by Tricia
Last week we spent time with relatives some 500 or so miles away. I always feel weird not blogging about the trip itself as it is happening, but I’m not one to announce that my home will be vacant for an extended period of time. I wait to discuss the trip after the fact.
It was definitely a long trip. Probably the longest time we have been away from home in some time (8 days). For most of the trip we were staying with family so our cost was low. The biggest expenses were for gas, food (on the drive) and lodging (also during the drive). Once I enter everything into Quicken, I’ll have a better idea of how much we spent. I have a feeling it will be similar to last year’s trip (around $500 if I remember correctly).
I realized a few financial things during this trip:
1.) I’m tired of worrying about our house and our belongings while we are away. I have a renewed zest for selling most of what we have – only leaving the things that we regularly use, can take with us or things of sentimental value that can be locked up securely. I thought we did a great job reducing stuff during last summer’s garage sales. Nope. We can do even better and make a few more bucks while doing it.
2.) Related to #1, I have to get off my tush and get a safe deposit box going to store copies of important documents and all of our pictures. I started scanning things to store electronic copies, but I lost some steam to finish it. I need to get this task done.
3.) I have to go to the doctors and bite the bullet about my knee pain. It has been an ongoing off/on thing for some time now. Sometimes it was brought on with activity, sometimes it wasn’t. I always drive the entire distance because I love to do it and because my husband doesn’t mind being a passenger. For the first time in over 10 years, I couldn’t drive the entire trip. I drove as long as I could before the pain became too much to bear and I was almost in tears. That was even with taking some Tylenol. Who knows where this pain could lead. You can bet that I’ll be making sure our insurance company gets a timely payment from this point forwards!
On another note, I was dealing with limited internet during our trip so some emails have accumulated. Rest assured, I am going through them and replying to them as quickly as possible. My internal schedule is still out of whack, but by mid-week I should probably be back into the groove.
Expect more posts related to our trip this week. There are a couple juicy topics too 🙂
