I had an experience where, inadvertently, I learned what I thought the value of upper-class travel was. In 2008, a friend of mine and I went to Scotland on a golf trip. Since he'd never been there and I'd been there three or four times, he relied on me to suggest the right time to buy airline tickets. I've found over the years that the best time to buy is about 6-12 weeks out from the date of the trip, and just about 9 weeks from our trip, the coach fares dropped from $1000 to $800.

Knowing it was time to buy, I called him up, and we each logged onto the USAirways site, which was the airline we'd chosen since they had a flight directly into GLA. He and I both saw the $800, but I hesitated for a moment since we were both single and earning well over 100K in our jobs. I suggested we check the cost of First Class, figuring, hey, I'm willing to pay up to $2000 (it was my pre-FT days, I didn't know!). We each pulled up first-class fares and pretty much gasped at the same time. Now that I have experience here, I wouldn't be so shocked, but at that time I just couldn't justify jumping from $800 to $10,000 (on US!) for a trip to Scotland.

Since then, I've pretty much kept $2000 in my head as an approximate cutoff number for what I'd pay for a business-class seat on a flight to Europe. And about once per year, you'll see fares fall into that range. Fortunately, I found FT after this trip and have learned that there are plenty of ways I can increase my chances for a more comfortable flight by spending no more than half, and usually, much less than that sum.