I’m back after five restful days in Mexico with my husband. We’d never been and learned a few things on our trip.

#1: Eating fresh fish that is caught the day of is much more delicious that buying bulk flash frozen salmon fillets at Costco– more expensive, but you can’t put a price on the best prawns ever, can you?

#2: That reading about fictional families struggling to make ends meet or a memoir recounting old struggles (I read The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates and The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls) is far more enjoyable than writing stories about ill-advised stimulus packages and growing consumer defaults. But now that I’m back, I’m ready to dig into these important topics again.

#3: That if you plan to make phone calls overseas, buy a calling card or a cell phone SIM card that works in your destination. We spent $80 to use our cell phone, mostly because we were dumb enough to lose our rental car key (temporarily) and because I was dumb enough to leave my credit cards at our first cabana. Earth to McGuires?!

#4: Don’t hide your credit cards under the giant vase in your room because you are paranoid that they will be stolen while you swim in a cenote. And then leave them there. At least I left them in a place where credit cards pretty much aren’t used. But really, Kara! And this was a decision made without the influence of tequila.

#5: There is something refreshing about taking a break from using credit and spending cash. Since we budgeted beforehand, I was already comfortable with the amount we were going to spend and I liked getting back and seeing only a handful of transactions. That way I can remember the delicious food and fun evening shopping, not every penny we spent on Mexican wrestling masks (see below).

#6: Haggle. I was told a necklace was $250 and got him down to $125 with relative ease. Unfortunately, that was still too much for this cheapskate to pay…and his willingness to go down to that amount made me question whether it was still far overpriced. It’s like Kohls. Never buy full price because full price is 50 percent off (at least that’s my estimation).

Thanks a million to my pal Tom Lee for manning el bloggo for the week. My email is chock full of tidbits for me to share with you on everything from saving to micro-lending, so check back soon.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 6:39 pm and is filed under Kara\'s finances. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.