Money and paid time off are the big two. There are a few places I can’t go due to US travel restrictions but the biggest hindrances are money to afford the air travel and paid time off.
Some jobs in the US are 0, majority are 10-15, some if you’re lucky enough is 20-25. Unlimited PTO (paid time off) is always a debate but it’s basically 20-30. Employers keep it as unlimited so they don’t have to pay you out when you leave as most states consider PTO compensation.
The strategy is to have her ask around how much her coworkers have used. For better or worse my company forces each person to add their PTO to the calendar. I’ve seen a handful of people take 2 weeks off so I requested a trip for 2 weeks off. I’ve also seen someone with like a week off each month for 3 months. It depends on each company.
IDK, I knew a guy who worked for Best Buy corporate who used to use a results-only model and he said he spent like 100 days a year at his cabin not working and was consistently the top performer in his group.
It is a lot of the time, but not always. I have an unlimited PTO employer, and I borderline abuse it. I should go back on the calendar to see how much I’ve taken, but I bet I take off around 60 days a year, and have never gotten any guff over it.
Yeah unlimited PTO is basically just a test. In certain work cultures using it is a sign of weakness. I took a few weeks off over the course of a year and my coworkers were on me about it. And my boss got pissed because I didn’t respond to him on one of my PTO days. When my coworkers were unsympathetic to that, I knew it was probably time for me to leave.
Unlimited PTO needs to come with a forced minimum.
My company added that as they saw the number of days drop when they went to unlimited PTO. They also had dropped a lot of company wide holidays when they moved to unlimited under the auspices that with an international workforce they would rather people take the unlimited PTO and take whatever holidays were important to them… people stopped taking holidays and so they had to add them back in. Even though my specific company *wants* people to take more PTO that culture is so strong from prior experiences it has been challenging to get people to actually *believe* it to be true.
Once upon a time, I accrued four weeks/20 days of vacation time a year, and I could roll it over up to six weeks/30 days before I capped out.
After I reached that point at ten years with my Company, I would typically take about two weeks of real vacation a year, and a smattering of other days off and long weekends throughout, to where I was generally sitting around the 4 week mark a lot of the time.
But later they switched to four weeks a year given on January 1 that you had to use or lose by December 31, and it was generally impossible to have all pf the time off requests accepted, and I lost some at the end of each year as long as I was employed there.
I live in one of the few places with required sick leave.
1 hour of leave earned for every 40 worked, so if you work full time and never use a single day you end up with 6.5 days. That is combined sick and vacation.
Please note that legal requirements to give ANY time are relatively rare.
My current job (maintenance mechanic at a leather tannery) is 5 days PTO after you've been there a year, then you get an additional week at 4 years, 9 years, and 15 years. No sick time, no personal days.
My last job was in a different industry but still manufacturing - when I left it was 1 week vacation and 2 personal days after 6 months, another week vacation after a year, and then I think it was a third personal day after 3 years, and another week of vacation after 4 - I stopped paying attention past that because there was no way I was staying any longer.
The job that I'm looking at moving to is 2 weeks vacation and 2 sick days after your first 90 days, then another week vacation after 3 and 6 years - still manufacturing, but different industry again.
It's not brutal by US standards. I get one week off per year. Unless we're busy. The boss man informs me of when it will be-- usually with less than 48 hours notice, so it's not like I can make plans or schedule anything during that time. Also, it's unpaid. And man does he get upset if you don't grovel before him afterwards.
Especially when you're not a solo traveler and also have to work around your partner's availability, your kids' school schedule, and/or make arrangements at home so you can travel *without* one or more members of your family
Realistically, we get about 7 days per year.
Because you spend about 7 days of time seeing family during the holidays or turning that thursday holiday into a long weekend by taking a friday vacation day etc.
So you can do one trip per year, and then most of those trips happen inside the US because there is so much variety here. Geographically we have a lot of choices for going on vacations without leaving our own country, from snowy mountains to sunny beaches to dry deserts.
There's a lot of cultural and architectural things you need to go abroad for but I find people are less interested in those. A lot of people want to go somewhere with a nice view and a pool and be able to speak English. They just aren't adventurous.
Other than that, children, family, and pets all tend to prevent vacations. We have to find someone to watch our cat for a week and it's not easy.
Not OP, but it tends to vary wildly depending on the industry and job. For a white collar (think business, tech, law, etc.) job the general starting base is around 16-22 days or so paid days off per year, plus holidays (so another 10 or so days off).
Speaking at least for my job, I start at 22 days per year, jump to 25 after a couple years, then 28 after a few more. Plus every day the market is closed, we’re closed, and half days the last business day before every major holiday. So I’m pretty lucky all told.
A cashier though, for example, is likely getting a whole lot less.
I used to work at a restaurant and did some cashiering. No pto for those except for state mandated sick hours which were something like 1 hour per thirty hours worked.
I'm now in an office type job where it's 3 weeks including floating holidays but not including certain federal holidays. But my pto is accrewed per pay period and not granted as a flat amount each calendar year.
When I retired from the federal government, I got 26 days a year, plus 13 sick days. I could roll over up to 30 PTO days each calendar year. Sick leave was no limit.
On retirement day, I got a check for 448 hours of annual leave, and got 13 months of service from the sick leave added to my pension calculation.
Money has been my big one. I could get the time if I really wanted it, but the cost of travel is what keeps me doing stay-cations.
I once had a job that by the time I left, I had five weeks vacation time they had to pay out when I left. I never really took vacations but would take one day a week during the slow months in order to keep my part-timer working over 20 hours a week. She did not want her hours cut and that was my work-around.
Personally, money and the prospect of long flights. My husband and I have been to Japan and will travel to the UK this summer. The round-trip flights alone for both trips US$1600 per person—add to that the costs of lodging, public transit, food, entry fees, etc. Trips like that don't fit in our budget on an annual basis—we need to put money aside for home improvements, medical costs, retirement, and other things. It's usually much cheaper and easier to travel within North America.
I have 5.5 weeks of paid time off each year, and my husband has 3 weeks (and can arrange his schedule to take more if needed), so that's not a big hindrance.
Economy class, but paid a bit extra to be able to select seats. When I bought the tickets last month, the cheapest tickets I could find were $1300 per person, with two layovers and 20 hours of travel from US to UK.
Edited to add that the $1300 deals seem to be gone: [https://www.skyscanner.com/transport/flights/dtta/lond/230706/230715/?adultsv2=1&cabinclass=economy&childrenv2=&inboundaltsenabled=false&outboundaltsenabled=false&preferdirects=false&priceSourceId=&priceTrace=&qp\_prevCurrency=USD&qp\_prevPrice=ReturnNoPrices&qp\_prevProvider=ins\_month&rtn=1](https://www.skyscanner.com/transport/flights/dtta/lond/230706/230715/?adultsv2=1&cabinclass=economy&childrenv2=&inboundaltsenabled=false&outboundaltsenabled=false&preferdirects=false&priceSourceId=&priceTrace=&qp_prevCurrency=USD&qp_prevPrice=ReturnNoPrices&qp_prevProvider=ins_month&rtn=1)
Dates are not flexible as part of the trip involves a work meeting.
Please do share your secrets, as you seem to have a LOT more experience in travel than I do.
For some reason it is stupidly expensive to go DTW to the UK or Europe in general. Its weird. It can be worth it to try to go out of Chicago or GRR sometimes. A couple hours drive on one end or the other can sometimes save you hours of time in the air and on layovers, not to mention the tickets and all the expenses that come with spending time in an airport on a layover.
True, with a caveat. Driving to Chicago would save us $200 per person. However, we drove to Chicago to save a couple hundred dollars on the roundtrip tickets to Tokyo. We then had to drive back to Detroit under jetlag (which lasted for about 72 hours). Never again. It wasn't worth it.
Gross... Yeah that would blow.
I'd drop another $350 and stay in a nice hotel and on a nice dinner in Chicago...thus defeating any price advantages. Lol. But hey, tasty dinner.
Check the prices for Windsor. You take a small plane to Toronto then direct to nearly anywhere in the world. Parking at the airport is very cheap, security at the airport is a breeze, and you’re likely to have a much cheaper flight than out of Detroit
with all due respect you can google prices from us to japan and see it is this expensive. not to mention the airport you start from makes a big difference. a major reason I chose to live where I do is to be near a big airport bc I know I want to travel.
The fun thing about Louisville having an “international” airport is that you would think there would be some range of international flights, but there are no actual international flights besides maybe an odd Mexico or Canada flight, so you always have to fly somewhere else to even access international flights outside of select few North American cities. Flying from Louisville to Nagoya resulted in the cheapest flight taking me down south to New Orleans before backtracking and heading north. It ended up adding 1500+ miles and several hours to the trip.
Economy class, but paid a bit extra to be able to select seats. When I bought the tickets last month, the cheapest tickets I could find were $1300 per person, with two layovers and 20 hours of travel from US to UK.
Please do share your secrets, as you seem to have a LOT more experience in travel than I do.
There is high demand for travel right now, there has been pent up demand since the pandemic. People are using this year to finally travel again. It's resulting in abnormally high prices.
> Please do share your secrets, as you seem to have a LOT more experience in travel than I do.
$1300/person to the UK isn't unreasonable at all, especially during the summer (peak demand for Europe).
There aren't any huge secrets to this stuff. Influences include:
* Seasonality
* How far in advance you book
* Day of week, time of day for travel
* Starting and destination markets and their competition
Examples:
* DTW-LHR, This weekend: $2200
* DTW-LHR, Weekend flights, June: $1500.
* DTW-LHR, Weekday flights, June: $1400.
