So much for a frugal fall. I haven’t finalized any of my travel plans for the autumn months yet, but at this point the following trips and events are on the horizon…
August
Wedding #1 — relatively local, but still need to buy a dress that fits. BF will prob cover cost of 1 night hotel & 1/2 gift, since it’s his friends (though they are my friends now too!)
September
Wedding #2 — my good friend in Michigan. Flights into MI aren’t cheap, but worth it for her wedding. Might pay for my bf to come as well. It sounds like she has a cabin we can stay in for free for the night before the wedding (score) but it’s an hour from the wedding location and prob that far from the airport as well. Might need a rental car. Also, flights during reasonable hours (that don’t require me to miss any/ a lot of work are $$$)
Family trip to Minnesota? My parents usually go out to my aunt’s house in MN each Sept. Every year I say I want to go but work and life gets in the way. With my father’s health deteriorating, we aren’t even sure my parent’s are going to make it out there this year — but if they do, I’d like to go. I thought it would be reasonable to go from Ann Arbor to the lake house in MN direct, but one-way flights are around $400 each (yikes!) not to mention the cost of a bus ticket to the small town far north. I did some more investigating and figured that renting a car for the trip would make more sense. Of course, if I do this trip that means taking off days of work… and losing the income from those vacation days. It might be worth it, but the travel may also be too much of a hassle for 2.5 days of Minnesota.
October
Personal Finance Blogger Conf, Chicago. The good news is KrystalatWork is going to split a hotel room with me (yeay, at least I’ll save some moolah there.) The bad news is… this is another flight to the midwest (for some reason this fall I have a lot of non-work reasons to be in the midwest, and none of them make sense on the same flight/trip.) I’m really looking forward to this conference, even though I haven’t been the most avid PF blogger lately. It’s still an expense, and one I need to factor into my pricey fall travel schedule.
Wedding #3 — This one happens to be in Chicago at the end of October. I might have to skip this one, though I’d like to go… it’s an old college friend, and I’d really like to be there for the wedding. Too bad it doesn’t work out that it’s the same week or the week after the PF blogger conference, so I could just stay in Chicago…
November
Wedding #5 — yes, wedding #5 in one season. This is my boyfriend’s cousin. I’m not sure if I’m invited but my bf thinks I will be. This one is also semi local so shouldn’t be too bad on the budget. It’s just incredible that I have 5 weddings coming up in the NEXT 3 MONTHS. And I don’t even know that many people…
10 Year Reunion –– I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to this, but I feel like I’ll regret it if I don’t. My 10 year reunion costs $85 per ticket (so that’s a $170 expense to bring my bf along) and then the flight back to NJ. It’s around thanksgiving time, so I might have been out there around then anyway, but regardless that’s an expensive time to travel. $500 / flight probably, $1000 total if my bf expects me to pay for his ticket too. Luckily we have a free place to stay in NJ (at my parent’s house) but all these fall trips are going to add up fast.
Otherwise, I’ll try to be as frugal as possible over the next few months. It’s going to be tough!
I hear you on the weddings! I've got six in six weeks, plus one outlier this weekend that I had to turn down. Luckily, most of them are local, but I do have to travel for two.