September was a month of planning. Back in August when Vay fulfilled her probation period at work and was subsequently confirmed, we had a discussion about finances and future plans. We talked about how we would divide the household expenditures between ourselves; while at the same time have enough to save. We not only came up with a plan to save for a rainy day, but we also came up with the idea of having a ‘travel fund’.
Apart from shouldering the household expenditures and having enough $$ to spend monthly, we decided that a portion of our salaries would be saved for anything major etc and another smaller portion would be put into our ‘travel fund’. The idea is to build the ‘travel fund’ and at the end of every year or two years (depending on how much we have saved), the money would then fund our year-end trips.
So as said in the beginning, September was a month of planning. Although we have yet to start our ‘travel fund’, we decided that we would treat ourselves to a holiday this year. And thus, the planning began.
First on Vay’s list of places to visit is Singapore, having last been there when she was 4 or 5. Besides the “need” to re-visit Singapore, there’s also the added incentive of our second parents and beloved great-grand-uncle living there. They’ve always asked us to go down south for a holiday and I went myself back in 2010. Now it’s Vay’s turn.
After deciding that Deepavali would be the best time to travel (Vay and I plan to take a week off), we researched for the best travel options: bus, train or plane. Thanks to the internet (I really don’t know how life without Google would be), we found that we had two options: save money, take the bus and waste 20 hours travelling or pay more, fly and save the hours.
Days and weeks were spent thinking about this. And finally, we decided that it was not worth it to waste 20 hours just travelling and spending only 2 nights in Singapore. We chose to fly and thanks to Air Asia, we managed to get not-too-expensive flights!
However, before we could move forward, Vay and I had to get out passports done. Vay hasn’t had a new one since she was a toddler and mine expires early next year. But getting the passports done was easy. Within hours we had our passports!
The next hurdle came when it was time to purchase the tickets. My friend had agreed to buy the tickets for me online. Sadly, she was hospitalized (nothing serious thank God) and as days passed, the cost of the ticket increased much to our dismay!!!
Then our second mum came to the rescue! She offered to buy the tickets for us first before the price went up again. Much to our surprise and delight, our second parents decided to pay for the tickets for us as a Deepavali and Xmas gift! Woohoo!!!
And so now, with our passports and flight tickets ready, Vay and I just can’t wait for November to come. Nevertheless, being the slight OCD that I am, I still need to come up with a budget plan so that we can estimate how much we’re going to spend and how much $$ we need to bring. Since our tickets are already paid for, the bulk of the expenditure would be paying for USS. But heck, it’s not everyday we get to go to USS and it’s a MUST GO place!
Can’t wait for November!!!!!!!!
