Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge

The Outer Banks are one of the few places left where you can drive a car out onto the sand. There are designated areas for it, but some are only seasonal, and you can only drive from beach to beach in Corolla, far north of where we stayed in Nags Head. Though we spent a lot on gas, this was the first time my boyfriend had a reason to take his Jeep on to the sand, so there was no way we weren’t going to take his gas guzzler instead of my sedate little Altima.

Jeep culture is kind of interesting. We definitely waved a lot at older guys in tricked out Jeeps, but the dippy girls in newer stock Wranglers less so. They’ll learn after they realize that a thousand people just waved at them, not because they are cute, but because the wavers are driving Jeeps. It’s kind of like motorcycles. I had a friend tell me once that Rule #1 was hang on while I’m riding on back and Rule #2 was wave at other motorcyclists. It’s the same thing.

At any rate, the wedding was very cute. It ended up being a GEICO commercial when a plane with a banner flew right overhead as the bride was about to start walking down the aisle. We all cracked up. My friends had a ridiculous number of bridal party members. (Almost double digits on both sides.) And it was good to spend time with my former boss and his wife, who I think are really neat.

His parents fed us on Thursday afternoon at the Rehearsal BBQ, then again on Saturday morning her parents fed us a post-wedding brunch. There were bonfires on the beach, a little night fishing (mostly rays) and some carousing, which we old folks fortunately skipped. No sunburns for us, fortunately, but the groom was his usual summer-sun-kissed self. I was seriously going to loan Mr. Peanut some green concealer to tone down the red, but it faded to a nice piggy pink by the time the ceremony came around.

I am going to have to write about the food in separate posts as well as some of the local activities. But for now, I’ll tell you the total cost of the trip and how it breaks down.

$266* – Gas for an off-road vehicle, i.e bad gas mileage
$4 - Tolls
$220 – Rental
$22 – Admission to National Parks
$44* – Groceries/beer
$30* – Dare Devil Pizza
$15* – BBQ lunch at Southland’s
$56* – Dirty Dick’s Restaurant
$146 – Owens’ Family Restaurant
$5 – Gag gift

Total Damage $808

Boyfriend picked up everything with a star (*) for a total of $411. Add on various small things like sodas, water, snacks on the trip home and it was pretty evenly split between us. Not too shabby for a 4-day weekend to the beach. It could have been much more expensive, but we had many delicious meals provided for us as wedding guests.

As far as a gift goes, my friends asked for nothing since they know most of their friends can’t afford much beyond the trip and rental itself, but I asked Mr. Peanut what he wanted and he said there is honestly nothing. I know what Mr. Peanut likes and I know what Mrs. Peanut will appreciate. But I’ll have to send something along later since cash is tight at the moment. But I have something in mind.

I will elaborate a little more on food and entertainment the rest of this week.

We are taking the off-road vehicle because we’re going to a beach that allows them. WHEE!

It’s not fuel-efficient to take this car, but in the name of fun, we spend extra.

My friends, Mr. and Mrs. Peanut, will be tying the knot on the beach. Very exciting stuff. Mr. Peanut and I met 5 years ago at work. He’s one of my totally awesome co-workers and I wish him all the best. When I first met him, he was kind of a freewheeling kid playing the field. Mrs. Peanut is really nice and I can tell they are going to be mega happy. My old boss will be there too! (He’s still Mr. Peanut’s boss. I left a few months ago.)

I have a super special wedding present for Mr. Peanut. It’s a gag gift, but it’s going to be great and it cost me less than 5 bucks! I’ll tell you what it is when I get back since there might not be internet access this weekend. (Rumor says yes, Gut Feeling says no.)

Have a great Memorial Day holiday!

I’m up quite a bit because I was able to get my Medical FSA reimbursement earlier this month. It’s up 14.2% month over month and up about 15% from March of last year.

