(Note: This is for people who are making ends meet and are even saving but by no means rich or even well-off.)
I mean it. I know it’s a weird question, but here’s my issue. We make a decent salary between the two of us. We save, we buy things we both need and want. We don’t over extend ourselves and never live beyond our means. Both of us have used cars, for example. And we have money for vacations…
but not for airfare. And that is what kills us. I would love to travel the country more often (our out of the country!), but airfare is outrageously expensive. I just on a whim checked travelocity airfare to DC in September - $460 per person. That’s a thousand dollars that I can’t spend on the actual vacation at all. No way I’m spending that kind of money for a week. And it would be really hard for me to spend $1000 + other vacation expenses all at once, anyway.
When I have told people in the past, they point out how cheap that is per mile, as if that’s supposed to comfort me - I could drive waaaaaaaaaay cheaper than that. And of course we end up driving nearly everywhere - up to about 5 or 6 hours, is our limit, though we have done a seven hour trip to Toronto. But driving obviously comes with its own set of problems.
But I hear people all the time telling how they are taking their whole family to Disney, or some other place - 4 or 5 or 6 people! And I begin to suspect that everyone else is in on some kind of conspiracy where they know how to get cheap airline tickets and I am the only one who doesn’t know how.
So am I missing something? Do you all just get packages or something? Is there a trick I don’t know? Go to travel agents? Please help!
Huh…I personally just consider it part of the cost of traveling. I thought nothing of spending $1000+ on a first class ticket (that’s one ticket) from Cleveland to San Francisco…because flying is part of the fun of a vacation for me and I wanted to be comfortable.
I didn’t think too much about it when I went to Vegas or Chicago either. When I go on vacation I want everything to be smooth and simple, and cost is secondary.
Train travel can be cheaper, and less of a hassle. It’s fun too, you can see the countryside and meet lots of interesting people hanging out that you simply wouldn’t have the opportunity to on a cramped plane trip.
I have put part of a vacation on a credit card, and paid it off later (I had NO problem making payments until I saved a little more and then wiped it out). If you have your heart set on a vacation, and you need it for life balance, sometimes it’s worth it.
Comparison shop - talk to travel agents. Are you a member of AAA? They are travel agents too - give them a call. I got 10% or so off a rental car and a round-trip Amtrak ticket for $250.
It’s hardly ever been the airfare that kept me from traveling, but rather the cost of hotels, every meal out, and so on. Cruises can be fairly economical in this regard, but of course you can only travel this way to where the ships go.
As for the people taking the whole family to Disney or some other faraway destination involving air travel, some do it on credit, while others are simply doing really, really well in their lives and have never had financial setbacks. Probably everyone knows at least one person/family like this–they have savings in the bank, IRAs, the house they used to live in and now rent out–even while they fly a thousand miles for Comic-Con type events, and the whole family goes to Europe, all within a couple of years.
I’m surprised airfare is that much for you…I went to DC just a month ago and flying out of Burlington airport my airfare was about $340…I thought flying out of Albany would be cheaper…not that $340 is a ton cheaper, but that’s $200 savings for two people.
And yeah, I imagine it’s just something other people know is there and they budget for it…it sucks, but that’s part of travel. Also keep in mind places like Disney offer package deals for families, so things like hotel, food, and sightseeing/attractions (which will probably be 90% Disney) might be cheaper than a random hotel and food and sightseeing/attractions for five people.
I fly to Florida every December, and that’s about what I pay. But only at that time of year. I just flew to BWI for less than $200 – and I got money back.
How? Are you rich? We just don’t make enough for cost to be secondary. That’s not to say that we don’t indulge and enjoy ourselves but for me plunking down $1000 for a two or four hour part of the vacation is pretty outrageous.
And yes, I like trains and we may do trains next time. I was just wondering about how people afforded flights.
We (me,wife,son) try to get down to Florida once a winter from Minnesota. We have usually been able to find round-trip tickets for around $200/ea. (I see some currently available for $208.) We’re usually flexible on the days of the week for flying since specific days are definately more expensive.
We also buy airfare a few months in advance so we’re spending on airfare now and spending on the actual trip later.
