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Home > Nice surprise in the filing pile; tentative vacay plan

Nice surprise in the filing pile; tentative vacay plan

July 2nd, 2013 at 04:14 am

AS decided to tackle our growing pile of unfiled paperwork, and came running when she opened a piece of mail from our mortgage company. Turns out they're lowering our payment by $17 starting Aug. 1 (because of lower escrow needs) AND they enclosed a check for $209! Good thing she decided to file!

After some discussion we decided to apply the $209 to our student loan debt. The extra $17 we'll just roll into our general surplus, which we can decide to use for fun or put toward one of our goals.

We've tentatively settled on Boston in the early spring for our next vacation, during NT's spring break (mid- to late March). Did a very quick scan of hotel prices and airfare and decided to shoot for saving $5000 by March, to cover transportation, lodging, food and entertainment. To do that we need to start setting aside money starting in October at the latest (preferably September). We've been using our travel line item to just have summer fun in Minnesota, so we just need to cut that off once the August money is spent.

Shouldn't be a problem. We do still have a lot of fun things planned for this summer, but none of them are very expensive. The one thing I'd love to do that's very indulgent is have dinner at the fine-dining restaurant half a block down from us; they don't post prices (!!) but I did some research online and reckon it would be $450 or $500 for all three of us to go. (I know, crazy, but I'd love to do it just once!) Everything else we want to do is little stuff like the occasional concert or small-town day trip, or free (like attending fireworks and parades).

2 Responses to “Nice surprise in the filing pile; tentative vacay plan”

  1. CB in the City Says:
    1372772906

    Would love to hear if the experience is worth the price on that fine dining! I love good food, but to me, it only gets so good!

  2. ceejay74 Says:
    1372775021

    I ate there once, at a wedding reception, and it was heavenly. You do get at least 5 courses which is really cool, and even though they don't have vegan options on their menu, they will cook a special vegan meal if you tell them in advance. Some of that cost would be for cocktails and wine; NT told me that restaurants mark up wine at least 60% over the base cost, so expensive restaurants are going to have expensive wine options and mark them up even more!

    I'm not 100% settled on this since it would be a good chunk of our summer fun money. But since so many of our other activities are frugal, maybe we could swing it and not feel like we totally wasted our money. We'll see. Smile

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