Unusual Spending For April

Here’s the second installment of my new series…

April is going to be an interesting month, for sure. In addition to unusual general life experiences, we are traveling to Washington D.C. for 10 days, from April 12^th to April 22^nd. We also have a car registration due and the second installment of our property taxes is due in April. The last unusual expense we might have for April is any costs associated with selling our house and/or moving. (This could be wishful thinking, but more on this in a minute.)

Washington D.C. is not going to be a cheap trip. The Husband is travelling to D.C. over spring break for a business trip. The Kids and I are tagging along. We have already paid for our air fare, to the tune of $2000, or $500 each, and our hotel, which ran us $1500. Because The Husband is going for work, some of the cost will be reimbursed. His air fare will be covered as will 4 nights of the hotel. We are currently waiting on a reimbursement of $1100 from his work. We have already paid for mine and The Kids’ plane tickets, that was $1500. We made a $486 payment last week towards the trip and with my next paycheck, on March 31^st, we will pay the remaining balance of our portion of the trip. Then we just have to wait for the deposit from The Husband’s work so we can pay his portion.

Once we get to D.C., we will have to pay for a rental car. The cost of that was just under $500. We will also have to pay for food, Metro tickets, any souvenirs, and the cost of fees or entrance into any attractions we go to. 5 days of The Husband’s food will be covered by his work as it is a business trip for him. As a family, we will take advantage of this by ordering pizza one night and/or eating at family style restaurants.  We are hoping this trip will not add to our credit card debt. It will definitely slow our debt progress down, but the goal is to not increase our debt totals by the time the trip is over. (Although we have debt, we choose not to sacrifice our lifestyle to get out of debt. We are willing to stay in debt longer in order to continue having life experiences and making memories for our kids.)

At the end of the month, we have car registration due on The Husband’s project car. The money for this will come from another account entirely that we use for budgeting purposes, especially our annual expenses.

The second installment of our dreaded property taxes are due in April as well.  That will run as about $1500, but we will pay for that out of our yearly expenses account. The money is already there; it’s just waiting to be paid.

Being that we are gone 1/3 of the month, our unusual expenses seem pretty low. We are continuing to fill our budget envelopes this month, so hopefully nothing too unexpected pops up.