The main thing I noticed is that my main retirement account holdings is down 8.88% since the year began. That’s a lot and it’s kind of disturbing since that’s an old 401k plan to which I cannot add new funds to dollar cost average out that low dip. I’m now safely past the 60-day holding period for selling off my funds without penalty so I can roll it over and out of the plan holder’s firm. But I think I’ll wait another quarter anyway just to see if the S&P improves any before selling it off and moving the money. Someone told me I can have the fund shares transferred without being hit with penalties for moving money in and out of a fund to quickly, but honestly, nothing in that account really thrills me. I’d rather sell everything in it and reallocate it all.

I took a close look at my abnormally high cash holdings. Since I get paid on the last day of the month with my new job, I expect that I will continue to have artificially high cash holdings unless I start doing some planned liabilities to offset that amount. It disturbs me because usually I have a mortgage payment waiting to go out of that money right after the new month starts.

At any rate, I think I can almost double my usual credit card payments in April. I have been hoarding cash a little due to my friend possibly needing to borrow money and wanting to buy a replacement laptop. But I think I am going to buy neither right now. I am going to another wedding in Boston in April and I plan on using a credit card to pay for that trip. It’s mostly just a hotel, gift, and a possible car rental. I hope to use cash for all other expenses that weekend since I can look at it as a self-indulgent spending weekend at home in DC. Costs for meals should be comparable.

Ah. Jersey City. It’s come quite a long way since 9/11 and all those downtown Manhattan firms have moved across the river. My friend’s lovely event was held at the Liberty House at Liberty State Park. There was a gorgeous moonlit view of Manhattan and at the edge, the Statue of Liberty. Beautiful, just like the wedding.

My friend is Indian and she sent me a sari to wear for her wedding, so my wedding attire was all set. A lot of the non-Indian women at the wedding were wearing them. It was actually pretty awesome to see all the styles and colors. It’s actually a pretty flattering outfit for most body types, from the skinny cousins to the chubby matrons, everyone looked great.

I have yet to send a wedding present to my friend, but I will probably send one shortly. I didn’t have time to think about it. That lack of time also contributed to my expensive hotel room. The bride and groom picked the Courtyard Marriott on the waterfront, so not the poshest of hotels, but certainly not the cheapest either. Had I booked the room reservation when I was supposed to do it, I would have saved $20 a night. However, because I was really sick last week (and still suffering from a lingering cough), I called the hotel Friday night and said there was no way I was going to arrive and to change my booking to Saturday night only. They said no problem. With valet parking, I spent $205.00 on the hotel.

Tolls were probably about $40-50, but I’m not sure since I use EZ-Pass now. It’s a bit of a mystery to me. This includes my trip to Jersey City from DC, then a side trip to Philadelphia on the PA Turnpike to visit my parents on Easter Sunday. Gas was about $80, and I came home with a tank that’s about 3/4ths full. I still hate paying someone else to pump my gas since I obligated to tip the attendant, so I skipped buying it in Jersey for cheap, and pumped it in Delaware twice at my favorite rest stop, i.e. usually the cheapest off the interstate. I figured for a 10-gallon fill up, if I tip the attendant $2, then I’ve added 20 cents to the price per gallon, thus negating any savings for buying it cheap in Jersey.

Since I left on Saturday morning early, after a good night’s rest, I skipped breakfast and had a big lunch when I got to the hotel. I dashed to Cosi across the street since the hotel’s weekend brunch service closes at 1pm, right after I checked in. BOO! But for my money, I got a veggie sandwich, tomato soup and some extra bread for the soup. Total was about $12, but the bread was saved for a snack in the car on my way out. I also bought a snack of chips and a drink at the hotel, very late at night after the wedding for about $4. Annoying, but very necessary since my stomach was growling and there were no alternatives around.

I tipped the maid $5 for putting up with my mess.

Because I was the only one at my wedding table who actually wanted the centerpiece, I took it to my folks for Easter. They were really happy to have some flowers for the house as the centerpiece was quite large and red, a very lucky color. It fit perfectly on my mother’s little table in the front hallway.

I took my folks out to lunch for Easter/my dad’s birthday. Total damage there was $57. The service was terrible so I didn’t tip them extravagantly.

