No Debt Plan

No Debt Plan is a blog about living a debt-free life. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed (e-mail subscription also available). Learn more about me, or some of my most popular posts. Thanks for visiting!

I have been bad about not getting my articles out at my typical 7am time. Sorry about that! We’ve been rather busy the past few days. We’ve had the whole “my wife may be getting fired” issue to worry about, and we’re taking a mini-vacation this Memorial Day weekend.

This is a point I am going to consistently hit on while writing this blog. Don’t forget to live. Yes, saving money and not overspending is very important in life. But don’t become a hermit. What good is that pile of money if you have no friends or family to enjoy it with?  Enjoy life as it comes, but make smart choices.

The problem with many people is they want to live today like it is their last day, all of the time. That’s all well and good until your last day is sixty years from now, you get laid off, and you have no money set aside. It’s a very fine balance. So don’t get me wrong — keep it up. Run through the No Debt Plan, save for retirement. But don’t turn down every opportunity to enjoy life.

For example, my work partner and our wives went to the SEC Baseball Tournament last night to see Ole Miss and Kentucky play. Granted, our company paid for it as a relationship building event, but it was fun. It cost gas to get there and we could have said “eh, no thanks”, but we didn’t do that. We had a lot of fun even though we only stayed through the top of the 5th inning. (It was getting late and we had been there 2.5 hours already).

Another example — we’re taking a mini-vacation this weekend. Some married friends are all getting together at someone’s aunt’s lake house (for free). Cost? Gas and food. Both of those could be significant costs, but we had planned to go to the beach instead. The beach would run $150+ per night in lodging on top of further gas costs (more distance) and more food costs (eating out vs. cooking). So we’re getting to enjoy ourselves, relax, take the puppy with us, see our friends… and it is somewhat frugal. We’ve got the money saved up for the trip already, too.

It should be a lot of fun. But I need to run — laundry and packing call!

We are planning a trip to New York City in December of this year. We are consistently saving up for it with an end goal of having $3,000 by the end of August. We’re putting away $200 per month for it, and are right on target to wrap up saving in August.

We want this trip to be memorable, of course. On the other hand, we want to be as “travel frugal” as possible to get the most bang for our buck. We’re not going to be cheap about it because this is probably the only time we’ll ever go to NYC. We’re not afraid to drop some money on something really special, but we’re not here to see how quickly we can blow through the money. We are planning on staying 5 or 6 nights, if possible.

Some ideas we had. Do you know how much some of these activities might cost?

• Statue of Liberty
• Grand Central Station
• Rockefeller Center
• Broadway
• Central Park (we want to go ice skating :))
• Empire State Building
• Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim
• Times Square
• WTC Site
• Radio City Music Hall
• Wall Street
• China Town
• seeing The New York Philharmonic
• shopping in general
• great, unique restaurants
• Maybe we’ll get lucky and see the Cash Cab…

We have no idea where we might stay. So I’m asking you — if you were going to New York City, where you would you stay, what would you do, and how much it would cost you?