Advantages:
-We will be visiting family, so this *could* result in low food costs, low utility costs, and gas for our roadtrip being gifted by parents
-On our roadtrip, we will be car camping. Past years we have had at least one hotel stay to the tune of $120, sometimes two stays. Going to plan ahead and skip that this year.
Disadvantages:
-The holidays. We're trying to keep it sub-$100 for each side of the family for gifts. But we are driving 2,400 miles next month on a roadtrip, and that is not cheap.
-It's never predictable whether my family will give us money to offset the cost of visiting them. Also, since we are the "weakest" in the war of attrition about laziness, we end up cooking and buying most of the food while there. Most years, this is fine, since my parents pay us back. Sometimes though... we will see.
-Less work. While this won't change income for DH until January (we live off his last month's paycheck), I'm paid weekly so my income will be lower.
Goals:
-Keep our roadtrip as cheap as possible. Pack all food, car camp, plan out gas using GasBuddy. DH is great at driving for good fuel economy, so that always helps. Plan out route so we don't get stuck in horrible LA traffic using an obscene amount of gas, like last year.
Planned spending:
-$200 gift budget
-$400 gas budget
-$75 clothing for DH (underwear and a sweatshirt)
-$20 to starbucks card for the trip
-$50 restaurant budget (give us an escape opportunity from family if needed)
Okay, we have returned from the roadtrip. Time for the overview! It was a mixed bag. This trip ended up... weird. On the way down, a relative had a health crisis and so we had to detour to downtown San Francisco. But not before going through the Siskayou pass in a snowstorm, so we had to buy chains. That whole thing was chaos. We decided to do the 1/101 up the coast on the way home, except then there was a giant storm. Some exciting bits involving the ocean ON THE ROAD, so we cut back to I5... anyway, there was even more driving than usual.
Successes:
We did NOT stay in a hotel. On the way down, we stayed at Relative-who-was-in-hospital's house. On the way back, we camped on the California coast ($20 developed site... there isn't really any dispersed camping anywhere accessible in Cali. Still, $20 is better than $120 for a hotel room).
I think my parents plan to reimburse for gas, particularly since $$ went to detouring through SF and taking care of family member. I guess being that family "on call" nurse has its perks!
Gift Budget- we stayed on target for both families, coming in at $140 total for everyone.
Income- ended up being fine, about $300 less than last month, but not majorly less. I picked up an extra shift before leaving.
Failures:
FOOD. The whole trip ended up so ridiculous, with the hospital and everything else, that our ability to self-regulate for food went to hell after the first day for the trip. Planned $50 restaurant budget came out the $103 =\ We even packed food for in the car, had Via pouches, etc, but we didn't wanna. *eyeroll*. We kind of had to pick our battles, but after so many months of killin' it on the restaurant front, it was a bit disappointing.
COFFEE- God I don't even want to admit to this. We started with $20 on the starbucks app, even, and then did another $50 of coffee. So $70 total. Ouch.
GAS- did end up being far more expensive than anticipated. See: downtown SF, coastal storms, Oregon storms. Instead of the $400 planned, we ended up at probably $550. I still need to pull together all the receipts on this.
BUT, this was also a success- I did use gas buddy the entire time, so this was less than it could have been!
