In a prior post, I did what about a million other bloggers have done better than me and discussed travel hacking and some of the ways it’s saved us. I also briefly mentioned a story about how we took a mostly subsidized trip instead of throwing a big shindig. Having threatened promised to give more details, I am now delivering. You can thank me later.
Mel Brooks once remarked “I’m not very religious, but I’m very Jewish.” That’s me. To a T. And although I was born into the faith, I wouldn’t take the least offense if someone accused me of really being in it for the jokes. And the corned beef. And the matzo balls. But The Missus? She’s hard core. So there was never any question that Thing One, The Elder and Thing Two, The Younger, would become bat/bar mitzvahs.
These events, I discovered, do not come without costs. First, there’s the mandatory tutoring for the kid. Then there’s various payments to the temple and staff for things associated with the bar/bat mitzvah weekend. The net result is a few hundred bucks. Not what I’d call a pittance, but, fortunately for us, manageable.
Hava nagila. And then another. And another.
Many in the social circles we swim in, however, spend more. Much, much . . . much more. This includes expenses for: (1) food for Friday night, Saturday afternoon and/or Sunday morning meals/get-togethers; and (2) a Saturday night party.
The Saturday night party often is the biggest ticket item. And they have gotten waaaaayyyy out of hand, IMHO, both in terms of cost and how obnoxious they are. Frankly, I dislike going to most of them because of how over-the-top they often are. It’s not uncommon for the whole weekend to cost the parents $30,000–$50,000. Others spend well into the six figures on the weekend’s events. By any measure, that ain’t chump change.
So I’d long been girding myself for the weekends when we’d be on the hook. After discovering FIRE, I began thinking of how we could hack them. Then I had a chance encounter with a friend of a friend. On the subject of bar/bat mitzvah weekends/parties, he said that he was foregoing a Saturday night party for his child (whose bar mitzvah was approaching) and instead they were taking a family trip.
Bingo! What a great idea. I’d already discovered travel hacking, so I was figuring we could do a trip for a relatively reasonable amount. And I’d plan for it to replace our annual family trip, so any expenses would be those we’d likely have spent anyway.
Straight Trippin’
I floated the idea of the trip-instead-of-party to Thing One, The Elder. She was intrigued. Egggcellent. Then it dawned on me. She’d long wanted to go to New York City. And New York City is pretty much the epicenter of America’s Jewish community. So there’s lotsa’ Jewish stuff there, and The Missus and I love the place. So why not propose that the trip be to New York City, where we could have part of the trip be educational — from an American, Jewish, and American-Jewish angle. Thing One, The Elder’s eyes lit up just a bit more, and I could sense that she was likely on board. She later said “yes.”
In learning about travel hacking, I’d read about Marriott’s hotel + air packages. These allowed for someone with enough Marriott points to pick one of many packages that included a seven-night hotel stay and to also a certain amount of points on one of several airlines. The best hotel + air package was the one that included Southwest Airlines. For a certain number of Marriott points, you could get the seven free nights, plus enough Southwest points to qualify for the airline’s companion pass, which allows the holder to have a designated companion travel with him or her essentially for free.
Hacking my plan
And so I devised a plan to travel hack the New York City trip by way of the hotel + air (Southwest) package. Short story so, so, . . . so very long Long story short, I got the package (note that these hotel + air deals have since changed and no longer are such a good deal).
Between the hotel, points, and companion pass I ultimately acquired, the cost of the flights, hotel in Lower Manhattan amounted to less than $100. I also made sure our hotel was a Residence Inn. This allowed us to take advantage of free breakfasts (and it may or may not be true that some food from the breakfast buffet ended up in our backpacks and was eaten for lunch and snacks) and to have a kitchen, so we could prepare some meals in the hotel instead of eating out.
From a monetary standpoint, we did very well. We also executed on the idea history lesson element of the trip, so I know the kids learned some things.
But, Dear Reader, the most gratifying result of our taking a somewhat contrarian approach was that Thing One, The Elder not only was happy she chose the trip over the party, but told me that she found the trip very meaningful (and much more meaningful than she’d have found some blow-out party) and something she’d remember forever. That’s a benefit beyond measure.
We’ve since discussed the trip vs. party idea with Thing Two, The Younger. He’s all in. Bless his heart. And so, we will ransack the City of Brotherly Love there is a trip to Philadelphia planned for 2020.
Maybe we missed out on some redeeming feature of the party, like singing and dancing. Nah.
