Travel budget

I'm trying to avoid doing too much traveling since it cause my budget to take quite a hit, but my sanity seems to require at least a little travel (likewise, my sanity require that I not travel too much.) I just took a short trip to Colorado, but that was a modest hit to my budget. My big trip to New York City over the holidays was a huge hit to my budget (which is not completely paid off since I have a 0% credit card and put the money in savings until the 0% runs out in June). I had been expecting to take a trip back to Washington, D.C. at the end of April or early May, but that trip probably won't happen, or may morph into a similar trip later in May or in June. I also would like to get down to San Francisco sometime. This is already much more travel than I had expected. I have to sit down and work through what a reasonable travel budget would be.

Travelling every other month is probably too much for my budget. If I spent $1,000 per trip, that would be $6,000 per year or $500 per month.

Four trips per year may be the happy medium for me. That would be three trips plus the Christmas holidays. Or two trips besides my short Colorado trip which I have been doing every year.

My April/May trip represented a twice a year trip to Washington, D.C. for a finance-related meeting that I became interested in. Unfortunately, that group suspended their meetings last Fall and may not meet again until this coming Fall, if then. If they do get back to a twice a year schedule, that plus Colorado plus the holidays would completely fill my four-trip travel budget. That makes me lean towards budgeting five trips and focusing on keeping the cost of each trip down.

Airfare is problematic. Sometimes I have enough advance notice and can get decent deals, and sometimes not. In the past, I would exert a modest level of effort and then bite the bullet and pay what the fare cost. If I want to take five trips a year, I'll have to get creative and possibly even take an extra vacation day or two to accomodate the oddball scheduling that great deals like Priceline might require.

I can usually get very decent hotel deals with Priceline, with the exception of New Years Eve in NYC. The trick here will be to keep my stay nights down.

Maybe at dinner tonight I'll come up with some numbers and see how to make this work.

-- Jack Krupansky