How to reduce a bank balance in a few easy steps…

The last time I saw my grandmother was ten years ago. Our family spent a month in Texas at my parents’ house and my grandmother and one of her sisters joined us for a week of that time. Lego Lover was just a toddler at the time and has no recollection of it, of course. Game Fanatic does have some vague memories but even he was only six at the time. My grandmother is now 88 years old and suffers from kidney disease as a long term complication of diabetes. Her vision is extremely poor and limits her ability to do her crossword puzzles and read. Her quality of life is not very good.  I wasn’t expecting her to be alive much longer when she decided last year that she was going to stop her dialysis treatments.  The idea of going home to see her was brought up but I didn’t really know how long she’d survive without treatment. So I didn’t go and I had resigned myself to the fact I wouldn’t see her again. When the time comes, I won’t be going back for her funeral because I don’t see the point of the time and expense to see someone who has died.  As it turns out, she either didn’t stop the treatments or she changed her mind. She is still alive and reasonably well, considering her condition.

Through a rather unimportant chain of events,  the notion of going back to see her again was again raised. If I went, it wouldn’t be a family holiday and would be limited to just me, and possibly, Lego Lover. Decisions had to be made so many discussion were had and I eventually decided I would go and that Lego Lover would also go. Originally, he hadn’t been interested in going but he changed his mind. I spent the next several days making enquiries with travel agents and researching online fares. Initially my plans were to go in late July but I eventually found I could save over $1000  by going in May or June.  Qantas Airlines has a huge sale on right now and I found my best fares on their website after much playing around with various dates. This is a huge surprise because they’ve usually be significantly more costly than flying Air New Zealand (and their associate alliance). Anyway, we leave early morning on May 29th and will be back in Perth on July 1st.

So the money has just been leaving the bank account lately. The main cost is obviously the air fare to get from here to Texas. After much searching and frustration at finding air fares and a car rental for Pennsylvania, we decided we would drive instead. The potential car rental was the deal-breaker as it was going to be as much as one or more tickets in the end. So we will have a long drive (to western PA) but I figure it will be a good way to see more of the country for all of us. With stops it’s going to take over a day of driving but even if we opt to stay some place overnight, it will be a major savings from air travel.  Lego Lover needed a new US passport so we organised that last week and it arrived a couple of days ago. My Australian passport expired in January so today I spent another couple hundred to renew that and should have it in a couple of weeks. I still have to organise travel insurance for the duration, which is looking like another $200-300 or more, depending on which company we use.  There will obviously be other incidentals over the next few weeks to add to everything so far.

I’m quite looking forward to our trip but the idea of travelling with just Lego Lover is very overwhelming. I expect to be dealing with difficult situations on various occasions…mostly situations that I don’t currently anticipate. As it is, we are already dealing with more challenging behavior from him than is usual. Obviously we will get through it so the best I can do is to plan for known issues and hope for the best on those unexpected ones.