Hi all,

Not sure if this is the right forum or not. Mods please move to to appropriate forum if required (and let me know too via PM). Also I am not sure if this has been asked before.

I have been flying around for about 10 years, not on regular basis. Mostly in back of the plane (ie Y), domestically in Australia, and some pacific and asian trip, as well as US trip but for business only (and it was still in Y). My travel patten can be seen at http://my.flightmemory.com/edison

I have been saving miles by using proper credit cards and flying specific airlines to earn points. Last year, I began to redeem these points to fly in Business (J) on NZ (SYD-AKL-PPT twice), and most recently redeem award on SQ J (CAN-SIN-SYD). Of course, we tried all the lounges available, J check-in lines, excellent in-flight service and food, etc. My wife loved every bit of it.

Also we were fortunate to get some good hotel deals in recent years in FT (Le Meridien Khao Lak and Hilton Moorea for example), as well as IHG Priority Club PointBreaks, where I managed to string a whole Europe trip together with most of my nights being free.

Of course, at the same time, we did travel from Sydney to Europe once on CX Y, and with the contrast of experience first hand in J, she found it very uncomfortable in Y, as well as "lack of service", even though, previously she didn't mind Y because she never tried J.

Yesterday morning, when my wife woke up, and the first thing she told me is that she won't travel anywhere unless it is J/C or above and staying in 4.5+ star properties (3.5+ star OK if the trip involves going out a lot and hardly stay in hotel). Now she doesn't even want to go to Thailand 5 star resorts, but thinking about Maldives She said that FT (and AFF) would give us deals so that we can travel like royals without spending a lot.

In fact, in my recent trip VS SYD-HKG on PE/Y+, she found the experience very disappointing (me too by the way).

Now I am scared, she now expects that I can just collect points quickly, with great ideas from FT and use it for redemptions for luxury trips, whilst spending very little for it. How do I manage her expectations?! I still want to travel but I don't get work trips (to collect points) and I actually don't want to spend actual cash for J.

At the moment I still have some points left for J travel, but sooner or later those points will burn out and I am unwilling to pay myself for J service. Anyone has experienced this, where you have to manage your spouse's expectations, what would you do?! Maybe we should never fly J (or above) at the first place as now she (and in a way, I) have the J/F bug, and suffers J/F withdrawal symptoms?!

Run the numbers and question what you value and why? Is it worth it? What can you sacrifice? Or are you being unreasonable?

BTW, I'm a single guy, never been married. So, you're more than welcome to ignore what I just wrote.

Me: I only fly international J (for leisure). My line of work don't involve flying internationally.

Numbers - I'm able to budget $4k-$5k per round-trip.
Why - Because I want a comfortable ride and a good night's rest - food and service are just a bonus. I use consolidators for find affordable J fares and use FT to find deals on earning miles. If I'm able to secure a mileage award, I'll use my miles.

Sacrifice - Eating out at fancy restaurants and drinking at fancy bars. But what I was missing was not the fanciness, I missed the time with my friends. So, I've learned that I value the time with my friends, not the restaurants and and bars. We go out on the occasional fancy meal and bar, like once a year. But the rest of the time, I cook or eat at a 3* restaurant. Hence, I can live with it. Retirement funds, emergency funds, mortgage are all still in line.

As a woman, I would say to your wife that she has to figure out a way to earn points and miles. Perhaps she can get a job with business travel to collect points, or just one that earns a whole lot more so she can pay directly for J/5* travel! But I know that won't help you very much to point that out to her.

It sounds like if you go along with this, you will just have to make your vacation travel a much rarer and briefer occurrence. Perhaps you'll be able to take 1/4 as many trips as you would at a Y/3* level, but that's a choice a lot of people make and prefer.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)

She sounds pretty high maintenance and needs to contribute to the points pool at once. Agree with never using points for Y travel, but this girl seems to show no gratitude whatsoever.

In business we call this poor customer management by setting the expectation so high that there is no way you can keep them as a permanent happy customer.

Can someone help me get my tongue out of my cheeks?

I'd agree with this. Unless you have the income to support such a lifestyle, it just won't happen. The only way I see a way around this is if you make these trips very other year or something infrequent like that. But I also agree that she also needs to start earning the points/miles if she likes that. While I would absolutely agree that you now need to take a hard look at your lifestyle, budget and income, even if you are a really good manager of these things, it just may not happen such that you are always able to fly C/F and stay in 4*+ level accommodations. In a sense the best way is, you need to pick and choose. Some trips she needs to accept that you'll be flying and living in lesser accomodations, but in some others, you guys can live it up.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)

Perhaps you can make some comprimes on hotels and use Priceline or Hotwire. You can still get very nice properties for a reasonable price.

Depending on your spending it would take years to get enough hotel and airline points for a trip.

Tell her that if she wants to take that position, she can just leave you for a man with more frequent flyer miles.