Am I nuts?

[WanderALot]

I believe Saluki had a similar question before...

My good friend is getting married. He is having a ceremony/reception here in SoCal and a smaller reception in Turkey for his fiancee's relatives. DW and I both really want to go. We will be traveling around Turkey for about 2 weeks by ourselves and hang out with them for a couple of days before heading back. We aren't hurting for money and save over 50% of our incomes. DW has been to Turkey before and she absolutely loved it, as have all our friends who have been there. We are also going to start trying to have kids. So, slam dunk right?

Well...the airline tickets cost about $1.5k each, so we'll be out $3k before we even step off the plane. This will be the most we have ever spent on tickets. We've tried every which way and it looks like it ain't going to get cheaper! I keep analyzing this saying that this is not a good value and feeling bad about it, especially since we just got back from another trip a few months back, but the other part of me says that we won't be able to do this with babies, you only live once etc..

 

[wabmester]

Turkey is that country right next door to Iraq, right?    And the Turks aren't exactly neutral, right?   And this is in the Middle East, right?

Yes, you're nuts. 

 

[AltaRed]

I'd say that was a bargain to experience something together before the responsibilities of kids.

 

[Cut-Throat]

I've never regretted the money I've spent on traveling. They build the memories of life! - Go for it!

Can you imagine yourself on your deathbed saying. "I'm really glad I never went to Turkey, I now have an extra $20K to leave to my heirs'

I really don't believe that there is money better spent, than money spent on travel. That is what money is for!

 

[justin]

Any chance you can fly to a cheaper European gateway (Athens?) destination and train/bus/ferry/local airline it to Turkey for less, and in the meantime see other parts of the world? Looks like Athens is only a few hundred miles from major turkish cities by plane.

As someone who has a kid and has another one on the way in a month or so (and maybe more ), I know that travel of this type is out of the question for me for a long time. Go for it! You may not have the chance for a long time. What's it going to do to your FIRE date? Extend it by a month or two?

 

[REWahoo]

On the plus side (I left out the starting the family part, since it isn't necessary to travel to take care of that ):

My good friend is getting married.
DW and I both really want to go.
We aren't hurting for money and save over 50% of our incomes.
DW has been to Turkey before and she absolutely loved it
...we won't be able to do this with babies
...you only live once etc..

And on the minus side:

...the airline tickets cost about $1.5k each, so we'll be out $3k before we even step off the plane.

My opinion: you aren't nuts, just a cheap sob. GO!

 

[WanderALot]

Turkey is that country right next door to Iraq, right? And the Turks aren't exactly neutral, right? And this is in the Middle East, right?

Yes, you're nuts.

I'm not too worried about that. We would be hanging out mostly in the western part of Turkey. The furthest east we would go would be to see Cappadocia. Turkey has had a few bombings, but they are relatively liberal. My friend's Turkish fiancee is blond haired and blue eyed.

 

[bpp]

Just transfer any negative feelings you have onto your friend for being inconsiderate enough to get married during a high season. Then go and enjoy yourself.

 

[Scrooge]

Can you imagine yourself on your deathbed saying. "I'm really glad I never went to Turkey, I now have an extra $20K to leave to my heirs'

My standard way of determining whether something is a good value is to translate it to the number of days that you will have to defer your retirement in order to be able to pay for it.

Your profile says "Want to retire in 5 years". If your Turkish vacation costs you $5-6K, what will it do to your ER plans? And are you willing to pay the price?

I really don't believe that there is money better spent, than money spent on travel. That is what money is for!

Travel is great, but at one point I discovered that you can overdo it. Thankfully, 99.9999% of humans will never have this problem

P.S. Have you checked Mobissimo.com? I see a few $1.1K JFK-Istanbul tickets for certain August dates.

 

[WanderALot]

Any chance you can fly to a cheaper European gateway (Athens?) destination and train/bus/ferry/local airline it to Turkey for less, and in the meantime see other parts of the world? Looks like Athens is only a few hundred miles from major turkish cities by plane.

Yeah, we looked into this as well. Flying to Athens seems to be the same price and flying to Istanbul, plus we would have to deal with the ferry ride (or flight) to Istanbul. If we had more time, we would have flown into someplace in Western Europe and slowly made our way east by train to Greece or Italy before taking a flight/ferry. This would have been awesome, but since I'm still working ...

