I love writing about the concept of enough. I have two posts about it if you haven’t had the chance to check them out yet. Enough, balanced with frugality, is how I try to frame my financial pans and my material worldview. For example, right now my 2003 Honda Accord with just about 200,000 miles on it is enough. I didn’t go out and buy a fancy new car when I got my first engineering job. However, if my car was always in the shop and requiring fancy repairs, any frugal benefits would be a wash. It would be better to buy a reasonably priced used car than to keep throwing away money on an inconvenience. Here’s a new story for the blog, one where my frugal nature taught me a good lesson on value.
The Plan is Hatched
In the summer of 2017, I had a great internship with an underwater tech company. It’s what inspired me to pursue ocean engineering as a career. It also paid me better than any other summer job I ever had. Part way through the summer, I realized that I had more savings than I needed to get me through the school year. I decided to save a good portion of my income and take a big trip the next summer as a graduation gift to myself. My chance to take a big international trip that I had been dreaming about for years had finally arrived. I had so many ideas for where to go, but I eventually decided to go to London and Ireland.
Frugality Going Fine
My grandparents offered to take me on a cruise as a graduation gift. I convinced them to take a cruise in the English Channel. Along with my younger sister, we started by spending a few days exploring London. We then embarked for Southampton for a four day cruise to the Normandy beaches and a port in southeastern Ireland. After the cruise, I said goodbye to my travelling companions at Heathrow Airport. For the first time, I was travelling alone.
Frugality Triumphing
I’m a huge planner, so I was ready for my brief solo travel. I knew where I was going to eat, where my hostel was, and which bus line from Dublin Airport I needed to take to get close to it. I only had one night alone before I had someone else coming to join me for the second leg of my trip. For my accommodations on that first night, I picked one of the cheapest rooms I could find. I booked a bed in a fourteen person hostel room. On the bus ride over, I thought of the interesting people I would meet there. It was evening in Dublin when I got to the city. Being summer, the sun didn’t set until well after 9 pm. So I dropped off my bags and explored the Temple Bar section of the city. I was killing it as a solo traveler and proving the haters back home wrong. Then, I headed back to the hostel room for what I thought would be a relaxing night.
Frugality Unraveling
Everything went great until the very late hours of the night, when I was continuously woken up by people coming in and out of the room. It was a Friday night in Dublin, in the section of the city where tourists like to party. Throughout the night, small groups of drunken Australians stumbled noisily into the darkened room. One individual who had clearly had three too many shots of Jameson sat on the edge of his bed and loudly groaned. He then decided to try to eat his way out of drunkenness with a bag of potato chips. After crunching his way through a few handfuls in an otherwise quiet room, he started dry heaving. He then threw up into what looked to me like his own backpack.
A group of three came bumbling into the room after 2 am. They had taken a cab to the hostel, but they had no way to pay the cabbie. They started rooting through their stuff looking for Euros. The angry cabbie was waiting outside with a fourth friend as a hostage. He was threatening to call the Garda, but they eventually worked something out with him. Needless to say I was tired and miserable. I texted me then fiancée and told her that if things didn’t get better in the next couple nights I would cancel the rest of my trip and come home.
Reason Returns by Morn
I eventually slept for a few hours. Half groggy and half refreshed, I showered early and ate the free hostel breakfast. Luckily, I had booked a different hostel for the rest of my time in Dublin. For this one, I booked a bed in a four person room. Every night in the four person room was restful and I slept through the night. The difference between the two experiences? About $5/night. That taught me an incredible lesson about enough. It’s not only having the discipline to not overspend. Sometimes it means loosening the purse strings and seeing value instead of cost.