I’m trying to think of what else I spent that day on this trip, but honestly, there was nothing. I had a snack and some bottled water in the car on the way from NJ to Philly.

Total damage for the weekend was $403. Only the hotel room and EZ Pass charges went on my credit card, everything else was paid with my debit card or cash in my pocket. Now I just have to send a gift to the happy bride and groom.

Ah… 2008 wedding season is starting to rear its ugly head. In the past 2 months, I have received invitations or save the date notices for three weddings. I have known about one for over a year. The other two are for very short engagements, lasting at most for 6 months.

I have an Indian wedding in March, for which the bride has sent me a sari to wear. All I have to do is cover the cost of driving to Jersey City and the hotel. I’ve already asked her if I can split a room with another of her single girlfriends. She is going to ask around for me. I will have to find some pretty purple/silver bangles to wear with the sari, but I am grateful for such a lovely present. (I think I have some somewhere from an Indian dancing class I took.) She’s one of the short engagement people, but she and the groom are South Asian and a long engagement isn’t typical for their culture. It came together pretty quickly since she’s using many of the same Indian wedding vendors her cousins and brother used. That cuts down A LOT on planning since she knows what she is getting and for what price. How much engagement time is wasted on lengthy research efforts?

The second wedding is in April for a couple that’s been dating for a long time. They also have a short engagement. The groom hinted that he was going to ask in 2008, but little did I think they’d set a date for this spring. Fast-moving, but I met the bride at a friend’s wedding in 2006 and she’s fantastic. It’s bittersweet for me, as he was my ‘backup’ and in 2 years he would have had to marry me on the agreed upon date. (Laugh all you want. I have to find another one.) Since they met through church, they didn’t have long to wait on getting a date for the sanctuary. I’m not sure what other plans are for the wedding. Being a friend of the groom, you get cut out of a lot of the planning chit chat. I’ve asked another friend if she’s heard details, but so far, no luck. We shall see what plans are afoot.

The last wedding is a Beach Weekend affair on the Outer Banks in NC. I cannot wait! This has been on my calendar for a year. Normally over Memorial Day weekend, I go to Texas and camp with some old friends (which started as a wedding invitation and morphed into an annual thing). But due to this wedding, I cannot go. That’s ok because the allotment for the TX trip now shifts to this wedding. And it should be cheaper than TX anyway. Instead of flying, I will likely be carpooling down with friends in a minivan from DC. Because the groom is renting a series of houses for a week, lodging will be fairly cheap. We’ll be able to cook, dine, and do all kinds of wacky stuff together. I hear the rental has wireless internet too, so I might be able to blog while on vacation.

What is wedding etiquette here? My boyfriend has been invited to some of these weddings. Do I pay for his share or should I expect him to pay? There is a problem with the April wedding in Boston because my boyfriend will likely have to fly up in time for the ceremony on Saturday, though I am considering Amtrak for myself. Quite a quandary.

There’s part of me that wants to take the curmudgeon route the Miserly Bastard takes, and just send a fat check and not go. But these are three people dear to me and the party should be a great time to catch up with old friends on the guest list. I’ll save the curmudgeon check for my cousin in Korea who is getting married this spring. (My sibling and I will each shell out $250 for my cousin and her fiance. We did that for her older brother who got married last year.)

As far as the road trip went, we took our host’s advice and drove the George Washington Bridge. It was a fine trip through NYC during rush hour, but not as bad as you might think. Because of the graciousness of our host, I spent Saturday as a No-Spend Day, knitting and reading on couches all over a beautiful country house.

We dined fabulously on rack of lamb, triple chocolate birthday cake, pate and yummy warmed goat cheese salad over spring greens. (Easier to make than you think.) The Barefoot Contessa cookbook has some really tasty dishes in it!

All in all, my friend paid for the gas and drove his car. I paid all the tolls with my SmartTag. I have no idea what the total tolls were since the NJ toll isn’t displayed for you, but it was about $41 altogether. (Shocking, but you can ride the NJ Turnpike for less than $20. That can’t be right, but it is! I checked their website.) Yes, we spent a lot of time in the car, but you get to know people a lot better by their iPod playlists.

