Summer Spending Hiatus

The constant battle I am waging in my life is one of debt vs. life. We are trying to claw our way out of debt without sacrificing our quality of life and it is a tight to rope to walk.

Debt sucks, but we decided any debt payoff has to work with our lifestyle, that goes for the credit card, the car payment, and the mortgage. Due to this, we take a vacation every year, often times we take more than one. This year, however, we decided not to take a vacation, and the reason is not to throw extra money towards our debt, but because we are remodeling our kitchen this summer instead.

Man, kitchen's are expensive!

Even though we didn't go on a huge vacation like we normally do, the kids and I took lots of day trips. We went to a zoo, a national park, a water park, an aquarium, several movies, camping and to San Diego, just to name a few of the things we did.  When I got my credit card bill I realized we really didn't save very much money. Because of this, I set my kids down and had a talk with them. I told them once we came back from San Diego we weren't spending any more money.  I told them all the activities we did would have to be free. These included things like going hiking, family walks, going to the park or library, and playing board games.  None of these activities cost any money but they are all fun and good family time.

We only have two weeks of summer left before we go back to school, but we are going to try to be very frugal during this time and not spend much money on recreational activities.  I want to spend the time with my kids and show them all the ways we can have fun without costing us a fortune. Essentially, for the next two weeks, we are on a "summer spending hiatus". I don't know how well we are going to do, only that we are going to try.

We need to pad our bank account with all the money we are going to save so we can cash flow our kitchen remodel!