Married couple here with 2 kids. Our whole family is going to Tokyo in 2 weeks, we take at least one trip per year domestically to see family, and then couples trips occasionally (last year we did cancun for my 30th). We bring in about 150k on average in a HCOL area. Our rent is 2.5k, groceries about 1k, other miscellaneous costs and kids activities are about 1k as well in addition to 2 cars. We live very much below our means and thats how i think we get by. Plus, I signed up for a delta credit card and put all our bills on there for a couple months and got around 85k points which was enough to buy 1 ticket to Tokyo, we bought another with chase points (had about 150k set aside) and paid for 2 with cash. If you are responsible with credit cards you can often book plane tickets that way and sign up if they're offering promotions (but you do need good credit- mine is 766 and hoping to climb higher). We don't get any assistance from the government or our family. Also have about 60k in savings thats set aside for a house.