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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Over $20 million NW and always fly coach.  We’re a short family (so leg room doe sad Much thanks matter so much) and no particular physical needs.  [/quote]

This is very interesting. I fly about twice a month for work and my company pays for first or business class regardless of distance or destination. On top of this, I fly with my family about six times a year. We always fly first or business class; seems weird I would do it for work but not for personal. I guess I’m only MC by DCUM standards with an HHI of $550K and a NW of $5M. Most of our business class is covered by FF miles or Global Services elite upgrades on United, but we still have a $50K / year travel budget to spend on first and business class, when necessary.

What do you plan to do with $20M in NW if not to live a little. Flying coach is like living in high density, low cost, suburban housing. Do people actually enjoy this? More seats for me and my kids, though…. Thanks![/quote]

DP here but with similar net worth. We do international travel for vacations about twice a year. However, we have always flown coach. Neither of us have any business travel so we don't earn points/miles that way, and our vacation travel also too infrequent. We don't generally budget - the concept is irrational to us, but to each their own. We spend money on things that bring us value that is congruent with the cost, and business class vs coach just doesn't work out on that front. For our most recent 2-week trip to Europe, coach tickets were about $4k, and business class would have been somewhere around $18k-$22k. This was a 9 hour flight. To put that into perspective, that's about $7.40 per minute per person just to enjoy the comforts of sitting/sleeping in business class. Jetlag is going to be an issue regardless of how much rest you get on the plane. That $16k is just going to be *FAR* more enjoyable elsewhere on the trip - 5-star accommodations, show tickets, fine dining, exclusive excursions, etc. Sure, with relatively high networth, we could afford all of those things in addition to paying $16k on business class, but one of the reasons we've been able to build our NW is to not waste it on things that don't bring us enjoyment that match the cost.[/quote]

PP here. I wouldn’t spend $16K on business class tickets for a single trip either. That’s crazy. I might spend $6K on coach and then use PlusPoints to upgrade to business. I might spend $4K for my own business class ticket and then use FF miles for the rest of the family. Quite frankly, anyone paying cash out of pocket for all of their personal business or first class tickets is either ultra-rich or ultra-dumb.

You have got to [b]take advantage of FF miles, hotel points, and elite status[/b] to cover the majority of your personal upgrades into luxury suites and comfortable seats. My family of four and I are traveling to France next week for seven nights. All four of us are flying business class round-trip on United. We also have two rooms booked at the Paris Park Hyatt Vendôme. Kids are sharing a room with 2 twin beds. DH and I have a [b]Park Suite King[/b]. The total amount of cash we’re spending for 4 round-trip business class tickets and 1 room and 1 suite, each for 7 nights at a luxury hotel in Paris? [b]$556, and this is just for taxes on the airfare!![/b] The typical cash rates for these two rooms is €1,305 and €1,710, respectively.[b] You’re spending more than 7X on just your coach airfare as I am on substantially more luxurious business airfare as well as top notch lodging.[/b] This is one of the reasons we've been able to build our NW: not wasting it on things that don't bring us enjoyment that match the cost.[/quote]

PP here. That's apples and oranges. You can't earn this level of FF points and elite status by traveling twice a year for vacations like we do. You are subsidizing your vacation travel either by 1) frequent business travel paid for by others, or 2) earning points through credit card spending, which is money you could have otherwise earned as cash back at 2% or higher. You said it yourself that you have a 50k a year budget to pay for business class seats, which incidentally is about the amount of annual spend required to maintain United Global Services status. The fact that your were able to save up and target your points to pay for this one vacation travel neglects the fact that some people, including you,  have poured money to earn these perks in the past - cost that can't be ignored just because you want to brag about laying less than 600 for a luxury vacation. Look, never mind the luxury hotel, if business class only cost 600 for four people, I would gladly pay for it. It doesn't.Business class tickets are expensive no matter how you paid for them - they are not worth it to me after a full accounting of the costs.

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Just to clarify, this is a $50K travel budget [b]total[/b], and not all of it is spent on business and first class airfare. The $50K we spend in cash results in leisure travel that is easily worth $150K+, as it is heavily augmented with optimized use of FF miles and hotel points, both of which are earned at minimal cost via business travel. This is another form of career compensation that is particularly valuable to a travel-heavy family like ours. This is also hardly a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence; we travel like this as a family several times per year.

[b]If you don’t have a job that provides this sort of compensation[/b], you either need to be happy flying in coach and staying at dingy Airbnbs or you need to have a job that pays an additional $150K-$200K per year to cover additional, discretionary travel expenses. Not everyone is supposed to be able to afford to fly business class. [/quote]

PP here. Well, no sh*t Sherlock. This thread didn't ask "is a business class ticket worth it if it is paid for by other people". The entire premise here is paying out of one's own pocket. To be sure, I'm envious of your travel perks, but do thank my lucky stars for having the sense to be able to follow the salient points of a discussion. [/quote]

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