As I’m writing this entry, it’s still Friday, and the weekend is getting closer and closer. I usually use the weekend to write and get ahead on posts, but this weekend, my sister is coming to visit, and I don’t want to have to take time to blog when I could be spending that time with her. I haven’t seen her since Christmas, and this is the first time she’s come to visit without another family member (and only the second time she’s visited ever).
At first, when I was making plans, I was thinking of all these great things we could do. Of course, in D.C., there are so many free museums and attractions that it would be easy to fill up a weekend and then some and never spend any money.
But then I realized that while she wants to do some touristy things, she really just wants to hang out. We don’t have to go do big things. We don’t have to make sure that every minute is filled. She said she’d be fine with just ordering pizza and watching movies. Some may say it’s a wasted trip, because she’s missing out on all the great things D.C. has to offer. I disagree, of course.
Sometimes, it’s important to remember to just enjoy the time you have with others (or the time you have to yourself) and not worry about making everything the best or the most fun or the most frugal.
Megan is a 40-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
I put trips into 2 categories- people or places. On people trips my main focus is spending time with the people I’m visiting. On places trips my main focus is enjoying the place I’m visiting. My last trip included NY/Philly/DC and I didn’t see one touristy place in any city. My goal was to reconnect with friends/family and I spent a lot of time in people’s living rooms just hanging out.
Categorizing the trips helps me get away from the idea that a people trip is a waste if I don’t really ‘do’ anything.