A perfectly charming, middle-class-seeming friend is currently taking a month-long dream vacation, traveling to four or five world archeology destinations. I’m not clear on all the details, but I think the trip includes Stonehenge, the pyramids at Giza, Petra, and some site in Oman. Embarcation is from London, so since she is starting in California, there’s also a prequel trip.

In any case, it sounds amazing, and she is a good friend, so I ventured to ask whether she would share the cost with me. She would: It was roughly equivalent to the MSRP of a Land Rover MR4.

Yowza.

I’ve read about the megayacht people, but this person is not that. If you really want something though, maybe it’s time to bet the farm, and in a way I admire the verve. Although my husband and I have done well, I started out in a lower-middle-class family in Houston and haven’t completely shaken those sensibilities. I am a little skeptical that any vacation could actually be worth that much, and I am too frugal to make the tradeoffs that would be required, like selling an organ or something.

I do remember how vacation costs can mount, especially for a family of four traveling to another continent. As soon as the kids were old enough, my husband and I would house them in a separate room–or in the case of camping, a separate tent–when we traveled for any length of time. So we were clearly not unwilling to spend some money to improve the restfulness of the trip. We also usually answered Yes! to the Should we… questions: Should we rent a jeep and go off-roading? Tour the cave? Go deep-sea fishing? Parasail? See the play? Take a side trip?

After all, you never know when you’ll be back.

However, these trips never reached the expense level of a new luxury car, a year of tuition at a private college, or a guitar signed by Paul McCartney, even with four people traveling.

Earlier this year I met someone who pays a $400 annual credit card fee to get extra airline miles. This person also likes to travel. At the time, I thought, I would never do that. Now it seems sort of quaint.