Hello there, readers! I know I’ve been MIA for a little bit, but I’m back! Apologies for being away for so long, but I promise, I have a good reason. For the past few weeks, we’ve been living out HARD our theme for the year of prioritizing friends and family!
So today, I’m here to tell you a little bit more about what we’ve been up to, as well as some of our learnings from all of the life experiences we have been having. I hope you enjoy!
Regular readers of the blog may remember that this year, in addition to setting my goals, I took on a theme for the year of prioritizing friends and family (if you’d like, you can read the original post here). I had a few great experiences last year that made me realize how important this was to me, and so I wanted to be more intentional about my time spent with loved ones in 2023.
I’ve done many a small thing in relation to this theme throughout 2023, some of which I have written about in passing on the blog, but 2 of the bigger experiences I had planned occurred recently, and happened to land within a week of each other.
First, ladies weekend
The first big task I undertook recently in support of my theme of prioritizing friends and family was to organize a ladies weekend for some of my closest friends.
I had the idea for this ladies weekend after planning/taking part in several successful “cousin” weekends. With my cousins, these weekend adventures were something we all talked about doing, and we were all involved in the planning. We had so much fun that it made me think about the potential for doing something similar with some of my close girl friends.
I feel very fortunate to say that I’ve had a lot of close friends over the years. Some have come and gone, but I feel really grateful these days about the people I’ve chosen to have in my life. However, none of these friends are really “shared”. Meaning, I don’t have a close group of friends that all hang out together and who all know each other. Some, like friends I met in high school, know of each other but were never that close. I am the connecting link. Even though I was slightly nervous about how it would be to all hang out if I organized a ladies weekend, it was a risk I was willing to take.
How did I make it happen?
The friends that I envisioned inviting on this trip all happened to be mamas, who inevitably lead very busy lives. So I started by just asking them each individually if they would be open to a weekend trip with other friends of mine that they didn’t know all that well. They all gave me an enthusiastic yes. Then, I started a group text chain in order to come up with some dates that would work for a weekend away.
Once we had the weekend picked out and I hopped on Airbnb, I started to get a little overwhelmed by the planning of it all. How would we decide on a place to stay that worked for everyone? There would probably be a lot of opinions. I also knew enough about the financial situations of each of these friends, and I knew some would want to splurge and some would want to save. I also didn’t know how comfortable they’d be talking to each other about money.
As I started to look at Airbnbs that would comfortably fit all of us, in a central location to everyone, I was surprised by the costs I was seeing. I found a house that seemed perfect, and I could easily afford it on my own.
I decided in that moment that I would just go for it. That even if I bought the house and no one paid me, that would be fine. I wanted to keep things as simple as I could, and I had been the planner, the instigator, from the start anyway. I treated it as an experiment. I wanted us all to be comfortable, I wanted to spoil my wonderful, busy, mama friends with a weekend of relaxation, and I didn’t want them to worry about anything. I decided in that moment that it was worth it for me to pay for the house in support of this goal of mine, to prioritize my friends. Plus, it was just an experiment. We wouldn’t have to do it this same way next time (if there even was a next time).
I pulled the trigger, I purchased the Airbnb, and I shared the details with my friends. I told them I wanted to treat them to a weekend away. Everyone was super happy and appreciative.
What did we eat?
We would all be arriving Friday evening, and I suggested that we all bring some things to make charcuterie, or snack dinner. We ended up all bringing so much food that we were able to do this for dinner again on Saturday night, and we went out to lunch on Saturday. I also brought enough groceries to be able to have breakfast at the house. Because we had the group chat going, everyone shared what they were bringing for alcohol. I was surprised by how relatively easy this particular planning stage felt!
How did it go?
On Friday as I prepared to leave, I shared my anxieties with Mr. Dink. What was I thinking?? No one knows each other… What if this was a horrible idea? What if no one gets along? He gently and kindly assured me I was being ridiculous. That I should trust my ideas. Because I have really good ideas, and this was an especially good one (shout out to Mr. Dink for always believing in me when I don’t always believe in myself).
He was absolutely right. We had an amazing time. Everyone got to do exactly what they wanted to do. The mamas got to relax and enjoy some time away from their kids and hectic schedules. And I got my friend time. Everyone got along swimmingly. They all had so much fun, that they were talking about how they wanted this to be a yearly event before the weekend was even over.
So, what did it cost me?
The Airbnb cost me $492.80 for 2 nights in a house we had all to ourselves, with 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, a fully stocked kitchen, and a private backyard with a fire pit and back porch.
I paid $114.18 for groceries, which included snacks for dinner, coffee, and breakfast food.
The one meal we had out, lunch on Saturday, one of my friends ended up treating the whole group unexpectedly.
And everyone else ended up bringing the booze!
I did use about 1 tank of gas to get there and back, and I gave one of my friends a ride (we met at a park-and-ride). In my Subaru Crosstrek, a tank of gas these days is about $50.
