Unplanned Date Night

Today was the first day in about 3 weeks in which Rachel felt like herself again. She's had a virus upon secondary virus upon tertiary infection (not sure if that's even close to the medical terms, but bottom line she's had a very rough few weeks). This morning, we went to the mall and did some window shopping. The main reason for the trip was to get the kids out of the house and give them some time running around crazily in the mall's huge play area. It's actually a pretty nice (and free) form of entertainment, especially on a rainy day! Anyway, as we watched our kids play in the chaos, we decided that we needed some alone time. It just felt like so long since we've been able to relax and focus on enjoying each other's company. The only problem is that we didn't budget a date night and being that it's the tail end of our weekly budget cycle, we didn't even have enough cash to take from another budget bucket. So, we left the mall to head home, thinking we would have to put off some alone time for at least a couple more days.

A couple of hours later, I asked Rachel if we should just go ahead and do our date! Since we didn't have any more of our weekly budget left, any money we spent would have to come out of our emergency fund. Obviously this isn't a "true" emergency. But we both felt strongly about spending some quality time with each other (just the two of us). So, we did it. We broke one of the cardinal debt free journey rules. We spent $59.98 out of our emergency fund on dinner and babysitting costs. The kids were only at the babysitting place for about 2 hours but it was 2 hours of peace and quality time with my wife.

Now, we could go crazy over analyzing this scenario and pinpoint all the various things we could've done differently. We could've waited a couple more days and gone on a date after the next budget cycle started. We could've gone to a cheaper dinner or split a meal so we only paid for one entree. We could've eaten at home before we left and just went somewhere free (i.e. bookstore) to enjoy each other's company. We could've called some family members to see if they could watch the kids for a little while, for free. We could've/should've done a lot of different things to stay on track with our debt free journeys' rules. But we didn't. The thing to do now is to make sure not to dwell on it and move on.

I thought this was an important post to write because I wanted to make sure I told my entire story (not just all the good parts). I'm no where near being perfect when it comes to living the debt free journey but I am overwhelmingly more on track than not! There will be many mistakes made along the way so you just need to acknowledge them, learn from them and move on! And make sure (if you're married) that your spouse is right by your side through all of this. Did we go off track today (in terms of the debt free journey)? Yes. Will we allow this to become the norm? No. Was the $60 worth spending some much needed alone time with my best friend and soul mate? Absolutely!