We Had Some “Extra” Money.
Shane and I were supposed to take a nice, long college road trip for spring break. I’d been planning it for months.
We were going to drive into upstate New York, cut through Ohio, and pick up Dylan in Tennessee. Then we were going to look at colleges in Alabama and Atlanta, and send Dylan back to college on an airplane from Atlanta. Shane and I were going to drive through South and North Carolina, respectively, stopping at colleges all the way home.
Of course, that didn’t happen. My guess is that we saved a few thousand dollars by not taking that trip.
Not long after we missed that trip, Bill’s conference in Los Angeles got canceled. And with it, our Hollywood/Disneyland trip disappeared. All of us had been looking forward to that vacation, but at least we saved some more money.
Dylan’s Italy trip was canceled, too. We’d budgeted $10,000 for it.
So we had some “extra” money for the first time since the kids were born. Basically, we had budgeted for vacations that simply weren’t happening. And, rather than saving our money for the trips that will surely take place sometime in the future, we decided to finally do something to make our house look less dated.
We got new floors. We got new carpet, too. And then, since we hadn’t painted since we moved in when Shane was born, we hired painters, too.
All of my life, I moved from house to house. I never had “upkeep” to worry about. If the oven gets dirty, I quipped, I’ll just move. It was pretty close to the truth. I never cleaned an oven until I was married.
But we’ve been in the same house since Shane was three months old. The oven has been cleaned countless times. But it took us more than a decade to plant bushes that thrived, and we finally screened in our back porch just a couple of years ago – our first “upgrade.”
So now, in the midst of the painting and flooring, the house is a mess – but it looks like a new house. It’s absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous! We have the same dumb furniture, all of it acquired haphazardly. I’m not exactly an interior decorator. I moved some pictures around and bought new curtains, and it looks pretty great.
I love the new look.
Now I just have to figure out how to pay for our upcoming trips. I’m looking forward to getting back to work and actually making money.
Did I say that out loud?