The Time We Ran Out of Money on Vacation
Personal story time. Once my husband and I ran out of money while on vacation.
The sad tale of a baseball trip gone wrong…
This happened about 7 years ago while we were actively paying off debt. We had cut up our credit cards and were spending strictly with debit cards from our single joint checking account. Some loved ones generously gifted us tickets to a three-game baseball series at a stadium situated 4 hours from where we live. We had been living on so little that we hadn’t splurged on an event like this so long — and we were so grateful and excited for the trip!
Since our money was tight, we had planned and saved for months to afford accompanying expenses like food and gas. Before the trip, we transferred that savings into our checking account, so we were all set, and the trip was funded. High-fives all around for our conscientious planning!
But during the trip hijinx ensued, and we found ourselves in a pickle. On our first night there, our debit card started getting mysteriously declined. The first time it happened, we just paid cash and decided we’d call the bank in the morning. But the next day they were closed for the weekend. After some panicked calls and emails to the (very much closed) bank, I had the gut-wrenching realization that they had frozen our debit cards because we hadn’t sent them a travel notice. And there was nothing we could do about it until Monday. So even though we had the money to pay for the trip in our checking account, we found ourselves with no access to our funds and just $36 in cash on the second day of a three-day trip. 36 dollars to get through two days and the four-hour drive home.
On the last morning, we ransacked our hotel’s breakfast buffet, socking away apples, pastries, and dry waffles in my purse to try to sustain our energy through the day. We couldn’t spend any money at the ballgame because we had to reserve those few dollars for gas to get home. Have you ever been hungry at a sporting event, surrounded by concessions, with no money to spend? It’s brutal.
We scraped by, making it home on fumes, and the bank received an irritated phone call on Monday morning. They un-froze the account and apologized, but the damage was done. They couldn’t restore lost experiences and memories.
The whole ordeal makes for an amusing story now that it’s behind us, but it ruined the trip. The fact that we’d planned and saved and couldn’t use our own money was infuriating. And, frankly, the resulting funny story was not worth the joy that we missed because of a simple mistake.
After that experience, we never traveled more than two hours away without grabbing some cash and sending our bank a travel notice. And now that we’re debt free, we exclusively use our credit cards when we travel, paying off the balance online immediately.
In most cases, credit cards can protect us from mishaps better than our bank can, and that feeling is priceless. Purchase protection, fraud mitigation, and travel benefits are just some of the reasons we now rely on the security of credit cards for travel and for everyday expenses.
This statement comes with a hefty caveat though, because of course personal finance is personal. For some people, credit cards can be dangerous. If you see spending on credit cards as getting without paying — as in, “I won’t have to pay for this purchase because it’s on credit,” or “I’ll pay this off someday” without any semblance of a plan — that’s a giant red flag that credit cards are not an option for your current mindset.
There’s good news if that’s you though. Some mindset coaching can help you address and change those conscious or subconscious thoughts about spending. Discipline practices, budgeting tools, and creating more empowering thoughts can help you move past bad habits and into a place of financial freedom. And you, too, could have more options for purchase protections (and peace of mind on trips out of state).
Do you have experiences where your best-laid plans fell through and you found yourself in your very own pickle? Please tell me all about it! I adore hearing from you.