Project 365: April 2012

You can see all my daily pics uploaded onto Flickr. All pictures are taken with my iPhone 4S and shared through Instagram.

070. Visit New York City: Saving & Planning

I've priced up a trip to New York once a year for the last couple of years, but we've never been. It's an incredibly expensive place to go and one of those trips that you just cannot sacrifice experiences because of the lack of money - it really needs commitment to saving money so you can do all the things you want to and buy all the things you love. Pricing up a trip for 2012 I had pretty much decided that was it, we were going! With a realistic budget of £2000 for flights and a hotel for either 5, 6 or 7 nights I started my internet searching.

I priced up flights for around £900 from London to New York, but wanted to find them cheaper - I checked KLM and Virgin Atlantic once a week for fluctuations in price. At first late-October was looking cheap, then I tried a few different dates and found the last week of September and first week of October to be the overall cheapest time to go for flights. We also want to time our visit with some sporting events and we'd love to go and watch a basketball game, fingers crossed the season starts in September so we can get some tickets.

New York City is not short on hotels, we will be able to find something we like to suit our budget, but booking the flights and hotel separately was working out slightly more money than booking the two parts together through a site like Expedia. We will definitely book the two elements together, it just seems easier and will definitely work out cheaper.

Funding it we've decided to book the hotel and flights on a 0% credit card that James is researching and will apply for. We'll then save like maniacs from now until September, I've got a final target figure of £3000 for spending money for everything including shopping, souvenirs and food/meals out. I need to do some boring, adult budgeting work to make sure I can be on track, but I'm hoping I can save £400 a month for the next five months to get to £2000, and the rest will be made up in other means like work bonuses, eBay selling and birthday money (my birthday is in June). 

Decided on 5 nights I made a wall chart to plan our daily activities including sights, meals and shopping! It seems excessive and obsessive, but you can't wake up in the morning, late, and then decide what you want to do - you have to have a plan! Most of the shopping (orange) has been left for the last day or two, this will ease James' mind because he always worries about my spending and we definitely don't want to run out of money too early in the week!



Another way of planning the places we want to see and go to includes plotting all points of interest on a Google Map. I saw this little tip posted on a message board for holiday planning and it's working for me really well so far. Is there anywhere I've missed? (Blue = sights to see, Green = stuff to do, Yellow = shops and department stores, Pink = restaurants and cafes)

View New York 2012 in a larger map

We seem to have most things accounted for and lots of plans in place. There's also the small matter of my fitness, being on the go all day and walking so much is going to take some preperation and if I can lose some weight in the next five months as well, I'll be very happy! We're planing an intense 12 weeks of healthy eating and exercising starting tomorrow, this should be just the kick start I'll need in the run up to our anniversary Olympic trip, and then the remaining eight weeks until our NYC trip will be just as intense to get the results I really want - I want to look great in all the photos!

Let's go!

058. Pay off my credit card debt

This morning my credit card debt was £593.25. 

I couldn't tell you what that money has bought over the last 8 years that I've had it. It was probably lots of internet purchases for hotels and tickets for gigs and trains because that was the only form of online payment available at the time - now I can use debit cards and my Paypal accounts.

Right now that debt is down to £0 - I've paid it off in full. I did have to put all my savings back into my normal account in order to pay most of it, but for every £10 I was paying off the credit card I would get £6 of interest added on, only paying £4 a month. For almost £600 that would take me a long, long time to work off.

So I did it. It just means I only have £100 of savings right now, but there's still time to save lots of money for our trip to New York later this year. My job role slightly changed this year and this month I've had another pay rise to go with it, and a new incentivised bonus scheme has started this financial year - so there will definitely be more money in my life this year.

Project 365: March 2012

You can see all my daily pics uploaded onto Flickr. All pictures are taken with my iPhone 4S and shared through Instagram.