Just a 48-year-old mom of 2 in Northern California. My kids are Monkey Monkey(MM) and Drama Llama (DL). I am married to Monkey Hubby (MH). 2025 TALLY:
$1,000 Capital One Venture (MH double dip)
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$1,000 TOTAL *ONE-TIME REWARDS*
**In addition, various monthly rewards that I will tally at 12/31
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Side note: I am also helping DL(20) with a $250 credit card reward.
I reported earlier in the year that the theme this year was, "Big money drains everywhere. Nevermind." Maybe it's just, "Nevermind." All of our the film festival plans this year has been a no-turned-yes, or a yes-turned-no.
In a more normal year I would have been a lot more irritated. Some drama erupted literally the weekend I applied for this credit card. The plan was to cover a June film convention that MH had been looking forward to. There was drama and that's not going to happen. No idea how I would get through this travel reward otherwise, in a more normal year. But we also have a 25th anniversary trip planned.
I did go into the year with a "money is no object" attitude about our 25th wedding anniversary trip. Which is good, because I didn't know we'd exhaust our vacation budget early in the year re: MH's movie premier. But it's relative. Our dream vacation is a road trip and some hiking. We did settle on a trip to the central coast of CA. It's my happy place, that I have been traveling to for decades. But I don't know if I've ever stayed more than 2 nights before, and have mostly stuck to the area by the college (and surrounding 15 miles). This trip we will travel from Ventura to Big Sur. We will enjoy the great outdoors and do some camping. All of that said, the hotels are not cheap. It will probably be comparable to the cost of our last Europe trip (which was some great deals and a lot of travels/ activities). This trip will just be some very expensive hotels, in contrast. I am eyeing DL(20)'s 'college rent fund' to pay for this. This is money that DL is not using.
With the travel bonus money, MH seemed to just be adding more trips to the list this year. It's moot because he just got word that mutliple July trips were canceled. He is planning to go to the Austin film festival in the fall. Lord knows the odds that will actually happen. At this rate... 🙄 (We are 4/4 on the change of plans. & that's just what I remember off the top of my head.)
In the meantime, we have a lot of hotel nights booked on the travel card but won't have the opportunity to pay for them (or use the travel credits) for a few more months. I did just apply $200 (travel reward) to the Austin airfare. That was satisfying.
I suppose the plan is to use this $1,000 reward to cover (most of) the Austin trip.
We did also cancel our family camp trip this year. I would have put some more pressure on DL(20) to cancel, but he admitted early in the year that it was time to move on. (He was the hold out). Longer term I'd like to rent a cabin in the woods for a week and create our own (more financially sensible) tradition. For this year (and probably next year or two) we just took advantage of the family cabin near Tahoe (free).
I suppose that makes it 5/5 on the change of plans. But the cabin/camp change of plans was our choice and it was also very foreseeable.
July 13th, 2025 at 09:37 pm 1752439061