Ok so yes, I had a plan to pay off my car by Christmas but I totally blew it. The
Disney cruise to Norway that I booked last year and later cancelled to "behave" has dropped in price. Now it's $2000 cheaper than what we had booked last summer, and that was even with the onboard booking discount, so I booked again. I still have the $10k that I saved for it. I feel guilty to pull it out of our Vanguard now as that account is doing amazingly well. I had to pull out around $2k for IRS at tax time (which was a shocker to owe instead of getting a refund) but it has already exceeded the balance it was before I pulled the $2k out. (The $10k is only part of it.) Maybe I'll find a 0% balance transfer deal instead.
I managed to find $700 RT flights to London and since our kids are not children anymore and both working full time, we told them we'd pay the rest if they pay for flights. Of course it's easy to say yes when Mommy & Daddy offer a free trip to Europe but how bad do ya really want to go? Enough to pony up the $700? Yes! Ds22 would do anything to be able to go. So we're all set to sail Sept 1 from Dover. Now it's a mad scramble to re-research the ports and what to do. It's been a year+ since I looked at all of this stuff.
Maybe it's just emotional spending since losing my mom but more than ever I feel like it's so important to make happy memories with the ones we love. I have zero regrets over the trips we took with my parents over the years. Such a happy time of our lives.