money bags

I need to vent about money. I don’t want to vent in my more “public” journal, because friends and family read far too much into it. venting got me into trouble on that journal before anyway.

since I doubt I’ve written about it here, I’ll give you the basics: I’m planning a great trip in august. I’ve hardly traveled before, and this august provided me with the perfect excuse: research. my own research, with michelle as my second author, was accepted at an international conference in England. it’s fantastic because it’s the conference for a little-known theory that my research is based in. it’s fantastic because it’s going to look great on my vitae that I went to an international conference.

I’m also a part of a research group on campus. I’m not all that into the topic that we have this year, and as the youngest in the group of 6, I don’t feel that I fit in. I feel intimidated. many of the others are friends and have classes together. most of them, except for me and a second year, already presented it at a conference in Boston last month. we were accepted to the APA conference in Boston in August, and so far the plan is for all of us to go.

it works out pretty well for me. I’ll go to the conference in Boston, then hang out for a week with Ryan in Connecticut, then fly from JFK to London. I’ll spend a day or two in London, then take a train to Cambridge for my conference. that conference is 4 days. I don’t know yet what day I’ll present. I just registered today.

I decided last minute to take the full package for students – I’ll be staying at the conference, with nearly all meals provided. I was planning to just pay the registration fee and find my own housing, but I realized that at the student rate I couldn’t possibly find anything cheaper AND still be able to eat. so I chose the full package.

I went to the bank today to make the wire transfer to register, and it was complicated. it took a while. somewhere in the middle of the process, I realized that I would be paying in pounds. I didn’t know how the pound converted to dollars. I had foolishly assumed it would be euros, which is around 1.6 of the dollar. after finishing the transfer and getting to work, I looked it up: the euro is nearly twice the dollar. the cost was 320 pounds….which is around $650. ouch. major ouch.

I do have some money set aside. for the first year, our loans are spread across two semesters. for all following years, it stretches over 3 semesters. so I have about $5000 set aside from this year. thing is, it’s all loans. thing is, the coming years will be much tighter financially, and I’m hoping to quit my part time job that I currantly have (I hope to replace it with a campus job, which would go towards my tuition). the problem there is that I would no longer be getting a check every two weeks.

so there was the first major ouch. registering for the conference was a good one or two hundred more than I was expecting. I still need to register for the one in boston and buy all of my plane tickets. the tickets will be $1200 at the bare minimum.

one of the girls in my group headed to boston has talked to me several times about getting a flight and sharing a hotel room. she has given me fantastic advice. I told her weeks ago I would definitely share a hotel room with her. over break, she sent an email to several of us in the research group, asking who all wanted to share a room. I replied, reassuring her that I was in.

today she sent me another email. the other girls already got a room, they included her, and now the room is full.

what???

so 4 girls are sharing a hotel room, and it’s full now. the professor will get her own room. the second year – the only guy – will likely stay with friends that he knows in the area. what am I supposed to do?

I’m tempted to just not go. the group won’t be hurting if I don’t go. I’m tempted to just give up. I’m not really a part of the group. I didn’t present with them last time, I’m not friends with them, and I don’t care about the topic much anyway. I could just quit.

but quiting isn’t the answer. I WANT to see Boston. I WANT to go to APA. I WANT to spend some time with Ryan. presenting will be good for me. and they might have left me out on accident, or due to the circumstances, not out of maliciousness.

I’m reminded of an evening last week at home, when I had to back out on plans with some friends, and the circumstances were awkward, and I hoped that no one would think ill of me. now it’s the flip side, and I need to remember that my classmates probably didn’t mean anything by it. quitting really isn’t the answer.

but neither is paying for a hotel by myself for two nights in boston. that’s pretty stupid. it’s going to be mega expensive. I’m going to need a hotel that close to / part of the conference, which means the prices will be jacked up even higher.

tomorrow is a meeting for the research group. I’m sure that someone will bring up plans for the conference. maybe something will happen. maybe the girls will allow me to join them and sleep on the floor. I wouln’t mind. maybe I’ll ask the guy what his plans are and see if he will share them with me.

I wonder if it’s fair to guess that this trip could cost $3,000. $1200 (absolute minimum) for plane tickets, $650 registration/hotel/food, $70 for the Boston conference (much cheaper than I expected), hopefully around $180 for my own hotel in Boston (unless I can get out of that somehow). That puts me at $2100. I’ll still need food in boston, a bit of money for whatever I do with Ryan for a week, train tickets in England, a hotel in London, food in England, sightseeing, a souvenirs. it still sounds reasonable that I can do this under $3000, right? my initial hope – without any research – was around $2500. plus, I’m not broke (yet), so I’ll be okay. I just have to be really careful how I spend my money and time. this trip can still be an absolute blast – as long as I’m careful.

I feel much better now. I just need to stay calm. I don’t need to blow up and scratch all of my plans and some of my relationships over getting dissed for the hotel in boston. it likely wasn’t any one person’s fault, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t like me. I still have a few possibilities for finding a cheap way around this.

so I’m out a couple hundred extra today. so the british pound is a lot more expensive than I was expecting. I’ll deal. the good news is that the registration fee for the conference in Boston is MUCH cheaper than I expected. $70 a day could add up pretty quickly, or I could only go to one day (the day we present). either way $70 is half – even a third – of what I was expecting.

so this isn’t the most insight-laden or narrative-oriented entry. that’s okay for me. here’s hoping that tomorrow’s meeting goes really well and doors start opening for me regarding this trip!