I did it. I went ahead and bought a $402 airline ticket for Thanksgiving. I could have waited but then I would stress out about the prices going up and the flights filling up and I would check the prices every day for the next month I and would probably end up paying $500. So, I bought it now. $402 seemed like a reasonable price from Arizona to Washington.Now, where to find the money. I only have $161 in my travel fund at the moment with no new incoming cash on the horizon. In fact, I had just cut back, twice. Once for the extra $100 for my mortgage and the other for my property tax bill. Hmmm, I could take it out of my November's extra mortgage payment but no. I won't. I hate to subtract on my mortgage spreadsheet. Only more money can be added!
My biggest adjustable budget category is food. How about no groceries until Thanksgiving! Ok, that's a little much. My tomato plant is dead and my squash plant isn't looking very good. I had better learn how to prepare cactus. I am going to try very hard to eat all of the food in my fridge and pantry. I just threw out carrots, lettuce and chicken that went bad too quickly. I can do better! I have only spent $20 on food this month because I went shopping at the end of August. If I eat everything that I have already I think I can cut my food bill in half. That would save $50 a month for Sept, Oct, and Nov. With the travel money I already have that leaves me only $91 short. Maybe I can do better than $50 a month. I see a lot of rice, beans and cheese in my future for the next 10 weeks. Right now that doesn't sound so bad. But when I get to Washington I think I will be very happy to eat anything else!
4 comments:
Someone at work had brought a big vat of beans, which she periodically does, with chili and the fixin's for frito pies. Because I was trying to stay away from the fritos, I had just the beans with red chile, a touch of cheddar, and lettuce, onions and tomtoes on top,and I thought - yeah, I could eat these every day - there was also a small amount of ground beef in it. Yummy!
Why don't you pay for the ticket out of your e-bay sales.
That does sound good. I think I need to drop some hints at work :)
I could use ebay money but I think I am going to have trouble reaching my $500 ebay goal for Nov. and that is promised for the mortgage so I didn't want to overcommit. If there's any excess I'll be happy to use it.
Worst case, I'd say delaying your mortgage payoff by one month would be well worth getting to spend Thanksgiving with your family. I bet you find/come up with the money somewhere though anyway.
I wouldn't even have to delay it a whole month since I am paying $1500 extra for the mortgage and I only need $239 more for the ticket. But I'll try to save it before I pilfer the mortgage money. And I agree, it is worth it to visit the family.
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