Curious…by the time your kids graduate HS
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Anonymous
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All right I’ll play. My situation is a little different because I am a single parent and travelled to attend and present at scientific conferences in addition to vacations. I usually extended the stay for leisure and brought my son along. HHI $200,000.
By age 15, prepandemic, my son had visited France - Paris twice, Nice Spain - Barcelona Italy - Florence Portugal- Lisbon UK - London twice Switzerland - Montreux twice, Lausanne, Geneva Morocco -Fes, Marrakech, Casablanca, blue town, Sahara China - Beijing Hong Kong Cuba a few times - Havana, Varadero, Holguin Dominica Republic - Punta Cana Haiti US- Hawaii twice, Puerto Rico, Florida- Orlando, Miami, Tampa, Atlanta Georgia, New Orleans, Seattle, Portland Oregon, LA, San Fran twice, San Diego twice, Chicago a few times, Baltimore, New York City many times, Philly, Boston Canada - Toronto and GTHA, Montreal many times, Quebec City, Vancouver BC, Niagara Falls, Ottawa I think that’s all. |
Anonymous
Also no regrets, I feel fortunate to have been able to travel and explore the world with my son- it has been so great to get away from the daily grind and really be in the moment. He is also extremely adaptable and independent as a result. |
Anonymous
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Honestly travel isn’t the end all and be all for exposing kids to different cultures. And yes a week or two weeks long vacation where you just visit the touristy spots isn’t exactly exposure to different cultures. But that duration is fine if all you want to do is visit places that have historical significance.
With the crowds these days, traveling has become overrated for me. Plus we are bound by when the kids are off school. Tourist spots are always so crowded during winter break, spring break and summer break. It’s over whelming with the long line ups for pretty much everything and takes the joy out of traveling to new destinations. |
Anonymous
| Also traveling with one child is way different from traveling with 3 or 4 no matter what your financial situation is. |
Anonymous
OP here. Not sure if the point is to expose them to different cultures but rather see different places. I’m South American and my kids have been to my country a few times and even then they are just getting a little bit of it when they visit so I get what you are saying. I noticed some people who travel to tons of different countries (especially poorer ones like mine) to “expose” their kids to different cultures are still kind of condescending jerks living in a bubble when they come back home. I do want to at least give my kids the opportunity to see a few different places in the US and abroad. Even if we doubled our HHI, there’s no way we can take tons of weeks off work to travel. So my kids’ final list will never be as long as many of the PPs. I do hope travel is accessible to them when they are adults. I think bc of climate change, things might look different. |
Anonymous
| Don’t worry about this OP. As you mentioned, it’s impossible to take more than two weeks off of work and kids also can’t be taken out of school other than during their breaks. Parenting is so much more than taking your kids to fancy places and showing them the world. There is no guarantee that just because you take them around the world, you’re going to have a great relationship with them and they will have fond memories. Plenty of families where the parents are bickering and making kids miserable during travel. At the end of the day, your relationship with your kids is definitely not dependent on how many countries they visit before high school. Try to do day trips or even weekend trips near your area and I assure you, your kids will have fond memories of that. |
Anonymous
| Many but we lived in HKG for 8 years. China, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, France, Spain, Mexico, Caribbean (St Croix, St Barth’s, Saba), BVI, Colombia, Canada |
Anonymous
Curious, what is your Hhi? These are some fancy trips |
Anonymous
| We prioritized making our kids good skiers. I figure they can go to Europe at any point (and will get more out of it when they are older anyway) but I really wanted to make sure they became pretty good skiers. Mission accomplished! |
Anonymous
Why skiing in particular? |
Anonymous
Because I think it is a great way to spend time together as a family and because it is so much easier to learn when you are young. Learning to ski when you are in college or older is rough. But if you live anywhere near skiing, it is a common group activity for 20 somethings (I went a lot when Iived in Boston post-college), so it's a good thing to already know how to do. |
Anonymous
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We make 300k. Kids are 7 and 11. They have been to 10 states and 2 foreign countries. We plan to take 1-2 international trips a year plus at least one domestic one. So a lot more than me growing up.
By the time I graduated I had been to 3 states and didn't go to another country until 20. |
Anonymous
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HHI 500,000
Kids have been to about 30 states and 8 countries, but we almost always stay with family or friends. My husbands’s family is huge and far-flung. When we stay ourselves it is not lavish, because we are never in the rooms. We use miles a lot for flights, do long road trips, etc. Travel is a priority for us so we don’t live in a $2mil home, we don’t drive a fancy car, I don’t have expensive clothing or handbags and Dh and I both cook, a lot. Kids are in a good public school so that certainly helps. |
Anonymous
| PP: meant to list countries since that was part of OP’s question: Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Germany, England, Ireland, Iceland. Oh wait, it was nine. There’s the cousin we visited in Denmark. |
Anonymous
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HHI has been on a slow trajectory upward to about 250K through DD's 16 years. She's been to our through seven European countries, plus the US and Canada. I'm guessing maybe 20 states. some of them for actual vacations, others just on the drive to get somewhere. Seven US national parks, two Canadian national parks, some parks in the Dolomites.
Travel was one of the reasons we chose to have only one kid (though there are times we wish we had had two...we started late.) |