Quote:
Originally posted by KSig RC
It's cool you have those opportunities, but honestly I don't agree with your primary assumption. I'm pretty sure that even if you're correct . . . it's still a money issue.
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It's more about priorities than it is about money. My family is not rich by any means -- they are pretty solidly middle class. My parents both believe that experiences are more valuable than things, therefore they sunk a lot of money into travelling, education, concerts/theater, etc. Meanwhile, our living room couch is about 30 years old, my mom is perfectly content to lounge around the house in jeans and thrift store tee shirts, and when I was growing up and my sister and I begged to go out to a restaurant for dinner, "It's too expensive" was a frequent reason why we didn't.
I know plenty of people who have just as much money as my family or more and don't travel because it's "too expensive," yet they think nothing of shelling out $40,000 for a new car when they have older ones that work just fine.
I'm not placing a value judgment on this, because I'm not always in agreement with my parents on the "experiences are always more valuable than things" train. But it really isn't THAT difficult to travel if it's something you really want to do.
Also, a lot of people assume that travel is more expensive than it is. My trip to Austria and Germany my sophomore year of high school, for example, was about $1300 (of which I paid for half and my parents covered the other half). Granted, that's not petty cash, but it's also not a staggering sum of money. I know middle-class families who bought their kids that much in birthday presents every year, easily. And my father travels very often (2-3 vacations a year plus business trips) and does tons of research while planning trips, plus he always makes a cursory effort to learn the language of the country before visiting. I know people who have gone to Mexico, stayed in the Best Western in the tourist zone of Mexico City, rented a car to drive down to Acapulco, blown $100 bucks a night on clubs, etc. -- of course that's going to be expensive! But if you're willing to stay in some smaller hotels where the owner doesn't speak English and the room is the normal size of a Mexican hotel room (i.e., breadbox-sized), you walk around the city instead of driving and take the bus instead of renting a car . . . to, oh, Zijuatenejo instead of a touristy place like Acapulco -- things start getting a lot cheaper. Again, as you said, because my dad knows so much about most of these countries and has travelled a lot, I've had advantages that a lot of people don't have in regards to this. But making an effort to know what you're doing really does cut back on costs pretty drastically.