If home is far away, how often do you go?

[Lifebeginner]

I'm currently grappling with how much we should prioritise going home. There are other trips I'd like to take but because home is so far away (15+ hours and 2 flights) it doesn't leave much room for any other travel if we do go. We were only there earlier this year but based on our current plans we either pay the exorbitant amount to go at Christmas, go in March/April and scrap our other travel plans for then, or we don't go at all until Christmas 2019.

Would be interested to know how often other people make the long expensive trip back and whether family get stroppy if you don't

Ahhh.. Stansted. Enough said..... I have some awful tales from Stansted, and Luton too, so these days, I'll pay that little bit more to fly to Gatwick or Heathrow (although you feel like you've walked for miles at Heathrow too, but at least that's fine because you've just got off a plane and need to stretch your legs anyhow).

For cars, I cannot recommend Alamo (who are Enterprise when you get there) enough - unlike Thrifty, who once caused me to miss a flight because the person who was supposed to open the office didn't turn up, they didn't answer any calls, and the office was too far from Stansted to walk..

I was going through Rome the other day, and they have a special passport queue if you're there with kids, so you can just whoosh straight through. Boy I appreciated that!

I have been living in NZ for 3 and a half years and have been back twice. Prioritising our own holidays is proving difficult. I have told my parents we will be taking a 3 week trip to japan soon and so it will be longer until I can go back to visit them.
Whilst I miss my family and friends and want to see them we also have to live our own lives.
I don't think you can compare a short flight to a flight to literally the other side of the world. When you bring into account the time difference we spend almost a week just travelling to and from our home in the UK.

Plus once you have kids, the price is absolutely eye watering - when we lived further afield, it would have been over 1 month's salary (2 months takehome) to fly the 4 of us home and back..

And if I'm completely honest, since you spend the whole time driving and visiting people, it's not even that appealing (apart from seeing people, which is nice.. but I have skype and facebook for that)

I was originally planning on going back summer and Christmas but I've now realised just how expensive that's going to be for 4 of us! I think i will still probably go back on my own with the kids every summer as I don't think I'll want to spend 8 weeks here but think we will have to forget about Christmas. Twice a year is just too expensive and like others have said it will mean that you don't end up actually getting to go on holiday if you keep going home.

In Sydney and going back twice a year. Parents are not getting any younger.

Home is 11 hours away. We usually go home once a year due to intense pressure from family. However long we stay it never seems enough to keep anyone happy and I find it very stressful. We are planning to move back soon and one thing I'm looking forward to is being able to actually travel to go on holiday, and not having to spend all my money and holiday allowance on a yearly 'holiday' to middle England.