Pricing out the trip to Chicago

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

On Tuesday I bought my early bird ticket to the Financial Blogger Conference. Now that I’m committed to going, I need to start budgeting out my trip.

My vacation days are booked, and I will be spending 3 days in the Windy City. A quick glance at Expedia tells me that flights from Vancouver to Chicago will cost me around $550 roundtrip. A flight across the border from Bellingham will cost a little less, at around $480. But that means, I need to factor in the time and cost to get to the airport, and parking money. It will probably end up costing about the same.

As for a hotel, I’m not really sure what to expect. I glanced quickly at Hot Wire, and the prices seemed a little steep. I might try out Priceline too. But, it’s still a long ways away, so I’m not worried. And, since I’ll be spending my time with personal finance bloggers, I know that I won’t have to budget much in the way of entertainment expenses. :)

I’ve got about $500 left to save for my trip to Toronto/NYC in May, so after that my focus will be this Chicago trip. I’m estimating approximately $1,000 in expenses – which include airfare, hotel, and meals/entertainment.

Another expense will be business cards. I’m finally going to bite the bullet and buy real, professional business cards to promote myself as a writer, blogger and designer. I’ve also made the commitment to buying high quality cards. I haven’t designed any promotional material for my side business before, and since I won’t be giving them away to just anyone, I really want to design something great. Check out this website for 400+ amazing cards that I’ve been drawing inspiration from. So far, I’ve tossed around 8 or 9 different designs, and contemplated embossing, debossing (which I am currently in love with), UV coating, metallic inks, foil, die cuts, and textured papers. Not only do I want to look unique and professional, but I also want to utilize some of these design elements because it will help me in the future if I ever have clients requesting things like that. I’m really excited, and have already requested paper samples from a few local print shops. I don’t have a budget yet, but wouldn’t be surprised if it ended up costing $75-100.