Thanksgiving Miscalculation

This Thanksgiving, we traveled to my in-laws house in Delaware. We drove down this morning, missing most of the traffic and arrived early this afternoon. In all the planning and preparation for the trip between packing for the trip and working extra hours to make up for the time off, I forgot something important. I forgot to budget for the extra expenses.

When I was planning for our journey, I concentrated on what I needed to do before we left: pay bills, buy another cat carrier, pack. I was excited that we wouldn't need to buy groceries for this week since we had some left over from last week and we'll be eating here all weekend. I didn't budget for the extra gas needed or travel expenses.

This doesn't sound like much, but consider this: the drive from our house to their house is 7 hours long. That is about a tank and a half of gas. With the recent rise in gas prices, the trip down cost us about $60 in fuel alone. Granted, we didn't think ahead enough to buy gas before we left at 4am, so we ended up at an expensive gas station right off the highway. Hopefully the trip back will be a little less expensive.

I know that our budget can handle this alteration, but it will put us over the normal gas budget for the month. I feel pretty dumb for completely overlooking this aspect of our trip. I was just so excited to finally have a few days off that I put the blinders on. Of course, it wouldn't make any difference on whether we would make the trip or not. In the future, we will just plan for it a little better.