Money posts and real estate - Tightwads or not?

Money posts are still in order this week on Hey, Don! and then I'll be moving into real estate posts next week which will include:

a link to Long Beach real estate agent Julia Huntsman and a post she did on the sub-prime market,

real estate investment clubs,

and hopefully an interview with a friend of mine, Dan M., who lives in Temple City, California, but invested in a home in Houston, Texas.

Right now, we're on a few day mini-vacation near Lake Isabella, California.

We're camping at a KOA with our 20-foot motor home and two camping cabins . . . or, following the KOA brand name, Kamping Kabins.

All our kids are with us except our 20-year-old daughter. Our group includes:

Our 22-year-old, our 20-year-old, our 2 boys both 18 years old and our 15-year-old daughter. We also have our 7-month old granddaughter and two friends of the family who are 14 and 12.

We drove Sunday from our home near Pasadena . . . a 3-hour trip which isn't too bad.

This jaunt from Sunday through Wednesday is going to run us just over $1,000 for 10 of us - and we'll have had some fun moments!!!

Now, i wouldn't say my wife and I are cheapskates but we are frugal and we watch our money carefully - especially over the long-term as I wrote about in an earlier post.

Yesterday, we spent $330 on two hours of jet skis on Lake Isabella. The boys really wanted to go jet skiing and it was a lot of fun. So we have to ask ourselves, "was it really expensive?"

Okay, how do you define "expensive"? What I'm about to write shows my flexibility - which is one of my strengths.

The jet skis cost $70 per hour. I hate to admit I don't make even close to that amount right now from Google Adsense - (I'm smiling of course) - and my income has been down this year.

But I believe the cost was well worth it. The two jet skis for two hours on the lake gave us something to talk about in the evening. And it also taught the kids the value of sharing, too.

This will be one of our last family gatherings as our one son is going to Azusa Pacific University in the fall on a Army ROTC scholarship and our 22-year-old now has a job in Corona, California, about 50 miles from our home.

We also went with a group from our church to see the Los Angeles Dodgers play the San Francisco Giants the week before with tickets being $15 each.

So, we do watch our money carefully. But we also spend it on worthwhile occasions.

I like to think of it as "strategic spending" on occasional fun activities - especially when the family can do it together.

How about you? Are you flexible in how you spend and save? Or do you have a rule and always stick to it no matter what?