was a magical place where several million people live and do basically the same stuff we do but the default food options would be considered ethnic here! And struggling low caste local service workers I tipped treated me like gold!”

We get it---you don't like to travel. So don't travel. Your loss, and our gain because it's one less person (I doubt you have family) traveling.

it's just too much of the same thing yet it's pandered to be something different each time and it seems extravagant if you are going on trips every month or so. It's just much more interesting to hear someone's once or twice a year travel for their family because you are actually excited for them to get away compared to someone's monthly travel. People need vacations but especially if you are still in prime adult years you don't need to be going far away every 3-day weekend for a break. Or if you do, find others who want to discuss that level of travel.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My extended aunts/uncles all just got their inheritance and retirement and it’s nauseating - we were solid MC families who did road trip vacations and maybe one flight a year… now they’re planning month- long tours of a continent

I’ve been a traveler my entire adult life, I’m not jealous just annoyed by it all

Why do you care so much? Why does it negatively affect you that you find it nauseauting how they spend their retirement? Are they asking you for money? F*** off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“Guys you'll never believe what I saw. It was a magical place where several million people live and do basically the same stuff we do but the default food options would be considered ethnic here! And struggling low caste local service workers I tipped treated me like gold!”

Yep. After awhile it ceases to be a unique experience. Fun sure. But not unique.

The very last thing on my mind when planning a trip is to make it “unique” for bragging rights. Sometimes we go for “unique to the family”, as in we have never been there before. Sometimes we go back to old favorites. Sometimes it’s expensive. Sometimes it’s cheap. But never is it about anyone else.

[Anonymous]

If you always have to be traveling it sounds like your home life is boring. Like, why do you live in a town or region apparently so miserable that you constantly want to be somewhere else? And if you trip over yourself to brag about travel during the handful of times you ever get together with extended family, you’re implicitly suggesting to the rest of your family is you’d probably rather be someplace else - without them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“Guys you'll never believe what I saw. It was a magical place where several million people live and do basically the same stuff we do but the default food options would be considered ethnic here! And struggling low caste local service workers I tipped treated me like gold!”

We get it---you don't like to travel. So don't travel. Your loss, and our gain because it's one less person (I doubt you have family) traveling.

it's just too much of the same thing yet it's pandered to be something different each time and it seems extravagant if you are going on trips every month or so. It's just much more interesting to hear someone's once or twice a year travel for their family because you are actually excited for them to get away compared to someone's monthly travel. People need vacations but especially if you are still in prime adult years you don't need to be going far away every 3-day weekend for a break. Or if you do, find others who want to discuss that level of travel.

You’re using this word incorrectly and just don’t seem very intelligent overall.

[Anonymous]

What I find funny is ANY topic being discussed can get one of these status obsessed braggarts to go on a boasting tangent. Food. Sports. Politics. College. Shopping. Golf. Retirement. Real estate. Investing. It doesn’t matter, they will say it reminds them of a trip to such and such. Any and all topics are a vessel to jam in details about a prior or upcoming trip; a new opportunity to boast how decadent and “cultured”. You have to assume they are rarely actively conversing with you, they are constantly thinking of ways to drop travel anecdotes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'll bite. We travel a lot. We don't spend money on other luxuries so it's not like we're loaded, just selective about what our money goes to. Friends and family often ask us about our travel, I usually don't bring it up unless it's relevant to the conversation.

I do love talking about travel with 1. people I love and 2. people who are adventurous. But I also get bored of listening to people who are obviously only traveling/bragging about the AI resorts they stay at. You can tell who is a boring tourist and who is a true traveler. The latter usually has some humility, and if not that then at least they have some interesting stories of getting lost, getting robbed, meeting a quirky local etc.

I will second all of this. And if someone asks me about a recent or upcoming trip as a pleasantry, I will keep it to 30 seconds or less.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I promise, our international trip over Thanksgiving was done solely because we wanted to do it, not because we wanted to be able to tell people about it. I only mentioned it if directly asked, it's not like we were telling everyone where we were going/went all the time.

I find hearing about people's trips interesting. If you don't, just step away. It seems like you have something that's bugging you about it all.

+1000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“Guys you'll never believe what I saw. It was a magical place where several million people live and do basically the same stuff we do but the default food options would be considered ethnic here! And struggling low caste local service workers I tipped treated me like gold!”

We get it---you don't like to travel. So don't travel. Your loss, and our gain because it's one less person (I doubt you have family) traveling.

it's just too much of the same thing yet it's pandered to be something different each time and it seems extravagant if you are going on trips every month or so. It's just much more interesting to hear someone's once or twice a year travel for their family because you are actually excited for them to get away compared to someone's monthly travel. People need vacations but especially if you are still in prime adult years you don't need to be going far away every 3-day weekend for a break. Or if you do, find others who want to discuss that level of travel.

