Recently, Poopsie and I travelled to the Gold Coast to visit my parents. Due to my trip to Tasmania, I hadn’t seen them over Christmas, so we turned Australia Day into an extra long weekend.
We drove up to visit them, as they live in the Hinterland so having a car is a must. We packed our lunches and enjoyed the eight hour drive up.
Our delicious lunch, including some of my left over birthday cake
We enjoyed our time with my parents and my younger brother who was also visiting. As it had been my birthday the week before, my parents took us all out to a delicious Indian dinner. Afterward, Poopsie and I took a drive to Surfers Paradise to have a look around. It was quite late but as there were night markets on the beach, it was very crowded. We drove around looking for a car park but weren’t having much luck.
We then found a spot, but it was clearly signposted that we were not to park there. Poopsie asked me what I thought and my response was “Parking inspectors don’t work at nighttime. Just park there.”
We then went and checked out the night markets, strolled down Cavall Mall and checked out the beach.
Surfers Paradise beach. Can you tell which shadows are us?
After an enjoyable and relaxing evening where we didn’t spend a cent, we made our way back to the car.
I’m sure you can all see where this is going. It seems parking inspectors do work at night. We got a ticket.
For $176.
I couldn’t believe it! I was so angry with myself as it had been my suggestion that we just park there. I honestly didn’t think parking inspectors worked at nighttime.
While in the grand scheme of things $176 will not make too much of a difference in our early retirement plans, it was still hard to swallow. It seemed so stupid and wasteful of me.
Later when we got home and told my parents about it, we discovered that a speeding ticket my dad had received the week before, where he was endangering the lives of other motorists was over $20 cheaper than our parking ticket.
Lesson learned. We’ll never park illegally again.
Have you had to learn any hard money lesson lately?
Oh no! Thankfully I haven’t had to learn a hard money lesson recently, but I will certainly learn from yours. That’s really painful, but you have to just chalk it down to experience and be able to move on (speaking from experience, I tend to beat myself up for longer than is really necessary).
Wise words Mrs ETT but definitely easier said than done. I am fine about it now but I was kicking myself for a couple of days immediately afterward. Definitely lesson learned!
Tune in tomorrow, I will be publishing your requested review on SiteGround!
Ouch $176 parking ticket. It’s tough getting a parking ticket, I remember getting one because I was late back to the parking lot for 15 minutes. Best to pay the ticket and learn from the mistake.
Hi Tawcan, thanks for the comment. Definitely a tough lesson and we have definitely learned from it! Sounds like you learned from yours as well 🙂
Yes! I checked my phone at a traffic light…. Ack bad drills… But still we weren’t moving. $335 later AND 3 points. Lesson well learned!!!
Hi K! Ouch, that one would have hurt. Yes, they are lessons well learned, hopefully neither of us gets stung again. Thanks for reading 🙂