Money and Games in November

The Games

Wendy and I have been playing Rummy 500 ever since we started the trip. You usually play first one to 500 points wins, but we have some time so we decided to go to 10,000! Then as we started approaching 10,000, we decided to up the ante even further. The first one to 100,000 points wins, I wonder if that will be a world record!

Although this post is for November, we didn’t mark down the score on Dec 1st. So, here is the score as of Dec 16th.

Wendy: 9690
Dusty: 9575

I was winning by a few hundred for most of November, but she went on a rally last week and now Wendy is winning by 115 points.

The Money

October was Over Budget, but November was much better.

We stayed in Salinas for the entire month of November so I could work on a project for a client. This helped greatly as our rent was lower in an apartment vs a hostel. In addition our transportation costs were low since we weren’t moving around. Finally, the ability to cook at home prevented us from going over budget again on the allowance/food expenses.

In November, we lowered our $100/week savings into the Activities account to $50/week. This lowered our budget by $200 for the month. Even with the lower budget, we were still under by $752.00.

The Details

Here is the breakdown of November:

It cost us $1388 to get to and live in Salinas for the month. This includes rent + utilities, internet, transportation, food, drinks, sunglasses, etc….

Areas for Improvement

• We are going to stop saving for the activities fund in December. Now we will only start to see withdrawals.
• We are going to re-evaluate Allowance and Groceries and see if we can cut those down a bit.
• We may lower our transportation budget, as it can stay pretty low if we take buses.