And one of the friends even ended up leaving me some cash toward the Airbnb, even after I insisted she didn’t need to.
So, I spent a grand total of about $657, $517 if you subtract the $140 cash my friend gave me towards the house.
In the past, I would have cringed at this number. Over $500 for one weekend?! But the me that has embraced the slow FI lifestyle, who spends on what they value and cuts costs on the rest, who knows what’s enough and what’s important to her, knows that this was totally worth it.
Even if I had had to purchase some alcohol and my lunch, and even if my friend hadn’t given me any cash, it was money completely well spent. This experience was SO worth the money, and I’ll have these memory dividends forever. As I said above, they all want to do it again. And I even inspired Mr. Dink to maybe give this a try with some of his close friends!
Next up: a vacation filled with friends and family
One week after this ladies weekend, Mr. Dink and I embarked on a week-and-a-half-long vacation to visit friends and see family.
First, we spent 2 nights with Mr. Dink’s friends from college, who live in Maryland with their 3 boys: ages 5, 8, and 10. I was curious to see how this would go because I’d only met these friends one other time, at our wedding. But it was absolutely wonderful. I went in completely blind, unsure of our sleeping arrangements or how it would be to stay with these folks, but it was perfect. We slept on a futon in their finished basement and had our own bathroom (makes such a difference when traveling!). Although we stayed for free, we brought them some Vermont beer, and we ended up treating everyone the one time we went out for food, for lunch (with prices these days, I’m a big fan of going out for lunch over dinner, and they were too).
Then, en route to see family, Mr. Dink and I camped for a night, just us, in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. We wish we could have spent a little more time here. Neither of us had been before, and it was beautiful. We were especially grateful to be able to go off season, as it seemed like it would have been a completely different experience during peak season.
Finally, we headed to Pennsylvania for a family reunion with my mom’s side of the family. This reunion had been originally planned for May of 2020. Perhaps unsurprisingly, due to a little known pandemic called COVID-19, that reunion didn’t end up happening, and when that one got rescheduled, many of the family (including us) couldn’t make it, so this reunion was long overdue.
We stayed for one whole week (Wednesday-Wednesday) in a house with 10 adults and 3 children ages 3 months, 8 months, and 2.5 years.
This vacation included a lot of firsts for me and Mr. Dink. Our first time traveling for that long together, my first time taking him on a family reunion, and our first vacation that was mostly about friends and family. We had a great time, and we learned A LOT. So I thought today I would share some of these learnings, especially as they relate to the financial independence community.
It was worth it to spend more money
When we were choosing houses to stay in with my family, we settled on a fancy (for us) one. My aunt is the planner, and she does most of the leg work on organizing, so she is also the one who deals with the money. Since she/we picked a pretty expensive house, she kindly chose to pay a larger chunk of the total, and told us all we each owed her $1000. But when I saw the rooms we had to choose from, I saw big differences, which gave me pause.
My aunt and uncle took the master with the king, which I knew would be the case since they were paying more. That was fine and good. But the remaining rooms were as follows: 2 queen rooms, each with their own bathroom (!), and then 3 rooms with mixed bed sizes down in the basement that all shared 1 bathroom…
After thinking about this for awhile and asking Mr. Dink and a few others what they thought, I proposed a change to the money situation. I suggested that whoever wanted the queen rooms with their own bathroom would each pay $1200, and the folks who chose a room down in the basement with a shared bathroom would pay $800. To my surprise, everyone loved the idea.
Since Mr. Dink and I were the least picky of the crew (and importantly, the only ones of my cousins and sibling without kids), we let everyone else choose their rooms first.
We ended up with a $1200 room with our own bathroom. It hurt a little (for me) to spend this much on a week in a house with family that I knew would be fun but not necessarily the vacation I would choose.
But let me tell you, did I ever end up being grateful for this! I am SO GLAD we ended up with this room. Having our own bathroom and our own space (we were tucked away on the top floor) I think contributed IMMENSELY to our happiness during that week. Looking back, I would gladly spend that much again in a similar situation.
And this nicely brings me to our next takeaway…
The family reunion was about what I expected: it was A LOT, but it was SO worth it
Family is tough. We all love each other dearly, and we all get along really well, but inevitably when you get essentially 6 different households together in one house for a week, there is going to be conflict. For us, said conflict was mostly around 1) the kitchen and 2) quiet hours. Luckily, the kitchen was very well set up overall (nice layout and perfectly stocked), and there were 2 refrigerators. But inevitably, there was conflict around cleanliness, the proper way to load the dishwasher, forgetting to run the dishwasher, trash organization, etc. Additionally, the aunt/uncle in the master slept on the main floor, and wanted things relatively quiet when they went to bed at 9 pm…we did our best. Then, folks in the morning wanted it quieter than an 8-month old would allow for.
