Surprisingly, NC actually does offer a lot more than many other places. We chose to move here for some of the educational benefits a few years ago. We lived in rural NY and none of the options in this thread were available to our oldest daughter there.Again, I find it hard to believe that NC is a leader in this regard.
In NC, my youngest is now enrolled in an early college high school and my middle daughter decided to homeschool last year to take greater advantage of the offerings through the community college. She has finished all of her high school requirements, but since she is still technically a high school student (hasn't graduated from homeschool yet) she can take all her classes for free at the community college. She took 5 courses online last year and has a full schedule of online and in-person courses that she is registered for this year.
That said, we do still have to get them to these classes so transportation could still be a limiting factor for some kids. I work from home so I have a fairly flexible schedule and my husband gets home at 3:15 so we can coordinate transportation since the local cc is just a few miles away. This year, we will have to buy a car for our daughter since the courses she is taking are only offered at the cc campus that is 40 minutes away so I will not have the time to drive her there and pick her up in the middle of my work day.
crisi made a good point about this a few posts back; that we only tend to give up things that are not that important to us. I don't really care about fancy cars, television, or dining out all the time so those are easy ways to cut back so I have extra to spend on the things that provide me with more value. We could also easily afford those things and a vacation, but I'd rather put more money into savings/retirement (because, again, stability and security are things that I value more).Right. My point is that it seems like in some of what is mentioned there are quite a lot of sacrifices being made for a Disney vacation. I worry about the ends justifying the means… again- in some of the mentioned situations.
I think your point is valid for some people because one vacation definitely may not be worth all the sacrifices. We have friends who get more pleasure out of small things in their daily lives (dining out, drinks, coffee, tv, etc) and they really are not interested in travelling at all. They would be absolutely miserable if they gave up all of those things throughout the year just to take a vacation. My family gets more joy out of planning, anticipating, and taking a few trips per year than we would ever get out of little daily things so we don't mind eating at home or not having cable to make that happen.