The Downside To Being Grown-Up

Hubby the Great and I have been trying our best lately to conduct ourselves like adults now that we have big-time financial responsibilities. But acting like a fiscally-responsible adult can suck sometimes. Now is one of those times.

We have just RSVP’d to a wedding invitation and the answer we submitted was not the one we wanted. The couple getting married are dear friends of ours. We so very badly want to go and share in their happy day. However, the nuptials are in Calgary and when all was said and done, the trip would’ve cost us more than we could shell out at the moment.

At first, Hubby the Great and I didn’t even consider the cost, merrily planning our trip from Ottawa to Calgary and thinking about where we would stay, who we would visit etc. etc. We knew airfares were going to be outrageous but we also knew they are a sad fact of life for us when we live here and all our family lives two and three time zones away. We have become almost numb over the cost of flights and begrudgingly pay the loan shark-like fares, so the aeronautical portion of our trip didn’t initially dissuade us from going to the wedding.

Then we started calculating the other costs: the hotel, the rental car, and three meals a day in restaurants. Our trip to Calgary was starting to look A LOT more expensive. And while it killed us to send our regrets, Hubby the Great and I knew it wouldn’t be financially prudent (yes, we are grown up when we start using words like prudent) to go.

We are still paying down credit cards and paying off a vehicle loan. And within the last year we have added a mortgage and a new baby, both of which have managed to keep our bank account at a can’t-fly-to-Calgary-for-the-weekend level. We knew, intellectually, that there wouldn’t be as much money to go around after we started a family but to put it into practice is something we are just now coming to terms with.

And seeing The Wee Man gleefully smush and contort his face up against the mesh of his playpen while we ate dinner last night told us that we better start saving for his Ivy League education now!