Blowing Our Budget

As you may recall, when we started this road trip, we estimated a budget of $1500 per week, or about $212 a day. We've just reviewed our expenses for the first month of our trip, and--as expected--we're spending more than that, but not too much.

We're also in the process of revising our itinerary, and it looks like we'll be ending our trip and settling in Portland in mid-September. (Full details and map coming soon.) In order to make the money last until then, we're looking at a new spending target of $1700 per week, which is just $70 less than what we've actually been spending. So it shouldn't be too difficult to tune our habits accordingly.

Mostly, our lodging has been about 30% over budget, and we ate very well in New Orleans. We've now racked up over 50,000 Marriott Rewards Points, which we'll be using very soon to offset our expensive fun in Orlando. (I'm even thinking about applying for their damn credit card to get an extra 20,000 points, but I'd have to cancel the stupid card before next year to avoid paying the outrageous annual fee.)

So, the new budget is $242 a day. And with apologies to Harper's Index, here are some facts and figures from our travels so far:

Days spent traveling with cats:	31
Original amount budgeted per week:	$1500
Actual amount spent per week:	$1769
Percentage over budget:	18%
Most expensive lodging, per night:	$229.40
Least expensive lodging, per night:	$51.43
Most spent in a single day, excluding lodging:	$239.07
Least spent in a single day, excluding lodging:	$0
Most expensive restaurant meal:	$160.00
Least expensive restaurant meal:	$14.39
Highest price paid for one gallon of gas:	$3.999
Lowest price paid for one gallon of gas:	$3.379
Most paid for one fill-up:	$31.07
Least paid for one fill-up:	$13.55
Total amount paid for gas so far:	$404.38

Now I'm curious. How much did you spend on gas last month? Post a comment!

~CKL