The holidays are just around the corner, so it’s about time we curl up by the fireplace, take in the changing leaves, and panic over the cost of flights home for Thanksgiving. While we hopelessly set flight trackers and scour the Internet for debilitating ticket fares, it’s important we take a moment to step back and reflect on the importance of family togetherness, good friends, and the really cool shit we could’ve bought in lieu of a flight home for Thanksgiving:
A Month of Groceries: While defending your ticking clock against Aunt Marge’s wine-induced attack on your ovaries, make note of the entire months-worth of groceries you could’ve purchased instead. The average American spends $150/week on food, but you could have gotten Whole Foods-level spending if you hadn’t blown $800 on a direct flight to Tucson . Just sayin’.
Ten tanks of gas: Oh the places you could go… if you weren’t making that fiscally demoralizing trek to your suburban homestay this Thanksgiving. With the money you threw away for a flight home for Thanksgiving, you could’ve saved up for three months’ worth of LA commutes, or road-tripped to a smorgasbord of glamorous locations where Katie’s Mom’s new boob job isn’t the most exciting thing to have happened in the last decade.
An iPhone 6: Going home for the holidays means reuniting with relatives from across the country to independently stare at electronic devices in the same room. When your dated iPhone 4S freezes and dies before dessert, forcing you to field face-to-face assaults on your generational flaws, just think about the new and improved access to new technology you could’ve had, if not for that obscene flight fare to your hometown this weekend.
Those Shoes You Saw At Fashion Week: Couldn’t justify splurging on those shoes you spotted during this year’s New York Fashion Week? Well you could’ve had two pairs of them if it weren’t for your flight home for Thanksgiving. Don’t worry, friends: burnt turkey, sibling feuds, and Uncle Ben’s diatribe about the right to bear arms will lead to far more glamorous memories than those silly heels that will be out of fashion by next year, right? At least that’s what Aunt Joanie says.
A Vacation: For the cost of a flight home for Thanksgiving you could’ve been the most cultured and well-traveled person in your family. Instead of sunning on the shores of Jamaica or backpacking through Europe, you’re sitting in coach between a drooling business man and a screaming toddler on a domestic flight to Topeka. For that multi-leg flight, you could have flown to EUROPE. Think about that.
Let’s face it, we’re going home for Thanksgiving. So let’s give thanks for that and remember money can’t buy a Mom, old friends, or that photo collection you’re about to snag from your parent’s house. But it certainly could’ve bought all of the above, with money left over for an iWatch.
