Fiscally challenged? I think you should meet my financial advisor, who rolls her eyes every times she gets a look at my finances. (I pay strictly by the hour; she gets a visit from me every couple of years as a sanity check to make sure I'm not doing anything foolish overall; I determine the specifics of all my investments.) She has a son my age and the comparison isn't pretty.

I agree with those who have said that your posting seems rather snobbish in tone. Over my life time, I've done slightly more leisure travel than business travel, and more often than not, I stay with the friends or family that I'm visiting, so my leisure travel expenses are rather low. Those whose travel may be 100% leisure are still entitled to be a contributing member of this community, even if they're not high spenders.

That said, I'll also note that it is entirely possible to do a lot of corporate travel and still not put a lot of money on a personal C/C. When I racked up 60 round trips in 1999, it was with a company which required that all travel be ticketed through the company travel office, or no reimbursement. Because there was so much travel to the same location, we had a corporate apartment at the destination which was billed to the company directly. I paid for a hotel room less than 20 nights; at an average of $150/night, that's $3,000. With car rental and incidental expenses at about an average of $100/day, and average of 2 days per trip, that's $12,000. That's a pretty darn heavy travel pattern, but still short of that $20,000. Did I charge the $15,000 I actually spent that year to a C/C which earned me something? Heck yes. But assuming that everybody matches your pattern of >$48,000 per year is unreasonable. Even if I had gotten to charge my own tickets, with Alaska, United Shuttle, and Southwest battling it out on West Coast routes, that would have added $9,000. If we hadn't had a corporate apartment, that would add another $6,000. Hypothetical total $30,000, still significantly less than your total.