It’s not my usual time or day to put out a post, but my family’s doing our Thanksgiving meal today before we go see Hamilton later tonight (!!!) because my mom and I are driving back up to DC tomorrow night so I can go to work on Friday. So why not a thankfulness/reflection post at an unusual time to go with our untraditional Thanksgiving this year?
I’ve said many times before that one of my favorite things about blogging has been the community and the many, many friends I’ve made through this blog. A few weeks ago at Cents Positive, Tanja called me a “FI community event junkie,” which I really can’t deny, given that this year I went to CampFI Mid-Atlantic, CampFI Midwest, FinCon, and Cents Positive (which I haven’t really written about yet, partly because it just happened a few weeks ago). Yep, I went to four FI community events this year (plus have already bought tickets for two more next year); I told you this community is important to me!
But all of that quality time with my friends in this community has a cost associated with it. I’ve known for months that I was going to write a post totalling up all the spending for those events. So here goes:
- CampFI Mid-Atlantic: $231.83 for ticket and fee and $60.16 for food/ booze/gas money, for a total of $291.99
- CampFI Mid-Atlantic 2019: $275 for ticket
- CampFI Midwest: $400 for ticket, $227.4 for flight, and $97.73 for food and booze, for a total of $725.13
- FinCon: luckily $0 for my ticket, $148.96 for flights, $238.51 for the hotel room, and $194.62 on food and transportation, for a total of $582.09 (not counting what I spent at Disney right after that trip. Which was related and wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been at FinCon. So there’s another $330 if you’re so inclined to include it)
- FinCon19: $205.32 for my ticket
- Cents Positive: $275 for my ticket, $294.18 for flights (I’m including the actual flights here, not the double ticket snafu since I’m using that credit for other travel and duh, I did not actually use three tickets for this travel!), $66.36 for the AirBnB, and $59.93 on food and transportation (which’ll be showing up on November’s spending report), for a total of $695.47
Grand total: $2,780. $2,299.68 on events for this year and $480.32 prepaying for next year.
That’s almost three thousand dollars, and seeing that total amount all added together, I’m freaking out a tad. Because holy shit, that’s a significant amount of money for me. That’s almost a quarter of what I’ll spend on rent this year!
This is also not inclusive of many get-togethers with the #DCmoneynerds because I lump that spending in with my general restaurant/bar spending instead of putting it into a separate category. Generally these days though if I’m out at a bar it’s probably a personal finance meetup (thanks for making me spend money, you supposedly frugal people! ?). That’s a much smaller but not insignificant amount, probably a couple hundred dollars.
Do I regret any of that spending? I’m still overwhelmed by seeing that total amount—it’s way more manageable when I buy tickets and flights across many months, usually at least a month or two in advance of the actual event. I bet it’s slowed down my FI date by a whole three weeks! ?
But no. Unequivocally, no.
I’ve loved getting to meet Twitter pf/blogger friends in person and spending more time with those I already knew. I’ve had so many amazing conversations and have learned so much from you all this year. So I consider that $3,000 extremely well-spent. I’m grateful to have all of you in my life, friends.
To all my American friends and readers, happy Thanksgiving! To everyone else, enjoy the rest of your week!
Okay, you’d better not regret that time! And do be fair, once you get fully on the travel hacking bandwagon, that number will drop pretty significantly 😉
This is what you call value spending! It’s certainly a TON of money, but I’m sure the experiences you’ve had and friends you’ve made have been worth it. The things you’ve learned and network you’ve created are sure to help you out in the future, and you can’t put a price on that!