How does anyone afford to travel now?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I love about travel is that it’s a relatively strong signal for who actually has $ and who is overstretching. Yes there’s people with a lot of $$ who don’t like to travel but for your average family in a $2-3M close-in McMansion who isn’t traveling at least 1-2x / year, it’s likely because they’re overstretched.

We spend a ton on travel but don’t tell anyone where we stay or how we’re getting there and we post zero pictures publicly. Once we have kids we’ll dial it down for a while for more middle-class type vacations until we’re relatively confident we’ve raised good kids and they aren’t spoiled sh*ts.

I find your attitude a little bizarre. People have different priorities. If they want their McMansion and can’t afford to travel, so be it. Other posters have said they live in modest houses and curb other expenses so they can afford to travel. C’est la vie.

We started with a modest house and didn't travel much when the kids were young. Now we rent out that house, which pays the mortgage on our larger house (the rental market is pretty insane these days). And now we have the means to travel.

[Anonymous]

We don't travel but we have a really small crummy house and lots of points. We could easily travel now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What I love about travel is that it’s a relatively strong signal for who actually has $ and who is overstretching.

That is what you love about travel? The ability to potentially parse out how much money other people have?

[Anonymous]

It’s pretty simple. Lots of people just have more money than you do.

[Anonymous]

Travel with kids is awful. Expensive and stressful.

Kids don't give a sh*t about the locations history or have any respect for the architecture or landscape. Just care about their stupid influencers on tiktok.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are at $350k HHI, $4k PITI (cries at 2023 interest rate), $1k car payment, $2k in monthly daycare, and no family money. We eat out, get DoorDash at least once a month, bi-monthly cleaners, max out retirements, have over $100k in college fund for one DC4. We also travel.

We don't live extravagantly, but we're also not pinching pennies.

yeah sounds solid middle class lifestyle

Middle class, haha. No.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Travel with kids is awful. Expensive and stressful.

Kids don't give a sh*t about the locations history or have any respect for the architecture or landscape. Just care about their stupid influencers on tiktok.

Speak for your own stupid kids.

[Anonymous]

Priorities- small house, old cars, do our own car maitenance, I give kids and DH haircuts. Shop at Aldi. Those saving allow us to put away a few hundred dollars each month for travel. Oh and kids 529s are good because of grandparents- if not for that we would't be travelling so much. I'm not sacrificing their future education to go to Europe, lol.

[Anonymous]

It's depends on the money exchange rate, some places are cheaper than US destinations.

[Anonymous]

The thing I don't understand are the people who fly business class all the time when they go on vacation. And pay for it with cash, not points.

Just for fun, I've looked at business class seats on some of the recent flights I've taken and they are THOUSANDS of dollars more. Like some of them were in excess of $10k. For one business class ticket.

These must be some rich mo-fos!

[Anonymous]

As several people said, we prioritize travel over some things like new cars, eating out, do a lot ourselves at home (repairs, yard...) But I don't like travel as much anymore because I am tired of blah hotels (used to stay at much nicer hotels for cheaper back in the day) and all the hassle with air travel.

[Anonymous]

We’ve started doing this. We are well off but not super rich. Most people of our income don’t do this. But we decided that it’s just going to be something we budget for.

We generally take one family trip abroad a year, and one trip as a couple. Business class seems to average out to maybe 2,500 more per person, per trip. So that’s $15,000 more per year in our travel budget to do it. That’s a lot.

But…we drive a 10 year old car, the value of our house is approximately one year of pre-tax income, our kids go to public school, etc.

I’d love to use points more. We are sitting on a huge bank of airline miles. But the redemptions are so bad when you don’t have flexibility in your travel dates (and it feels like we rarely do).

Anonymous wrote:The thing I don't understand are the people who fly business class all the time when they go on vacation. And pay for it with cash, not points.

Just for fun, I've looked at business class seats on some of the recent flights I've taken and they are THOUSANDS of dollars more. Like some of them were in excess of $10k. For one business class ticket.

These must be some rich mo-fos!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because there are a lot of people who make a lot of money. It's that simple.

And yes, there really are a lot of people with large incomes. And if you are smart with money and budgets and travel, it's highly manageable. The most common complaint I hear around me isn't the cost of travel but the time scarcity.

What is a large income? I make $150k per year and cannot afford to travel at all. I don’t even spend much besides on food, rent, gas, and insurance

how many are in your family on that income?

[Anonymous]

Right, for most people it's a matter of budgeting for travel but also having a certain amount of discretionary income to begin with. My parents lived modestly but also had modest incomes- like we always had older cars but you still need an emergency fund for when the car needed repairs or suddenly died. A travel splurge was a driving trip to the beach in a mid-range hotel, and that was not an every year thing.

I think there is a certain amout of wealth on this board that isn't necessarily a reflection of real life. The only friends we have taking international vacations every year are DINKs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think people who travel for work and rack up the miles have the best chance for affordable travel.

I have a neighbor who games credit card deals, opening and closing cards to get the travel points and somehow doesn’t worry about his credit score.

Because it doesn't really affect your credit score much at all.

https://onemileatatime.com/insights/my-credit-score/

This is the way.