Karin and I try to be very careful with our money. This is partially because we don’t have that much, my current job doesn’t pay the best and Karin cannot work. But it’s also because we are focussed on our goals. We want to pay off our mortgage as quickly as possible, get me through school ASAP, and work on our long term goal of buying property in Mexico. The sooner I can get through school, the sooner I can earn significantly more and we’ll be able to focus on achieving our other goals. Towards this, we make certain sacrifices.
Sacrifices might not be the best word, prioritizing might be better. Everyone prioritizes, but we are a bit more focussed in this regard. When we enjoy a day in Vancouver, there is a lot of window shopping involved, walks in parks or the beach, our dining choice is carefully considered, and we drive home even when hotels offer tempting “BC residents only” winter specials that would then let us enjoy ourselves more.
Our lives are a little more simple than most, even though they are following budgets also. We don’t have cell phones. We survive with one aging car. Our computers are our main source of entertainment, but are almost 6 years old. Yes, we’ll be forced to move forward on most of these items soon, but we delay that much further than most.
One of our big passions is travel, and we have fallen in love with Playa del Carmen, Mexico. We have met a number of people who travel to Playa through the internet, and notice that a lot of them who love the area as much as us will travel there 4 or 5 times a year. They state that if they could afford it, they would buy a vacation home there. We limit ourselves, and made a long term goal of returning for our fifth anniversary this year, with our last visiting being for our honeymoon. We also don’t go precisely on our wedding date, but rather a few months later when the weather is perfect, but the rates are still low season. By booking cheap flights, not pre-booking a hotel room but instead letting the seasonally empty hotels fight for our business once we are there, and researching fabulous restaurants that are a few blocks of the tourist street and priced for the locals; we can go for a fraction of the cost most pay, but still we limit ourselves on frequency. However, this is what we hope will allow us to one day buy that vacation home of which others dream.
So how does this all link into today, St. Valentine’s Day? Well, first, we are not going out for dinner today, I am not giving her $100 roses, and diamonds are definitely not on the list. But unlike others who shun Valentine’s due to its commercialism, we still will acknowledge this day. We do not need expensive gifts to show our love, but we can still say “I love you” today.
But most importantly, ignoring today’s commercialism together just stresses why we are so happy together. We have the same interests, similar tastes, and we share the same goals in life. If this wasn’t true, one of us would likely be upset that we aren’t doing more today. But because we complement each other so well, we are happy just being together today, knowing that we are that much closer to our goals. Someday, the two of us will be celebrating the success that today’s prioritizing has produced as we sit in our little Mexico hideaway, exchange local trinkets we picked up while out for dinner on Fifth Ave, and saying “Feliz Día de San Valentín”.
Update: 5:27pm Karin just messaged me to say “If you plan of buying flowers, do it tomorrow when they are half price. It will save money for Playa”. And that’s why she’s my Valentine.
