Vacations are worth the financial cost

I don’t know what it is about the period around my birthday in early August, but the last two summers have brought chaos around that time.

Last year? Our air-conditioning system died amid a heat wave. I caught a sinus infection and broke out in a rash, which was super uncomfortable in an overheated house.

This year? I spent most of July without my car – my 22-year-old PT Cruiser started overheating and we couldn’t figure out why. In a bit of cosmic timing, we got a lead on a newer car that had just been traded in and ticked all the boxes on my list, so… I bought a new (to me) car. Oh, and this was right after our hot water heater died and we spent a week taking baths the old-fashioned way, boiling water on the stove, because it took that long to get the new heater installed.

So after spending all that money unexpectedly, my first inclination is not to spend any money on anything “fun.” Gotta save back up, right? Can’t spend frivolously. Skip the vacation, skip the “treat yourself” moments.

Last year, we had tickets to see New Kids on the Block in Hershey on my birthday. It was my birthday gift, and the tickets were already paid for, but when the a/c went kablooey I thought we should sell the tickets and get the money back to put towards the bills.

We didn’t. In fact, we got a hotel room and stayed over, giving ourselves some relief from the hot house. And that concert was the best birthday gift ever. I remember thinking about halfway through, as I was singing and dancing to all my favorite songs in a sea of neon with my “five brothers and a million sisters,” that this was the purest joy and lightness I’d felt in a long time.

I carried that feeling with me. That concert inspired a few of these blog posts. I leaned back into my unapologetic love of boy bands and my “Boy Band Hype Mix” playlist has become my go-to energy boost (it’s playing *NSYNC’s “No Strings Attached” right now as I write this).

And just a few weeks ago, even after the unexpected expense of buying a car, we still went on our planned short vacation. Like last year, we debated whether or not we should do it, but we really needed that time-out. It was just a quiet getaway to a cabin in the Catskills, but it was just the reset we needed. My brain was pretty fried from all the problems before we left, and while I can’t say I’m perfectly on top of my game now, I’m pretty sure I’d be a lot worse off if we hadn’t had that pause to refresh.

If you’re anything like me, you probably struggle to do things for yourself or to see the value in taking those moments of self-care. And I certainly don’t want to encourage anyone to be fiscally irresponsible. But it really is OK to go on that outing or take that vacation, even if it seems like the universe is screaming “don’t spend that money!”

The mental payoff is worth it.