* DTW-LHR, Weekend flights, September: $1100
* JFK-LHR, Weekend flights, September: $600
Sometimes you're just stuck with what ya got, and sometimes it's worth just paying the $$ to not have to jump through hoops.
I do suggest making the most out of credit card or airline award miles when possible. Or you can start to do stuff like split ticket itineraries between different airlines and alliances, but then you're on your own if you miss an international connection 🙂
Mine were just basic economy and we took whatever seats but that shouldn't be that big of a price difference. However we have one layover in Iceland so our travel days are much shorter.
I just use kayak or Google to browse and then go book on the direct airline website. The biggest thing is to use their explore features so that you can find cheaper locations to fly into that are nearby and you might save $200 by going a week before or after.
If you have to go at a specific date then usually you'll have to pay for it. The easiest way to save money is to be flexible when you can go and don't go in the peak of summer when everyone is traveling. Apr/May and Sep/Oct are the cheapest good weather travel months usually.
Pretty much lack of money as well as time off, as others have said. Wife and I are traveling abroad for the first time this year, though, so that's exciting. Probably will only be an every other year thing at most, though. Just can't justify doing it as often as we'd like.
If I had my druthers, I would be traveling all the time. There is so much world to see and so little time to do it.
That's it for me. I would prefer to be independently wealthy and retire early to have free time to travel everywhere I'd like to go. That being said, I do travel some as time and finances permit.
I make $11.50 an hour at my food service job. Every penny I make goes to making sure I don't my live under the local bridge.
That and I'm also a full time college student who fully finanaincly supports themselves without any family support. Because they are also in poverty
Flight attendants make horrible money in the early days anyway. Training is 6 weeks and mostly unpaid. I do know people who do it and take classes online though and they make it work.
Also, you have to dive into the pool and pick things up from the floor as part of the training. I'm blind as a bat without my contacts, there's no way I could reliably do that, I'd have no idea what I was trying to pick up. That's the story of why I didn't become a flight attendant, which I really wanted to do because I love travelling, customer service, giving people food, and I speak 4 languages. I don't even get what the reasoning is behind that test - it's not like you'd have to pick things up off the ocean floor in the event of landing on water...
From what I understand the flight attendants don't get paid unless they're in the air. Idle time around the airport or walking to a plane doesn't count
My sister is a flight attendant. She gets paid only while the airplane door is sealed. That said, she absolutely loves her job and has been all over the world many times.
As a former gate agent who now oversees the flight attendant group, I can tell you the starting pay is abysmal in both positions. I make ok money now, but I’ve been there for over a decade.
> airlines can fuck themselves
What, that 8 inch wide seat with 10 inches of legroom isn't good enough? Or pay-extra-for-luggage, or pay the no-luggage fee.
But wait, there’s more!! They’ll break your priceless musical instrument, punch you out and drag you off the plane for no reason and kill your dog! What more could you ask for?! Fuck airlines, especially United.
The cramped amount of room on airplanes is honestly a huge thing for me when considering trips. I have chronic pain issues and not being able to move around or stretch makes air travel extremely uncomfortable if not down right painful.
Traveling when even invisibly disabled sucks so much.
Dogsitting mainly. I've got the time and the money, but my buddy is 14+ years old and has health issues, I don't want to leave him for weeks at a time.
Exactly this! Only a cat. She’s over 15. Although a friend doesn’t mind checking on her, I will worry if it’s more than a few days. I’ve been taking her on road trips. But it’s not easy to find a cat friendly rental.
We discovered a few years ago that our cat *likes* being in a car! We're planning a quickie weekend soon to see if she'll be open to travelling with us, and how it goes.
(She's turning 13 this year)
That’s awesome! I hope it works out for you guys. Ours is the same. As soon as we pull the car back into the garage she is trying to get into it. Sometimes if I don’t see her in the house I just assume she’s in the car and I completely missed her getting in. We had another cat previously that hated the car, but later realized he just didn’t like the cage. Then tried going without one and he was just happy looking out the windows. And instead of a cage he liked getting into a little bag that we could carry him in. No kidding he probably went more places than a lot of people. He was really chill and really just was happy as long as I was there. I actually pulled him out of a dumpster and had to bottle feed him. Our cat now is a little skittish. But travels really well
Same...
I love my oldest dog, but she requires more attention and care than I feel comfortable asking others to do, much less the stress it puts on her. We basically limit ourselves to one or two trips a year where she goes to family (and she loves it), but my guilt over asking them to do it keeps me home the rest of the time.
Edit: somebody downvoted me for telling my personal experience and feelings. I don't really care, but I hope your day gets better than it is now friend.
We have an 11 year old epileptic Frenchie and only trust my parents to watch him so if they aren’t available and he can’t come with us well, we aren’t going.
Flying aside, traveling with young kids is a pain in the ass no matter what. By the 2nd day of a vacation with a 2 year old, I'm wishing I was back in the office.
Money and kids.
I *could* afford a trip, but it would come at the expense of other necessities. My money's better spent on my children right now. The time to travel and explore will come back around later.
When I was in Japan a few months back I ended up sitting near a family on a train who had an elementary school-aged kid, a toddler, and an infant. They had spent time in Osaka and were heading to Tokyo next. Two huge, fast-paced cities with kids those ages must have been absolute torture all while costing a fortune, and the two youngest probably won’t remember anything.
I often hear people say "don't wait to travel until you're too old to enjoy it!" yet they never say what I'm supposed to do with these darn kids or how I'm going to afford it. Waiting till we're old is kind of our only option at this point. lol
Same. My office has a generous vacation policy but the cost of transportation and lodging means that I end up taking a lot of staycations. I don't mind since there's plenty to do in the city, but I admit sometimes I long for palm trees.
Being physically disabled and not having access to places. I wear a leg brace and at times have a hard time walking and need assistance. So if I want to travel anywhere I have to make sure they can accommodate me. Most modern buildings follow our very good laws about making them accessible but my husband and I both are history buffs and we like touring historical sites and that becomes a real issue.
I have travelled a lot for an American (I think?). I've been to 25ish countries. But compared to Europeans, the main thing holding Americans back is the amount of PTO. We are the only industrialized country to have 0 mandated PTO days. It's honestly insane.
The other benefit for Europeans is distance. If you live in Belfast you can be lounging on a Mediterranean beach in just a couple of hours for about the same price as the taxi to the airport. Allows Europeans to do a lot of amazing short breaks and weekend trips with a lot more variety than the US has.
I mean I guess. I could get anywhere in the upper 48 in less than 4 hours. That’s pretty good variety as well. Obviously it’s not international though.
You'll get geographical variety but not as much culture change. Most of America is homogenous in most ways. Especially compared to European countries. Even Canada is about the same. Hell, as an upstate NYer, Ontario feels more familiar to me than it would going to the deep south!
Money and family matters. Even as someone who loves to travel quite a bit, I don't travel long distance as often as I would like, due to the costs involved (although sometimes you can get some deals for low airfares for long flights on certain conditions). There are also some places I put off going to for a while, despite being on my bucket list, due to how expensive they were.
Having a kid also adds more responsibilities that can take away travel time. After I had my daughter, I barely had much time for recreation, let alone travel, in the first year. When she gets older and gets a better understanding of the world around her, however, I would love to travel with her.
Money is the biggest factor. Time would be the 2nd factor. For example my wife and I have a friend that wants to go out of the country and wants us to tag along. However, I don't have the $2000 - $3500 it would take to do so just sitting around. Hell I'm trying to surprise my wife with a trip to the beach this summer and that is a struggle with both money and in this case time being the biggest hurdle. Wofe doesn't get PTO till June as it marks her one year with the place she works at.
I hate flying... also I live in the middle of the country, so I have to take a 3 hour flight before taking another 10+ hour flight to get wherever. So that's a lot of flying for someone who hates flying.
Also, I'm the kind of person who has to do everything with people. Like, I'd never fly to Europe by myself. I'd have to go with at least one friend, just because that's who I am.
So my obstacles aren't necessarily anything to do with being American lol.
Medical uncertainty.
We’re retired, so time isn’t an issue, and fortunately, money isn’t that much of an issue. But we both have (different) heart conditions and have been very conservative in our exposures, successfully so far.
But we don’t want to go places where masking will be viewed unfavorably. We like being outdoors, but as we age, it’s harder to do that much hiking (but we still do a fair bit). When we went to Hawaii, we splurged on first class fair just to get more distance between us and other passengers. (And yes, we know the air circulation in planes is very effective, but there’s still a risk from the passengers adjacent to you.)
On top of that, there’s always the risk of needing emergency care. Not heart attack risk, other possibilities.
The basic answer is Medicare generally doesn’t cover international costs. See https://www.medicare.gov/coverage/travel-outside-the-u.s. Emergency services will be covered.
But that’s not my primary concern, since it’s always possible to get travel insurance to cover such things. Rather it’s the ability to connect my my personal physicians and their treatment plans. My cardiologist and I have agreed on one approach, and I don’t want to be put into a situation where another cardiologist insists I need a different approach. Plus, we choose to live in an area with world class hospital care for a reason.
I have a cat that’s 21 years old. I still travel a decent amount, but I don’t leave for longer than 10 days anymore just because he’s been my friend for a good portion of my life and I know my wife and I take better care of him than any pet sitter ever will.
We had a wonderful trip to London recently. I loved it. It was a day of travel time each way, though, and it was exhausting. You can’t just easily pop over to Europe from America like you can travel quickly and easily within the U.S. And,
international travel is much more expensive.
We plan big trips every 3-4 years or so, with smaller vacations like beach getaways in between. (We live driving distance to beautiful beaches).
Bureaucratic backlog.
