This is not my idea of a 10k holiday !

[Itwillgeteasieripromise]

Ex pats, heading home for Christmas after a tough year, not taken any leave really in 12 months and just finished an ivf cycle with one in the freezer for when we get back. We need a rest, DH and I are shattered.
I love my family dearly, but dear god the demands !!! Every day I'm literally sent a list of 'events' to attend, including helping my sister with her kids while she has to work late. Coming home is expensive, all
you seem to do is be expected to come to people because they are so busy with Christmas. Everyday day I'm literally sent a new invite, if it's not a birthday party, it's a school play ! It doesn't help that DH and I are from opposite ends of the country (and his family think I'm a spoiled bitch) If you think of what a holiday would look like if you spend 10k I can promise you, I wouldn't be rushing around like a headless chicken, spending it sat in people's living rooms seeing their kids and being an unpaid babysitter for family ! (Rant over) I am excited honestly, but it almost feels like an ex pat tax that you have to pay every couple of years .....

Prejudice. HTH

Yeah, I know, I just wanted to say it because like a PP said, I hate the term expat

Pallisers your post does make some sense, although I'm pretty sure nobody calls their Polish builders "expats", even if they are planning on moving back to Poland after a couple of years of making money in England.

OP; it’s sitting, not sat.

Hold on, I thought:
expat is someone that left.
Immigrant is someone that came.

So an English expat would be an immigrant in Australia.

It’s not a holiday though. It’s visiting family and while you should be able to have a nice time, there are social, emotional and practical obligations associated with being in a family that you don’t have to perform on a holiday. If I take a days annual leave to do a 400 mile round trip to take my DM to a 30 min hospital appointment or go to my aunt and uncles golden wedding then I don’t go back to work the next day under the illusion that I’ve been on holiday. It’s not the same as travelling 10000 miles, but it’s closer to it then spending a week lying on a beach or sightseeing with just your Dp. Have a proper holiday a different time or try to book a a break on the journey or during your visit.

Immigrant is someone who came
Emigrant is someone who left

Pallisers your post does make some sense, although I'm pretty sure nobody calls their Polish builders "expats", even if they are planning on moving back to Poland after a couple of years of making money in England.

Interesting. In some ways I think it depends on the place you move to. In places like UK, Ireland, Australia, US etc if you go for a few years you are an immigrant with plans to go home - but while you are there you are local. You rent a place in a neighbourhood that will be like anywhere else people in your wage bracket live. Your children go to local schools, play local games, you do same things and go to same places as the locals do by and large. In places like Dubai/Shanghai etc you probably live in a compound with other "expats". your children go to international schools that locals don't go to. You don't need to learn the language. Those are people I think of as "expats"

So you have decided to grace your family with your presence and shock horror they have arranged for lots of outings and people to see you because they miss you due to you having moved miles away. I think you should be a little more gracious and not moan about it.

So you have decided to grace your family with your presence

you mean she's decided to spend 10k to come home and spend time with her family.

OP, I think posting in the living overseas section might have got you a more sympathetic response. It is a challenge though which is why we are flying over some family members to see us for Xmas and next year we aren't going home at all.
Good luck with your IVF.

It can very easily be £10k. DH is from NZ, and if his parents didn’t pay for the kids flights and most of our food, we could easily spend this as economy flights alone are £6k for all of us and we stay for 3 weeks so food etc would add up.

I think that when you go and work on the other side of the world you have to factor in expensive trips home and expect that the family you left will be keen to see you and therefore make demands on your time during the precious time you are here. They probably miss you dreadfully - how often do you visit?

It's easily £10k.

Four flights from afar = £5k.

Then there are hotel costs, car hire, taxis, gifts when you visit, meals out.

I love when I visit home tbh, and I'd be kind of sad if people weren't desperate to see me!

Are they in oz?

OP - sorry if I’m coming at this from the wrong angle but all I took away from your post was that you’re going to be rushing around going from pillar to post and you say yourself that you’re knackered.

I get it - it took 4 cycles of IVF before we got our baby and I will NEVER forget the state it left us in. For those who haven’t experienced this - It’s a different kind of ‘shattered’. I remember feeling like my heart and brain ached. Despite having a baby who is allergic to sleep, the tiredness doesn’t compare to how I felt when we were on the infertility hamster wheel (it’s nothing like a rollercoaster, that would suggest that there are highs).

Sorry if I’m speaking out of turn but I just have to speak up in these situations. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to help out every Tom, Dick and Harry with their kids while they worked like some kind of travelling babysitter. Fuck that.

