Buyer's remorse

I'm having a severe case of buyer's remorse. Have been feeling guilty and thinking it was a really bad idea for over 6 hours now and there's no chance of this letting up any time soon, at least until I eventually fall asleep. But I'm worried the remorse, the guilt will return as soon as I awake later today.

We booked our hotel in Cleveland earlier. Which is all good and fine, Spring Break is now taken care of. We're driving out there since it's not really that far from Chicago. Plus we're only staying 3 days, so the total of that trip really isn't going to be much. I did splurged a little on the hotel and we're staying at a Sheraton instead of a cheaper hotel. After staying at the local Sheraton hotel for the kiddie's b-day party, I couldn't resist the chance to sleep in those damn comfy beds they have again. Besides, with the deal I negotiated, we're only paying an extra $15 a night over what the cheapy hotels were charging.

But after booking that trip, I went ahead and bought the tickets to The Bamboozle festival in Jersey AND booked our flight & hotel. That's what I feel guilty about. I don't think I should be spending that kind of money...for a concert?!?!? It's different when we to go Wisconsin or Indiana for concerts cuz both of those are only a few hours away. Without being slowed by traffic or road construction, we can make it to Milwaukee in an hour & a half, so we typically don't even spend the night up there. But this, this is a whole new level of musical insanity!

The concert tickets themselves were $35 each cuz there's so many bands playing (48 so far, though there will be several stages so we won't see them all). But after that evil monopoly known as Ticketmaster got finished adding all their extra "fees" the total came to just over $92.

The travel package was $550; and again, we're staying at a Sheraton but only because the next cheaper package was only $20 lower & the hotel really sucked. When you consider that price includes round trip airline tickets for two people (and we get to fly out of O'hare which is closer to our house but always more expensive than flying out of Midway) plus the hotel for 3 nights, it really doesn't seem like a lot. But all I see is that we've just spent $642 to fly half way across the country for a concert!

We decided to fly in on the Friday morning before the show since the kiddie is off school that day. We arrive in Jersey at 11 am, so we thought we'd check into the hotel, hop on the train and spend the rest of Friday in NYC since Manhattan is only about 15 miles from our hotel. We're not going to the festival on Saturday cuz there aren't really too many bands we want to see playing that day, so we figured we'd spend all of Saturday in NYC as well. Sunday we'll be at the show all day and then Monday we return home by 3 pm.

I should be excited about this, especially since we're not going to be able to take a vacation at all this summer with the kiddie going to summer school and with other stuff going on. But yet I can't help thinking I should be saving this money. Saving it to pay for the bankruptcy court fees. Saving it for however much a divorce is going to cost me. Saving it towards getting a place of our own. Just saving it for anything rather than spending it.

We didn't spend much money last month, so I had enough left over to cover what I've paid out so far for both trips without dipping into either my savings or this month's disability payments. I know that's a good thing. I'm not going into debt or getting behind on my bills just to travel. If we keep our spending down again this month, even with paying for the additional expenses associated with the trip to Cleveland, we should have a few hundred dollars left over that I can put into my savings. Should be able to save even more in April.

But there's that nagging, guilty voice saying I'd have $642 more in my savings right now if I hadn't foolishly spent it on a trip to Jersey. A voice that just won't shut the hell up and let me be happy & excited about something, something I think I deserve.