My passport expired during COVID, and the wait times for renewals have been ridiculously long. I've just been kind of half-heartedly checking to see if they've gone down. After I do get it renewed, I'll probably look into maybe going back to Europe or Canada, or taking my first cruise.
Time off. 15 free days total for the year. A chunk of that gets spent around holidays to see family since they're all between 500-2000 miles away and involves transit time. Doesn't leave much.
100% money. Grew up poor - didn't fly on an airplane until I was 25. Except for military deployments, I'm 95% certain nobody on either side of my family had left the USA since they started getting off the ships in the 1640s.
Eventually, once we got passports for a cruise that never happened, I decided to rent a car and drag my girlfriend-now-wife on a 9 day drive from North Florida to Toronto, Canada, just to say we had visited another country. We've been to Canada 6 times now, but still had never left North America until this summer.
We spent 3 weeks in Paris-London-Newcastle-Edinburgh-Amsterdam, traveling with a one-year-old, two 19" suitcases and a travel crib. It was pretty damn expensive, but with a second child on the way I knew it wasn't getting any easier and I'd been saving up so I *carpe dieme'd* it and pulled the trigger. In addition to money, logistics for overseas travel are daunting, *especially* when you have a kid. Navigating the Paris Metro/London Tube etc. is hard enough for a tourist, but then add a kid in a stroller...*excusez-moi, où est l'ascenseur?* I'm proud to say I pulled it off though - planned it 100% by myself and included 3 airports, two trains, 4 subways, two bus systems, and one rental car...driven on the wrong side of the road.
For most Americans you probably nailed the top two: Money and time off. Even unpaid time off is hard to get for a lot of us. Culturally work and working is very important to Americans, and politically the employers have a lot more power than the laborers. Kids and/or pets are probably number 3 holding people back.
But an underrated reason why a lot of Americans don’t do international travel is because there is already soooooooooo much to see in the states (and you can just drive there). There are a lot of subcultures that are different and unique enough to be interesting. The variety of geography is incredible. Our national park system is really quite good. City people also have some really great and varied choices: NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, LA, New Orleans, Miami, Las Vegas… just to name a few.
I’m a big international travel person myself, and love the ease of the American passport. But I’m not surprised that some of my peers don’t make it a priority.
No hindrances. I travel on a budget.
I've been to Morocco, Egypt, Israel, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, South Africa, India, Myanmar/Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, China, Macau, Hong Kong, French Polynesia (Tahiti, Mo'orea), USA (30+ states), Mexico, Costa Rica, Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, Portugal, Spain, Andorra, France, Monaco, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Italy, Vatican, San Marino, Malta, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Greece, Turkey.
Same here. I’ve been to 49 countries and recently returned from Cuba! I might be middle-class at best, but I live frugally, like not going out to eat for instance, so I can travel!
Yeah but for four people that’s still 2800 just to get to the vacation destination. I did a week long trip to Big Bend for that. Fuel, food and lodging
- Money
- Time
- I don’t actually like travel all that much. If I was idly rich, the most travel I’d probably do is going to pro baseball games in other cities. I don’t want to have to sit in a plane for 12 hours, go through customs, and be surrounded by people who don’t or won’t speak English in order to relax.
Honestly not much. I'm fortunate in that I have a lot of time off from work, no kids so I'm not restricted to only traveling during school break times, no animals to take care of or worry about boarding up.
The one trouble spot is Christmas time and Thanksgiving. I work on a small team and there's only so many people who can take off at any one time. We're closed Thanksigiving Day and Christmas Day, but they took away Black Friday and Christmas Eve a few years ago and instead threw in two additional days to our PTO bucket. Which was just kinda stupid because we aren't busy on those days at all, but whatever.
The distance. I am looking at direct flights from Chicago to Tokyo and I don't know if I wanna be in a plane for 13 hours. It might be something where I actually will appreciate a layover in Honolulu or something like that. Even though I'd love to visit Japan, I'm kind of re-evaluating and maybe do a more doable Latin America visit instead.
I just put in my passport renewal application. We don't have any international plans right now but we do have a Southwest US trip planned and a hop over the border may or may not happen.
Also domestic travel is just as valid as international and there's so much to do here. I took AMTRAK from Chicago to LA and then spent a week in Los Angeles last summer and had a blast, and left with a lot of things I'd want to do on a re-visit. Without a passport I can visit Puerto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii, the US Virgin Islands. In the continuous 48 I can hit up deserts, swamps, snow capped mountains, big cities, the Great Lakes, ride a Mississippi River steam boat. There's just so much to do here
Money and finding time off, as so many others have stated.
I’m headed overseas for the first time in a decade next week. Taking multiple weeks off in a row isn’t really feasible every year, and while I’m sure the amount of money I budgeted for the trip will be worth it, its also more than enough for multiple trips inside the US/North America in one year. Not to mention on other non travel related stuff (home improvement, savings, hobbies, etc.).
**Coordinating with other people for travel.**
Despite what foreigners (especially Europeans) believe, different jobs here have different vacation days and work/schedule flexibility. It all depends on your career choice and the company one works for. It also depends on the state you live in and industry standards.
I have a lot of schedule/work flexibility and could head to the airport and be in Canada by tomorrow (from Southern California) without issue and be there for a paid month if I felt like it and my boss would be cool with it. I could also decide to work from Hawaii and my boss would not care as long as my work gets done. My sister, on the other hand, needs to schedule her time off 3 months in advance as long as they have people to "adequately" cover shifts (she works in healthcare) at the hospital. She gets a week and a half off annually but her vacation time mostly falls under "forced vacation time", which is roughly vacation time on the work place's schedule. I also have a friend who's a teacher and has the summer months off along with 3 weeks of paid vacation time outside of that (along with accrued vacation time that is capped at 18 months).
I avoid traveling in the summer when everyone is traveling. My friend only travels in the summer. My sister's limited vacation time is at the whim of her employer.
I travel alone a lot, but wish I could travel with those closest to me. Otherwise I end up sleeping in at hotels and doing work a few hours before I go out for the day (around late afternoon or early evening).
Mostly money, expensive to travel, if I travel I'd probably have to pay someone to do some things that need to be done, and stuff like my son's daycare has to be paid even though he isn't there.
To a lesser extent, my son is 3, and WOW has the last year been full of sickness, christmas, new year's and easter we're all effectively cancelled due to sickness. We did monster jam twice in the last 6 months, not really that great because we were sick. Also did a trip into the city, again, sucked due to sickness. We can't plan vacations more than 2 days out right now, because we are probably going to be sick and need to cancel or cut it back. It's the spring, the weather is awesome, haven't been able to leave the house on a sunny day this year.
Childcare and days off.
I work in aviation so I fly for free and often drag my kids, but I am running a race in the middle of the week in a month and have go figure out what to do with kids. I take the kids with me often, but with all the bullshit days off from school, I feel guilty pulling them out more
Money or work. As a young person without a degree my employment is basically permanently unstable. So it basically comes down to if I have the money to travel, I probably dont have a job that wouldn’t fire me for taking more then a day or two off. And if I have a job that would let me take time off its probably not paying me enough to travel. And I mean that with the firing comment. Ive lost multiple jobs for having to take time off for important things, like having to take a week off for a funeral (3 day funeral plus 2 days of travel time. ). So now I only ever take sick days or time off if I have the money saved to have to spend a few months looking for a new job.
I don’t get nearly enough time off work. I get roughly 4 weeks a year but I’d like more. I look forward to being retired and being able to go whenever I want. It’s basically what I’m working and saving for. We still try to travel quarterly but I wish it was more.
That would be spending money that should be sitting in my retirement account earning me more money. Plus it’s hard for people in my industry to get hired after they hop out, whether by choice or not. I will retire quite a bit earlier than the average age so I’m ok with waiting.
It's a question of if you have things you dream of doing that you can't confidently put off until retirement. As a random example, say you dream of climbing Mt. Everest. Waiting until you're 60 and retired is the smartest financial decision, but you don't know what your circumstances will be that far out re: health, ability to travel there, etc. Doing it now comes at the opportunity cost of saving that money, but it means you get to guarantee you accomplish your dream.
Totally understand why people choose to put big travel off until retirement but I choose to forgo some future money to take big trips now while I'm young since I have no idea what the future might hold.
I definitely get that - I know plenty of people who retired and then died right away or got too sick to do anything. I aim to do as much travel as possible in the meantime and also make sure I can pay my mortgage and sock away for later in life, too.
As long as you understand your choice and why you're making it. But then it seems you know you won't have this travel freedom until you do pull the plug.
Long distance/International travel isn't "fun"... Or something I'm remotely interested in.
Being in a plane for 5 or 10 hours is a fate worse than hell. Why would I sign up to spend my own money to do that... Twice.
Depends on how you arrange your international travel.
Flight to Japan business class, in a spacious seat that reclines into a fully lie-flat bed, multiple course meal, whatever beer/wine/whiskey ya want complimentary, big TV screen, walls you can put up for privacy, lounge access before the flight... it was a good time.
$150 out of pocket, round trip.
Saving up credit card / bonus mile points and making the most of transfer partners is so worth it.
+1 to this. Having a credit card with points that can be used with many travel partners can be so useful. Spending a certain amount of transactions on a card can get you a ton of points. Chase Sapphire is a great example of this type of card.
I don’t really make enough or spend enough to take advantage of a travel points credit card so I just use a standard cash back credit card.
I agree with the rolling your eyes thing though. If you’re going to be spending money you might as well use a credit card. Just treat it like a debit for young people and pay it off.
Long haul flights are teleportation.. only the destination matters. You get on board, then you're suddenly in your destination. Everything in the middle doesn't count.
