Thirty is the new Someday

I'm turning 30 in a few weeks. And I've decided I'll be making some changes when I do.

Tiffany and I are super thrifty. We're constantly saving our money for something-like a house or a coffee pot that starts automatically--in a distant future we call Someday. The trick is, we never get to Someday. Instead, we continually push the future further back. Sometimes it feels like we'll never get there and instead forever have money in savings but live in a one-bedroom apartment and make Tiffany's coffee manually after we get up.

Recently we decided we're ready to claim a piece of the future now: nice hotels.

Last month, we booked a spur of the moment trip to San Diego to see if we could find The Sun That Forgot San Francisco. We used a buy-one-get-one-free airline coupon and rented an economy car ("Is a gold car okay?" the woman behind the counter asked us. "Bling-Bling!" we exclaimed).

We settled on a reasonably priced room at a place with a pool and hot tub, just a quick walk from the beach.

Then, our future beckoned. Mostly to me.

"We don't really need a pool and hot tub," I said. "We'll never use it. How about this place? It's $30 bucks cheaper and we can use that money to rent surfboards."

I had doubts as soon we pulled into the parking lot. After we hand-cranked our gold car's windows up and manually locked all the doors, we came face-to-face with a leathery-looking man being ushered away from the "lobby" by staff. He had unkempt hair and smelled of pee.

"Is he a guest, do you think?" I whispered.

"Here we are!" Tiffany cried, throwing open our door to a reveal a room with peeling wall paper, a decrepit looking sofa and... some other stuff. After my first glance, I stopped registering what I saw and visualized my Happy Hotel Room, which smelled clean and had pillows without impressions from other people's heads.

I knew I had no right to complain since I had pushed for the cheaper room. Still...

"I'll pay for another place!" I blurted out. "I don't care how much it costs--I want to be able to walk barefoot in our room without cringing!"

Once I knew the future was brighter (not our immediate future but our second-night's future...what? 24-hour cancellation policy, people) and after I had piled all the moveable furniture against the door, I relaxed a little in our scary room.

"When I turn 30," I said shuffling to the bed in my flip-flops, "no more cheap hotels."

The rest of our trip was fantastic. We found the sun and the beach and pretty much didn't look for anything else.

Which brings me to the next piece of the future I'm ready to embrace:

"When I turn 30," I said to Tiffany on our second day as I piled my t-shirt and shorts on top of my face and stomach to cover my burns, "sunscreen."