Anonymous wrote:Booking in advance is pretty pointless these days. Predictive analytics tells the airlines what to price things at. If anything, waiting longer pays off. Business class this year has been ridiculous.

Actual evidence or generalization? I'm the PP who is flying to Europe in August with our family for $2,500 ticket in business class. We purchased those about 10 months before the trip.

Also in my experience with work trips, it's the same thing -- if you book really far in advance you can get decent deals. There's a few conferences I attend every year so I book those nearly a year in advance and always get reasonable prices.

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Anonymous wrote:I’m am so lol, but that is such a true description of the parade of horribles in economy. And the reason why I sometimes will pay for first or business even though my income and net worth are less than those above. And why it’s completely silly to have an income of seven figures and be flying overseas in economy.

Agreed- the alleged coach/economy plus- flying 1.1 million HHI poster above is either a troll or a fool

$1.1m poster here. I have a couple of comments:
(1) Based on my degrees and the line of business I am in, I am not a fool.
(2) You are right, you would never know how much money we have based on the cars that we drive and our house, but we are just not into material things. Ironically, we like to travel (coach ).
(3) Maybe one of the reasons that our NW percentile matches our income percentile is because we actually make saving money a priority.

I have been called an idiot for flying economy plus on DCUM. We have a $2m+ HHI. We fly economy plus now and flew economy plus at 1.1m and also 800k.

We recently went to Asia and I believe our original flights had cost around 15k for our family of 5. We did end up upgrading on the way home for 15k to be able to sleep. If we originally booked all business class, our trip would have costs 60k. Can we afford 60k for just flights for spring break? Yes, but we didn’t want to. We ended up splurging for flight back since Dh had to go to work and kids had school. Wanted to be able to sleep on plane.

I’ve been called an idiot for paying for business class on overnight flights. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t around here.

This might be the first post on this board that we can all agree on.

Booking in advance is pretty pointless these days. Predictive analytics tells the airlines what to price things at. If anything, waiting longer pays off. Business class this year has been ridiculous.

Net worth 12 million. HHI 1 million plus. It depends on the price. If first class is not crazy, I do that. We have flow to Europe as a family of 4 in first and business -- sometimes miles -- sometimes pay. But when prices are where they are now -- no. Also domestic -- will fly unless proces are way off. It is all price related. I wills pend a bit extra but not a lot extra.

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Anonymous wrote:Like PP, we’re at around $200K HHI and $2M NW and we like to travel in our family of four, but I have never had enough money and cannot imagine ever having enough money to feel that business or first class would be in our reach.

It really shouldn't be at that HHI and NW.

Shut up

WTF is your issue?

IMO, someone making $200K and only 2M NW and that has 2 kids, should not be paying for business or first class routinely (ie flying 3-4+ times per year) Most financial advisors would have a similar opinion. Just like someone making 200K shouldn't be spending $75K on a new vehicle. That money would be more beneficial going towards college savings/retirement savings.

DP. I fly business often. I spent 70k on a new car, bought a 1.2m house in a good school district. Income is 250k and financial goals are on track. Life is good. NW is 2m (not including home equity)
If you think this isn’t doable, you should take my classes on how to manage your money.

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Anonymous wrote:Summertime biz class tickets to Europe are 10k+ this year. I’m not even using my work budget for that.

This is the issue. We went to Europe twice last fall. The premium economy tickets were $2500 RT and biz was $10-12k. I make more than $1m but not willing to spend $20k for 2 tickets for 7 hours to London. Plus I don’t sleep much in the lie flat seats anyway so I don’t arrive that rested. I do like the arrivals lounges and will do the cheap day of upgrades if available.

Premium economy in a separate cabin is actually decent. BA does champagne on boarding, wider seats with more recline, quilts instead of blankets, better food. I have no problem paying for that.

I wouldn't pay it, but just looked at some random dates in early July to Paris. Business class (lie flat) nonstop on United around $4500/person. Definitely not $10k across the board by any means. Again, still wouldn't pay that much, personally.

Anonymous wrote:If you are high net worth, if you don’t fly first class your children will. We are retired and made the change about 7 years ago with no regrets. However, recent fares are getting ridiculous with RTs up at least 50% in the last year.

We didn't use to fly First/business when we were just HNW. Once we made the jump to UHNW we typically do fly first/business. However, for shorter flights, if it's more than $150 we fly economy plus. And the college aged kiddos can fly economy plus all the time

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Anonymous wrote:Like PP, we’re at around $200K HHI and $2M NW and we like to travel in our family of four, but I have never had enough money and cannot imagine ever having enough money to feel that business or first class would be in our reach.

It really shouldn't be at that HHI and NW.

Shut up

WTF is your issue?