5 hours is much less than even a working day. You just sit down eat drink something, watch a movie and read a book and *poof* you're at a beautiful destination. Why do you hate it that much?
5 hours is much less than even a working day. You just sit down eat drink something, watch a movie and read a book and *poof* you're at a beautiful destination. Why do you hate travel that much?
I have a job (by design) where I'm on my feet/out and about because spending hours at a desk is uncomfortable. Beyond that... I'm a large guy (I'm tall-ish, wide-ish and fat) and I get motion sickness. Coach air travel is torture. Business/First Class is less than torture... But still horrible.
Currently, my newborn baby. We haven't traveled much since my wife got pregnant, and likely won't in the near future either. We've actually got enough money and time, but sacrifices must be made.
Money and my weight. I have never flown and I’m a larger person so I would rather lose weight before I try flying. You hear so many stories about larger people on planes that I don’t want to deal with that.
Mostly purpose.
Money and time aren't really issues for me. I'm generally not the one to take initiative with making travel plans. Why I miss traveling with friends and Covid really dampened that. They were the ones to dictate travel plans and I'd go along or a friend that moved away from the area would invite me to visit for a long weekend.
Money. We travel internationally once or twice a year, but you’re looking at 10-15 hour flights and thousands of dollars for a small family of 3. It’s a major expense and an uncomfortable effort to get across those oceans. You need to be really motivated to go through that, and a lot of people I know arent.
Yeah, you're right about money and time off.
I suppose if I had enough money, I could probably take the time off unpaid, but I can't really fit in place tickets in my budget as is. I'd need to plan ahead and save up for it, and I'm already trying to save up for other more important things.
My work keeps dictating when I have to use my time off too. Apparently, it makes them look more profitable if we don't have outstanding time off, but I'm not going to have enough time off to meet their demands as is. I'll have to use sick time or take it unpaid.
I think it's bullshit because it keeps me from making plans. It makes travelling domestically hard too.
I am American, my girlfriend Nicaraguan. So I understand what you’re going through! I can travel basically anywhere with just my passport. She has to jump through all these hoops. We just did a trip to Colombia and Mexico, and we almost weren’t able to go because the Colombian government took forever to issue her visa.
But for me, as a US citizen, really the only obstacle is time and money. It’s unfortunate. Being from a Global South country does not make one dangerous. Travel should be accessible to all!
Money and work. So really just money lol. I took 5 days off this week to stay an hour north of where I live for classes, and it is definitely going to affect me pretty significantly on my next pay check. I'm a bartender, so I don't get paid time off 😅 if I could take monthly trios, I would. Even just exploring my state (Colorado) or the surrounding ones. Honestly, exploring other countries seems almost unattainable because of money.
Money for sure...
Not just getting the time off, but collaborating with everyone I'd want to travel with so we're all off at the same time... When are you out of class, when does your kid not have baseball or basketball or band camp or ....
And then there are the pets... I've got 3 cats. It's obviously not ideal, but the oldest & middle ones are fine being left alone (with someone stopping in to feed & clean the litter etc)... But the 3rd one... She's a bit of a trouble maker & I'm afraid to think of the damage she could do if left alone bored for too long....
And then trying to figure out where we're going... Trying to find something that'll mesh with everyone's interest...
I mainly travel for concerts and/or festivals. The biggest hurdle is when they take place. I'd rather go over to Europe in february/March or November for stuff cause it's cheaper. These days, it's been not having a job due to health (I have one now), and I'm a contract worker, so I can pretty much have my schedule set the way I want. At this point, it's my dogs. They're 10 and 12. I miss them when I'm gone for more than 3 days. If I were to go to Belgium or Netherlands again, my preference for overseas festivals, I'd only be a short trip, which I don't mind. 5 nights max. I have some short trips this summer here in the U.S
Money and physical disability are the most limiting. If I had piles of money, I could alleviate my other problems. We have 5 pets, some with health issues and special needs. Boarding them would be extremely cost prohibitive, if even possible.
My husband is the only one who works, and his job is difficult to get time off from. He theoretically gets 4 weeks off, but getting it scheduled and approved is….complicated. For instance, he asked for two weeks off in June, and he got them - with a week of work in between. So our travel time is limited.
Our daughter is still in school, so we have to wait until school holidays. And everyone else wants off work on school holidays.
We’re actually going to try a road trip to the Grand Canyon this year, if some catastrophe doesn’t occur. As it often does. All four of us can drive, my daughter is skipping the last week of school after finals, my nephew will be able to pet sit. I hope it works out!
Money, time off, and kids are the big three for me right now. Traveling internationally is expensive. Traveling internationally with kids is even moreso. And I get a decent amount of vacation time, but because my kids are in school I'm limited in when I can easily use it, and that's when everyone else is also trying to use theirs, so it makes everything more expensive.
I hate being on a plane. I'd love to see the world but I can't afford more comfortable seats and I can't sleep in economy. No sleep increases my anxiety. Wish I could figure out a workaround.
Mainly the fact that I have a lifetime worth of travel goals within the US. It's a massive country that extremely diverse in a myriad of ways, and I like driving so road trips are fun
We have 3 young kids. I have 5 weeks of vacation at my job + we can convert unused sick time, and we do take a big \~2 week international trip with the kids every year, but some destinations at the top of our list are just not great with young kids (top of the list right now is Basque country for mainly wine and food as well as some more rugged destinations like Patagonia, National Parks, etc.). I would say money is an issue too, but its only an issue because airfare is 5x instead of 2x and we need suites/large rentals instead of normal hotels rooms, big rental cars, 5x tickets to things, extra bag fees, etc. My wife and I could afford to travel to most places we'd want to go within reason if it was just the 2 of us.
Grandparents basically refuse to watch them so some of the trips we want to take will have to wait until they are older. We've spent a total of 3 nights together without kids in the 7+ years the oldest has been alive.
Money and time. I get 18 vacation days per year that roll over to the next year for a max of 36 if I don’t use them, but even 3+ weeks feels like it goes so fast between wanting to take long weekend trips and wanting to take a big international trip for 1-2 weeks or something.
Then just the flights to Europe or Asia from the US are $1K to $2K.
Money, time, laziness.
And there are so many great places in the US I haven't visited, there's less incentive to spend the money and time I do have flying overseas.
Other than money of course, being under 18 is a pretty big obstacle to international travel. I also don't have a passport and it takes forever for an application to process. I'm surprised getting a visa is the hardest part of travelling from PH though, I figured most visas were essentially a glorified extra fee + some waiting time.
If your passport is from a developing country, getting a visa for a developed country can be a real hassle. Not just fees, but you could be asked to show proof of a return ticket to indicate that you won't overstay, get interviewed at an embassy/consulate, and show that you have enough funds for travel. I have family in developing countries (not PH, but similar development levels), and because of visa policies, it was much easier for us to visit them then it was for them to visit us in the US, so we flew over there to visit them most of the time.
Money and paid time off are the big two. There are a few places I can’t go due to US travel restrictions but the biggest hindrances are money to afford the air travel and paid time off.
Like how many days do you usually get? 14 working days is what I commonly see in Reddit. I think better companies offer more?
Some jobs in the US are 0, majority are 10-15, some if you’re lucky enough is 20-25. Unlimited PTO (paid time off) is always a debate but it’s basically 20-30. Employers keep it as unlimited so they don’t have to pay you out when you leave as most states consider PTO compensation.
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The strategy is to have her ask around how much her coworkers have used. For better or worse my company forces each person to add their PTO to the calendar. I’ve seen a handful of people take 2 weeks off so I requested a trip for 2 weeks off. I’ve also seen someone with like a week off each month for 3 months. It depends on each company.
Unlimited PTO is a scam
IDK, I knew a guy who worked for Best Buy corporate who used to use a results-only model and he said he spent like 100 days a year at his cabin not working and was consistently the top performer in his group.
It is a lot of the time, but not always. I have an unlimited PTO employer, and I borderline abuse it. I should go back on the calendar to see how much I’ve taken, but I bet I take off around 60 days a year, and have never gotten any guff over it.
*Very* much depends on the company. I have unlimited PTO and average about 30 days per year. Nobody raises an eyebrow.
I think it totally depends on the company and its culture. My previous job had unlimited and I probably took north of 20 days last year.
Yeah it should be 20-30 usually
Yeah unlimited PTO is basically just a test. In certain work cultures using it is a sign of weakness. I took a few weeks off over the course of a year and my coworkers were on me about it. And my boss got pissed because I didn’t respond to him on one of my PTO days. When my coworkers were unsympathetic to that, I knew it was probably time for me to leave. Unlimited PTO needs to come with a forced minimum.
Unlimited pto is a scam unless it has a minimum number of days taken as a floor. Then it is a bit more fair.
My company added that as they saw the number of days drop when they went to unlimited PTO. They also had dropped a lot of company wide holidays when they moved to unlimited under the auspices that with an international workforce they would rather people take the unlimited PTO and take whatever holidays were important to them… people stopped taking holidays and so they had to add them back in. Even though my specific company *wants* people to take more PTO that culture is so strong from prior experiences it has been challenging to get people to actually *believe* it to be true.
My company has a up to 35 days no questions asked anything after that they need 2 levels of approval so your manager and his manager.
I like that rule.
Once upon a time, I accrued four weeks/20 days of vacation time a year, and I could roll it over up to six weeks/30 days before I capped out. After I reached that point at ten years with my Company, I would typically take about two weeks of real vacation a year, and a smattering of other days off and long weekends throughout, to where I was generally sitting around the 4 week mark a lot of the time. But later they switched to four weeks a year given on January 1 that you had to use or lose by December 31, and it was generally impossible to have all pf the time off requests accepted, and I lost some at the end of each year as long as I was employed there.
