how many trips is normal?

[Anonymous]

I don't see where her DH asked for equal time with his family. I do see where OP has concluded that the only reason he came up with 4 trips is because they live close to her family, which I think is probably diminishing his actual concern.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't see where her DH asked for equal time with his family. I do see where OP has concluded that the only reason he came up with 4 trips is because they live close to her family, which I think is probably diminishing his actual concern.

From her post: "his insistence to spend the money we don't have on his family trips to make things fair (between family time) feels immature."

[Anonymous]

my dh is like this. The only solution is to get his buy-in on the overall budget and just stand your ground the next time he says to buy plane tickets. Maybe deciding on the percentage you can afford on travel and putting aside a set amount each month would help him see the reality.

Some people are just *really* bad with money and don't think beyond being able to technically afford something in the moment. OP's DH may be ignoring creeping credit card debt, failure to save for retirement or college, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am a SAHM and we are very middle income (H makes $120,000). We live close to my family, and as a result H wants to see his family 4x a year. As a family of 4 this gets very expensive (flights are about $1200 all together each trip, and we stay for free with his family). As I SAH I am ok with all the travel but we have finally assembled a budget and unlimited travel is not within our means (more like $1000 per year). He will not have a conversation with me about missing one of the 4 trips with his family because he thinks I am disregarding his emotional attachment to them (he misses them) etc. This seems like maybe a cut and dry case of you can't always get what you want, but his insistence to spend the money we don't have on his family trips to make things fair (between family time) feels immature. I would like to hear others' thoughts on this. Thank you!

As others have noted, you have the money, it's just a matter of priorities. Of course unlimited travel is not possible, but you have come to the conclusion that $1000 is within your means--obviously, he feels otherwise. The two of you need to agree on a budget. If he wants to allocate that much money to travel, where can he sacrifice?

There are other possible ways of providing that closeness with his family. Can you drive there? (We drive 12 hours each way to visit family.) Can some family members come to visit you? Can you make 3 trips per year but make them a little longer?

One thing you don't mention is the quality of those visits once you're there. If these are positive interactions for your family, I'm more inclined to encourage them. Parents and grandparents are not around forever.

As to what's normal, it's again a matter of priorities. We usually travel 1-2x per year to each of our families, and then get 1-3 visits from each set of parents. Recently, we've been traveling more like 4x a year to one of our families--because of dying and elderly relatives, special family occasions, etc. At times, just one of us has gone, when appropriate.

Whatever you do, I'd encourage you to think positively about your husband's emotional connection to his family. (Especially since you've not said anything negative about the trips other than expense.) So many people check out of relationships and disconnect from loved ones. I think it's great that he wants to keep those ties.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

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 the "I think it's sad" poster from page 3. Yes, I live in the area and yes, I have basic math skills. I am surprised by some of the reactions to my post, but I'm glad at least some people here agree with me. My husband and I have never made over $100,000 in our combined incomes in spite of our many advanced degrees. It just happens that our professions don't pay much. Sometimes in the past I found myself getting tense when he would tell me it was important for our family to fly across the country to visit most of his family. Sometimes I have even stayed home while they went, to save the cost of one ticket. Sometimes we just send the younger generation (who can fly unaccompanied) because we know how important it is to have an active relationship with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Whenever my husband reminds me that his parents are getting up in years and we will never miss the money as much as we will miss them when they are gone, I know he is right and that we need to make family visits a priority.

And again, one of the things I said was sad in my PP is that the non-working wife is telling the husband that there is not enough money in the budget for the visits he wants to make. Be careful to cherish the marriage partnership and consider each other's feelings and perspective sensitively. And I wasn't suggesting that cutting the cable bill would pay for the trips; that is what others suggested, and I was contrasting my suggestion with that, saying they might consider much bigger cuts such as even moving to a smaller house or different neighborhood. It is not an outlandish suggestion. It all depends on one's priorities. Family trumps a lot of things. We live in a modest home beyond the Beltway. We've downsized before and we will probably downsize again. We don't have a cleaning service. We don't generally take travel vacations except to visit family. My husband drives an old car. And I will never tell my husband again that we don't have enough money for him and the kids to visit his family whenever he thinks it's right to do so.

To me, if you cannot afford to fly to visit family four times a year when your husband thinks it's important, then that in and of itself means you are living beyond your means. Look at all the things that we regard as necessities that really aren't. When I remember how simply my family lived when I was young, I know that most of what we surround ourselves with isn't really necessary. We could probably all live more simply, and we might be better off for it.