Either way, a road trip is worth the money for two people on a weekend trip like this one. We saved about $75-125 per person by driving. I’m glad I put my foot down on spending money for plane tickets. I really hate airports and the new security rules. I think I’m going to have to take more car trips instead of flying.

Now the only thing is that I need to be adamant about what travel I will and will not pay for/do. Last year I caved in on the wedding in Seattle because my friend said she’d pool resources for me. I still ended up spending a mint that weekend, even though I did it as cheaply as I could. I love my friends, but I’m not really looking forward to sacrificing my personal vacation time again this year for another wedding.

Every year I go to a camping event for 10 days in the desert. Tickets are usually $200+ by August. If you are smart, you buy them in January for $185. Even with the ticket handling fees, it ends up being a good deal than buying one at the gate for $300. Talk about Time Value of Money!

Because of four weddings, I have to forgo my personal vacation just because of vacation days. Now that I know I’m not going, I have found a buyer for the ticket who is willing to pay me for all the extra stupid fees I had to pay for postage and handling.

What does this mean? This means that the ticket covers the cost of a plane ticket to Boston in September. Yay! Hooray for saleable assets!

On other wedding plans, I have found a taker on splitting a room in Boston and a car rental in Seattle. I am very pleased, sharing a room and car with an old friend is going to be fantastic! I am still out over a thousand dollars this year on airline travel alone, but really if you want me to attend your wedding, you need to tell me a year in advance. The only one for which I was prepared was the first one, where I was sent a save the date card well in advance.

Please as a courtesy for your frugal friends, give them as much advanced notice as possible!

Please talk to your bride and groom and let them know where you stand!

I got a mass email from one bride and groom and replied to the other guests asking if anyone wanted to share costs in Boston. I was surprised at the number of responses I got back from guests. I’m actually trying to coordinate them into their own room and ride share arrangements now. Man, I should charge a fee! *winky*

I got stuck holding the bag on three nights at a posh resort for this wedding in Puerto Rico. Luckily some good things happened.

1) The PR bride found me another guest to split rooms on two nights.

2) My ex-boyfriend is living in San Juan and suggested I looked at the Isla Verde neighborhood and scored a cheap hotel for $80+ a night for the final night, which is about half of what I would have paid at the posh resort.

3) I told one of the September brides I could not attend her wedding due to expenses. She has graciously offered me the room she rents since she won’t be there for the week during the festivities. So no hotel needed! But I’m not out of the woods yet… (I would have asked my other friends in that town to host me, but they are all silly cat owners and I am very allergic.)

4) This leaves me with having to rent a car. But the bride tells me one of our friends is driving to town with her cello (to perform at the wedding) and might be willing to chauffeur me around. At the very least, another friend called me right away because I cc’d him on the email with the bad news. If he rents a car, he might also ferry me around as well.

5) I forgot that I have a $185 event ticket for my regular vacation plans which I can sell off to defray costs. I decided long ago to forgo this event for these weddings, but forgot I was holding a saleable asset! Woo hoo!

6) Folks have offered to scrounge up airline miles for me to fly to one of the September weddings.

So, when desperate for a solution, people get creative. There are some other options to explore, but I am glad I said something now rather than nothing too late. I will have to figure something out with the other September wedding as well. (I am thinking of bringing my tent and camping in the backyard of the house and dashing in as needed, saving myself the expense of a hotel, but is that being frugal or cheap? Again, it’s make or break on being able to go…)

What’s the lesson learned? There’s a few.

1) Plan your finances! Know your current state of affairs. Know what you can or cannot afford. If I didn’t know what I was going to be spending on stuff in the next 6 months, I wouldn’t have been able to understand the impact of these weddings on my finances.

2) Say SOMETHING! It really hurt to have to swallow my pride and admit I could not go. But once I did, the phones started ringing with different solutions I could not manage on my own. My close friends are really wonderful people. I’ve known them now for 14 years. Crazy that is. Just crazy.

