I have been saying to the husband for a few weeks now “I have itchy feet, we are long overdue for a vacation”. Which is not exactly true. We went abroad less than a year ago. But I think this is my reaction to winter. To the long nights and low temperatures. I wake up in the morning and think, “I wonder who I could convince to go to Florida with me this weekend”. I know this is not a normal thing, but I have long suffered this addiction to travel, needing to get out of town (or the country) has plagued my bank account since I was 16, luckily I married a very understanding man.
All this being said, around our house we have been discussing how to cut back. What if work dries up for Paul? What if I got laid off? We don’t have any savings. We always put money in our IRA’s and said that was our safety net. If it got bad enough that we needed to crack into our IRA’s we wouldn’t mind paying the penalties. But alas, our IRA’s are about 30% below the purchase price and looking more meager by the day. We are young, we shouldn’t plan on using them for years and years, blah blah blah- therefore, I’ve stopped opening the statements…
So we have be talking about how to perk up our savings accounts. I shopped around and got cheaper home owners and car insurance which is saving us about $50 a month. I toyed with the idea of canceling the cable, but my dirty little secret is that I love television. Really love it. Especially with Paul working overseas, just having the background noise is a comfort. So what else it there to cut out? We live pretty modest lives, we have 9 year old economy cars…okay, Paul’s is a truck, but it is a necessity for his job. We eat out less than once a month, we wear clothes until they fall apart at the seams and we possess one 19″ box television which I think I may bring to antiques roadshow soon. Our netflix subscription at $14 a month feels very luxurious to me. What are our biggest splurges? Travel and parties. Which we seem incapable of cutting out. This weekend we will be hosting a bonfire with whiskey drinking and chili dinner and have invited everyone we have ever met passing in the street. Which seems like a lot of whiskey to me… I have justified this by saying “at least we are getting rid of all that brush!”
And yesterday, on almost a whim, I bought 2 round trip tickets to Barcelona in May. US Air was having such an incredible sale that I just couldn’t stop myself from pulling out the credit card. For $100 more than the price of one ticket to London this time last year I booked 2 tickets to Spain!
So there we are, cutting back all to the bare neccesities. Failing miserably at perking up our savings account. But somehow, it makes me feel more like myself again. For example this is the first blog post in months that hasn’t had to do with sewing. And while I like sewing, I also like having things to look forward to. So now I am looking forward, 9 weeks to spain!
