eye on the prize

living in central europe working as an english teacher, you can get by pretty well. i know you read a lot about the wages of ESL teachers in europe being basically enough to just slide by on, but that’s not necessarily true. sure, if we’re talking u.s. dollars, we are totally below the poverty line. however, if we’re talking about the average wages in the czech republic, we are doing pretty well! salary vs. cost of living results favorably. i have talked at length about how it’s possible that we travel a lot on a teacher’s salary.

even so, when we live a life in which we should, for all intents and purposes, be able to not think twice about going out to the movies or going out to eat, we do. and not only in the “season of poor” (ie, when we return from our big summer trip) either. last year, we had big plans to go to the united states, so there wasn’t a time that we weren’t scrimping and saving.

and welp, i guess we’ve done it again, because we recently plunked down for airline tickets to…

with a couple night stop-over in oslo. for a month! one of the more expensive countries in europe. i think we can do it (well, we’re doing it no matter what now, so let’s just think positively, hah!). but it’s going to require some real, united states trip level saving.

of course, if it wasn’t worth it to me, i wouldn’t do it. but sometimes when we decide to stay at home some weekends versus go out (to lunch, for coffee, to a movie, etc) just to save money, i start thinking: is this the right way to be? at only a couple months away from the big 3-0, it would be nice to start feeling like we’re not in the “red alert zone” in regards to our bank account. like i could have a nice, luxurious milestone birthday weekend away instead of the much simpler one that i know i’m probably going to have to plan. you start to feel a bit silly about it all sometimes.

but this major trip? this year, it just makes sense. last autumn, we pre-paid for two years of health insurance because of a killer deal (which we normally do once a year), so we won’t have to worry about that huge extra cost right after the trip this time. also, we’re planning on work-staying again… a slow-travel style that i miss dearly and think about constantly as some of the best experiences of my life. we are still independent, mobile, and “un-childrened” as well as living in europe. it seems like there’s no better time to do it.

so scrimp we will. eye on the prize.

how do you balance your trips vs. little luxuries in your day-to-day life? i’d love to hear your thoughts. for better or worse, i can only report that my eyes are sometimes bigger than my wallet.

this post is part of travel tuesday.