There are two conferences I’m interested in for this summer. The CA home school association conference and a conference aimed at the families of gender non-conforming youth. They happen on consecutive weekends in August. Today I looked up the registration costs.

It would cost a hair shy of $1100 to register my family for both conferences. That’s not including food or housing costs (both of them are about an hour away, which is a barrier to my attendance if I have to commute each day). One of the conferences encourages using their on-site sleeping arrangements that go for $90/bed/night/person. So they would want almost $800 for my family sleeping there for two nights.

Do you know what we don’t need to do this summer? Go to conferences. We can stay home. We can study some books and try to talk to people in other ways.

I have to stop hemorrhaging money. You can’t have everything you want in life.

Ok. This is where I have to pretend I have self discipline. Sigh.