IMO, someone making $200K and only 2M NW and that has 2 kids, should not be paying for business or first class routinely (ie flying 3-4+ times per year) Most financial advisors would have a similar opinion. Just like someone making 200K shouldn't be spending $75K on a new vehicle. That money would be more beneficial going towards college savings/retirement savings.

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We’re flying to Asia this year and I cannot rationally justify spending an extra 8k/person for business for one day.

Why would it be $8k extra? I looked at a random week in August to Tokyo. It's $7k on the direct flight -- probably cheaper it if was bought further in advance. Economy is about $2k so that's $5k extra.

I’m not the pp but I always get annoyed at people who don’t seem to believe flights cost more at certain times. We will likely be flying to Asia this summer, probably June. I’m sure a lot more people fly in June than August.

Captain obvious here

Anonymous wrote:Summertime biz class tickets to Europe are 10k+ this year. I’m not even using my work budget for that.

This is the issue. We went to Europe twice last fall. The premium economy tickets were $2500 RT and biz was $10-12k. I make more than $1m but not willing to spend $20k for 2 tickets for 7 hours to London. Plus I don’t sleep much in the lie flat seats anyway so I don’t arrive that rested. I do like the arrivals lounges and will do the cheap day of upgrades if available.

Premium economy in a separate cabin is actually decent. BA does champagne on boarding, wider seats with more recline, quilts instead of blankets, better food. I have no problem paying for that.

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Anonymous wrote:I’m am so lol, but that is such a true description of the parade of horribles in economy. And the reason why I sometimes will pay for first or business even though my income and net worth are less than those above. And why it’s completely silly to have an income of seven figures and be flying overseas in economy.

Agreed- the alleged coach/economy plus- flying 1.1 million HHI poster above is either a troll or a fool

$1.1m poster here. I have a couple of comments:
(1) Based on my degrees and the line of business I am in, I am not a fool.
(2) You are right, you would never know how much money we have based on the cars that we drive and our house, but we are just not into material things. Ironically, we like to travel (coach ).
(3) Maybe one of the reasons that our NW percentile matches our income percentile is because we actually make saving money a priority.

I have been called an idiot for flying economy plus on DCUM. We have a $2m+ HHI. We fly economy plus now and flew economy plus at 1.1m and also 800k.

We recently went to Asia and I believe our original flights had cost around 15k for our family of 5. We did end up upgrading on the way home for 15k to be able to sleep. If we originally booked all business class, our trip would have costs 60k. Can we afford 60k for just flights for spring break? Yes, but we didn’t want to. We ended up splurging for flight back since Dh had to go to work and kids had school. Wanted to be able to sleep on plane.

We have a high HHI and woud flinch at spending $60k for a family of 5 too. But why was it that high? That's $12k/person. I just priced flying round-trip to Tokyo leaving next week, and it's $7,500/person. Buying tickets well in advance it should be a good bit lower than that.

We flew during spring break and went to two countries. I have friends who track flight prices. I don’t. All I know is we are always stuck paying peak prices for winter break, spring break, summer and long weekends like MLK and Presidents Day. Winter and spring break are often double or triple regular off speak prices.

How far ahead do you plan? I've noticed the same during those periods, but only in teh rare cases we planned a month or two ahead instead of 10+ months ahead.

We usually book flights 2-3 months in advance. We have booked as late as the week of and we often change our dates at the last minute.

DH has a very demanding job. I have 3 kids with various commitments.

We have no flights booked for summer yet. I haven’t looked at prices yet for summer flights.

Definitely do not plan 10+ months in advance. I don’t even know what activities or sports teams my kids will be on.

The times I have booked in advance, we always have conflicts. My kid missed a big science tournament and let his teammate down. Most recently another kid missed a tryout for a team he really wanted to be on and was mad at us for booking travel that week.

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Anonymous wrote:
We’re flying to Asia this year and I cannot rationally justify spending an extra 8k/person for business for one day.

Why would it be $8k extra? I looked at a random week in August to Tokyo. It's $7k on the direct flight -- probably cheaper it if was bought further in advance. Economy is about $2k so that's $5k extra.

I’m not the pp but I always get annoyed at people who don’t seem to believe flights cost more at certain times. We will likely be flying to Asia this summer, probably June. I’m sure a lot more people fly in June than August.

If you are high net worth, if you don’t fly first class your children will. We are retired and made the change about 7 years ago with no regrets. However, recent fares are getting ridiculous with RTs up at least 50% in the last year.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Like PP, we’re at around $200K HHI and $2M NW and we like to travel in our family of four, but I have never had enough money and cannot imagine ever having enough money to feel that business or first class would be in our reach.

It really shouldn't be at that HHI and NW.

Shut up

Anonymous wrote:Like PP, we’re at around $200K HHI and $2M NW and we like to travel in our family of four, but I have never had enough money and cannot imagine ever having enough money to feel that business or first class would be in our reach.

It really shouldn't be at that HHI and NW.