You are a bore, and seem obnoxious, unable to appreciate friends/family who are living their life they way they want.

We travel a lot, kids are 20+, we have the money and figure we might as well travel while we are still healthy/able to do the activities we want. Normal people are excited for their friends, whether they can afford the same things or not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“Guys you'll never believe what I saw. It was a magical place where several million people live and do basically the same stuff we do but the default food options would be considered ethnic here! And struggling low caste local service workers I tipped treated me like gold!”

Yep. After awhile it ceases to be a unique experience. Fun sure. But not unique.

The very last thing on my mind when planning a trip is to make it “unique” for bragging rights. Sometimes we go for “unique to the family”, as in we have never been there before. Sometimes we go back to old favorites. Sometimes it’s expensive. Sometimes it’s cheap. But never is it about anyone else.

[phone]

We travel for ourselves. We enjoy planning the trip and experiencing it. We include fancy hotels as well as local B&Bs/small town boutique hotels. It's about the experiences---we have places we return to multiple times because we love the towns and people. Have owner of a 7bedroom villa we stayed at in Chianti region 6 years ago that we communicate with regularly still, just because we all hit it off when staying in their villa (they cooked for us daily and other arranged activities)---even stopped by to see them when we took our kids to the region for a day this year. They are lifetime friends after our week at their villa.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you always have to be traveling it sounds like your home life is boring. Like, why do you live in a town or region apparently so miserable that you constantly want to be somewhere else? And if you trip over yourself to brag about travel during the handful of times you ever get together with extended family, you’re implicitly suggesting to the rest of your family is you’d probably rather be someplace else - without them.

Not at all! We are close to retirement, and are planning several trips for first year of retirement, as spouse may return to "consulting/some type of work" for a few years (not sure yet---don't need to might want to). We want to travel while we are healthy and can do the activities we want. Our kids are launched or in college---so we just make sure we are home for holidays.

We get it---you don't like to travel (or more likely cannot afford to travel in the ways your friends/family do). But we can, we are rich and we want to travel. So it's a trip every 2 months or so. Some trips are longer ---if I go to Australia/New Zealand, I'm staying for 3-4 weeks to see more of both countries (given the time and costs to get there). When we are home we enjoy time with friends and family. Nothing better than a 5 day trip to Hawaii either--we are a 5 hour flight, so can leave at 8am and be at the hotel by 1pm and then take a red-eye flight back 5 days later (which means you get the full day plus a quick dinner in Hawaii before leaving). Perfect trip in the dreary wintertime for a bit of sun and fun.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe you just weren’t this prone to jealousy before?

Who's jealous? It's just shallow and boring conversation. Shallow and boring is fine among professional work associates but family are only together a couple of times a year and THIS is the most spirited dialogue now? It's sad.

Travel is not “shallow and boring conversation.” What do you want to discuss? Little Larlo’s soccer? Little Larlo is going into AAP?

Little Larlo likes soccer and bonding time with his close friends far more than sitting in an airport, customs line, taxis, hotel, hotel pool, weird food, and being dragged around to tourist attractions so his insecure status-signal obsessed striver mommy (and daddy) can have vapid content to brag about on social media and at social gatherings.

I dunno. We just had a very basic tourist trip to London and both kids loved it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“Guys you'll never believe what I saw. It was a magical place where several million people live and do basically the same stuff we do but the default food options would be considered ethnic here! And struggling low caste local service workers I tipped treated me like gold!”

We get it---you don't like to travel. So don't travel. Your loss, and our gain because it's one less person (I doubt you have family) traveling.

it's just too much of the same thing yet it's pandered to be something different each time and it seems extravagant if you are going on trips every month or so. It's just much more interesting to hear someone's once or twice a year travel for their family because you are actually excited for them to get away compared to someone's monthly travel. People need vacations but especially if you are still in prime adult years you don't need to be going far away every 3-day weekend for a break. Or if you do, find others who want to discuss that level of travel.

Once again, we get it. You sound really jealous! If you don't want to take a 3 day weekend every month, don't do it. Personally we are approaching retirement at early 50s. We already take 2-3 trips to Hawaii each year (6 hour flights for us) for 5-6 days, usually tied into a long weekend (so less vacation days needed). We love it, great way to relax and just have fun.
Our friends love to hear about our travels, just like we love to hear about their travels or hobbies/activities.

[Anonymous]

I"m more afraid my friends won't tell me about their trips. If it's what they've been doing, I want to hear - it's what's going on in their lives. I want to stay close, keep feeling close and involved in their lives. I want to hear.

I've traveled a lot myself though decades ago. Now, in sort of a lull. Tied to home and don't want to be. We all are likely to be caretaking someone else, sometime, due to their health problems. They need us home.

Be happy for people who are out adventuring. This is their time. Undoubtedly, it won't always be their time.