When I found out I was going to Las Vegas for a work conference, my first thought was, Ugh, Vegas. And not in a cute, endearing “Ugh, Jay” like in The Luminaries; more like “Loud noises” from Anchorman. Now that we live in Colorado, however, this Vegas trip was the perfect opportunity to squeeze Mike’s Hard Lemonade out of lemons. What better excuse exists to plan a road trip and stop in our favorite state to visit, the mighty Utah? None, my friends. Thus, an idea was born.
Recent health issues caused us to cancel our fall trip to the Grand Teton, Yellowstone, and Glacier national parks, so I was jonesing for a vacation. Take me back to Zion! It’s finally time to see the Fire Wave! Antelope Canyon, baby! Oh, the places we would go. Narrowing it down was Sophie’s choice, especially when we sat down and ran the numbers on how much PTO my husband had left for the year. I cued up the world’s smallest violin, then grabbed an axe and hacked off stops along the way and back until our dream trip fit our job realities.
To minimize burning through my husband’s precious PTO, he worked in the hotel room while I worked the conference during the week. On his work calls, his coworkers saw the million blinding LED lights (this is actually an understate instead of an exaggeration, if you can believe it) of The Sphere in the background. Colleagues asked what show he was going to. When he told them he had no idea, he was shamed. Shamed!
Okay, fine, he’s not a Post Malone or U2 fan. But what about dinner? Surely he was hitting the town each night after work for the culinary adventure that is Las Vegas.
Surely not, he informed them. My husband is not about to “waste” $100 on steaks.
But the gondola? You’re staying at The Venetian! You at least took your wife on a romantic, relaxing ride through the fake Italian scenery, right? RIGHT?!?!?!
Cue the instant FOMO.
Except… don’t.
By this point in the conversations, my husband’s coworkers thought he was a penny pinching miser, but here’s the thing, Natalie: we had an amazing trip. Just because we didn’t get all dressed up and didn’t pay a bunch for a super cheesy gondola ride under an artificial sky doesn’t mean we didn’t have a hell of a time.
We enjoyed the first snow of the season in the breathtaking Kolob Canyons.
We went and hiked the Fire Wave before we checked into the hotel.
We even scrambled through an old lava tube for a bit in Snow Canyon State Park.
His team ribbed him for not embracing the YOLO mindset based on their definition of entertainment, but we squeezed every penny out of our vacation sinking fund.
We were just super intentional with where we spent those funds. When we spend on wants, we like to make sure our choices align with our goals and our values. Instead of dropping $150 on a dinner in a crowded restaurant where it’s too loud to have a conversation, we booked a tour of Antelope Canyon, which was worth every penny.
This doesn’t mean it’s wrong to spend $150 on a nice dinner.
It just means that spending $150 on a nice dinner is wrong for us. Trust me, we’ve tried it. When Orlando got Michelin ratings, I made reservations for Morimoto Asia. We got dressed up and made a date night out of it. The food was great, and the drinks were good, but my husband calculated how much of our annual income the meal cost and almost upchucked it all back up. Plus, he had to eat a post-restaurant second dinner because he was still hungry. For him, the $150 dining experience wasn’t worth the price tag. So when it comes to spending in our entertainment and vacation budget, we don’t spend our money on this type of experience that doesn’t ROI for us.
To his credit, he tried to do the whole Vegas, Baby!!! thing. (Well, not the whole thing. We didn’t need to recreate The Hangover.) He splurged on some drinks Sunday while he meandered The Strip. But he threw away the vast majority of his twisted tea beer–”What did beer ever do to deserve this?!”–then dropped almost $17 on a piña colada at Minus5. The piña colada at least made up for the twisted tea fiasco (there was no making hard lemonade out of that), but even with the icebar ambiance, it wasn’t worth the price tag for him. So he spent the rest of the afternoon walking around. He does miss being able to eat the Standard American Diet (appropriately abbreviated as SAD), so he picked up some Dave’s Hot Chicken while he didn’t have to worry about my dietary concerns. And since he didn’t spend the entire vacation budget on booze, he didn’t have to worry about the price tag on the chicken.
We aren’t allergic to spending money. But wasting money? That sends my immune system into overdrive.
In towns like Las Vegas, it’s easy to leak money from every inch of your wallet. The city is socially engineered to trap you inside the windowless casinos to spend. The sun? Pffft, who needs the sun? We’ve got slots, slots, slots, slots, slots, slots, everybody! And we’ve played the slots, but again, we aren’t wired to enjoy inhaling secondhand smoke while pushing a button to instantly lose $2, so we don’t waste our money on the casino floor.
On our first Vegas, Baby! tour, we paired a trip to the Grand Canyon with a Penn & Teller show instead of gambling away the rest of our vacation sinking fund. My great-grandmother, however, loved her a good slot machine back in her day when you could actually pull a lever. (I tried this in the casino on my last visit, not realizing it was for decor only, and almost broke it off.) Since it was something that brought her a high entertainment value, she’d allow herself a certain number of coins and play those until she ran out. Her approach to Las Vegas used the same tactic us we do with an allocated fun money budget, she just had a different value proposition. And that’s okay.
At the end of the trip, the point is this: my husband and I love to travel. Or at least, I love to travel and he tolerates it to humor me. Either way, being mindful and spending our vacation budget intentionally means we get to do more vacations and more of the experiences we really value and enjoy on said trips.
Extra perk: since we save for vacations ahead of time, we don’t have to stress over how to pay for all that fun, fun, fun when the credit card bill comes. The T-Bird can stay in the driveway, because Daddy Discover Card can’t take it away. The only thing I have to stress about is unpacking and the mound of laundry I have to summit when we get home.
So instead of going to Vegas and betting it all on lucky number seven, focus on what will bring you the best memories you can cherish forever. Ignore all the FOMO noise, whether it’s from well-meaning coworkers or from the ping ping ping of the slot machines. Do you, and enjoy it.
Now excuse me, I’ve got our next vacation to plan.