After nearly 2 years of planning and 1.5 years of saving (the first 6 months went to paying off student loans) the time has finally come to starting spending all my hard earned money…and boy does it hurt. For so long I have pinched pennies and cut corners to put as much money as possible into my travel fund so to switch my mentality from saving to spending? Not an easy thing to change. At all.
I’m going to be posting my April budget roundup soon and you’ll notice I will be wayyyy over in some categories. That’s because this month the spending has begun.
The first thing I bought was my plane ticket home! I have 2.5 months left of work and I’ll be heading home the middle/end of July. Thanks to ThePointsGuy (an amazing blogger who knows everything about travel hacking) I was introduced to The Matrix (no not the movie…the airfare search!). This handy little search engine brings you every flight option imaginable in order to help you find the cheapest flight.
Most one way flights from San Diego to Boston were about $160-$250…a bit more then I wanted to spend. I check the site pretty often and the other day I saw a flight available on the day I wanted to leave for $146! I jumped on it immediately. It’s a beautiful overnight flight on Virgin Atlantic (an airline I’ve never flown before so that will be fun in and of itself) that goes from San Diego to San Francisco and then San Fran to Boston. Not a bad deal if I do say so myself.
The next thing I bought was my 13′ Macbook Air. I own an iPhone but have always owned PCs. However the Macbook Airs weigh until 3 lbs which is perfect for travel and my goal of packing as light as possible. In my research I found that people suggested buying the Apple certified refurbished Macbooks as they are exactly the same as the new computers (if someone opens the Macbook and turns it on Apple can’t resell them as new) and sometimes even better since they go through a rigorous screening and testing process to be considered ‘Apple refurbished’. It comes with the exact same warranty as the new computers as well but at a cheaper price. A bit of a no brainer if you ask me.
Initially I bought the 2013 version 13′ Macbook Air for $936 plus tax which came to about $1008. A steep price for a computer but I got $940 back from my tax return this year so I was using that money to pay for the computer. However today my sister texted me saying Apple just dropped the price of their Macbook Airs…4 days after I’d already purchased mine. So I canceled my original order and reordered the exact same computer except now it cost $799, or $866 with tax. Not too shabby.
So needless to say my credit card has been getting a major workout these past few days. But it’s a good thing as well seeing as I recently opened a new travel credit card, the Chase Ink Bold Business card, and to get the sign up bonus of 50,000 points I have to spend $5,000 in the first 3 months of having the card. With all the spending I’ve been doing plus the amazing Amazon payments I should easily meet that requirement.
What about you? Did you find it difficult to switch from saving mode to spending mode?
