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St. Thomas and Weekly Update

Last Updated: BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 41 Comments

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St. Thomas and Weekly Update

This is a Pinterest Fail of mine from last year.

Hey everyone! I hope all of you had a great weekend. And, I hope all of you have a fun holiday week.

We still haven’t done much holiday shopping yet. Luckily we aren’t celebrating Christmas with W’s family until the 28th, or we would be in trouble. We have many presents left to buy still. We also don’t even have a single present under the tree because we have been lazy.

How much have you spent on the holidays so far? How much do you usually spend on presents? Share in the comments below!

The day after we got back from our trip, W went up to the classic car place and signed the truck title over. It is officially sold.

The dealership told us that a young couple just like us bought the truck, so I at least have faith in the new owner. I am still sad to see it gone though!

We were able to profit off the truck though and put some money in the bank, so that was nice. Also, now we have one less car to worry about having to fix.

 

St. Thomas and Weekly Update St. Thomas and Weekly UpdateSt. Thomas and Weekly Update

St. Thomas, December of 2013

We were in St. Thomas last week. We were there from Sunday and arrived home late on Thursday. I’m sad to say that it wasn’t the greatest trip. W had some sort of stomach bug the entire time. And right in the middle of the trip I was attacked by sand fleas and received over 200 bites.

I wish I was joking when I said 200, but I am not.

We were both stuck in the room for most of the trip!

It was definitely a cheap trip though. We spent around $500 altogether for the whole trip. That includes the taxis, food, airfare, room charges, and so on.

 

Spending

We haven’t done much spending, but that will change this week. We need to buy some presents and will probably spend a few hundred dollars on those.

 

Business Income:

Self-employment is still going well. I do think that the next 1.5 to 2 weeks will be fairly slow because of the holidays. However, that is fine by me! I have many things that I need to catch up on and if everyone is on a little break then that usually means that I can catch up.

If anyone needs any help, check out my Hire Me page and let me know what services you are interested in. Lately, a few other website owners have asked me to help run their website while they are gone for just a month or two, so this is a new service that I am also offering. If you are starting a new job, about to have a baby, want to do some long-term travel or something else, please let me know.

 

Posts from Making Sense of Cents:

  1. We have $200,000 in Student Loan Debt – I received a question from a reader the other day and decided to share it with you all. This reader along with her significant other have $200,000 in student loan debt, and they feel stuck. She decided to start a blog as well, and has replied to most of the comments. Thank you to everyone for being so helpful!
  2. Our Travel Plans For 2014 – We have a good amount of traveling in store for 2014. We haven’t really finalized much, but we plan on doing that soon.
  3. Our Truck Sold and Weekly Update – This is my usual weekly update. The main story of that post? WE FINALLY HAD CARPET INSTALLED 🙂
  4. Keeping the Kids Active on a Budget – This is an article from Jefferson at See Debt Run. Enjoy!

 

Being healthy

Being healthy was non-existent last week. I keep going back and forth between having great weeks and bad weeks. I will change that this week!

 

Wedding Planning

We are still doing well with wedding planning. We are in the process of finalizing the invitations. I am still looking for the perfect Mad Libs RSVPs for the invitations though. Have any of you ever used Mad Libs for your RSVPs?

We did have a little problem with our Save the Dates. We used magnetic Save the Dates, and USPS didn’t separate all of them so some guests received more than one Save the Date (the ones were just stuck and the postage was not even canceled out on these, so hopefully all of the guests just put it back in the mail). It was a little frustrating because we have had a few people joke about being uninvited. AH! I’m not even sure how many people this happened to.

I am also in the process of finalizing the contract for the hair and makeup for myself and the bridal party as well. I plan on gifting either hair or makeup. It will be around $100 per girl, and probably around $200 for myself. Definitely a lot of money! How much have you spent on hair and makeup at a wedding before? Also, if you have been in a wedding, would you prefer to have hair/makeup paid for, or would you rather receive actual wedding gifts from the bride?

We still haven’t finalized any contracts for wedding rentals or food yet. We plan on doing that within the next week though. These are things that we really need to do.

 

Have you been doing well with your extra income, spending and being healthy?

What are your plans for the holidays?

 

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About Michelle Schroeder-Gardner

Michelle is the founder of Making Sense of Cents, a blog about personal finance and traveling. She discusses how her business has evolved in her side income series. She paid off $40,000 in student loans by the age of 24 mainly due to her freelancing side hustles. Click here to learn more about starting a blog!

Comments

  2. Charles@gettingarichlife says

    Finances are great this year but I’m battling really bad sciatic back pain that has made this a tough Christmas. Once I get over this I will never take my health for granted again. Happy Holidays Michelle to you and your family.