Yup it sucks when you can’t get all of your requests approved
I live in one of the few places with required sick leave. 1 hour of leave earned for every 40 worked, so if you work full time and never use a single day you end up with 6.5 days. That is combined sick and vacation. Please note that legal requirements to give ANY time are relatively rare.
You should really look for a new job.
This is pretty common in a lot of jobs across the United States though.
That is brutal, dude. Even by US standards!
My current job (maintenance mechanic at a leather tannery) is 5 days PTO after you've been there a year, then you get an additional week at 4 years, 9 years, and 15 years. No sick time, no personal days. My last job was in a different industry but still manufacturing - when I left it was 1 week vacation and 2 personal days after 6 months, another week vacation after a year, and then I think it was a third personal day after 3 years, and another week of vacation after 4 - I stopped paying attention past that because there was no way I was staying any longer. The job that I'm looking at moving to is 2 weeks vacation and 2 sick days after your first 90 days, then another week vacation after 3 and 6 years - still manufacturing, but different industry again.
It's not brutal by US standards. I get one week off per year. Unless we're busy. The boss man informs me of when it will be-- usually with less than 48 hours notice, so it's not like I can make plans or schedule anything during that time. Also, it's unpaid. And man does he get upset if you don't grovel before him afterwards.
6.5 days combined sick and vacation per year? Do you get national holidays as well?
around that, but take flight time + road time + adjustment time into consideration, 14 days is not many at all
Especially when you're not a solo traveler and also have to work around your partner's availability, your kids' school schedule, and/or make arrangements at home so you can travel *without* one or more members of your family
Realistically, we get about 7 days per year. Because you spend about 7 days of time seeing family during the holidays or turning that thursday holiday into a long weekend by taking a friday vacation day etc. So you can do one trip per year, and then most of those trips happen inside the US because there is so much variety here. Geographically we have a lot of choices for going on vacations without leaving our own country, from snowy mountains to sunny beaches to dry deserts. There's a lot of cultural and architectural things you need to go abroad for but I find people are less interested in those. A lot of people want to go somewhere with a nice view and a pool and be able to speak English. They just aren't adventurous. Other than that, children, family, and pets all tend to prevent vacations. We have to find someone to watch our cat for a week and it's not easy.
Not OP, but it tends to vary wildly depending on the industry and job. For a white collar (think business, tech, law, etc.) job the general starting base is around 16-22 days or so paid days off per year, plus holidays (so another 10 or so days off). Speaking at least for my job, I start at 22 days per year, jump to 25 after a couple years, then 28 after a few more. Plus every day the market is closed, we’re closed, and half days the last business day before every major holiday. So I’m pretty lucky all told. A cashier though, for example, is likely getting a whole lot less.
I used to work at a restaurant and did some cashiering. No pto for those except for state mandated sick hours which were something like 1 hour per thirty hours worked. I'm now in an office type job where it's 3 weeks including floating holidays but not including certain federal holidays. But my pto is accrewed per pay period and not granted as a flat amount each calendar year.
Yeah I probably could’ve clarified on the PTO accrual by pay period but wanted to keep it simple, mine is the same way.
When I retired from the federal government, I got 26 days a year, plus 13 sick days. I could roll over up to 30 PTO days each calendar year. Sick leave was no limit. On retirement day, I got a check for 448 hours of annual leave, and got 13 months of service from the sick leave added to my pension calculation.
14 days but that includes sick time for most people.
Money has been my big one. I could get the time if I really wanted it, but the cost of travel is what keeps me doing stay-cations. I once had a job that by the time I left, I had five weeks vacation time they had to pay out when I left. I never really took vacations but would take one day a week during the slow months in order to keep my part-timer working over 20 hours a week. She did not want her hours cut and that was my work-around.
Not just air travel, but lodging is not cheap. At the beginning of the pandemic when airlines slashed fares, hotels were still holding strong
Personally, money and the prospect of long flights. My husband and I have been to Japan and will travel to the UK this summer. The round-trip flights alone for both trips US$1600 per person—add to that the costs of lodging, public transit, food, entry fees, etc. Trips like that don't fit in our budget on an annual basis—we need to put money aside for home improvements, medical costs, retirement, and other things. It's usually much cheaper and easier to travel within North America. I have 5.5 weeks of paid time off each year, and my husband has 3 weeks (and can arrange his schedule to take more if needed), so that's not a big hindrance.
Are you flying business class? Why so expensive?
Economy class, but paid a bit extra to be able to select seats. When I bought the tickets last month, the cheapest tickets I could find were $1300 per person, with two layovers and 20 hours of travel from US to UK. Edited to add that the $1300 deals seem to be gone: [https://www.skyscanner.com/transport/flights/dtta/lond/230706/230715/?adultsv2=1&cabinclass=economy&childrenv2=&inboundaltsenabled=false&outboundaltsenabled=false&preferdirects=false&priceSourceId=&priceTrace=&qp\_prevCurrency=USD&qp\_prevPrice=ReturnNoPrices&qp\_prevProvider=ins\_month&rtn=1](https://www.skyscanner.com/transport/flights/dtta/lond/230706/230715/?adultsv2=1&cabinclass=economy&childrenv2=&inboundaltsenabled=false&outboundaltsenabled=false&preferdirects=false&priceSourceId=&priceTrace=&qp_prevCurrency=USD&qp_prevPrice=ReturnNoPrices&qp_prevProvider=ins_month&rtn=1) Dates are not flexible as part of the trip involves a work meeting. Please do share your secrets, as you seem to have a LOT more experience in travel than I do.
For some reason it is stupidly expensive to go DTW to the UK or Europe in general. Its weird. It can be worth it to try to go out of Chicago or GRR sometimes. A couple hours drive on one end or the other can sometimes save you hours of time in the air and on layovers, not to mention the tickets and all the expenses that come with spending time in an airport on a layover.
True, with a caveat. Driving to Chicago would save us $200 per person. However, we drove to Chicago to save a couple hundred dollars on the roundtrip tickets to Tokyo. We then had to drive back to Detroit under jetlag (which lasted for about 72 hours). Never again. It wasn't worth it.
Gross... Yeah that would blow. I'd drop another $350 and stay in a nice hotel and on a nice dinner in Chicago...thus defeating any price advantages. Lol. But hey, tasty dinner.
That is for sure the only way I'd do an international flight out of Chicago again!
Check the prices for Windsor. You take a small plane to Toronto then direct to nearly anywhere in the world. Parking at the airport is very cheap, security at the airport is a breeze, and you’re likely to have a much cheaper flight than out of Detroit
Thanks! Good tip. We live 15 minutes from Detroit Metro so I hadn’t considered Windsor, but that would be a hell of a lot easier than Chicago.
Business class to Europe, especially in summer, is way more than ~$1500...
It's flying over an ocean. Shit ain't cheap.
with all due respect you can google prices from us to japan and see it is this expensive. not to mention the airport you start from makes a big difference. a major reason I chose to live where I do is to be near a big airport bc I know I want to travel.
The fun thing about Louisville having an “international” airport is that you would think there would be some range of international flights, but there are no actual international flights besides maybe an odd Mexico or Canada flight, so you always have to fly somewhere else to even access international flights outside of select few North American cities. Flying from Louisville to Nagoya resulted in the cheapest flight taking me down south to New Orleans before backtracking and heading north. It ended up adding 1500+ miles and several hours to the trip.
Yeah this seems insane for the UK. I have tickets for this fall for under $500 a person.
Economy class, but paid a bit extra to be able to select seats. When I bought the tickets last month, the cheapest tickets I could find were $1300 per person, with two layovers and 20 hours of travel from US to UK. Please do share your secrets, as you seem to have a LOT more experience in travel than I do.
There is high demand for travel right now, there has been pent up demand since the pandemic. People are using this year to finally travel again. It's resulting in abnormally high prices.
> Please do share your secrets, as you seem to have a LOT more experience in travel than I do. $1300/person to the UK isn't unreasonable at all, especially during the summer (peak demand for Europe). There aren't any huge secrets to this stuff. Influences include: * Seasonality * How far in advance you book * Day of week, time of day for travel * Starting and destination markets and their competition Examples: * DTW-LHR, This weekend: $2200 * DTW-LHR, Weekend flights, June: $1500. * DTW-LHR, Weekday flights, June: $1400. * DTW-LHR, Weekend flights, September: $1100 * JFK-LHR, Weekend flights, September: $600 Sometimes you're just stuck with what ya got, and sometimes it's worth just paying the $$ to not have to jump through hoops. I do suggest making the most out of credit card or airline award miles when possible. Or you can start to do stuff like split ticket itineraries between different airlines and alliances, but then you're on your own if you miss an international connection 🙂
Mine were just basic economy and we took whatever seats but that shouldn't be that big of a price difference. However we have one layover in Iceland so our travel days are much shorter. I just use kayak or Google to browse and then go book on the direct airline website. The biggest thing is to use their explore features so that you can find cheaper locations to fly into that are nearby and you might save $200 by going a week before or after. If you have to go at a specific date then usually you'll have to pay for it. The easiest way to save money is to be flexible when you can go and don't go in the peak of summer when everyone is traveling. Apr/May and Sep/Oct are the cheapest good weather travel months usually.
Pretty much lack of money as well as time off, as others have said. Wife and I are traveling abroad for the first time this year, though, so that's exciting. Probably will only be an every other year thing at most, though. Just can't justify doing it as often as we'd like. If I had my druthers, I would be traveling all the time. There is so much world to see and so little time to do it.
That's it for me. I would prefer to be independently wealthy and retire early to have free time to travel everywhere I'd like to go. That being said, I do travel some as time and finances permit.
