Should I buy a return ticket if I'm staying for more than a 6 months? [closed]

Recently a few budget carriers have popped up on Transatlantic routes. Such as WOW air or Norwegian Air Shuttle. For this, there is no real difference between a round trip and two one ways. You can book a one way from Germany to the US east coast for as little as $260 US (Radom Example: Wow, FRA-BOS, Feb or Mar).

These are no frills carrier, i.e. you pay extra for seat selection, food and checked luggage so your mileage may vary.

However it's great if you have flexible dates, since you don't need to commit to a return date until you are actually know when you want to go.

The question as asked and as clarified seems to be entirely opinion based - is it better for someone to pay more now for a return ticket in the far future, or is it better to buy it at a later date.

A couple of things to help you make your mind up:

1. If you pay for the ticket now, you have the ticket and you have an almost guaranteed seat on a plane in the future. You can also change the ticket to travel at an earlier or later date, often for a small fee, but the main consideration here is that you have the ticket - the bulk of the cost has already been paid out.

2. Following on from the first point, consider your circumstances - will you absolutely 100% guaranteed have the means to pay for a one way ticket back to your country of origin at the end of the stay? If you cannot guarantee this, then buying the more expensive return ticket at the outset is a more prudent course of action. Don't assume you can simply put the one-way ticket cost away in a bank account and never touch it, as you never know what will happen in the months after your arrival - you may need to take that money as an emergency fund for medical treatment or rent.

3. Will prices change drastically during your stay? Will the cost of flying back to your origin change dramatically, or in such a way to make the cost of the one way ticket back to your origin unduly more expensive than you considered? Unfortunately, there is no way to know this - airlines have had price spikes in the past, and one may indeed correlate with your departure.

4. Will you need to return urgently at any point during your stay? A return ticket means you won't have to find the cash at short notice for this flight.

What you decide to do is entirely opinion based - a conservative traveler may opt for the more immediately expensive option of buying the open ended return, because then the ticket is paid for and they dont need to worry. A more free-spirited traveler may decide to see how it goes and hope they can buy a cheap flight to return on, with the added benefit of having more spending money in the mean time.