    Reply

  3. Dee @ Color Me Frugal says

    We’re not traveling this year and we’ve managed to talk some family and friends into not giving gifts this year, so Christmas is going to be a little bit cheaper for us than usual- maybe $500 total cuz hubby and I like to get each other nice gifts. I’m soooo sorry to hear about the stomach bug and sand fleas!! What a huge bummer!!

    Reply

  4. DC @ Young Adult Money says

    Oh my gosh 200 bites! I’m so sorry to hear that. On our honeymoon we were warned about them but they didn’t show up until the very last night thankfully. Sorry to hear you were stuck in the room, but St. Thomas still sounds amazing and hope it was a fun trip otherwise.

    Reply

  5. Liz says

    Wow those sand fleas sound awful. We will be spending the holidays with my parents and sister. We all live within a few miles of each other so it should be a nice, low-key holiday.

    Reply

  6. Mrs. Pop @ Planting Our Pennies says

    Oooh, so sorry! Noseeums can be awful, and I tend to be the one that gets bitten, too!

    I think we’re postponing most of Christmas until after the new year since we’re both still working and trying to get through the rest of the year. And yes, the only gifts we’ve purchased so far are for Kitty PoP and my in-laws’ cat.

    Reply

  7. MMD says

    How in the world did this trip only cost $500? That’s incredible! I like the lizard on your plate. I’m sure that wasn’t funny at the time, but it’s cute now. Sorry to hear about getting bit by sand fleas. My son once stepped on the wrong part of a sand hill and got bit by hundreds of ants. He was okay, but it really spooked him.

    Reply

  8. Laurie @thefrugalfarmer says

    So sorry to hear that the trip was less than awesome, Michelle. 🙁 Hope you’re both feeling much better. We’ve been focusing on staying on budget for Christmas shopping, and staying on calorie budget with all of these sweet treats around. So far, so good. 🙂

    Reply

  9. John S @ Frugal Rules says

    Ouch! Sorry about all the bites, especially while you were somewhere like St. Thomas. At least it was an affordable trip I guess. 🙂 We don’t have big plans for the Holidays since we’ll be traveling next month. We’ll be taking a few days off but have a lot of client work to look forward to which I was sort of surprised at being the end of the year, but I’ll happily take it. 🙂

    Reply

  10. Brian @ Luke1428 says

    Sorry to hear about your trip. The islands are such a beautiful place to visit and it’s no fun when you are feeling under the weather.

    We caught quite a break with our Christmas spending this year. Through our various jobs we received around $300 worth of gift cards as bonuses. That went a long way in helping our Christmas spending budget.

    Reply

  12. Raquel@Practical Cents says

    That’s too bad about the bug bites and the stomach bug. But at least you didn’t spend too much on the trip. We didn’t have too many gifts to buy this year. We’ll have a quiet Xmas at home with my father-in-law. Have a great holiday!

    Reply

  13. Holly@ClubThrifty says

    I got the worst sand flea bites in Mexico this year. My legs looked awful! I can relate, Michelle. They are so itchy that I can see how they could ruin your vacation. Mine didn’t really start itching until after I got home.

    Reply

  14. Lena says

    Ugh, I’m so sorry about the bug bites!! That’s no fun, especially on vacation.

    Our Xmas budget was $500, and I will have about $10 to spare after we mail one very late package today 🙂

    Reply

  17. Renee s says

    Sorry to hear about your trip!

    I have been in a lot of weddings and I would say that having the bride pay for getting my hair done would have been AMAZING. I feel like most girls would prefer to do their own make up, for the most part. Having hair be professionally done so that a bridesmaid doesn’t have to worry about it all day/night would be a great gift though. I also think that a bridesmaid gift is nice. When I have been a bridesmaid, the bride bought her bridal party earrings that were to be worn during the wedding. That was a great gift 🙂

    Reply

  18. Connie @ Savvy With Saving says

    I’m sorry to hear about your trip! That does not sound like fun.
    I’m spending Xmas with my family and since they are all in the area, I don’t have to travel…which is great on the wallet! 🙂

    Reply

  19. Krista says

    I always think bridesmaids gifts that help make being involved more affordable are ideal. My husbands been in about 7 weddings and we are always thrilled when their gift is the tuxedo rental. Just makes it a little less stressful.

    Reply

  21. Michelle S. says

    I’m not looking for something uniform exactly, I just want them to look nice 🙂 They all get to choose their own dress (I don’t care if they choose a $15 dress or a $150 dress), so my wedding is fairly cheap for them.

    Reply

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