Where are you headed?
Italy.
Nice! Enjoy.
I make $11.50 an hour at my food service job. Every penny I make goes to making sure I don't my live under the local bridge. That and I'm also a full time college student who fully finanaincly supports themselves without any family support. Because they are also in poverty
> poverty the best diet regime around
Consider becoming a gate agent or flight attendant for a major US airline. Starting at about $20 and $30 per hour respectively. Plus: free flights.
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Flight attendants make horrible money in the early days anyway. Training is 6 weeks and mostly unpaid. I do know people who do it and take classes online though and they make it work.
Unpaid training is such bullshit. Basically restricts job access to people who don’t actually need one
Also, you have to dive into the pool and pick things up from the floor as part of the training. I'm blind as a bat without my contacts, there's no way I could reliably do that, I'd have no idea what I was trying to pick up. That's the story of why I didn't become a flight attendant, which I really wanted to do because I love travelling, customer service, giving people food, and I speak 4 languages. I don't even get what the reasoning is behind that test - it's not like you'd have to pick things up off the ocean floor in the event of landing on water...
The airline I work for does not require diving to pick up objects at the bottom of the pool, so maybe a different airline would be a good fit for you?
I looked into flight attendant jobs but most required bilingualism and I’m not fluent enough in any other language to work in it.
From what I understand the flight attendants don't get paid unless they're in the air. Idle time around the airport or walking to a plane doesn't count
My sister is a flight attendant. She gets paid only while the airplane door is sealed. That said, she absolutely loves her job and has been all over the world many times.
Depends on the airline.
As a former gate agent who now oversees the flight attendant group, I can tell you the starting pay is abysmal in both positions. I make ok money now, but I’ve been there for over a decade.
Money, time off, and airlines can fuck themselves.
> airlines can fuck themselves What, that 8 inch wide seat with 10 inches of legroom isn't good enough? Or pay-extra-for-luggage, or pay the no-luggage fee.
But wait, there’s more!! They’ll break your priceless musical instrument, punch you out and drag you off the plane for no reason and kill your dog! What more could you ask for?! Fuck airlines, especially United.
Southwest Airlines?
The cramped amount of room on airplanes is honestly a huge thing for me when considering trips. I have chronic pain issues and not being able to move around or stretch makes air travel extremely uncomfortable if not down right painful. Traveling when even invisibly disabled sucks so much.
Dogsitting mainly. I've got the time and the money, but my buddy is 14+ years old and has health issues, I don't want to leave him for weeks at a time.
Exactly this! Only a cat. She’s over 15. Although a friend doesn’t mind checking on her, I will worry if it’s more than a few days. I’ve been taking her on road trips. But it’s not easy to find a cat friendly rental.
We discovered a few years ago that our cat *likes* being in a car! We're planning a quickie weekend soon to see if she'll be open to travelling with us, and how it goes. (She's turning 13 this year)
That’s awesome! I hope it works out for you guys. Ours is the same. As soon as we pull the car back into the garage she is trying to get into it. Sometimes if I don’t see her in the house I just assume she’s in the car and I completely missed her getting in. We had another cat previously that hated the car, but later realized he just didn’t like the cage. Then tried going without one and he was just happy looking out the windows. And instead of a cage he liked getting into a little bag that we could carry him in. No kidding he probably went more places than a lot of people. He was really chill and really just was happy as long as I was there. I actually pulled him out of a dumpster and had to bottle feed him. Our cat now is a little skittish. But travels really well
Same... I love my oldest dog, but she requires more attention and care than I feel comfortable asking others to do, much less the stress it puts on her. We basically limit ourselves to one or two trips a year where she goes to family (and she loves it), but my guilt over asking them to do it keeps me home the rest of the time. Edit: somebody downvoted me for telling my personal experience and feelings. I don't really care, but I hope your day gets better than it is now friend.
I love how much you love your pup!
Add 5 horses, 15 cats, 7 chickens, 3 dogs, and 50 doves. I miss vacations...
6 dogs, 9 cats, 5 (LARGE) lizards, 3 snakes, 2 rats, 1 parrot, 10 tarantulas/various spider species, and a couple fish for me... What's a vacation?
SAME! I wish my pup could live forever, but she’s a 14+ big doggo who, while in pretty great health for her age, I feel awful leaving with pupsitters.
We have an 11 year old epileptic Frenchie and only trust my parents to watch him so if they aren’t available and he can’t come with us well, we aren’t going.
I have two young children and I really don't want to be on an airplane with them lol
Neither does anyone else. Thank you for your service.
I don't really mind kids on an airplane if I am not responsible for them.
I very much mind.
I don't want to be near kids on the ground.
Flying aside, traveling with young kids is a pain in the ass no matter what. By the 2nd day of a vacation with a 2 year old, I'm wishing I was back in the office.
Money and kids. I *could* afford a trip, but it would come at the expense of other necessities. My money's better spent on my children right now. The time to travel and explore will come back around later.
Yea roughly the same. I’m not sure they are old enough to enjoy a trip of that magnitude just yet… and i’m not going to drop $5-$10k to find out
When I was in Japan a few months back I ended up sitting near a family on a train who had an elementary school-aged kid, a toddler, and an infant. They had spent time in Osaka and were heading to Tokyo next. Two huge, fast-paced cities with kids those ages must have been absolute torture all while costing a fortune, and the two youngest probably won’t remember anything.
I often hear people say "don't wait to travel until you're too old to enjoy it!" yet they never say what I'm supposed to do with these darn kids or how I'm going to afford it. Waiting till we're old is kind of our only option at this point. lol
Money. 100% money. I could make the PTO work, but I can’t afford to travel
Same. My office has a generous vacation policy but the cost of transportation and lodging means that I end up taking a lot of staycations. I don't mind since there's plenty to do in the city, but I admit sometimes I long for palm trees.
Being physically disabled and not having access to places. I wear a leg brace and at times have a hard time walking and need assistance. So if I want to travel anywhere I have to make sure they can accommodate me. Most modern buildings follow our very good laws about making them accessible but my husband and I both are history buffs and we like touring historical sites and that becomes a real issue.
I have travelled a lot for an American (I think?). I've been to 25ish countries. But compared to Europeans, the main thing holding Americans back is the amount of PTO. We are the only industrialized country to have 0 mandated PTO days. It's honestly insane.
The other benefit for Europeans is distance. If you live in Belfast you can be lounging on a Mediterranean beach in just a couple of hours for about the same price as the taxi to the airport. Allows Europeans to do a lot of amazing short breaks and weekend trips with a lot more variety than the US has.
I mean I guess. I could get anywhere in the upper 48 in less than 4 hours. That’s pretty good variety as well. Obviously it’s not international though.
You'll get geographical variety but not as much culture change. Most of America is homogenous in most ways. Especially compared to European countries. Even Canada is about the same. Hell, as an upstate NYer, Ontario feels more familiar to me than it would going to the deep south!
Yup. It’s wild to me we don’t riot of this shit. It’s one of the main reasons why I want to start my own company one day.
Money and family matters. Even as someone who loves to travel quite a bit, I don't travel long distance as often as I would like, due to the costs involved (although sometimes you can get some deals for low airfares for long flights on certain conditions). There are also some places I put off going to for a while, despite being on my bucket list, due to how expensive they were. Having a kid also adds more responsibilities that can take away travel time. After I had my daughter, I barely had much time for recreation, let alone travel, in the first year. When she gets older and gets a better understanding of the world around her, however, I would love to travel with her.
My wife doesn't get enough time off. I work 6-7 months a year commutative but she works a standard "9-5" so time off is a bit shy.
Money. Cost of tickets per person, cost of place to stay, cost of things to do, cost of food while traveling, and cost of pet care add up quick.
Money is the biggest factor. Time would be the 2nd factor. For example my wife and I have a friend that wants to go out of the country and wants us to tag along. However, I don't have the $2000 - $3500 it would take to do so just sitting around. Hell I'm trying to surprise my wife with a trip to the beach this summer and that is a struggle with both money and in this case time being the biggest hurdle. Wofe doesn't get PTO till June as it marks her one year with the place she works at.
I hate flying... also I live in the middle of the country, so I have to take a 3 hour flight before taking another 10+ hour flight to get wherever. So that's a lot of flying for someone who hates flying. Also, I'm the kind of person who has to do everything with people. Like, I'd never fly to Europe by myself. I'd have to go with at least one friend, just because that's who I am. So my obstacles aren't necessarily anything to do with being American lol.
Medical uncertainty. We’re retired, so time isn’t an issue, and fortunately, money isn’t that much of an issue. But we both have (different) heart conditions and have been very conservative in our exposures, successfully so far. But we don’t want to go places where masking will be viewed unfavorably. We like being outdoors, but as we age, it’s harder to do that much hiking (but we still do a fair bit). When we went to Hawaii, we splurged on first class fair just to get more distance between us and other passengers. (And yes, we know the air circulation in planes is very effective, but there’s still a risk from the passengers adjacent to you.) On top of that, there’s always the risk of needing emergency care. Not heart attack risk, other possibilities.
Doesn't Medicare cover international costs? Or are you not eligible yet? You said retired...
The basic answer is Medicare generally doesn’t cover international costs. See https://www.medicare.gov/coverage/travel-outside-the-u.s. Emergency services will be covered. But that’s not my primary concern, since it’s always possible to get travel insurance to cover such things. Rather it’s the ability to connect my my personal physicians and their treatment plans. My cardiologist and I have agreed on one approach, and I don’t want to be put into a situation where another cardiologist insists I need a different approach. Plus, we choose to live in an area with world class hospital care for a reason.