Well, there are lots of variables. The number of people traveling does shift economy toward the car, but for small numbers of people (1 or 2) it is not a clear winner. Example: It is 1080 miles from NYC to Orlando. If your car gets 20 miles to the gallon, that is 54 gallons at $4 a gallon for a total trip cost of $432 not counting wear and tear on the vehicle.
Airline prices, depending on when and where you are going, are very variable. I’ve seen tickets going from DC to Jacksonville at about $120 round trip before.
Many people also shop around for airfare tickets and pick during cheaper times. My wife and I bought tickets a couple of weeks off of the “prime season” for european travel and the tickets were $600 instead of $1300.
Many of those trips involving 5-6 people were probably planned out a year ahead of time and were picked at an optimum time to make the tickets as cheap as possible.
We do this in a couple of different ways. The first is that we try to time travel during off seasons or other times when airfare is reduced. For example, we took our honeymoon to Finland during November, which meant that it was really cold already but the winter sports hadn’t really started up yet so we paid about $600 a person for a nonstop international flight. To make that same trip in May we would have paid more than $1200 per person. We didn’t get to go skiing while we were there but we got to go dog sledding and snow tubing and all sorts of other fun stuff so we don’t feel like we missed out by being there during the off-season. If you pick someplace a bit closer or that is more of a tourist destination you can travel internationally for a pittance. During some times of the year you can fly out of JFK to Iceland, Ireland, or England for about $400 a person.
The second way is that we have frequent flyer numbers with a few different airlines so we get constant updates from them on cheap flights. I get emails from both American Airlines and JetBlue telling me about their crazy faresaver flights all over the country sometimes for as little as $75-$80 round trip per person depending on where you want to go. More than once I’ve been able to take a trip in the next 60 days for less than $100 because they are desperate to fill that plane to keep it from flying empty.
Otherwise we just try to avoid flying whenever possible. If we want to go to DC there is a bus that goes from Penn Station to DC in about 4 hours and it costs $15 a person, which is an absolute steal. We can get similar deals to go to about a dozen big cities within driving distance of New York City. The bus takes longer but isn’t any less comfortable than the plane, so we really jump at the opportunity to take the cheap as dirt bus rides whenever we want to travel nearby.
Keep in mind that the cost of driving is more than just the cost of gas. Add in insurance, maintenance, and depreciation, and the national average is over 50 cents per mile. So from upstate NY, a driving round-trip to DC costs about $450. If there’s two of you in the same car, then I guess the cost per passenger is $225, about half of the airfare you mentioned. So yes, driving’s cheaper, but not exactly dirt-cheap.
The conspiracy, I’m convinced, is that no one seems to be saving for retirement. Seriously, surveys consistently show that people aren’t saving nearly enough money for retirement, and that probably helps out with the luxury family getaways. My wife and I are maxed out on our contributions; if we stopped them altogether, we’d have an extra $20K a year (after taxes) to blow on trips, new cars, or cocaine.
When I was a kid, family vacations were three-week voyages out to the western US in a station wagon towing a pop-up camper, staying at campgrounds for maybe $5 a night. We ate at a restaurant maybe once a week, and the rest of the time Mom cooked a complete dinner at our campsite. I saw and did incredible things at some of our country’s most amazing national parks. I have fond memories of those trips, and thanks to a lifetime of aggressive saving, my parents retired 10 years ago as millionaires.
I sign up for fare watcher deals through Travelocity, so that I get an alert whenever a fare to a particular destination drops below X. Generally I use $250 - 300 as the threshold for when I want to be notified that I could fly somewhere for less than that. You can also get broader notifications about cheap fares in general if you don’t have a particular destination in mind.
I’m paid every two weeks, which means that every six months, I get a “skip check,” (my term) – I get paid three times in one calendar month. Those “extra” checks get put toward luxury items like travel.
We also book accommodations through VRBO, which cuts way, WAY down on hotel costs and gets us better accommodations – our big thing is having a kitchen so that we don’t have to eat out for every meal.
We’re also big fans of road trips, but with gas prices being what they are, it’s often a wash compared to flying.
Depending on where you’re going, flying into a nearby destination and then renting a car or going by train makes sense. Flying to Vegas is usually dirt cheap, and from there you can drive to California or other states. Earlier this year, we flew to Dallas and drove down to the Gulf coast of Texas because it was much cheaper than flying directly to anywhere further south.