3) Say something EARLY! Sometimes it takes time to make things happen and time is on your side. I’ll be making phone calls, trying to sell my event ticket, figuring out blackout dates, etc. But I have two months to plan and not just 2 weeks or 2 days.

ps- The PR bride is already at the hotel and has sent me a text message that food is expensive there. The plan now is to buy some Powerbars and drinks to put in my hotel room and avoid extra food costs.

I’m going to Puerto Rico next weekend for a very expensive wedding. I should have declined, but I’m the maid of honor and the only attendant. I would be declining on my friend confiding to me that I’m her closest emotional intimate in town. How do you say no to that? I was supposed to room with a friend, but she forgot to change her RSVP on the wedding website and the bride and I thought she was still going.

Well, apparently she’s not. So I am stuck paying about $150+/night for three nights at a posh resort. Yes, I resent the bride mildly for certain decisions she’s made in regards to selecting a destination wedding. While she did give me the opportunity to pass on it because of the expense, I said yes only because I thought the other friend was going to help me share expenses. And the bride is also stuck holding the bag for a guest who did not change her reply before the headcount was taken. Now I know that an RSVP is not a firm commitment to anyone of anything. Lesson learned. When will my naivete rub off? Why do I take people at face value and expect them to behave with integrity?

Now that the other girl isn’t going to go, if I can’t find another wedding guest to share a room and split the bill, I will have to forgo two other weddings in September to get my teeth fixed, which I probably should have done anyway. This is after one of the September grooms asked me this morning to write a letter for INS about how he met the bride through me. I am crushed.

Yeah, don’t even talk to me about the vacation time I’m giving up to fly the horrible skies with airlines that lose my luggage.

This fiscal challenge is going to be a tight squeeze on me for the rest of 2006. I’ll be paying for all this stuff with credit cards till Christmas at least.

Unlike Jane Dough, I don’t have a five-year plan. I think in the last two months, I’ve gotten all willy-nilly about my finances. Granted, I’ve had quite a few distracting, enormous life events happen to me during this time. I feel like I’ve turned into an ostrich with my head in the sand. At one point, I had to call my insurance company to make a payment by telephone at the last minute because I had forgotten to mail the payment. Life’s definitely kept me spinning around in a whirl of busyness. Last night was the first time I went grocery shopping in about two months and cooked myself a very frugal dinner. (And wouldn’t you know it, I left my lunch at home this morning.)

Right now, I have a lot of short term expenses that are killing me. Four weddings requiring out of state travel and a massive health expense, for which I am underinsured and underfunded. I actually think I can do it all without stumbling too much, but any hopes I had of maintaining the Emergency Basket of Cash has flown out the window.

I’ve always known that I had to go and get some dental work done. It’s been lurking in the back of my mind. I was already saving $3K in a flexible spending account to get this work done in 2006. I’ve spent about $1K of the FSA on some other medical expenses (glasses, co-pays, prescriptions, etc.), and dental insurance will only end up covering about $1.5K. Out of an expected $10K in expenditures, about $3.5K I will be able to finance immediately. I will need to find another $6.5K.

I will be liquidating the short term savings portion of the basket when work is done in July and then again when one of my CDs expires in September. I will be reserving about 40% my since those are locked up in CDs. Unexpected health expenses are what the EBoC is for, right? That will leave me with $4K to finance.

I could pay myself first very aggressively and start saving 10% of my monthly pay, a la Single Ma style, but that would mean short shrift on paying down my credit card debts which are only racking up because of these weddings.

I just don’t know what to do. Should I start paying the minimums on my credit cards and saving more cash? Should I put it all on credit cards and start shoving money to the lenders? Should I liquidate all of my cash reserves?

I shouldn’t have ignored my health for this long and yes, I’m paying a hefty price. So an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Dental floss is cheap and even if you don’t have dental insurance, try to get your teeth cleaned anyway. Trust me. You’d rather put $300 a credit card now for a cleaning, rather than pay $3000K later for an extraction and dental appliance.