Trips for us take some serious budget planning. I’m not even kidding. In 1997, when we decided to get married in Las Vegas, we booked our vacation package a year in advance because it was going to take us a year to pay for it.
In 2007, we had decided that each year we would visit a city where we would like to live someday, so we started with Seattle. Then, in September of 2008, Cindy and I, with a couple of friends, took a six-day trip to Portland.
I’m not sure what happened in 2009, but we didn’t visit a potential dream city that year. The best we managed to do was a long weekend to visit friends in Lake Charles, LA. In 2010, we spent a weekend in Center, TX visiting friends; in August, Cindy went to New York, and I managed a couple of days in Orlando, FL.
Our big trip this year was our moving to Kansas City, MO. But Cindy’s also going to BlogHer again, which is in San Diego this year.
This evening, we were sitting on the couch watching TV, and Cindy informs me that she’s going to skip BlogHer next year (she says this now, but I’m waiting to see where it’ll be held before I believe her). Instead, she wants to do #91 on her Life List: Be at the Statue of Liberty on the 4th of July. This, of course, means we’ll have to go to New York.
The reason we have to decide this now is because if we waited until just a few months before July 2012, we’d be scrambling to fund it, and more than likely we’d come up short, and have to postpone it for another year.
As much as we love to travel, we don’t get to do it often. But we’re doing much better than we used to. We used to spend years thinking about taking trips — small ones even, like Portland — but we’d never have the money. It would cost too much, we thought.
But, in reality, maybe not.
When we went to Seattle, we had friends there, and we could stay with them, saving us hundreds of dollars for a motel for the week. With round-trip airfare, some meals out, and walking-around money, we made the trip for $650. Six days in Portland cost us $1200 for round-trip airfare for 2, motel (split four ways), rental car (split four ways), meals (lots of meals), and some activities (walking tour, aquarium, etc. ). That’s almost a week in Portland for $600 each.
If we had each started saving $1.00 a day (the price of a cup of coffee) after we got back from Portland, we could go back this year, with a few hundred dollars more in our pockets.
Just for fun, I looked up a couple of other trips I would have liked to have taken during these past few years. I found several 7-day all-inclusive resort deals in Mexico for $1200 (sometimes less) per person, and an air+hotel deal for a week in Amsterdam for $2100 per person.
If I put aside $1.65 a day for 2 years, I could go to Mexico every other year. If I put aside $1.92 a day for 3 years, I would have the money for the Amsterdam trip.
I know it seems like a long commitment, but those 2 or 3 years are going to happen anyway, no matter how little or how much we save for another trip. I think it’s natural for us to be overwhelmed with the idea of saving significant chunks of money in a short amount of time, which is why we don’t do it. But what about setting aside insignificant amounts of money over a long period of time?
I mean, most of us leak money almost every day because we think $2.00 (or less) doesn’t make that much of difference in our lives: a 12 oz. can of soda and a candy bar, a coffee, a 20 oz. bottle of Coke, using a few stamps when I could be using my bank’s Bill Pay service that I’m already paying for, etc. You get the idea.
But, it does make a difference.
I haven’t been to New York. And, I remember telling a friend two years ago at Christmas that, yes, we would go to New York “soon” to visit her, because we could stay with her, and all we would have to worry about is our plane tickets, and whatever money we needed for food, and getting around. Well, we never made it. Cindy went a year later for BlogHer, but we didn’t go to New York together.
There was no real reason for that trip not to have happened when you consider that $1.00 a day for a year would have flown my ass to New York and back. In fact, for $1.00 a day, I could probably fly round-trip almost anywhere in the United States every year.
What do you think? Does it make a difference, thinking about saving small amounts of money over a few years? Given everything else going on, is it even possible to scrounge $2.00 a day for 3 years. And, if so, is that enough to get you where you want to go?
Related posts:
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
I rely on bonus and tax money. And the kindness of friends. A lake house retreat owned by friends. Perhaps a trip to KCMO… I know some people there. I am really more of a fly by the seat of my pants kina gal… couch at the spur of a moments… pack the car… stop for gas and smokes and vodka… get out the IPOD and crank up the Willie Nelson…. roll down the windows and roll on. I’ve rarely planned a thing and never saved a dime. But I’ve been and done. And I love it.
There’s so much to be said for doing it that way, too! Adventures come in all sizes, in a variety of durations, to fit all budgets! I love it!
I can’t wait for you to see New York. It killed me that you weren’t with me on that trip. It killed me that I had to sit next to a stranger on the plane while tears streamed down my face as I left that city.
I completely agree with you! So much so that a few years back, I changed my direct deposit so that a predefined portion of my paycheck automatically goes into a savings account that I don’t touch until it’s time for a vacation. Raises go in there, too as do bonuses and IRS refunds. I’ve planned the regular budget so I don’t have to worry about tapping into it to pay the bills. I never see that money so it’s out of sight and out of mind. It’s a great feeling to check the balance occasionally and plan out all the places we could go (who am I kidding – there’s about an 70% chance it’s a tropical island and and 20% Vegas).
On a side note – where are you getting a cup of coffee for $1 and how can you possibly imagine surviving long enough to get to a vacation if you don’t have a cup of coffee every day??
Ah, right, the coffee thing. It’s a riff on those old commercials for feeding starving children in other countries, but I was thinking of coffee in the most common sense, like a small coffee from McDonald’s or 7-11, something you might pick up on your way to work. I would never attempt to go a day without coffee, but I’ve cut back significantly on the $3.65 dark chocolate coconut mochas. So, I’m having coffee, but just having it before I leave the house (or taking it with me in the travel mug), or waiting until I get back home. I’m not super strict about it, but if I make this one small change, just a few times a month, I’m already at 33% of my monthly goal, right?
I have a direct withdrawl account set aside and last year I went to Idaho! (No, you da ho.) And the year before that I went to the Adirondacks and to PA Dutch Country. This year was supposed to be Utah in September, but now it’s looking like….wait for it….Peru!!!!
I could take bigger, better trips if that account didn’t get emptied for other emergencies…car repairs mainly.
I really want to save it up big and go abroad. I’ve never been abroad. ( A broad, yes. Abroad, no.)
Peru is abroad, isn’t it?
I don’t know. Do you have to cross water to go abroad?
I don’t think so. I think it means just being out of the country (our country), but it seems odd to think of going to Canada as “abroad”. I know we usually think of travelling abroad as going somewhere that you have to cross water to get to, but it’s also odd (for me, anyway) to think of people in England going abroad to France because they’re so close.