Can you imagine yourself on your deathbed saying. "I'm really glad I never went to Turkey, I now have an extra $20K to leave to my heirs'

I knew Cutthroat would set me straight! We tend to splurge on travel (not to your level though, no 10k fishing trips for us! but for some reason paying that much for airline tickets really irks me! I think as ReWahoo says...

My opinion: you aren't nuts, just a cheap sob. GO!

Guilty!

Your profile says "Want to retire in 5 years". If your Turkish vacation costs you $5-6K, what will it do to your ER plans? And are you willing to pay the price?

P.S. Have you checked Mobissimo.com? I see a few $1.1K JFK-Istanbul tickets for certain August dates.

It probably wouldn't affect my (semi-) retirement one bit! Both DW and I are addicted to overseas travel; it's one of the reasons I want to get timeoff so that I can travel more with my i-get-three-months-off-a-year-so-we-should-go-somewhere DW!

I'll try Mobissimo, thanks.

THanks everyone! I think I needed a beeatch-slap to put things in perspective!

 

[Dawg52]

To each his own but I wouldn't go to the middle east if the trip was free.

 

[Eagle43]

Go. You should be alright in Turkey. Just stay out of the Mideast hotspots; Turkey is not (necessarily) one of them, right this minute. The Israelis will occupy the bad guys for awhile. Take some photos, and share with us when you get back. Good luck!

 

[wagemonkey]

Wander,
Also check out <www.farecompare.com> .
It is a wonderful site that has many great features. One feature is a Google Map of all major airports in a region with corresponding flight prices. This might help you to find a cheaper nearby destination from which you can then connect to Turkey.
Enjoy!
wm

 

[chris2008]

A lot of turkish people work in Germany. So there are lots of cheap flights available from German airports to Turkey.
Turkey is also popular for holidays (carriers like TUI, Oeger, Hapag offer "flight only" tickets also to places like Antalya)
Flights to and from Germany (try Frankfurt or Düsseldorf) should not be more than 250-300 Euro per Person, both ways.
On the other hand, for 2 weeks total I would bite the cost and not invest time in a stopover.
Traffic in Turkey can be crazy.
Recent bombs in turkey were related to inner political issues, not to the Iraq issue. I would not be concerned - just like some 100.000 other Germans who are on vacation down there right now.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. If other guests of your friends will invite you to visit them - consider to accept that invitation. Turkish people are very hospitable and friendly.
Go and enjoy!

 

[planning101]

I don't think you are nuts. I was in your shoes before - attending a friend's wedding in France. And it was the BEST BEST BEST trip ever. It was in the height of summer (thus, very costly airplane ticket). But since my friend's spouse's family live there, we get to travel all over France and had less trouble with communications (acting as tour guide for us).

Mixing with the locals is a great way to immerse yourself in a foreign country. No regrets whatsoever.

Money, you can always accumulate more.
Opportunities like this, priceless.

Go for it. You'll have a blast!

 

[Caroline]

I'm going to Nepal this October. My partner was trying to decide if he wanted to go with me or save the money for some unknown future expense.

"What if you'd said that about Africa?" I asked him.

(We did Africa last year and it was the best trip of our lives -- and something we'll remember, together, forever.)

We paid for BOTH sets of tickets this morning -- IMHO, go for it!
Caroline

 

[WanderALot]

Thanks for all the encouragement everyone. We bought tickets last night with no regrets!

Chris2008, thanks for the Frankfurt suggestion. The fare was cheaper but the high airport taxes pretty much killed the deal.

I don't think you are nuts. I was in your shoes before - attending a friend's wedding in France. And it was the BEST BEST BEST trip ever. It was in the height of summer (thus, very costly airplane ticket).

A few years back we attended my Irish friend's wedding in a 15th century castle in western Ireland. They rented out the entire castle and we got to stay there. It was freaking incredible! Didn't think for a moment about going there, but then again, tickets were only $400 r/t from LAX (off-season). I gotta stop thinking like a backpacker, I'm over 30 and need to not worry so much about cheapest possible travel...