Took a Staycation (ish)

It’s Monday and we just got back from a week long vacation at our lake house near Hood Canal. We considered this a staycation even though we didn’t really stay home at our regular home.

Originally we had considered taking a trip somewhere with a budget of around $1500. Due to our inability to actually dedicate the time to plan a trip and the underlying concern about spending too much money these days, we decided to just take advantage of the hard work we put in to the lake house and spend the week there.

When it was all said and done, we spent about $500 for the week. About half that was spent on hardware to finish a couple projects so it really wasn’t all spent on “vacation” items.

While the weather didn’t cooperate, we did have a good time. The temperature was about 70 each day so we spent lots of time doing yard work and going for walks around the lake. It was really nice to disconnect from thinking about work and just focus on my wife and daughter.

Unfortunately, the rest of the money we spent on vacation was for food. I think I gained about two pounds over the course of the week but we ate really well. All the great meals were capped off with a bbq at a friend’s house down on the lake. We had steak, tons of fresh crab, potatoes, vegetables, bread and of course a few cocktails. It was a nice way to wind the vacation to a close.

Now it’s back to the grind where we’ll be working hard on saving as much money as we can over the next few months. We have some expenses coming up that are pretty much unavoidable but nothing like the expense of putting a new roof on the place. Both of our 9 year old cars need tune ups and my Toyota Tacoma needs a new timing belt which will probably set us back a couple thousand dollars. We also really need to think long and hard about buying a new refrigerator. My wife has tolerated missing shelves and broken rails in the fridge for a long time and is really starting to get antsy about buying a replacement. We’ll try to find one that is energy efficient to offset the cost over time.

While I was on vacation I read a number of articles about the economy. There seems to be about 50% thinking that the worst is over and another 50% that think we are heading back down further. It’s really hard to tell where we are headed but with the high unemployment levels, record deficits and massive consumer debt (along with ridiculous amounts of home foreclosures), I’m sitting on the side that thinks we still have a lot of hard days ahead for a lot of people.

Oh, and speaking of the economy: Even the wealthy are having to squeak by on only $300,000 per year. Oh the horror.