Needless to say, people had to make concessions, and we all survived. Mindset was key here. Once everyone realized that they couldn’t get exactly what they wanted all the time, and realized that this was a different situation than the way they live their lives every day, things got better. For whatever reason, I have been all about the mindset these days, and I found it easy to adapt. I think I was just prepared. I knew this wasn’t going to be a vacation in the sense of the type I would choose, but a time to spend with family I rarely get to see, and so I just let go. I enjoyed myself because I knew I wouldn’t get to do exactly what I wanted all day every day, and I let that be ok.
Ultimately, it was important for us as a family to do a reunion at this stage in our lives. In the past, it has always been the “adults” (aka our parents) making all the decisions, and the “kids” (aka me and my sibling and cousins) going along with everything. This time, we the kids all have families and lives of our own. I stood up for myself and my sibling/cousins on several occasions, and it went ok. I was proud of myself, and we all left feeling like this experience is worth it and we want to keep doing this every couple of years or so.
We love being around kids, but we still don’t want any of our own
In true Mr. Dink and I fashion, we used this opportunity where we were (almost) constantly surrounded by kids to talk about our feelings about kids. We thought and talked about them A LOT.
I wondered if being around 3 older boys 24/7 for 2 days, a first for us, would change Mr. Dink’s mind or any of his thinking about kids. This was a big no.
However, a new thought did pop up for Mr. Dink based on this trip that I’m really glad he shared with me. As vacation was winding down, he told me about this new thought: that if anything, he now felt slightly more guilty about NOT having a kid in the sense that he feels a pull from society to bring up a decent human in this difficult world. He saw his really good college friend, for the first time, as an amazing father. He saw my brother and my cousin fathering their kids, and was awed by their patience and kindness.
Basically, he saw so many good parents (especially dads), that it made him feel guilty for not wanting to be a parent. In my opinion, this was really important for us to talk about. Although I only slightly share his feelings, they are completely valid. We talked about how it’s absolutely ok to feel this way, and yet it doesn’t mean we need to run out and have a kid. Now, if this pull for him became more of a priority, that would be one thing. And maybe that will change. But for now, he/we have other priorities that weigh more heavily, and we also know that we do and we will contribute to society in other ways that get at the same end game – contributing to society in a positive way.
Mr. Dink got SO MANY comments on how good he was with kids. I think that made him really happy as he is learning to be an uncle for the first time. And I love being helpful, so of course loved helping out with the kids. Ultimately, we left that vacation more confident than ever that we do not want kids of our own.
And with all this kid and family time comes another takeaway.
It’s incredibly important to make and take solo time, just for us, on a trip like this
Instead of cramming in friend/family time to the max, going immediately from visiting friends to staying with family, we took a day to ourselves in between. We were SO happy we did. And, we were intentional about it, which made it even better.
Even though it was sort of silly to bring all of our gear for ONE night of camping, we did it because we knew the outcome would be worth it. We really wanted to camp, we really wanted a night to ourselves, and we knew that camping would reinvigorate our spirits more than just a hotel room in some random place. Plus, we knew we could always fall back on a hotel if something happened or if the weather was bad (luckily, the weather was great, although hot).
Indeed, this decision was life giving. We had so much fun. A nice little reset.
Similarly, our next takeaway was that…
We enjoyed traveling out of Mr. Dink’s truck more than we thought
We have always used my car, a Subaru Crosstrek, when we’ve gone on long trips, mainly because of 1) comfort and 2) gas mileage. Plus, we’re both really comfortable driving it. But we’ve also never needed the truck on these trips because we’ve never done a long-distance camping trip.
On this vacation, because we were camping one of the nights, we wanted a lot of space. Plus, we love having the truck when we car camp (meaning we can park the car right where we set up our tent) because the tailgate acts almost as another room/space/table. The other big reason for bringing the truck is that we wanted to have the canoe. The family reunion was on a big lake in Pennsylvania, and we wanted to have the boat as an option, and especially for Mr. Dink to get some fishing in.
Mr. Dink also finally completed his goal of building us a platform to use for sleeping when we’re camping. As we’ve gotten older, he’s sick of sleeping on the ground. It’s hard on our bodies, and this is one of the main draws for getting the bus…being able to travel for long periods more comfortably. He’s always envisioned making us a cot/platform for our camping mattress, and version 1.0 was complete right before this trip. Although it folds down nicely, it’s still very long, and was much easier to transport in the truck than in my car.
We loved the platform even more than we thought we would. We can’t wait to try it out on longer trips (more than just one night) and see how it feels.
The combination of traveling out of the truck and adding the sleeping platform to our camping set-up ended up being way more enjoyable than we even thought possible. We had high hopes the platform would be worth the effort, but we were also skeptical of whether it would make that much of a difference as far as comfort goes. We were blown away by how comfortable it was, and we are even more excited to get back out on the road with it. In fact, it even made us think a little bit about how we could travel more with the truck before we get the bus (potentially more on this in a future post!)
And there you have it: where we’ve been, what we’ve been up to, how we’ve been prioritizing friends and family, and some of our key takeaways from almost 2 weeks away from home.
What have you been up to during this transition from summer to fall? I’d love to hear from you!