Financial Fasting On Vacation

So.....like many things in my life, I have this nice little plan to blog every week....and then, well, "stuff" gets in the way.  But--I'm back now!  And hopefully more faithful about financial updates.  Writing about our journey helps us to stay accountable and stick with the commitment.

When we made the initial decision for Family Fasting, one of the decisions we made was to cut out as many out-of-town trips and vacations as possible.  In our pre-financial-fasting past vacations, we would come home flabbergasted at how much spending--necessary and unnecessary--actually occurred.  Somehow it seemed money just disappeared....this is what happens when you're not watching.  We started fasting in October, and though it wasn't an easy decision by any means, we opted to forgo our out-of-town Thanksgiving with the extended family.  We calculated that this decision potentially saved us over $700--gas, football tickets, zoo-lights event, big city Christmas shopping, and other spending that likely would have occurred.  Christmas was another "do we or don't we" travel decision--then we found ourselves with a free timeshare (thank you mom-in-law!) and the opportunity to vacation after the actual holiday, therefore diminishing the need for ongoing gift spending.  Other than the cost of gas, we calculated this vacation would be almost next to nothing in actual spending.

For spring break, we discussed how far we had come in our financial fasting and allowed a little pat on our backs that we are finally ahead of the money target, instead of constantly behind.  BUT....we wanted to stay ahead, and not fall back into old patterns, so we discussed at length what our family vacation options might look like.  We used the free time share again (why sure, we'll help you out with those unused extra points you have! ) and planned a simple family vacation with a few of the extended family.  My family likes the fact that my husband is the family chef, so Bryan and I do all the meal-planning ahead of time, buy the groceries when we get there, then we all split the cost.  In reality, the cost of groceries is a wash--we plan inexpensive meals that cost roughly the same as what our weekly groceries would have cost if we had stayed home.  Since we were going to a little Bavarian tourist town, we planned for one out-to-eat meal.  We also decided ahead of time how much spending money we would allow ourselves--so we used the cash from the family grocery reimbursement as our target.

Strategy 1--map out the driving distance and estimate the real cost of gas to get there and back home.  Decide ahead of time whether on-site driving will be part of the vacation, and if so, how much gas for that too.  You can't control the price of gas, but you can budget for it ahead of time.

Strategy 2--plan menus, and eat in rather than eat out.  This takes a little bit of strategizing because you won't have all those little staples from home--do you buy butter or do you plan butter-less meals?  Are flour, sugar, spices required?--probably better re-think the menu.  Plan a flexible menu that can include leftovers on the last day so you're not wasting all that grocery money if there's extra food.  If there's room, take a cooler and bring items you already have at home that would otherwise go to waste while you're gone.  And don't forget to plan an easy meal for the return home night, after traveling.

Strategy 3--set a spending money goal, and use cash.  It's much easier to keep track of how much is being spent--and how much is still left--when you have actual paper money.  Debit cards are too easy to let spending accumulate and then the receipts get totaled (gasp!) once you get home.

Strategy 4--give the kids a spending allowance:  the parents set the amount, but the kids are allowed to choose what they spend it on.  In our case, we allowed each kid $10 and encouraged them to not make a decision until we had visited all the stores.  We also taught them lessons on price-comparing amongst the various shops--we found the same item in three stores at three different prices.

One little side note on #2--we did plan a back-home meal, which we made prior to vacation and put in the freezer.  But we didn't account for getting back home right at dinner time.....and we'd still have to un-thaw the meal (which was in an aluminum container = no microwave thawing).  So we ended up going to Costco fast-food counter.  As a cost comparison:  our one out-to-eat meal was a modest but not over-spent meal for $60 for our family of five; our after-vacation Costco meal for a family of five was.....$16.  We might decide to keep that Costco membership after all!

What We Didn't Spend

This past week Bryan and I went out of town while Grammy came to our house to watch the kids.  I went to a conference for my work, and Bryan got to come along.  The mucho lovely part was that my work paid for not only the conference but the hotel, (Hilton in downtown Portland, yee haw!) gas, and food.  AND I was able to get the reimbursement check ahead of time--so I didn't even have to put any expenses on my credit card.  On past business trips, I would put expenses on the card thinking "I'll pay it right back as soon as I get the reimbursement check"....but....by the time that check actually arrived, something always happened and we "needed" that check for the general finances.  And thus the credit card bill remained....

The nice thing about car trips is the chance to talk for several hours, so we strategized what we would need to spend money on and what we would be diligent about not spending.  We knew we would in fact need to eat, but we could curb the amount we usually spend on eating out.  We also are making an effort to not only minimize Christmas presents, but to spread out the shopping over three months, and therefore avoid the massive chunk of change in December.  Therefore we would go to specific stores, not just randomly browsing and risk succumbing to "impulse buying."

Here's our list (you'll soon find out I love lists!) of what we didn't spend:

• Fancy restaurant:  normally we would "justify" a spendy dinner by rationalizing that 1--we had some time to ourselves without kids! 2--we're in the big city, we have to go to a nice place! and 3--we've been working really hard to trim our budget, we deserve it!  Instead, Bryan went on a little exploration to check out The Food Truck Capital of the World and we got some inexpensive lunches that were new to us and very tasty!  Everywhere we went, we spent less than $20 for both of us together.  (If you haven't tried these, you should check out Noodles & Company, Five Guys, and Einstein Bros Bagels.....seriously good food that doesn't taste cheap but is.)  And we actually stayed under the amount I was given for my food allowance!
• Gas driving all over Portland:  we mapped out where we'd be and who we were meeting up with and lumped the same areas together.  Not only did this save on gas, but it saved on Bryan being perturbed with Portland drivers!  And....since we were in downtown Portland--we walked!
• OSU Beaver store:  picture a 37 year old dad acting like a 7 year old kid on his birthday and you have my husband at the Beaver store.  But.....he showed great self-restraint and it probably helped that we showed up five minutes before closing--and the store clerks let us know this in more ways than one.  (Note to self: This could be a good strategy for future stores!)  We did buy his Christmas presents from the kids--which he picked out himself of course--and he will have three months to be practicing his surprise face.
• Mall purchases:  We did browse around quite a bit but we ended up not spending at the Hello Kitty store (Maezie), the Lego Store (Graeson), and Claires (Kaela).  We ultimately decided that we could get similar items at home from a non-brand-name store, and we could also watch for sales over the next few weeks/months.  We did the same thing at the calendar booth--we found really cool calendars the kids would love, but instead we grabbed the online postcard which has the code for free shipping, and decided to wait and see if we still want them later on.  If not, we could always send the online link to one of the Grandma's and give them a no-thinking-involved gift idea.
• Cell phone upgrade:  back in the first blog entry, on our "not to spend" list is cell phone "everything" plans.  We learned that we are in fact on the cheapest plan already, and even though I am currently a free agent, it would cost us more money for me to leave the multiple-lines-family-plan and get something cheap on my own.  And nowadays, there actually aren't any plans without data.  (So I get to keep checking Facebook 45 times a day after all!)  But we did decide not to get the "free" upgrade which would include a new phone I may or may not actually enjoy, an extra $10 a month, and an extra $35 activation fee.  So in the end we saved $45 and some (probably unnecessary) bells and whistles.

I hope I'm not the only Saved By The Bell girl out there!

It was a very successful out of town trip!  Next on our agenda:  laptop shopping.  Cable ends in two more days!