So I haven’t even finished putting away my luggage from my last trip and I’m already making plans for the next one. Well, the next few. In the past few days, I have booked hotel rooms for three trips, registered for a race, and will probably register for another one soon.
The first trip planned is just a quick overnight stay. Since my half-marathon didn’t happen, I wanted to get one in before the summer so that I don’t end up with a mental stumbling block over the distance. I found one that’s fairly local and has great reviews, so I registered, and then, in the interest of not having to get up at 3am, decided to book a hotel room within walking distance of the start line for the night before. It will be a nice little treat for me.
The other two hotel stays are also for races – one in Florida and one in California. The California trip has been planned for months, my friend and I just didn’t have a hotel room yet. The Florida trip is a replacement for this most recent trip that turned out to be a bit of a bust. I haven’t registered for the Florida race yet, so for now, the trip is mostly refundable, though I really want to go. Next up will be looking for flights.
It feels like a lot of travel, and it is, but at the same time, it’s just a few weekend trips. It’s not cheap, but I do what I can to make the trips as cost effective as possible, and this is one of the reasons that I try to watch my spending in other categories. I would rather save on groceries and rent movies rather than go to the theater and then spend my money on fun trips. Other people don’t like to travel, so they splurge on fancy groceries or cute shoes. It’s all about the balance.
I kind of like the idea of traveling to run a race. It gives me an excuse to go to a new destination and something to do while I’m there. Plus it’s a good way to stay in shape. Never a bad thing.
Now to just kick the rest of this illness so I can get back to running this weekend!
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.
