The Story of Our Financial Blip

My blogging style if I could call it that, is to share my story, what I do, what I wish I might have done differently, and elicit feedback and conversation. Please note in my postings and even when I comment back, I'm mostly referencing myself and how I approach things. Feel free to judge me and be as awesome as you want to be in giving feedback and joining in the conversation. Just note that while my word choice or the order of how I respond to comment in the interest of brevity, might not be clear or could be taken out of context, I'm not placing judgment back at anyone. That being said, my next story might give me a lot of negative push back on self and family indulgence, vanity, or just plain stupidity, but this is how the financial blip manifested. 

I was too eager, too aggressive in booking our initial airline tickets for our trip. I saw the weeks free on my work calendar, checked with DH and the adult kids, and away I went. I found the Air BNB and have blissfully been planning away, looking at options left right and center of Paris, adding in side trips to Belgium and Germany along the way. I saw the super low air fare as a sign this trip was meant to be-I needed to act. 

We knew DD2 was going to audition for a an all state choir. I didn't know, nothing  was shared about what happens if the kids is selected, other than they are part of a two day workshop and then sing as the finale to a state music educators conference next February. All the details though, are on the state choir website if I had bothered to research. We learned through one of her college visits when she met with the music program director that the All State required week long camp was the same week as the first week of our planned trip.  DD2 wasn't too worried-it is very hard for girls to get into the choir because of the large numbers auditioning in the state, and she did not feel she had a strong audition. No school can have more than six students selected, and many years her school has had only two or three, and until last year when one girl was selected, they haven't had a girl make the choir for many years. 

Have you ever been in the position of hoping the best for someone, but knowing if they succeed, a whole lot of mess was going to spiral out of it? You've probably figured where I am heading, but DD2 was selected for the choir. On top of that, she was the only girl from her school to be selected. Because this is a state audition process, to forfeit her  place in the choir would not mean a slot for another student from her school, so not accepting her slot would not go over well, and she would essentially be cutting a lot of opportunities for herself her senior year of high school. Sure, the school directors should have been much more communicative about the week long camp as a possibility. Who knows, they maybe did say something to the kids, but those are details that would  have been great to have in writing. We would have planned around the week from the beginning. 

This left us with the dilemma of figuring out how to reconstruct the trip to accommodate her schedule. There are change fees with the airline of, gulp $275 a ticket, plus the price difference, accommodations to  cancel and reschedule, and an itinerary plan to start over. We also have the cost of the week long camp itself. All together, we estimate a $3,600 swing in expenses. Scheduling is going to be tight as the camp runs right up to the day before our new departure date, so a fast pick-up, unpack, laundry, repack will be required. Fortunately, her camp is at a college within forty minutes of us as opposed to last years being in a college four hours away. 

A bright spot though, this all state placement  is an automatic $4,000 a year scholarship at several of the schools she is considering. She just got a part time job and starts training today, as a hostess, food runner and table busser at a hip restaurant downtown on the river, plus a few steady babysitting gigs lined up. With earned and gifted money, she's contributing to the cost of the camp and incidentals for the trip. 

I couldn't be prouder of her for this accomplishment. I'm just as proud that she recognizes what this change has meant financially and making new choices on how she will use her own money and a plan to contribute more. It might also nudge her in a specific college direction, knowing others have heard her talent and it is not just all mom and dad talk when we say how good her singing is. I'm sure there is a lot of eye rolling at our situation-I would be rolling my eyes too if I wasn't front and center. We're making it work. OK, let the comments commence.