Since the monies received from in-laws covered our entire trip, I just forwarded those monies to the credit card this week. Paid and Done!

A Rough Breakout of costs:

Airfare $2,000 (paid for a while ago)
Eating Out $450** (9 days)
Zip Line (2) $380
Car Rental $ 230
Kitty Hotel $ 180
Private Surfing Lessons (1) $150
Snorkel Gear/Boogie Boards RENTAL (4) $150
Hotel $82 (charged taxes/fees, which was unusual - we used "free" timeshare)
Souvenirs $40 (Hawaiian shirts for kids, candy)
Parking $25 (2 state park type places)

Total = $3,700-ish; $1,700 balance paid this week

**Generally tried to eat out lunch every day and eat dinner in (we had a condo/kitchen). Lunch was never under $40, even at the Taco stand or deli. Spent $200 total on two meals - neither was worth it.

Groceries ($200) and gas ($30-ish) will be absorbed in our regular budget.

Tried to be frugal by not checking bags, getting a ride to airport, not paying for hotel, etc. Good airfare deals never materialized, and I didn't end up jumping through the credit card hoops to do better. Splurged on most the rest. It was easy to splurge on excursions since BM was really the only taker. I think we easily could have kept the trip to $3,000-ish and would have been just as happy (left to hike, snorkel, beach). But we have one daredevil in the bunch and were able to appease him.

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Payday was this week and I had $2,500 for savings.

Dh has received 2 small paychecks, which we have done nothing with, since we seemed to have over-spent last month. He should also receive $500-ish in a couple of weeks and I will add that to savings this month.

I expect to just tread water the rest of the year. $5k due for property taxes, and lots of insurance due the end of the year. Plus we seem to have a lot of big expenses popping up.

I am hoping that by Jan. or Feb. that we have cash savings where we want it and IRAs fully funded. I am hoping to really avalanche our investments next year. (Hoping to stop throwing so much to build our cash savings up or to cash flow splurges, which leaves more for investments. Plus dh might be working, which will just add to the avalanche).

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It's crazy hot here. We've yet to turn off the AC this year, which is insane. It's a little cooler today and so I hope we can turn it off now.

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This week I canceled the collision/comprehensive insurance on the van. I probably should have a long time ago, but have been dragging my feet. I Feel confident about this today though because the value of the vehicle is in the range of our deductible anyway, and we are starting to think seriously about replacing it. This will help offset some of the higher collision/comp. costs on our newer vehicle. (We had dropped these coverages many years ago on our older vehicle that we replaced).

Historically we mostly drove low-value cars and had a general rule not to even bother insuring cars under the $5k range (which would cover our first couple of car purchases). I guess dh's 2001 Ford was probably the first car we ever had full coverage on, since we bought it in 2002. & then we got full coverage on the van when we bought a 2005 model in 2006.

Anyway, my dad can be crazy cheap but he was in an accident a couple of years ago and they gave him enough cash to replace his 2002-ish vehicle with like a 2010. It was just a weird situation and he made out really well. (This was post retirement, and he got a free significant car upgrade out of the whole thing). I asked him why on earth he even had full coverage on his old car and he told me he had been using a lot of rental cars (traveling a lot) and found it easier to keep coverage on their newer car. Fair enough. I guess we have been thinking along those same lines.

It was probably overkill for us both to keep full insurance on both our cars for our vacation, but I knew we'd both be driving the rental and I figured I'd just drop the insurance when we got back. I remember feeling nervous when we dropped the coverage on dh's car (not that it mattered financially but just didn't want to jinx it), but we waited so long this time I feel very "meh" about it this time around. It helps to be in a space where we are already ready to move on from the minivan anyway. If it runs good for 5 years, that's great, and we haven't identified a replacement yet. But if we saw a good car we may be ready to ditch it.