Couple Days Out, and The Future.
A quickie, so I don't have the usual hype going into this one but it should be fun none the less. Two full days and out the door, with a great show on the back end. Everything is basically ready to go, the laundry is done, the money is out of the bank. As predicted $700 per day cash and I'll have the Discover if I need a few hundy more for something, though I don't know what that would be. As stated previously I don't plan to gamble much if at all so 7 bills a day should be more than enough for food and bev.
Unless something happens on the job front (which has settled down a bit) this will be trip 2 of 4 this year. It's going to be a financial drain as it always is and while I have plenty to take care of daily life AND my Vegas obsession, I need to reel a couple things in in my life that may affect future Vegas.
I've managed to rack up some debt in the last couple years, with the car and the loan for the car and I've also got some CC debt now that I need to pay down/off. I have no trouble making payments, and often pay quite a bit more than minimums but I can't seem to get the card debt down much. This leaves me with a choice...I can get a consolidation loan of $20K or so and pay all of that off, but then that just extends the debt down the road and the interest rate is no picnic. OR I can cut down on the Vegas.
What would that look like? Well the obvious thing would be cut down to 3 or even 2 trips a year. 2 trips would be maybe do a week in summer and the inevitable Xmas trip and that's it. Would allow me to get caught up on the financials but man that 6 month gap between trips would be a stretch. If I did a 3 trip year it could be birthday, summer and Xmas, but maybe just 4-day trips instead of the 5+ ones I've been doing. The 5-plus'ers are the ones that really put on the financial burden, I need to come up with $4K for each of those, and 3 of those a year is then $12K. A chunk. Downgrading to 4-day trips would mean coming up with $3500 or so, getting the yearly spend down to around $10K. Still a lot but more manageable.
I don't know. I have my 50th birthday coming up next year so I will definitely be wanting to be in town for that. Can I then make it from May to December without a trip? Big ask for me. Maybe do 5 days for Bday, then a shorty in summer? 3 days? Possible. But then I'm still saving for much of the year and not paying down debt like I need to. I don't like the feeling of having debt hanging over my head - I like to "travel lightly through life" and being under $12k of debt like I am now is not a good feeling. But I also don't want to consolidate and be under a $20K debt for even longer down the road. Gah.
Come on Vegas - would it be so hard to just let me hit a $50K jackpot while I'm there this year and put all this in the trash can? You sure as shit owe me by now.
More riveting blog posts when I'm back from yet another trip next week.
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