Please yourself. I dare say it might be an idea to book yourselves into a nice hotel for some downtime just the two of you to further demonstrate how vulnerable and knackered you are.

Keep going OP, your strength leaps off the page. I hope 2019 brings you all you deserved and all you’ve fought for.

❤️

dont go back then

i dont see visiting family as a holiday its family

The cheapest flights for the four of us to NZ would easily be £6k+. There are plans for us to visit expat family in NZ but I have made it clear we would go to a nearby resort (nearby for our hosts) as it would be a sunny day in hell to spunk £10K+ and annual leave to sit in someone's house in a dull provincial town halfway around the world.

Not sure why people are comparing with the 4 flights they are paying, costing £6K.
that therefore suggests, OP and her dh would be paying about £3K in total, and OP has said about staying with her Mum, so no hotel costs.

Do agree with most though - if you want to come home and spend time with family, it seems odd to complain when they include you in things.. If you want a £10K holiday, then do that - it is a completely different thing.

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!
Please do not misunderstand me, of course I am looking forward to seeing my family and it’s not as easy as ‘just don’t go’. I go home every 2 years and my parents come out every year, for this I am very thankful and also know I am very fortunate to be in that position. All I am meaning, if you imagined a 10K holiday(and yes it costs that much, flights 6K, some hotels, fuel, meals, spending money, gifts) it would not be spent driving up and down the motorway and having tea/wine with family answering the same questions. (yes I miss home, no I’m not sure when I am coming home, no I haven’t had a snake in the house, yes the spiders are that big, yes I know I don’t have that great of a tan - work kinda gets in the way, yes you get used to the heat, no I don’t have much of an accent yet, yes come for a holiday anytime and so and so forth) We try to do as many big family gatherings as possible, but mine and DH’s family live 100’s of miles away, not all of them have met so it’s not as easy as getting one gathering sorted. But we try to do that as much as possible, but as I am sure you can appreciate everyone’s availability is tight at this time. We have tacked a break on at the end, which I am thankful for. I feel like it’s a fight with everyone to get their ‘fair share’ of your time. I guess you can’t really explain it unless you’ve done it. I am sorry for those I have offended with the term ‘ex pat’ (it gets used here all the time and I consider myself one, I’m also a POM) Thank you for everyone’s kind words re IVF, its been hard on us on top of work and not having your mum to give you a hug when you really bloody need it. I will be over the moon when I step off that plane, it really is like that scene from love actually and it makes my heart happy. I just wish it didn’t come with such a hefty price tag - financially, emotionally and physically.

Op I really feel for you. I've not been through IVF but good friends have been.

We live abroad on an expat package. Employer pays for our flights once a year. Other than that we pay for everything. This year we purchased our own place locally and I've had it updated for our visit in 2 weeks.

We manage our trips back by taking a few days somewhere. This year we are doing Munich for 4 days while DH has an offsite meeting. Not ideal but I take what breaks I can get. I'm not happy the company isn't paying for our nanny to fly out. We have 2 special needs DC (they have autism and find transitions hard) so our trip this year is costing us more than what some make in a year. I'm expected to attend evening events with DH and attend daytime events with the DC so I need someone who can safely look after the DC.

OP go to the Maldives or Hawaii or Dubai and get a gorgeous private villa over the sea and be waited on hand and foot with massages and cocktails and sunsets and candlelit dinners and a massive bed with massive tv so you can netflix and chill to the sound of crashing waves with a glass of champagne...

And skype the family instead. You'll probably have change from that 10k too!

Expats are in a country temporarily, immigrants are permanent.

As an expat our travels were always to visit family (DH and I are from different countries, we were expats in neither). We'd only get a proper family holiday once every 3-5 years.

Now I'm an immigrant in DH's country I only have to visit my own family but it's still not a holiday.

I completely get it OP. Posters are being wankers because you dared to say "expat"...
I live in the Caribbean and flights from here to UK are at the bare minimum $1200 per adult, $800 per child, not including internal flights up to Scotland to see DHs family which are an additional $700+ - so roughly $5k in flights alone.
Add on car hire in both Scotland and London and we're looking at an additional $1200 given we need a large car for all of us.
So before we even factor in spending money and additional accommodation if we're not staying with family, we're near $7k. To visit the UK....

I absolutely totally get it, it's fucking lunacy...

I would like to point out that the OP doesn’t say the currency she is working with. A £5-6k holiday very easily forex’s into $10k+.

I hate staying with family a few hours drive away! This would be horrific and we’d definitely Airbnb a couple of places somewhere fairly central to each family and invite people to us.

Christmas is always a clusterfuck though. PPs idea of visiting in summer sounds much better.