February 21st, 2006 - Non-frugal trip
We got back Sunday morning at 3 or 4 am (I no longer recall!). Our trip was not frugal, intentionally. Times like this simply aren’t a time to worry about each dollar spent. However, due to our somewhat-frugal lifestyle in general, we were able to not worry about things for a week. We also weren’t going around throwing money away, either. We’ve always given ourselves daily spending money on trips ($5/day, $10 on travel days; food bought at the grocery store in advance doesn’t count against you!). I used mine for our Valentine’s date (free babysitting, woohoo! We went to the restaurant where we had our first in-person date about 8 years ago. So cool! We hadn’t been back inbetween. Eric thought of it!). I still have to go through the receipts, but I believe it will be about a $400 trip; gas and toll roads probably total over half of that. It’s a 17-18 hour drive from WI to NJ, tollway about 90% of the way (everywhere but NJ and WI!). We also visited my parents and brother in PA; tollroads all the way except them to OH. (Which reminds me–we have to go get an EZPass. All of the roads take it except maybe around Chicago and I think they might now too. It’s definitely worth it. In some places, the EZPass was half the cost of cash. And around Chicago, they are getting open road tolling: NO SLOWING DOWN! Since we’ll be returning within the next couple months and we usually go out there at least once a year anyway, it’s worth it.)
On the positive side, for the first time in the 4.5 years we’ve owned a house, I thought of turning down the water heater during a vacation! It has an actual vacation setting, making it nice and easy. I also reprogrammed the thermostat–60 during the day and 55 at night. (I thought 55 the wholw day was too low for the kitties, and the dogs were supposed to be there 2 days as well.) We also unplugged a lot of things–my bedside clock, tv, VCR (never used, so left unplugged after returning), XBox (ditto), and the computer and peripherals. I’m so proud of us! We’ve *never* done this before and it’s so easy I really should have thought of it. (I have turned down the thermostat, always, just not the rest.)