Ok, don’t get your knickers in a twist. They don’t exist literally. Lemme ‘splain.
After our most recent visit/trip, we determined that in order for future visits to occur and not incur heavy use of my credit cards (lodging, food, emergencies) it would be best to start socking away money somewhere to pay for them. We’d discussed this before, but never really did anything with it. Sure, $10-20 here and there was set aside, but bills, unforeseen expenses, and good old-fashioned emergencies occurred in between and ate up the nest egg.
So this time we made a pact and I opened a new savings account at my credit union. A separate account that’s not tied to my personal ones that I pay my bills out of. It needed to be accessible to me if I had to draw funds out in a hurry (through PayPal more than likely), so I also had a debit card attached to it. Yeah, one more card to carry/keep track of.
We’re both contributing to it. Since she makes less than I do, she kicks in what she can and I double the amount on my end. That way it will build up more quickly and will be available come the time when she is going to travel here. Savings accounts draw interest on balances, so as it grows, it will add to that too.
I figure by the time of her first visit in 2024 we should have a tidy sum accumulated. And we can continue to add to it as time progresses. In the meantime, I’m paring down my credit card debt. Hopefully, by 2026, I can be debt free. At least that’s the plan.