The Savers have just returned from a vacation to Santa Fe, New Mexico. We took the Amtrak Southwest Chief train across the country which was wonderfully relaxing compared to the post 9/11 hassle of air travel. No sending shoes through a x-ray machine and you can bring your own wine into your sleeper car to boot!
Commuter train reflected in window of Santa Fe train station
We found Santa Fe to be our perfect combination of idyllic weather, outdoor exploration opportunities, and amazing food from all over the world. Usually I am ready to come home from vacation, but I was prepared to have our neighbors call a realtor, put our house on the market, and send us the check! Sigh.
While we were there we really made no major efforts to save money. We had budgeted for the vacation and enjoyed it freely. We were home no more than an hour before Mr. Saver had fired up Quicken and was reconciling our expenses against our budget. We found we had a decent amount of money left at the end of the trip. We will set aside some for a “Stay-Cation” in August and put the rest into savings.
Mr. Saver carefully looked at our Enterprise car rental charges and found that they had assessed a $24.00 fuel charge despite the fact that the clerk had waived fuel charges because we started with an empty tank. A phone call later, we had our money back.
We spent 5 months saving for our trip, and it was so worth it. We are grateful for our commitment to be debt-free so that we can have experiences like this trip to Santa Fe.
Hiking at Bandelier National Monument, home of the Ancestral Pueblo People
The Healthful Saver 
The best vacations don’t haunt your mailbox for months!! We have enjoyed our first few paid for vacations the past 18 months … its been awesome. It is so much more relaxing and enjoyable when we are not thinking about the bill that will come every month until the next vacation!!!! Way to go on having money left over 🙂
Well stated Crazynoiia!
AWESOME!! The best vacations are the ones you come home from with no credit card bill to follow. Just lots of pictures.
Kelly
yourfinancialtoolkit.wordpress.com
Thanks, Kelly! A debt-free vacation is so worth the weeks of cooking at home, meal planning, and such. To us, this is the meaning of Dave Ramsey’s “Live like no one else, so later, you can live like no one else!”
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