The Best Laid Plans

I guess I should have been more clear that I was on vacation over these past few days!  Whoops.  I was just so excited that I forgot to remind everyone to not worry, that I was just out of town and not worrying about blogging.

Sadly, the trip was a bit of a bust.  This was the weekend I was scheduled to run the half-marathon I’ve been planning for for over a year.  Because of all the snow, I’ve been slogging through many treadmill runs, sometimes spending almost two hours on the treadmill.  I overcame that and worked through a few injuries.  I was ready.

And then I caught a stomach virus.  It’s no fun to be sick on vacation.  It’s especially no fun to be sick when you’re supposed to be running a huge race.  I was so upset to not be able to run.  I could hear the fireworks from the start line and it made me so incredibly sad.  But sometimes things just don’t go as you plan.

Other than that, the trip was great, but there’s still kind of a dark cloud over it all.  Thankfully, no one else got sick.  I was so worried that someone in my traveling party would end up sick the day that we were all scheduled to fly home.  As my mom put it, they still might get sick, but at least now they’re all home.  Being sick on vacation is bad.  Being sick while traveling is much worse.

Because the race was a no-go, I decided to take advantage of the “book now and save” offer that was in the hotel room.  There’s another race in October that I really want to run.  So I called and booked a hotel room.  I can cancel it later for a full refund, but the discount was pretty great, and it’s nice to take that first step towards committing.  My race partner did end up running the race and she did amazing, so I’m happy for her, and she’s willing to come back with me for the October race.   I just hope it all works out.  After all, what are the odds of getting sick again?

So now I’m looking for a local half-marathon to run so that the half-marathon distance doesn’t become my albatross.  I think there’s one in June that looks good.  Plenty of time to get healthy and train.

Megan Smith

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.