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Lessons I Learned in New York City

My pleasure trip to New York City quickly turned into a series of micro-lessons of personal finance. Months ago, when I started thinking about my personal financial health, it quickly became nearly impossible not to relate everything to personal finances. This continued during my stay in New York. Here are some of the lessons that I have written about in this blog that were supported during my trip to NYC:

Plan A Budget–and Stick to It! Sometimes it can be difficult to stick to a monthly budget because those thirty days seem like an insurmountable amount of time to stick to a spending plan. This trip offered an invaluable lesson in budgeting. By planning a budget for a limited amount of time, not only was I more likely to adhere to the limits set forth in the budget, but in most cases I under spent my allotted amount by 20% to 40%. Now, in addition to a “macro” budget that will address my monthly spending, I will try to develop 4 week-long “micro” budgets. By breaking down my budget even further, I hope to become even more aggressive with my controlling my spending, eliminating debt, and increasing the amount I save.

Try to Pay with Cash Granted, I still use my credit card on a limited basis. Plane, hotel, and rental car reservations require them and I don’t mind putting such large amounts onto my credit cards because now I know I have enough cash to pay them off. However, with other expenses on the trip I have vowed to retire my credit card and will only use cash/debit card. Unless you pay off your credit card at the end of the month–which many Americans do NOT do–it is not financially smart to put drinks or dinners on a credit card. Those $80 dinners turn into thousands of dollars down the road.

Scourge the Urge To Spend If you get the urge to make an impulse purchase when you’re traveling, set it aside. Sleep on it overnight. Chances are, as time goes on, your desire to spend money on said object/event/purchase will have decreased significantly. It may have disappeared entirely. Although, this is easy for me since I am not one to spend my vacation time shopping. I know there are others out there who wouldn’t think of making a trip to NYC without spending a good amount of time in the high end boutiques.

I was surprised that a trip to New York would end up highlighting some of my basic tenets of personal finance. Let’s be honest–it could have very easily have gone the other way and ended up causing me to get into debt all over again!