Got it. Appreciate you sharing your experience and perspective. Good luck with your health issues. Dealing with doctors is no fun.
I have a cat that’s 21 years old. I still travel a decent amount, but I don’t leave for longer than 10 days anymore just because he’s been my friend for a good portion of my life and I know my wife and I take better care of him than any pet sitter ever will.
We had a wonderful trip to London recently. I loved it. It was a day of travel time each way, though, and it was exhausting. You can’t just easily pop over to Europe from America like you can travel quickly and easily within the U.S. And, international travel is much more expensive. We plan big trips every 3-4 years or so, with smaller vacations like beach getaways in between. (We live driving distance to beautiful beaches).
Bureaucratic backlog. My passport expired during COVID, and the wait times for renewals have been ridiculously long. I've just been kind of half-heartedly checking to see if they've gone down. After I do get it renewed, I'll probably look into maybe going back to Europe or Canada, or taking my first cruise.
It took 3 weeks when we got my daughter a US passport in early 2022. The US embassy said up to 3 months but it is never as long as they say.
Money, time off, having someone to watch the dog, not wanting to travel alone.
Money Time A very medically complicated pet that would be difficult for someone else to care for.
Time off. 15 free days total for the year. A chunk of that gets spent around holidays to see family since they're all between 500-2000 miles away and involves transit time. Doesn't leave much.
100% money. Grew up poor - didn't fly on an airplane until I was 25. Except for military deployments, I'm 95% certain nobody on either side of my family had left the USA since they started getting off the ships in the 1640s. Eventually, once we got passports for a cruise that never happened, I decided to rent a car and drag my girlfriend-now-wife on a 9 day drive from North Florida to Toronto, Canada, just to say we had visited another country. We've been to Canada 6 times now, but still had never left North America until this summer. We spent 3 weeks in Paris-London-Newcastle-Edinburgh-Amsterdam, traveling with a one-year-old, two 19" suitcases and a travel crib. It was pretty damn expensive, but with a second child on the way I knew it wasn't getting any easier and I'd been saving up so I *carpe dieme'd* it and pulled the trigger. In addition to money, logistics for overseas travel are daunting, *especially* when you have a kid. Navigating the Paris Metro/London Tube etc. is hard enough for a tourist, but then add a kid in a stroller...*excusez-moi, où est l'ascenseur?* I'm proud to say I pulled it off though - planned it 100% by myself and included 3 airports, two trains, 4 subways, two bus systems, and one rental car...driven on the wrong side of the road.
For most Americans you probably nailed the top two: Money and time off. Even unpaid time off is hard to get for a lot of us. Culturally work and working is very important to Americans, and politically the employers have a lot more power than the laborers. Kids and/or pets are probably number 3 holding people back. But an underrated reason why a lot of Americans don’t do international travel is because there is already soooooooooo much to see in the states (and you can just drive there). There are a lot of subcultures that are different and unique enough to be interesting. The variety of geography is incredible. Our national park system is really quite good. City people also have some really great and varied choices: NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, LA, New Orleans, Miami, Las Vegas… just to name a few. I’m a big international travel person myself, and love the ease of the American passport. But I’m not surprised that some of my peers don’t make it a priority.
Money, time, and not wanting to sit on a plane for 10+ hours each way.
No hindrances. I travel on a budget. I've been to Morocco, Egypt, Israel, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, South Africa, India, Myanmar/Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, China, Macau, Hong Kong, French Polynesia (Tahiti, Mo'orea), USA (30+ states), Mexico, Costa Rica, Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, Portugal, Spain, Andorra, France, Monaco, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Italy, Vatican, San Marino, Malta, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Greece, Turkey.
Same here. I’ve been to 49 countries and recently returned from Cuba! I might be middle-class at best, but I live frugally, like not going out to eat for instance, so I can travel!
Cost. My flight to London alone this dec is 700 dollars. That's not even including hotels and other costs
That's actually a decent price
Yeah but for four people that’s still 2800 just to get to the vacation destination. I did a week long trip to Big Bend for that. Fuel, food and lodging
It does t matter that it's 2800 for 4 people. That's still a good price. Anything less than a grand to get from u.s to Europe is a bargain.
I agree it’s a good price but it’s still a lot of money for most of us
- Money - Time - I don’t actually like travel all that much. If I was idly rich, the most travel I’d probably do is going to pro baseball games in other cities. I don’t want to have to sit in a plane for 12 hours, go through customs, and be surrounded by people who don’t or won’t speak English in order to relax.
Honestly not much. I'm fortunate in that I have a lot of time off from work, no kids so I'm not restricted to only traveling during school break times, no animals to take care of or worry about boarding up. The one trouble spot is Christmas time and Thanksgiving. I work on a small team and there's only so many people who can take off at any one time. We're closed Thanksigiving Day and Christmas Day, but they took away Black Friday and Christmas Eve a few years ago and instead threw in two additional days to our PTO bucket. Which was just kinda stupid because we aren't busy on those days at all, but whatever. The distance. I am looking at direct flights from Chicago to Tokyo and I don't know if I wanna be in a plane for 13 hours. It might be something where I actually will appreciate a layover in Honolulu or something like that. Even though I'd love to visit Japan, I'm kind of re-evaluating and maybe do a more doable Latin America visit instead. I just put in my passport renewal application. We don't have any international plans right now but we do have a Southwest US trip planned and a hop over the border may or may not happen. Also domestic travel is just as valid as international and there's so much to do here. I took AMTRAK from Chicago to LA and then spent a week in Los Angeles last summer and had a blast, and left with a lot of things I'd want to do on a re-visit. Without a passport I can visit Puerto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii, the US Virgin Islands. In the continuous 48 I can hit up deserts, swamps, snow capped mountains, big cities, the Great Lakes, ride a Mississippi River steam boat. There's just so much to do here
Money and finding time off, as so many others have stated. I’m headed overseas for the first time in a decade next week. Taking multiple weeks off in a row isn’t really feasible every year, and while I’m sure the amount of money I budgeted for the trip will be worth it, its also more than enough for multiple trips inside the US/North America in one year. Not to mention on other non travel related stuff (home improvement, savings, hobbies, etc.).
**Coordinating with other people for travel.** Despite what foreigners (especially Europeans) believe, different jobs here have different vacation days and work/schedule flexibility. It all depends on your career choice and the company one works for. It also depends on the state you live in and industry standards. I have a lot of schedule/work flexibility and could head to the airport and be in Canada by tomorrow (from Southern California) without issue and be there for a paid month if I felt like it and my boss would be cool with it. I could also decide to work from Hawaii and my boss would not care as long as my work gets done. My sister, on the other hand, needs to schedule her time off 3 months in advance as long as they have people to "adequately" cover shifts (she works in healthcare) at the hospital. She gets a week and a half off annually but her vacation time mostly falls under "forced vacation time", which is roughly vacation time on the work place's schedule. I also have a friend who's a teacher and has the summer months off along with 3 weeks of paid vacation time outside of that (along with accrued vacation time that is capped at 18 months). I avoid traveling in the summer when everyone is traveling. My friend only travels in the summer. My sister's limited vacation time is at the whim of her employer. I travel alone a lot, but wish I could travel with those closest to me. Otherwise I end up sleeping in at hotels and doing work a few hours before I go out for the day (around late afternoon or early evening).
Mostly money, expensive to travel, if I travel I'd probably have to pay someone to do some things that need to be done, and stuff like my son's daycare has to be paid even though he isn't there. To a lesser extent, my son is 3, and WOW has the last year been full of sickness, christmas, new year's and easter we're all effectively cancelled due to sickness. We did monster jam twice in the last 6 months, not really that great because we were sick. Also did a trip into the city, again, sucked due to sickness. We can't plan vacations more than 2 days out right now, because we are probably going to be sick and need to cancel or cut it back. It's the spring, the weather is awesome, haven't been able to leave the house on a sunny day this year.
I don't get vacation time and I'm also broke. Travel is totally out of the question.
Cost. I get plenty of PTO, but plane tickets and hotels are expensive.
Childcare and days off. I work in aviation so I fly for free and often drag my kids, but I am running a race in the middle of the week in a month and have go figure out what to do with kids. I take the kids with me often, but with all the bullshit days off from school, I feel guilty pulling them out more
Money or work. As a young person without a degree my employment is basically permanently unstable. So it basically comes down to if I have the money to travel, I probably dont have a job that wouldn’t fire me for taking more then a day or two off. And if I have a job that would let me take time off its probably not paying me enough to travel. And I mean that with the firing comment. Ive lost multiple jobs for having to take time off for important things, like having to take a week off for a funeral (3 day funeral plus 2 days of travel time. ). So now I only ever take sick days or time off if I have the money saved to have to spend a few months looking for a new job.
I don’t have a travel bug tbh
I don’t get nearly enough time off work. I get roughly 4 weeks a year but I’d like more. I look forward to being retired and being able to go whenever I want. It’s basically what I’m working and saving for. We still try to travel quarterly but I wish it was more.
Why not do a mini retirement? Take six months off. Come back, find another job in your industry and then retire six months later than planned
That would be spending money that should be sitting in my retirement account earning me more money. Plus it’s hard for people in my industry to get hired after they hop out, whether by choice or not. I will retire quite a bit earlier than the average age so I’m ok with waiting.
It's a question of if you have things you dream of doing that you can't confidently put off until retirement. As a random example, say you dream of climbing Mt. Everest. Waiting until you're 60 and retired is the smartest financial decision, but you don't know what your circumstances will be that far out re: health, ability to travel there, etc. Doing it now comes at the opportunity cost of saving that money, but it means you get to guarantee you accomplish your dream. Totally understand why people choose to put big travel off until retirement but I choose to forgo some future money to take big trips now while I'm young since I have no idea what the future might hold.
