The trip envelope is sitting on the kitchen table as I type this. It is a plain white business envelope with "Wilmington" written on the front in blue pen, and inside are two gas receipts, a fried shrimp supper for two, a bag of boiled peanuts and a slip from a grocery store where we bought coffee and breakfast for my brother's kitchen. Add it all up and last weekend cost us $212. I added it twice, because that is who I am.
My name is Heather. I'm 40, I work the front desk at a dental office in Laurinburg, and I spend most of my day reading insurance codes and the fine print nobody else wants to read. My husband Wes is a diesel technician who keeps tractor-trailers on the road for a trucking outfit near Laurinburg. He grew up in Pembroke, I grew up in Laurinburg, and we met at a friend's cookout in 2009. We got married in October 2011 and have been in our brick ranch off a two-lane road near Maxton since June 2014.
It's just the two of us and the dog. June is a beagle mix we adopted from the Scotland County shelter in 2018, and she believes every car ride is about her. Most of the time it isn't, and she stays with Wes's sister Tonya in Pembroke.
The rule we made in January
Last year we spent about $2,900 on two real vacations: a week in a Myrtle Beach high-rise in July and a cabin in Gatlinburg in October. Sometime in early January, sitting on the screened porch with coffee, we tried to remember what we actually did on either one. We could name the pool and the pancake place. That was about it. Nearly three thousand dollars, and the best memory was a waffle.
Here is the funny part. Wes and I both work four ten-hour days, Monday through Thursday. The dental office is closed Fridays, and Wes's shop runs him 6 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and then lets him go for three days. We have had three-day weekends for years and spent almost every one of them mowing, running to Lumberton for errands and saying we ought to go somewhere.
So we wrote down a rule on the back of a light bill envelope:
- One cheap weekend trip a month, Friday through Sunday.
- Paid only from its own savings account, which gets $250 automatically on the first of every month.
- Try to keep each trip under $300, all in.
- Stay mostly within about four hours of home.
- January is the month we stay home and plan.
The trip account opened on January 1. We kept January quiet like we said we would, let February's deposit stack on top, and then went to Wilmington the last weekend of the month. We slept on my brother Darren's couch, walked Kure Beach in our jackets and spent a cold, windy afternoon at Fort Fisher. Nobody needed a waffle.
Why a two-lane road
We live a few miles outside Maxton, about ten minutes from I-74 and twenty-five from I-95. Those interstates will get you to the beach, the Sandhills or the mountains, and we use them. But when there's time, Wes would rather take the two-lane state roads through the tobacco barns and little crossroads towns. Fewer trucks, he says, and he would know. I like them because there's always a produce stand or a church sign worth reading.
From our carport the coast is a couple of hours, Charleston and Savannah are a few more, and the Blue Ridge is a long day's drive. That is a lot of country inside a $250 month if you are willing to sleep somewhere plain and pack a cooler.
What I'll write about here
I'm the passenger-seat planner with the paper road atlas, and Wes is the one who checks tire pressure the way other people check the weather. We drive a silver 2017 Honda CR-V with about 112,400 miles on it, and it gets around 31 miles to the gallon on the highway if Wes behaves. His work truck stays home.
On this blog I'll write down where we went and what it really cost: gallons and price per gallon, the room rate plus tax, park fees, parking and what we ate. I'll also write about the boring money parts, like why the trip money lives in its own account, what our insurance did or didn't cover and what broke on the car. I'm not a travel agent or a financial advisor, and I won't tell you what bank or insurance company to use. I'll just tell you what we did and what it added up to, so you can do your own math with better numbers.
There will be some posts from home too. We have a small garden, a retired farmer next door named Mr. Earl, and a big family in Pembroke on Wes's side. Life doesn't stop between trips, and sometimes the house is part of the cost of leaving it.
When I told Wes I was starting a blog, he looked at the envelope, looked at me and said, "So the receipts are getting a website." Pretty much. The next trip is already penciled in for April. I'll let you know what it cost.
