go to Scotland

yay! due to being hired for the summer by my school year employers, i have secured steady income from now until october, which means that i can actually afford to go to scotland. at a rate of $150 dollars saved (or, well, spent on deposits, etc) a month until then, i can afford to stay in scotland a week, then take a train down to london, stay there a few days, and fly home.

today’s payday, so i made my very first enquiry to a self-catering place. this’s the place i really want to stay, so i hope very much that it’s available during the week i want to go (and that they’ll take international money orders for deposits!). that’s this month’s goal… to put a deposit down for a place to stay in scotland.

very excited… this is actually going to happen! hurrah!

if we go, we’ll probably stay in northumberland somewhere… favorite cottages so far are in rothbury and peebles. peebles has the advantage of being only about 30 minutes out from edinburgh, whereas rothbury is about an hour.

peebles is my more favorite at the moment…

sheesh. i just want to go. i’m really not too picky.

so we’re bad at saving money, right. well, that’s not quite it; it’s more that i rarely have money that can be saved. it always needs to go to paying rent or having teeth pulled or feeding guinea pigs or whatever.

this summer i might actually make money in excess of what i need to pay expenses. if i don’t allocate that to something, it will get pissed away on a bunch of little luxuries that don’t add up to anything in the end.

so instead… i’d like to use it to go on a trip to the uk. what would be best would be going over the summer… as i wouldn’t then have the money lingering, asking to be used. but, ugh, it’s literally twice as much to go in the summer months, and for two people… that’s a lot of money.

october, however, when i’ll have a short break from school, is much cheaper. (yes, it rains. i like rain, cold, and damp. it’ll be fine.) but how do we save the money until then, being known wasters? i’ve come up with this scheme:

part the first: as soon as i’ve got the cash for it, i’ll put down a deposit for a place to stay. (looking at self-catering cottages, nearish to edinburgh, preferrably.) you don’t get deposits back if you flake out, so, hopefully this’ll make us stick to the plan.

part the second: as soon as i’ve got the cash (after the deposit placing), i’ll buy plane tickets. it offends my sensibility to give up money for plane tickets until you absolutely need to buy them… but… i’d rather spend that money earlier and have it done with than not go due to my foolishness.

from there on, it’s pretty straightforward. save the rest of the money for the stay… save money for food, etc… stay focused. whee.