Monthly Archives: September 2021

Lessons from a Road Trip

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My husband and I took a bit of a vacation recently.  And when I look back on it, I see that we did a lot of things right from a financial perspective.  And we also did a lot of things wrong.

Our five day adventure was a road trip to Chicago.  We traveled by car instead of airplane, which saved us several hundred dollars.  Yes…it took us 10 hours or so each way.  But we enjoy each other’s company…especially on a road trip.  Yes…we paid about $40 each direction in tolls as we took the turnpike all the way across both Ohio and Indiana.  But it could have been much more expensive (and a lot more annoying) if we hadn’t used our EZ Pass.  And yes…we had to fill the gas tank several times.  But we were driving our 2008 Prius and averaged 47 miles per gallon over the whole trip.  All in all, our travel cost was very inexpensive!

While we were in Chicago we stayed with friends who live there.  They didn’t have a guest bed to offer, so we took along our camping cots and sleeping bags.  And our lodging was completely free for our four night stay!  That’s as inexpensive as it gets.  A great choice as well as great company!

Our primary reason for traveling was to see a pair of concerts at Wrigley Field.  Entertainment is always one of those areas where I feel guilty about spending money.  But we bought the cheap seats.  We weren’t right in front of the stage or even on the field level.  We were actually pretty far out to the edges of the viewing area both nights.  But we could see the giant screens and we could hear every note.  If I had it to do again, I would buy the same seats.

The place where we did nearly everything wrong was with food and drink.  We ate out too often.  We bought too much food and beverage at the concerts.  We treated our friends to meals and drinks.  We bought too much road food while we were traveling.  We could have done all of that a lot more frugally.  We should have packed road food and beverages in a cooler.  We should have eaten in more.  We should not have purchased concert beverages and ballpark hot dogs.  Even with treating our friends, we still could have shaved a hundred dollars or more off of our food and beverage bill by simply planning ahead and being smarter.

As we travel through life, there are always places that we see we did things right (YAY!!!).  And there will always be places that we find we could have made better choices.  This road trip is a perfect example of that.  Do I regret the trip?  Absolutely not!  Will I make better decisions on my next road trip?  Probably.  At least I hope so.  The only truly bad decisions are the ones we fail to learn from.

 

Taking a Look at your Credit

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I celebrated my birthday recently.  I’m one year closer to the life of leisure and adventure that I have planned for my retirement!  And aside from a lovely day of doing my favorite things, I like to use my birthday as a reminder for things that should be done once a year.

One of the things people should do once a year is look at their credit report.  Your credit report is basically a history of all the things (both good and bad) that have been happening in your financial life.  It will show you all of your loans and where you stand in repayment.  It will show you all of your open lines of credit.  It will show you a history of closed lines of credit.  It will even show you who has been looking at your credit.  And just like with everything, it’s not always going to be correct.  That’s why it is important to look at it once in a while.

The federal government has set it up so you have access to a free copy of your credit report once a year, from each of the three major credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion).  And while the pandemic continues you actually have access to a free report once per week.  But there is a lot of confusion about how to access this information for free.  There are a lot of places where they are happy to charge you a fee for this information…or even worse, set you up on a recurring subscription.  All to get information you have the right to see for free.

To request your free reports, you should visit http://annualcreditreport.com.  This is the site set up by the government to allow you this free access.   The site will ask for your Social Security number and ask you questions about your credit accounts to verify your identity (so no one else should be able to access your information).  And then, you’ll have all of the information you want about your credit history.  All of your accounts.  Whether you have a history of late payments.  How much you owe.  It’s all laid out for you.

Once I looked at my credit report and found an error.  A big error.  A mortgage that had been paid off in a refinance was showing as open.  It looked like I had about $80,000 in debt more than I actually did.  And I had to jump through some hoops and fax a bunch of documents to get it corrected.  And that’s why it’s important to look at this stuff from time to time.  It’s absolutely better to find credit report errors on your own rather than be surprised when a loan request is denied.

Whether or not you are celebrating your birthday, you should probably take a few minutes and review your credit report.  The best gift of all is peace of mind.