roamthepla.net
October was expensive
ยท by dusty
The other day I posted a story about our Budget. Now I will show how we did last month.
The Results
Officially we were over budget by $200. Also, we started the trip on October 12th, which means we were only gone for 20 days or about 3 weeks. So, not really that great.
The Details
Here is the break down on the important parts. I won’t go into detail about the regular things like health insurance, just the parts that are directly influenced by our travels.
| Category | Budget | Actual | Difference | Notes |
| Transportation | 300 | 652 | 352 | getting from city to city |
| Rent | 800 | 748 | (52) | hostel, apartment |
| Misc | 200 | 100 | (100) | random things like laundry or postage |
| Activities | 400 | 400 | 0 | tours, admissions, etc.. |
| Groceries | 240 | 240 | 0 | food for cooking |
| Allowance | 400 | 400 | 0 | beer, dining, toys |
| TOTAL | 2340 | 2540 | 200 |
The Hits
- The big hit was the Transportation cost. I needed to settle down for a month to work on a project for a client. So, we thought getting to a beach town ASAP would be the best move and decided to just fly from Colombia to Ecuador. That put us way over.
- The Activities category is a savings program. We’ve been automatically transferring $100/week to a separate savings account that is allocated for having guilt-free fun. We actually only spent $79.00 out of that $400 last month. But, savings is still considered an expense for us so we can plan for it.
- Allowance is mostly used for drinks and dining out. Misc in October was mostly from running out of Allowance from drinking and eating in Montanita.
Areas for improvement.
- Since we’ve built up some room on the Activities account, we are reducing that contribution for November.
- Right now we allocate $800/month on rent. That comes to about $27/day. I think we can do better than that.
- We will try to eat at home more often in November, which should help from going over on Allowance. :)