WEIGHING PRIORITIES

There are priorities in every aspect of our lives, from our time to our hobbies, but I wanted to talk specifically about finances and travel.

In the Fall of 2014, Marcus and I took our first big international vacation. We spent 2 weeks backpacking around Italy. That trip was exciting, life-changing and exhausting, but it was also a turning point in my financial priorities. The idea to even begin looking at traveling didn’t even enter my mind seriously until 2 years earlier in 2012. I think we both had the idea that travel was expensive and just outside of our means. I can’t even recall how the rabbit hole began, but at one point I was researching how to travel carry-on only and how to book hostels. It was a world of travel that I could maybe actually do! Over the next two years I started saving money. Every little bit here and there got socked away. On top of our travel savings though we were working our way out of debt and trying to save for a house.

Mt. Vesuvius from Pompeii

This was where the priority shift really began to happen. In college we both had jobs alongside classes, and we had both been working ever since. It was easy to spend money eating out, drinking or buying clothes I certainly didn’t need. When I saw how cheaply we would be able to travel and have an amazing experience, I started seeing how my perception of wants was skewed. Somewhere in the middle of planning for Italy I recall standing in the shoe section at Target debating whether I wanted to buy a pair of shoes. They were cheap, kind of comfortable but did I need them? All of those things were still floating around in my head when suddenly a new thought encroached. Those shoes were around $20, not much really, but that same $20 could pay for a night in a hostel for us both. I remember putting the shoes back, and feeling a weird clarity, that I could have something worth so much more if I only straightened out my priorities.

The trip to Italy cost us a little over $3000. Most of that cost ended up being the flights. We stayed in hostels, ate at small shops and I had booked train tickets months in advance to get them super cheap, around $9 for some of our longer ones. It wasn’t glamorous as budget travel rarely is, but it opened my eyes to a different way of doing things, a different way to live.

What this meant for the future

Fast forward 5 years to present day. Our combined income is quite healthy and our lifestyle has seen some creep. However, I still am managing to save close to 50% of our income every month and we now even have a dedicated monthly expense that goes into a travel-only savings account. We have the ability to buy new cars or I could go on a shopping binge and buy lots of trinkets and shiny stuff. There are many people out there who do this and I’m not about to judge. I don’t know what their priorities are and quite frankly, it’s none of my business. I am solely responsible for my own life path here, and that’s really enough to handle! But my question still lingers- what’s more important to me: The Shiny stuff or the plane ticket?

When traveling cheap, remember walking is free! This was the day we walked many miles around Florence.

Our priorities have shifted over the last few years and I talked briefly about some of my financial goals of 2021 a few weeks ago. We’ll keep putting in our IRA contributions, funding out retirement plans and making sure our emergency fund is topped up. This year though I am finally going to being focusing efforts to our non taxable investment account. We have a goal of some day having a second home in Europe and that might mean I won’t be working so we really need to step up our savings to cover that loss in income. As of today we have about $30,000 in that account and since it is our only account that is not tax-advantaged its one we really need to grow. I haven’t come up with an investment plan for this yet as I am still trying to work out if I want to keep paying our mortgage principle down or not.

I am really glad I got the opportunity and had the will power to save the money to go to Italy. It was very eye-opening for me, helped me determine what I wanted pieces of my life to look like and where to put my energy. Sometimes it’s good to put yourself in a position to have to make a choice between things, it can solidify your true wants. Sometimes I would feel depraved, but really there is nothing depraved about being able to spend time eating new food and experiencing new culture, and I find it a much more worthy cost to me now.

I plan to write about this topic more later, but my financial goals have also started to transform the way I see my surrounding spaces at home. I’m not a minimalist but I am really working to evaluate what I bring into my space but as a cost exercise and a needs exercise.