I agree that those numbers seem high. I just checked Southwest Airlines from Albany to BWI leaving September 1 and returning on September 7. The cheapest but most restrictive ticket is $49 each way. So the two of you could travel for 200 bucks.
But as to your larger point, the airfare is just part of the cost of traveling. I know that my brother doesn’t make a huge salary so some years he drives his family somewhere in the northeast for vacation. But they’ve been to Disneyworld twice, Las Vegas/Grand Canyon once and San Francisco once.
I’m not too surprised about the cost of airfare going up; it’s been in the news recently in the SF Bay Area how the price of oil is causing airfare increases.
Besides comparing prices with the online Travel agencies you can also try contacting a regular TA. Sometimes you can get lower airfare by also purchasing hotel or car through the TA. Did you try pricing out undesirable times (like midnight arrivals)?
As far as being able to afford to go anywhere I pretty much don’t until I have the money to pay for the trip. I’ve got a Florida trip planned for October and I’m expecting to pay a lot for airfare, but we’ve been saving up for it for two years. The only reason why we are going is because our credit card had enough points for a free cruise and if we don’t use it by the end of the year we lose the voucher.
Also, not all airlines are in Travelocity and similar sites. Try checking Southwest and (I think) Virgin.
We drive long distances. We pack up the kids, hop into the minivan and drive. The (4) kids are used to it, and we do our best to make it fun.
We’ve found that listening to books on tape make the hours fly by (the Harry Potter ones are especially good, the guy who narrates them is amazing!). I make little bags with treats (a piece of candy, a toy, a coloring book) and hand them out every few hours, so the kids have something new to mess with.
We drive a thousand miles to my parents’ house (about 16 hours) and stay over night in a cheap hotel, all 6 of us jammed into a tiny hotel room. We do this a few times a year and have since the kids were babies. They are use to it and look forward to it as a fun time. Memories are made of moments like this.
Are you close to a major airport? It might (or might not) be worth driving a couple hours in order to avoid a connection and lower your ticket price.
$460 seems a little high for the cheap end of fares to DC, although I don’t know where you are starting. Have you been checking fares regularly? Are you signed up with Travelocity and individual airline sites to receive notices of fare sales, particularly for airports close to you? Stalking flights months in advance and buying early is definitely helpful.
Flights on weekends (including Friday) and during “regular” hours will be typically be pricier than flights on weekdays and early or late hours.
I’m told that Wednesdays are good days to buy. (My brother just pinged my family today to let us know that fares to Dallas had dropped for his wedding weekend.)
We don’t fly anywhere. We drive. From NW Indiana, we’ve driven to Orlando, Williamsburg, the Smokey Mountains, the Ozarks, the Poconos and this summer we’ll be driving to Maryland. Sometimes, we’ve done it over two days, but we’ve driven to all of our vacations as a family.
With two kids, plane tickets are crazy expensive, so we don’t buy them. That cuts off some vacation places like California and overseas, but most of the USA is within our reach. And until we can afford to pay catch, I’m okay with waiting. My hubby and I have taken planes to California and Vegas, and three of us got one trip to Sedona in before my son was born, but so far we’ve been content to pay cash and drive.
This of course is a big deal. Albany is by no means podunk but we do not have the opportunities NYC does, and never will, with NYC right there. And I wish we could, since we are equidistant between several large cities.
I do save for retirement. I know I have to - I have no one to take care of me. I have no kids, and certainly no one in my family will do so. So yes, that takes a good portion of our disposable income - I have money going to a 401K, and two separate savings accounts that I put money into every paycheck.
And my SO is for some reason categorically opposed to the bus. Yes, this will have to change, with the cost of gas rising again.
Oh, and one more thing - I try to put as little as possible on credit. I don’t mind chargin a few things like hotels and stuff on credit, but I want most of my vacation to be paid for. Credit is for when the fridge breaks and you need another one ASAP. Or if someone in my family dies and I need to fly out there. I don’t feel it is for luxuries.
I certainly am game for taking the train to NYC and flying out of there…it is an added inconvenience but not one I am totally against.
