@Sarah: How funny – that’s amazing that the situation I described exactly happened to you! If you guys come up with creative ideas to spend the $10k of fun money I’d love to share them. I’m hoping to make that a rather lengthy list in the book. I also love the idea of switching the car payment to a travel account so it doesn’t mingle with the other money. I have been talking a lot about money being perfectly fungible so it can go to anything. That is a plus, but sometimes it is a minus in that the brain likes to have separate categories. So a lot of people find separate accounts useful for precisely that reason — when the money is already assigned to travel it doesn’t feel like you’re taking it from something else (e.g. groceries).

For one, this actually just happened to us. We received an unexpected $50,000 and we are trying to decide what to do with it, ranging from refinancing and paying down the mortgage to get to a lower interest rate to buying a boat or some other fun outrageous family time-focused choice. I like the 40/10 split plan and we may go with that.

Some people have talked about ways to make travel more affordable. It is a priority for us. When we realized that our cars were paid off but still looking and running great, we put the amount of our monthly payments into a dedicated travel account – this is a substantial amount monthly, but the transfer is automatic and whenever we want to take a trip, we are pleasantly surprised by the amount in our travel account and we never feel like we are choosing family time and travel vs more practical expenditures.

Others have talked about traveling the country. I recently counted our trips for 2010 and we went on 19 “getaways”, large and small, local and as far as Asia, weekends to as long as 6 weeks, almost all with the kids ages 6 & 9. So my first instinct for that fun money would be to take a fantastic trip but we already prioritize that and travel a lot, so then what?

Someone mentioned renting an RV. It just happens that we have a small motorhome, by the way, and we love to rent it out to other families when we are not using it. I highly recommend it for family fun, adventure, and memories.

I will continue to follow this discussion…

@Denise – great idea! The good thing about money is it can be used for anything… but that’s also a downside because sometimes we use it for things that are more pressing. Here’s to having more of it!

That said, we’ve signed up on one of the home swapping sites — we’re just outside of DC, and are hoping to find some folks w/in an easy drive who want to do some weekend exchanges.

And if you’re willing to ride the bus, intercity travel has become really cheap on the East Coast lately. And it comes with wifi.

@D – sounds good! I think travel figures in many people’s answers, because we know it will produce memories. So I guess the question becomes, is there a way we can change our economics so travel becomes more doable?

2. join weight watchers
3. hire a personal trainer or a personal chef or both
4. try to avoid cooking at all costs –I’ve tried cooking, really tried and I hate it. I’d love to be able to order out several times a week without guilt as I really really hate to cook.. hate it.
5. set up a home gym so i can run and watch my soap in an area that is completely mine — no kids crawling around the treadmill as it is now

6. the issue of debt is interesting b/c taking it on on the one hand implies the ability to take risk… but there is also something freeing bout living debt free and knowing that when you work you do it b/c you want to and not b/c you need to pay for debt but i tis pretty hard to grow most businesses without some risk tolerance and some debt..
we are really fortunate in america to have access to pretty cheap money and interest rates have been so low for such a long time… (this also means though that most of us aren’t getting much on our savings)
we have a home equity line right now that costs us very little like $150 bucks a month in interest though the interest rate could go up — so we should pay it down — but it brings up interesting questions, like should we really do that before I get a massage, get that minivan and make the commitment to take a road trip every other sunday with my hubby and kids…
7. the issue of personal savings — not retirement — not the kids’ college fund but just the cash cushion is interesting b/c usually most articles about that $ are written for folks on salary… as an entrepreneur I am always torn between paying myself and building up some cash and investing in my business, my family and just my general quality of life… especially right now where most great money markets are giving you like less than 2 % interest… you think.. ok so I am banking cash.. at 1% interest, who cares and does this make me happy…. I mean clearly you need some retirement and some cash cushion but being able to go out to lunch or get a massage probably makes me happier… as does extra babysitting, having a cleaning lady or someone to do my laundry… all these things make me happier than say a ton of cash savings…