[Anonymous]

PP, I completely agree that we could all live more simply overall. I don't think it really makes a difference whether the wife in this picture is working or not. She says they made a budget, and their travel budget for a year, per that budget, is $1000. If her husband wants to fly everyone to see his family 4x a year for about $1200, that exceeds the travel budget with just ONE trip, not to mention the 4 he thinks are required to give his family equal time to hers, who are local. She stated that he will not even discuss her staying behind on one of these trips (which would reduce the cost). That seems like an elegant solution, and one you yourself have utilized to maximize the relationship with grandparents that is important to your family.

I don't make a ton of money either. My household income is less than the OP's. We live as simply as we can. My family lives on the West Coast. It costs us about $1000 to fly out there to see them, which is a lot of money for us to spend all in one shot. I spend months saving money to make those trips possible. We are able to go, at most, twice a year.

When you say "we will never miss the money as much as we'll miss them when they are gone", I don't disagree with you, but for MY budget? I'd love to go see my mom every other month. She's got a chronic condition that will likely shorten her life by a couple of decades. I would move there if I could, to spend more time with her. But flying out there twice as often as we do already would mean that we would never be able to do anything else. I would never be able to get DD birthday presents or Christmas presents. There wouldn't be any splurges. We wouldn't be able to go see the movie she desperately wants to see this weekend. I love my mom. DD loves my mom. My mom loves us. But she would never want us to prioritize flying 10 hours across the country at the expense of every other fun thing we get to do. I made a budget and I stick to that budget. If the budget says "This thing is not possible", we don't do that thing.

[Anonymous]

I am not a SAHM, and it's MY family that lives on the West Coast, not DH's. And I'm very close to them. But there is no way our $160k HHI would accommodate four family trips to CA each year. We average one trip out there per year and my parents come here at least twice. I would love for it to be more often, but I'm realistic.

That said, DH is very understanding about my desire to see my family as much as possible. And he happily hosts my mom and dad for a week at a time in our tiny house. I think the important thing here is to be understanding. You, that it really sucks to be so far away from family. And your DH, that a middle-income family of four can't possibly afford $5000/year on four cross-country trips.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:there is no way our $160k HHI would accommodate four family trips to CA each year. We average one trip out there per year and my parents come here at least twice. I would love for it to be more often, but I'm realistic.

Priorities poster here. But if you made $165k, you could accommodate four family trips a year, right, because it's $5k more a year of income and $5k more a year of expenses, right? And if you had chosen a house that cost you $5k less per year, you could afford to spend that $5k on travel. We each choose how to allocate our money, and you are choosing an allocation that doesn't make that travel easy--but it's still your choice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:there is no way our $160k HHI would accommodate four family trips to CA each year. We average one trip out there per year and my parents come here at least twice. I would love for it to be more often, but I'm realistic.

Priorities poster here. But if you made $165k, you could accommodate four family trips a year, right, because it's $5k more a year of income and $5k more a year of expenses, right? And if you had chosen a house that cost you $5k less per year, you could afford to spend that $5k on travel. We each choose how to allocate our money, and you are choosing an allocation that doesn't make that travel easy--but it's still your choice.

Just to be pedantic, a person earning $160k who get a $5,000 raise only nets $3500, or slightly less if they fall under AMT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:there is no way our $160k HHI would accommodate four family trips to CA each year. We average one trip out there per year and my parents come here at least twice. I would love for it to be more often, but I'm realistic.

Priorities poster here. But if you made $165k, you could accommodate four family trips a year, right, because it's $5k more a year of income and $5k more a year of expenses, right? And if you had chosen a house that cost you $5k less per year, you could afford to spend that $5k on travel. We each choose how to allocate our money, and you are choosing an allocation that doesn't make that travel easy--but it's still your choice.

Just to be pedantic, a person earning $160k who get a $5,000 raise only nets $3500, or slightly less if they fall under AMT.

\

My apologies. Then that $3500, or slightly less, could buy them an additional 3.5 trips, or slightly fewer. Added to the 1 trip in the budget already, that's still 4.5 trips. Or slightly fewer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:there is no way our $160k HHI would accommodate four family trips to CA each year. We average one trip out there per year and my parents come here at least twice. I would love for it to be more often, but I'm realistic.

Priorities poster here. But if you made $165k, you could accommodate four family trips a year, right, because it's $5k more a year of income and $5k more a year of expenses, right? And if you had chosen a house that cost you $5k less per year, you could afford to spend that $5k on travel. We each choose how to allocate our money, and you are choosing an allocation that doesn't make that travel easy--but it's still your choice.

Just to be pedantic, a person earning $160k who get a $5,000 raise only nets $3500, or slightly less if they fall under AMT.

\

My apologies. Then that $3500, or slightly less, could buy them an additional 3.5 trips, or slightly fewer. Added to the 1 trip in the budget already, that's still 4.5 trips. Or slightly fewer.

Dang it, I forgot to calculate the airline miles they'll get toward a free trip. Pedant, forgive me.