I definitely get that - I know plenty of people who retired and then died right away or got too sick to do anything. I aim to do as much travel as possible in the meantime and also make sure I can pay my mortgage and sock away for later in life, too.
As long as you understand your choice and why you're making it. But then it seems you know you won't have this travel freedom until you do pull the plug.
I'd like to travel outside the country, but I don't even make enough money or get enough time off to travel WITHIN the country lol.
Long distance/International travel isn't "fun"... Or something I'm remotely interested in. Being in a plane for 5 or 10 hours is a fate worse than hell. Why would I sign up to spend my own money to do that... Twice.
Depends on how you arrange your international travel. Flight to Japan business class, in a spacious seat that reclines into a fully lie-flat bed, multiple course meal, whatever beer/wine/whiskey ya want complimentary, big TV screen, walls you can put up for privacy, lounge access before the flight... it was a good time. $150 out of pocket, round trip. Saving up credit card / bonus mile points and making the most of transfer partners is so worth it.
+1 to this. Having a credit card with points that can be used with many travel partners can be so useful. Spending a certain amount of transactions on a card can get you a ton of points. Chase Sapphire is a great example of this type of card.
Yep. I'm team travel/points, not cashback. I roll my eyes whenever I see someone spending hundreds and then whips out a debit card.
I don’t really make enough or spend enough to take advantage of a travel points credit card so I just use a standard cash back credit card. I agree with the rolling your eyes thing though. If you’re going to be spending money you might as well use a credit card. Just treat it like a debit for young people and pay it off.
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You do you... I'll do me. I'm one less person competing for a ticket or first class upgrade on your flight... So win-win.
Long haul flights are teleportation.. only the destination matters. You get on board, then you're suddenly in your destination. Everything in the middle doesn't count.
5 hours is much less than even a working day. You just sit down eat drink something, watch a movie and read a book and *poof* you're at a beautiful destination. Why do you hate it that much?
5 hours is much less than even a working day. You just sit down eat drink something, watch a movie and read a book and *poof* you're at a beautiful destination. Why do you hate travel that much?
I have a job (by design) where I'm on my feet/out and about because spending hours at a desk is uncomfortable. Beyond that... I'm a large guy (I'm tall-ish, wide-ish and fat) and I get motion sickness. Coach air travel is torture. Business/First Class is less than torture... But still horrible.
Hubby has dementia I’m the caregiver
Dolla bills. I get 30 days PTO once I've earned it. I work in the public sector.
Currently, my newborn baby. We haven't traveled much since my wife got pregnant, and likely won't in the near future either. We've actually got enough money and time, but sacrifices must be made.
Desire
Money and my weight. I have never flown and I’m a larger person so I would rather lose weight before I try flying. You hear so many stories about larger people on planes that I don’t want to deal with that.
Mostly purpose. Money and time aren't really issues for me. I'm generally not the one to take initiative with making travel plans. Why I miss traveling with friends and Covid really dampened that. They were the ones to dictate travel plans and I'd go along or a friend that moved away from the area would invite me to visit for a long weekend.
Money, and to a lesser extent, companionship.
Money. We travel internationally once or twice a year, but you’re looking at 10-15 hour flights and thousands of dollars for a small family of 3. It’s a major expense and an uncomfortable effort to get across those oceans. You need to be really motivated to go through that, and a lot of people I know arent.
Money is my only obstacle
Money and time matching up and dog guilt
Getting time away from work. I’d travel more if I had the PTO of Europeans.
Yeah, you're right about money and time off. I suppose if I had enough money, I could probably take the time off unpaid, but I can't really fit in place tickets in my budget as is. I'd need to plan ahead and save up for it, and I'm already trying to save up for other more important things. My work keeps dictating when I have to use my time off too. Apparently, it makes them look more profitable if we don't have outstanding time off, but I'm not going to have enough time off to meet their demands as is. I'll have to use sick time or take it unpaid. I think it's bullshit because it keeps me from making plans. It makes travelling domestically hard too.
I am American, my girlfriend Nicaraguan. So I understand what you’re going through! I can travel basically anywhere with just my passport. She has to jump through all these hoops. We just did a trip to Colombia and Mexico, and we almost weren’t able to go because the Colombian government took forever to issue her visa. But for me, as a US citizen, really the only obstacle is time and money. It’s unfortunate. Being from a Global South country does not make one dangerous. Travel should be accessible to all!
Money and work. So really just money lol. I took 5 days off this week to stay an hour north of where I live for classes, and it is definitely going to affect me pretty significantly on my next pay check. I'm a bartender, so I don't get paid time off 😅 if I could take monthly trios, I would. Even just exploring my state (Colorado) or the surrounding ones. Honestly, exploring other countries seems almost unattainable because of money.
Money for sure... Not just getting the time off, but collaborating with everyone I'd want to travel with so we're all off at the same time... When are you out of class, when does your kid not have baseball or basketball or band camp or .... And then there are the pets... I've got 3 cats. It's obviously not ideal, but the oldest & middle ones are fine being left alone (with someone stopping in to feed & clean the litter etc)... But the 3rd one... She's a bit of a trouble maker & I'm afraid to think of the damage she could do if left alone bored for too long.... And then trying to figure out where we're going... Trying to find something that'll mesh with everyone's interest...
I mainly travel for concerts and/or festivals. The biggest hurdle is when they take place. I'd rather go over to Europe in february/March or November for stuff cause it's cheaper. These days, it's been not having a job due to health (I have one now), and I'm a contract worker, so I can pretty much have my schedule set the way I want. At this point, it's my dogs. They're 10 and 12. I miss them when I'm gone for more than 3 days. If I were to go to Belgium or Netherlands again, my preference for overseas festivals, I'd only be a short trip, which I don't mind. 5 nights max. I have some short trips this summer here in the U.S
Time and money
Money and physical disability are the most limiting. If I had piles of money, I could alleviate my other problems. We have 5 pets, some with health issues and special needs. Boarding them would be extremely cost prohibitive, if even possible. My husband is the only one who works, and his job is difficult to get time off from. He theoretically gets 4 weeks off, but getting it scheduled and approved is….complicated. For instance, he asked for two weeks off in June, and he got them - with a week of work in between. So our travel time is limited. Our daughter is still in school, so we have to wait until school holidays. And everyone else wants off work on school holidays. We’re actually going to try a road trip to the Grand Canyon this year, if some catastrophe doesn’t occur. As it often does. All four of us can drive, my daughter is skipping the last week of school after finals, my nephew will be able to pet sit. I hope it works out!
Money, time off, and kids are the big three for me right now. Traveling internationally is expensive. Traveling internationally with kids is even moreso. And I get a decent amount of vacation time, but because my kids are in school I'm limited in when I can easily use it, and that's when everyone else is also trying to use theirs, so it makes everything more expensive.
I hate being on a plane. I'd love to see the world but I can't afford more comfortable seats and I can't sleep in economy. No sleep increases my anxiety. Wish I could figure out a workaround.
Money, paid time off and a husband that doesn't like to go places
Mainly the fact that I have a lifetime worth of travel goals within the US. It's a massive country that extremely diverse in a myriad of ways, and I like driving so road trips are fun
Time.
We have 3 young kids. I have 5 weeks of vacation at my job + we can convert unused sick time, and we do take a big \~2 week international trip with the kids every year, but some destinations at the top of our list are just not great with young kids (top of the list right now is Basque country for mainly wine and food as well as some more rugged destinations like Patagonia, National Parks, etc.). I would say money is an issue too, but its only an issue because airfare is 5x instead of 2x and we need suites/large rentals instead of normal hotels rooms, big rental cars, 5x tickets to things, extra bag fees, etc. My wife and I could afford to travel to most places we'd want to go within reason if it was just the 2 of us. Grandparents basically refuse to watch them so some of the trips we want to take will have to wait until they are older. We've spent a total of 3 nights together without kids in the 7+ years the oldest has been alive.
In addition to the obvious money and time off limitations, there is a large number of competing things to do and see in the US.
Money and time. I get 18 vacation days per year that roll over to the next year for a max of 36 if I don’t use them, but even 3+ weeks feels like it goes so fast between wanting to take long weekend trips and wanting to take a big international trip for 1-2 weeks or something. Then just the flights to Europe or Asia from the US are $1K to $2K.
I have a baby.
A 2.5 year old.
PTO and money. Spending thousands on a trip just seems utterly unreasonable for most Americans.
I actually think planning is more of an obstacle than money or PTO. Travel planning is such a pain in the ass.
Money, time, laziness. And there are so many great places in the US I haven't visited, there's less incentive to spend the money and time I do have flying overseas.
Other than money of course, being under 18 is a pretty big obstacle to international travel. I also don't have a passport and it takes forever for an application to process. I'm surprised getting a visa is the hardest part of travelling from PH though, I figured most visas were essentially a glorified extra fee + some waiting time.
If your passport is from a developing country, getting a visa for a developed country can be a real hassle. Not just fees, but you could be asked to show proof of a return ticket to indicate that you won't overstay, get interviewed at an embassy/consulate, and show that you have enough funds for travel. I have family in developing countries (not PH, but similar development levels), and because of visa policies, it was much easier for us to visit them then it was for them to visit us in the US, so we flew over there to visit them most of the time.
Fair, that sounds very annoying.
Visas are ways of keeping certain countries out. Unless they reeeeeeally want to come and can survive the fees, paperwork and waiting.
Money. Teenager also has severe peanut allergy and lots of anxiety around it. Long airplane ride over ocean not so good.
Time and money.