The holiday rush is nearing its conclusion, and we’re starting to think about the prospect of getting back into our normal routine.  One of the things we try to do at least once a week is to go out, just the two of us, and have a date night.  The trouble is, most date nights are pretty stinkin’ expensive, be it having dinner out, going to a movie, or even just getting a drink.  You can spend $20 in a heartbeat, and if we’re doing that 4 times per month, our dining and entertainment budgets are going to fly out the window.

So here are a couple ideas that you might enjoy in the new year!

Our favorite: the Target “walk-around”

No one really knows how this particular tradition got started, except to say that we just love walking around our local Target store on a Friday night.  We rarely go there with a particular purpose, except to check out the new stuff that they’ve got for sale.  Bonus tip: grab the $1.50 pretzel combo and go with Minute Maid Light Lemonade for the beverage.  You won’t be sorry.  Another note: if you’re trying to stick to a budget, this date will require some significant willpower; it seems no aisle at Target can claim zero budget-buster capacity.

A close second: the Barnes & Noble “sip and read”

Your local B&N will probably have a Sevenbucks Starbucks cafe right inside, and if it does, you are in business for this one.  It comes in second only because you have to put up a little bit of money for the coffee.  This option also toes a moral line, as you have to be okay with “borrowing” a few magazines or books to read/browse as you’re enjoying your beverage.  I typically go with a seasonal latte (if it’s pumpkin or gingerbread time) and Julie loves a well-made caramel macchiato.

What’s your cheap date night idea?  Leave us a comment and let us know—we’d love to hear it

We’re halfway through our Christmas travels this year, and thought it would be great to share our plan for cheap lodging on the road!

One of the biggest benefits of the time I spend on the road for my job at Hope is that I get to collect honors/reward points from all of the hotels at which I stay.  This usually amounts to something like 5 or 6 nights per year that are free to us to use for our own personal travel.  We’ve gotten some major use out of this perk during our trips to my parents’ house this year, with a trip out in August for a graduation party and now our Christmas travel this month.

A little backstory: with four siblings, my parents’ house can get a little full during the holiday season.  We’ve stayed there before, but this year we decided to cash in some points and stay at a hotel for the three nights that we’d be in town.  I hadn’t accumulated them to the point where we’d be able to get all three nights through one brand (Hilton, Marriott, etc.), so here’s what we ended up with:

Nights #1 and #2: 40,000 Hilton Honors points got us two nights at the awesome Hampton Inn in Webster, New York.  Hampton Inns are my hotel of choice when on the road and this newer hotel (opened March 2009) is really great for the money.

Night #3: 15,000 Marriott rewards points got us a night at the Marriott hotel in Greece, New York.  It seems to have been recently renovated and it was a really nice place to stay.  I did have to purchase some points to meet the one-night quota, but that only cost us $12.50.

It’s a nice perk that Hope allows me to hang on to the rewards points I accumulate during the year from Hilton, Marriott, and Holiday Inn, among others.  Doing a little math, we get a savings of:

2 nights at Hampton Inn: 2 x $130 = $260
1 night at Marriott: $125
- purchased rewards points: $12.50
Total savings: about $373

Probably worth noting is the fact that we’d be less inclined to stay in a hotel were it not for the rewards points we’d accumulated.  But if you’ve got ‘em, why not use them?
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Photo Credit: brent_nashville // Creative Commons

It’s another holiday season, and with no kids (yet) to keep our Christmas local, we’re hitting the road to visit our families this week.  Jules and I are on an alternating holiday family gathering schedule, which means that this year we are headed to visit my family in the great state of New York, and then we’ll head down to Ohio for some additional time with Julie’s extended family there.

All told, we’re going to put about 1,300 miles on Julie’s beautiful Pontiac Vibe in the next week or so.  That means that we’ve got about 18 hours-ish worth of car time and many opportunities to spend some serious cash while on the road.  It’s inevitable—getting on the road means major hankerings for McDonald’s fries, caramel macchiatos from Starbucks, and ice cream from our favorite place in Findlay, Ohio.  While we’ll definitely have some treats during our yuletide travel, we simply can’t (and shouldn’t) financially (or nutritionally) indulge our every dining whim.

