Does planning save money? Plus links and a sonnet

In Sarah Hart-Unger’s Best Laid Plans podcast, she often takes listener questions. I appreciated her answer to a listener who asked this week whether planning saves money. Basically…it depends.

I can think of some situations where planning saves me money. For instance, we have a “meal plan” that consists of eating the same crowd-pleasing meals for dinner during the week. We buy groceries for these meals and they are easy to cook. Knowing what we’re going to eat and how long it will take to make (usually: not long) means that I’m not tempted to order from GrubHub most nights. Eating at home is almost always cheaper than ordering in or eating out.

Because I planned the summer ahead of time, I was able to take advantage of “early bird” discounts for various camps. In the case of the 11-year-old’s sleep away camp, this discount was several hundred dollars.

However, as Sarah pointed out, when we plan, we often plan big things that we want to do — such as trips and other adventures. These adventures can be vastly more expensive than doing nothing, which is what might happen without planning. My husband and I planned a trip for Christmas break next year a full year out (and we bought the plane tickets 11 months out when they became available). This trip is probably more expensive than whatever trip we would have taken if we didn’t plan a year out, because we most likely would not have been able to take a trip like this if we hadn’t planned a year out. Small, in-demand places tend not to magically be able to accommodate 7 people last minute.

Of course, if something did happen and we couldn’t go (knock on wood this won’t happen!) then planning would be expensive because we might lose our deposit. And some other family of seven could score a last minute accommodation, perhaps, even though they didn’t plan ahead!

But in general, most things we plan do happen, even if they don’t all happen. None of this is either/or. Longtime readers may recall the ill-fated attempt to get to Scotland in 2024…But most trips I’ve planned have happened. And many cool things would be highly unlikely to happen without extensive planning. No one has offered me a ready-made trip to Scotland that I haven’t had to plan.

So it’s not that planning inherently saves money, it’s that overall, it makes a different set of things possible. It’s a different sort of benefit.

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I’m back from a fun trip to NYC during the week — among other things, I stopped at Norton’s office and filmed some short videos about Big Time. (Pic on this post from their conference room where I did a virtual event for someone else.) I’m looking forward to sharing those. I had an evening event and I stayed overnight near Times Square and I was reminded that NYC is…loud. Good thing I brought ear plugs.

I have a guest post over at Charlie Gilkey’s Productive Flourishing newsletter. I know we have some overlap in audience, and I’m hoping some new folks find me through that.

Bloomberg wrote about Big Time (behind the paywall)

I’ll be doing a Big Time book club discussion with the Best of Both Worlds Patreon crew on Monday the 18th at 11:30 a.m. eastern. To join the Patreon community, go here. 

And as readers of Big Time know, I’m still cranking away on my sonnets at a pace of one a week (2 lines a day). Here’s one I wrote about waking on a hot May morning.

Somewhere between the darkness and the dawn,
I hear a noise, perhaps, or maybe light
in its first form pulls me awake. I yawn
and look around at windows not quite bright,

more gray than anything, half-shadow, dim.
I do not recognize this world quite yet,
just hoping for new mercies, like the hymn
suggests. The summer heat feels slightly wet.

Already, all is green and thick. The blooms,
so elegant and light in April, gone,
and as the warming humid earth consumes
their colors, as the longer days march on,

I wonder, was that fragile world a dream?
Exuberance — then all a muted scheme.