Miles driven: 3041.4
Ferries Rides Considered: 2
Ferries Ridden: 1
Video here
Video here
Number of friends and family visited: 10
Spending
Spending Analysis OR How Exactly Did You Guys Spend That Much??
Food: We are suckers for good food in cities and we visited some great cities this month.
Auto: We definitely saw higher gas prices this month, not only in California, but in Oregon and Washington too. We are also driving more miles than we expected.
Lodging: We have adjusted our sleeping situation quite a bit. We are sleeping in a lot more Walmart parking lots and interspersing cheap (~$50ish) hotels when we get to big cities that we want to explore.
Other: I don't even know what to say about the spending in this category. It's the catch-all envelope and includes entertainment like renting bikes and visiting museums/drive through trees, mass transit, tips, website hosting*, showers at public facilities, and ten mysterious Walmart purchases.
Looking On The Bright Side
Soooo, I am going to use our "overspending" as an...opportunity... (ahem) to share with you my Super Duper Budget SecretTM.
Now that I know our real world spending, I've adjusted our budget:
My Super Duper Budget SecretTM is this: I set the budget for lower than what I think we will spend and when we predictably overspend, it will be close to our max spending tolerance. I use stress to rein in the spending.
My mistake this month was setting an unrealistic budget. I was hoping that my strategy would keep our spending low but it backfired; once we knew that we were going to be way over, we gave up and started indulging.
What's Next?
We are in Olympic National Park this weekend and start heading east next week. Look out Montana, the Boekes are a comin'!
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*We are collectors of web addresses and have over fifteen domains including Sexy Car, Amazing Looking, and Point Sublime.
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