So here’s our typical on-the-road game plan for making sure we don’t blow our budget to pieces:

• Pack at least one meal, usually for the first leg of our trip
• Bring along a bag of snacks, hopefully somewhat healthy (we like pretzels, Wheat Thins, fruit, etc.)
• Pack bottled water (purchased in bulk) or water bottles
• Budget for any meals out in advance (beginning of the month) so they are accounted for in our “dining” category
• Leftovers available from family gatherings?  They’ll taste good in the Vibe as well

Just a few ideas for this holiday travel season—oh, and don’t worry, they work in the summertime, too.  Merry Christmas Eve!
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Photo Credit: gingerblokey // Creative Commons

I dread getting my oil changed for several reasons: (1) it takes time to drive there and hope there’s not a long line, (2) it’s not a fun way to spend money, and (3) I always get taken for a ride.

I finally got around to taking my Pontiac Vibe for its overdue oil change this week and sure enough, Murphy’s Law came with me.  The first time I went I waited a good 20 minutes before they opened an available bay window.  After pulling my car in, they informed me that they don’t regularly carry the oil filter for my car and I’d have to return next week.  Sigh.  I went back a few days later and was happy to see there was no line at all.  I pulled right in and the awkwardness began, “What kind of oil do you want?”  Now I’ve been taking my own vehicles to get an oil change since I was 16, and my dad had prepared me for this question by saying, “just tell them, whatever you used last time.”  However that answer didn’t suffice this time around when the attendant answered “we just got a new computer system and don’t have record of what we used last, but we would recommend a synthetic for your car.”  When I hear the word synthetic, I think of something fake like a synthetic fiber sweater that means cheap, cheap, cheap.  And I’m OK with cheap when it comes to oil changes.  But I didn’t ask how much it was and later found out it was an additional $30 to get synthetic oil.

$93 dollars later, I was pulling out of this oil change chain just fuming that I had, once again, spent way more than I intended to all because I didn’t ask first.  I just assumed that the options he gave me were included in the standard oil change price.  And although I think a good business practice is to be up front with additional charges, I do take responsibility for not asking how much something was before purchasing it.

So whether it’s an upgrade on your baked potato at a restaurant or an upgrade in oil for your car, always be sure to ask when any sort of salesman asks you if you want something additional.  You’ll probably save a few bucks if you do

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Photo Credit: pagedooley // Creative Commons

2 years ago Andrew and I were handed the keys to our very first home!  We were introduced to the wonderful world of home-ownership and have been learning a lot ever since.  I know 2 years sounds like a drop in the bucket to some, but to us it feels like a long journey filled with changing furnace filters, flooded basements, hosting parties, shoveling driveways, and holiday gatherings.

As we’ve mentioned before, we decided to purchase a house after we got engaged—knowing that we’d want to live in a house together once we were married.  Looking back, we were pretty naive through much of the house hunting process, but thanks to the guidance of a great realtor and reading real estate books at Barnes and Nobles, we felt comfortable purchasing our little cape cod bungalow near downtown Holland.  The first weekend after getting the keys, my parents made the drive to Holland and we spent a solid day cleaning the house from top to bottom.

It’s interesting how cleaning someone else’s filth is grosser than cleaning your own!  But we scrubbed the place clean and ate dinner around our only furniture in the house—a card table.

The next day several of our friends helped move the majority of our belongings and furniture to our new home.  Mismatched college furniture, hand-me-down pots and pans, and several trips later, we began to get settled in.

Like many new homeowners, we quickly learned the joys and sorrows of owning a home.  We have had our basement flood four times (and consequently installed a sump pump), refinished a basement room (thanks to the flooding), learned how to install a new toilet and put in a new bathroom floor.  But we’ve also had a comfortable place to call home, hosted family for Easter, created memories and got a great tax return thanks to paying all that interest!

Owning a home is a great investment but is also a great marriage-strengthener (picture the two of us shopvac-ing a wet basement for the fourth time!).  We wouldn’t trade the last 2 years in this house (it’s amazing to think how far we’ve come from that first card table) and look forward to what we have yet to learn!