Blogging Away Debt Our Journeys to a Debt-Free Life

by Ashley

We’re back from our Spring Break trip to DC and NYC and I’m happy to report back that it was a great time!

I wrote back in October about our planned trip, and I made it a challenge to stay under $6k for the whole thing. Did it happen? Hang tight – I’ll let you know in a bit. But first, let’s rewind.

The Plan 

I was excited going into this trip, but I was also a bit nervous to be traveling away from home with the kids as the sole adult for the first time (hubby has limited time off work, so we planned this as a girl’s trip). 

My mom joined us for the DC portion, but then the girls and I boarded a train and traveled to NYC for another couple of days with just us! Equal parts exciting and mildly terrifying!

Budget Breakdown

Here was my budget going into the trip:

As always, I owe a hearty THANK YOU to you, the readers, for giving me so many cheap/free and FUN ideas of things to do while on Spring Break! Let me tell you about our trip and then I’ll break down the numbers….

Washington, DC: Surprisingly Affordable

We spent 4.5 days in DC, and nearly everything we did was free.

We packed in a ton:

• Natural History Museum
• Museum of American History
• Holocaust Museum
• National Archives
• Capitol tour
• Sculpture Garden
• The People’s House (suggested donation)
• DC at Night Tour (our only pricey tour)

We ended up taking more Ubers than expected because my mom’s knee was flaring up, and I covered those since the app is already on my phone. But she insisted on paying for most meals (despite my repeated attempts to get the check – why do they always hand it to the retiree?! Wouldn’t it make more sense to give it to the middle-aged person? But I digress…)

Bottom line: I came in well under budget in DC.

On to NYC!

We spent an additional 2.5 days in NYC. I’d originally budgeted $1150 for tourism but spent way less!

We ended up NOT going to the Statue of Liberty. We went to Battery Park and saw it from afar, and then we rode the FREE ferry to Staten Island and back where we had AMAZING views from the water (thanks to readers for that gem of a tip!). That was $500 saved. 

Amazing view of the Statue of Liberty from the free Staten Island Ferry!

Also, I’d originally planned $650 for Broadway, but we were able to get last-minute tickets to the production & Juliet. It was truly an incredible performance and was amazing to see with teen girls (it’s a coming of age story with a strong female lead). Because we waited and scored last-minute deals, it was less than $300 for all three of us!

While in NYC, our only “sit down” restaurant was at the famous (and overpriced but fun/iconic) Ellen’s Stardust Diner. All our other meals were on-the-go: hot dog cart, sandwiches, bagels, pizza, and similar. I’ll be honest, pretty much everything we ate was lackluster (except the bagels – those were divine!). I KNOW NYC has amazing food, but our trip focused more on tourism than food, so we didn’t visit any great food places. But that trade-off (food that was just “meh”) was worth it to do all the exploring we did! Bikes through central park, walking through Times Square, attending a Broadway show, and more!

I want to share one crazy story that I hadn’t mentioned in my last/planning post.

Jellycat Mania

My girls are obsessed with Jellycat Diner. If you know, you know. It was literally in their TOP 2 things to do in NYC (along with Broadway). To go to Jellycat, you need reservations. They book 4 weeks in advance and sell out INSTANTLY. I knew this ahead of time, and got myself reservations for the day we were set to arrive in NYC. 

Once at Jellycat, we got checked in and stood in line, waiting for our reservation time. Here’s the thing – Jellycat is expensive. I’d forgotten to include it in my original budget breakdown, but I knew this was a non-negotiable for my kids. I told them they could each select one Jellycat (despite the name “Diner” Jellycats are stuffed animals in the shape of food. And they go for about $80 a piece!). 

As we are standing in line, a man approaches us, giving us a story about how he’s only in town for one day and his daughters have begged for a Jellycat and he’ll do anything for them, and would I be willing to buy one of every Jellycat for his girls? He would pay. Not only that, he’d pay for my girls’ too. And he’d give me an extra $100 just for the trouble.

I truly thought it was a scam at first. Counterfeit bills or something shady. He pulled out his wallet and started counting out hundreds. Then I saw his daughters – about the same age as mine – and the sad look on their faces. I said sure. He gave me the money, I got his girls all the Jellycats, he paid for it all and I made a hundred bucks for the “hassle” (which was no hassle at all). 

And so that is the story of how we got FREE Jellycats and actually came up on money on our first day in NYC.

Sorry this is blurry, its a screen grab from a video I took at the Jellycat Diner. Here, they were “cooking up” my daughter’s burger.

Okay, I’ve left you in suspense long enough… 

Did I stay Within Budget?

Yes!

Total spent: $5,213

That’s nearly $800 under budget!

In full transparency, I have a travel credit card with rewards that I use to “erase” travel-related expenses from my bill. I had rewards stacked up and I used those to erase the charge of our NYC hotel, which was $758. Had that erasure not happened, I would’ve spent more like $5971. That still puts me under our $6,000 budget but my actual out-of-pocket spend was just over $5200.

If anyone is interested in my card, they have a promotion now with up to 75,000 miles free for new cardholders (that would cover a NYC hotel for a couple nights, just sayin ;)). If you’re interested and use my link, I get a few bonus miles thrown my way, too. No pressure!

Unexpected Expenses

There were some surprises – like spending more on transportation than I’d expected! I spent a couple hundred on Ubers in DC I hadn’t planned for. And the Uber to the airport in NYC, alone, was $70! We also did a little Lime Scooter rental around the Washington Monument in DC (highly recommend), and boy did that add up quick! It ended up being a $50 ride for maybe 20-30 minutes? I hadn’t anticipated these expenses.

What Helped Us Stay Under

Despite the unexpected expenses, overall, we spent way less on “tourism” than I’d expected. Between skipping out on the $$$ Statue of Liberty excursion and having a random stranger buy our expensive Jellycat items, we were way under-budget. And while we were pretty much right at $200/day for food in NYC (which was my estimated expense), we were under-budget in DC due to my mom’s generosity.

Memories Made

More than anything, though, I’m just grateful I was able to make these memories with the girls. I was worried about navigating the city via subway and while I had a couple of navigational mishaps, nothing was disastrous.

The biggest “OOPS!” was on the train from DC to NYC. I could have sworn I heard the conductor say “New York” so we jumped up and got our bags, exiting the train…only to immediately sense something was wrong (I’d never been to Penn Station, but it didn’t seem right, and I was assuming many others would also be exiting, but most were continuing to sit).

I turned around and asked the conductor, “is this New York?!” He said, “No, it’s NEWARK!” Cue the panic! I’m sure it’s probably not allowed? But my girls and I jumped back on so quick! They were mortified. I was stressed for about 30 seconds. But now it’s a fun inside joke we have amongst ourselves. Those memories – they’re worth more than gold! I’m so glad we had this time together.

Do you have Spring Break plans this year? Any memorable Spring Break trips from the past?

Ashley

Hi, I’m Ashley! Arizonan on paper, Texan at heart. Lover of running, blogging, and all things cheeeeese. Early 40s, married mother of two, working in academia. Trying to finally (finally!) pay off that ridiculous 6-digit student loan debt!