If you live abroad...

[MetuaVahine]

...how many times a year do you travel back to visit close family?

I used to live abroad . Depending on finances usually once maybe twice a year

Difference between living in Calais with family in Dover and living in New Zealand with family on the Isle of Bute...

What sort of distances are you looking at for comparison?

Christmas for 4, 5 days and summer for 5 to 7 days. I'm a 2.5 hour flight away.

Parents come to visit me once a year on average too, and siblings occasionally.

Once every two years (we live in Australia), but it's quite hard with three children

@Hermie12 How far away did you have to travel?

@ahumanfemale Tahiti and Norway so very spread out. We live in the uk.

My problem is not so much money but time as it's using all our annual leave.

I was wondering how other expats manage and if twice a year is plenty enough or if I'm being an unfilial daughter

PS: I know the obvious solution is for my parents to come to us but my father won't travel (a whole other story).

Also: my parents live in Norway so Tahiti trips are less frequent.

I think in that case it would depend on a number of things, but the bottom line is that if you're British, then they've moved away, so onus is on them to travel back.

I've lived abroad in a few places but without kids. With kids the frequency would depend on a number of things.

1. Who is paying? If it's an expat posting then often one or two return trips to "home country" paid annually for family. So people would do that.

1. If paying themselves then age of kids would be next factor. School age kids would often mean whole summer holidays spent back in "home" country to catch up with relatives and "make memories". Pre-school age other factors came into play like temperature in host country and working partner's annual leave.

1. If the distance was say, London or Edinburgh to Oslo (ie direct shortish flights) then people would return more often for shorter visits. I know someone who lives similar to the Dover-Calais option I gave above and they return quite regularly on the ferry with their car to visit an aging parent.

If a parent moved to Tahiti however, they'd not be getting many visits from me because that's a horrendously long and expensive (especially multiplied by two adults and two kids!) flight!

@ahumanfemale We are the ones who moved out, hence my sense of guilt...

DH is Norwegian only. I'm the dual national: Norwegian father and French Polynesian mother.

The plane to Tahiti is horribly expensive so it's every 2 years. But if we listened to my parents and PIL, we'd be up in Norway every school holiday, which is not possible. Visits every summer/Christmas/Easter seem plenty to me. But I'm ready to be told IABU.

I'm told once DC are older, it's easier as they can stay on their own and holidays aren't tied to the parents' annual leave. I'm sure they'll love the opportunity to holiday in Tahiti 

@girlsname I can totally imagine! Our Tahiti plane tickets cost an arm and a leg! Do your parents visit?

@Chochito Roughly the same as for us from Stansted to Oslo. Do you travel with children?

I live in the US but have a bit of a unique situation in that I travel to London regularly for work and always tag on seeing my family at the weekend. I'm about to do my 4th trip this year, only 1 of them was for a holiday though.

I think if I didn't do that it would be every 2 years because of US vacation time, although my family would probably visit in between.

I'm a Brit living abroad, go home every two years. Parents come over every alternate year.

It's the cost and the annual leave.

I don't believe that the onus should always be on the person who left, to go home and see the family. The visiting should be shared, especially when the young couple has kids .

I had to leave because of DH's work ( armed forces) and so I was raising my kids far from home with no support. But my parents , who were retired by then, would sit there comfortably at home and say " so when are YOU going to come and see US again ?" as if it was our job , because we were the ones who'd left. That always used to give me the almighty shits .

We have some family and friends in UK and moved to Australia (also family here). PIL tend to visit once every 2 yrs and we try and go back alternate years so end up seeing them at least once each year for two weeks. I get a little resentful as half our annual leave is reserved for which limits us to travel and see other places. We also have a big expense dragging 4 of us on long expensive and exhausting international flights. When we go there I try to plan it so only one week is spent in the uk, the other somewhere EU so at least we get our own separate holiday (but this is contentious!).

@Birdie6 I agree regarding the onus, it should depend on individual circumstances ie age and number of kids, annual leave, retired and ability to travel rather than "who left".

We go home every second Christmas for around 3 weeks. 10 hour flight two adults four kids gets pretty expensive when you factor in flights hire car rental accommodation spending money. I love going home but the expense means it's the only vacation we get that year

I am American and lived in England for nearly nine years.
My oldest son has an American father so I did take my son to spend two weeks with him in the US four times and the ex-husband came to England twice. However, my ex-husband did not live close to my family so I only managed to visit my family three times in those years for a few days each visit. My family didn't visit me in England during those years because the exchange rate was $1.75-2.10 to the GBP. Plane fare alone would have financially crippled them.

My husband is English and we have been living in the USA for 15 years.
He didn't visit his family for the first eight years. But has been to see his family six times in the last seven years. His parents have come to visit us five times and his sister & her family came last year.

As a family, we have only been back twice because the cost of airfare, hotels, car hire, food has cost us around $6,000 each time. I hate to say it but spending $6,000+ to visit Hawaii or somewhere tropical and sunny is totally worth the expense. Spending $6,000+ to spend 10 days near Wigan is a little hard to spend. But I know that family is important so we are saving up to go again soon.

Live in NZ and my Mum is in UK - visit 3 times a year and it is tough, but as an only child I feel I have to. I wish we were closer as it is not worth going for less than three weeks, but our choice to emigrate ........

Once per year- although tbh mainly to catchup with friends as opposed to family (both DH and I have challenging families!).

On average every 6 years. No one has bothered to visit me. So meh. DH goes back much more frequently to his home country

I have lived overseas for a long time - just started year 25 - and have been back to the UK once since 2008. I pay for my mum to visit us in China and I think it's a more productive visit - she can go to dd's school, watch her do her hobbies, we have more space here, we take dm to visit new places, etc. We do have a travel allowance from dh's company, but prefer to spend it on travel in the far east and Australia.

Roughly once every two years. I'm in Australia and they are in the UK.

Twice a year, 2 weeks at Christmas, approx 5 weeks at Summer, 10 hour flight, 1 adult.

Our employers pay for a trip home once a year - we are 5 hours away from U.K. so every summer we go as a family for 10 days or so.
I also usually go home for a week but without husband and kids, as it’s cheaper and I don’t work (visa requirement). We struggle to go more often due to leave (we don’t want to spend all his leave back in the U.K.).
My family come to visit us twice a year (my brother has never been but that’s another story) and his family once a year.

Live in the ME and probably go back to the UK three times a year. I always tack on a day or two for a work trip if I'm back which pushes the number up. Very common here for people to go back multiple times.

We are in Australia, DH is a Brit and I am kiwi (I lived in the UK for nearly 15yrs) we only been here for 6 months. We are only staying in Aus for about three years so would rather use our precious annual leave on exploring Aus and NZ. We have heaps of family and friends wanting to come and stay anyway, PIL are coming over in October, and SIL is likely to come over too in January.

I am lucky in that I have negotiated 5 week annual leave so we might go back for a week next UK July. Just because SIL is getting married next summer but other than that I doubt we will back until 2022 unless death etc.

I only went back to NZ every 18ish months but there is only my mum (who comes back and forth to the UK) over there and a handful of close friends (we Skype a lot) so I didn't feel an obligation to go home heaps. It is just too far away, expensive and a bit of PITA when the kids were tiny, plus we liked to go other places too.