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Syndicated | Kasasa
Let’s be real: attending other people’s weddings can get pricey quick. The worst part is that it usually comes in waves. I remember a few years back wondering why I hadn’t gotten any invitations yet. Low and behold, this year I received three for the same month. Be careful what you wish for.
This week we’re featuring two bloggers who tackle this adulthood struggle in their own ways.
First up is Erin Lowry, otherwise known as the Broke Millennial. Her blog is jam-packed with real-talk about handling money as a “Millennial,” and her work has been featured on Forbes and Kiplinger.
The Price Tag of Attending Other People’s Weddings
“Hey – guess who got engaged today,” Peach asked.
My stomach dropped. Our combined dance card felt dangerously full already with seven weddings populating our calendars from May to November.
“Who?” I choked out.
Peach smirked, clearly messing with me.
“Not nice,” I retorted, while wishing I could cradle my travel savings account and whisper in soothing tones, “I won’t totally deplete you.”
Lately, weddings seem to dominate both conversations and my bank account. The onslaught started about four years ago when I’d just hit 23. That’s not to say I’d been wedding free for the first 23 years of my life, but I didn’t have to pick up the tab as card-carrying member of the Bank of Mom and Dad.
Planning for the inevitable
Suddenly, entering my mid-twenties ushered me into a phase of life in which everyone around me seemed ready to get legally yoked to another human being. I was also a big girl with big girl paychecks – not to be confused with big paychecks – who no longer had an active account at the Bank of Mom and Dad.
After a year of five wedding invitations, and no end in sight, I decided it was time to stop trying to squeeze variable line item into my budget and instead give “Other People’s Weddings” its own savings account. It’s part of the reason I routinely joke that I’m saving for a wedding, just not my own.
Previously, the “Other People’s Weddings” fund served as my travel savings account, but considering most of my vacation had been co-opted by true love, the logic followed to just transition the account too.
The account gets funded by 25% of each freelance paycheck I earn. To clarify, that means I’m exclusively using side hustle money to pay for travel and focus my daytime job salary on other financial goals. Part of the reason I freelance is to subsidize non-essentials (in the sense of survival) like travel. I aim to have $2,000 to $4,000 available at any given time (depending on how many flights, hotels, presents and bachelorette parties I’ve recently attended).
On a few occasions, Peach and I have leveraged a wedding destination into … (continue reading Help! My mailbox is filled with wedding invites, and I’m trying to budget)
