Three months down, 57 months to go!
March 2018 has ended, so it’s time to take stock of our stats from last month. We went over budget in both January and February, so we were determined to be under budget in March.
Before the month started, we’d been hopeful we’d manage it. We didn’t expect our accommodation costs to be high as several of our stays were booked using hotel points, so we just had to make sure our other spending was reined in.
How did we do? Read on to find out!
Miles Driven
March 2018 began with 83,585 miles on the clock of our car. By the end of the month, there were 86,170 miles on the clock which meant we drove 2,585 miles in March.
Interestingly, that’s the most miles we’ve driven in the first three months. I say interestingly because I thought it was going to be lower than that as it didn’t feel like we drove any long distances. However, we did go on several trips further afield than where we were staying which apparently racked up the miles.
Money Spent
It’s the moment of truth – did we stay under budget?
Yes…just.
Our budget is $100 per day; as always, that has to cover accommodation, activities, gas, food – everything. With 31 days in March, that made our monthly budget $3,100. The total amount we spent was $3,013.91, so we were under budget by $86.09
It’s great that we were under budget, although I was a little disappointed we didn’t save more money than that. Having said that, the biggest reason we didn’t save more was because we spent so much on eating out. I’m therefore only so sorry that we didn’t save more as we had sooooo much good food in March, especially in Alabama.
And as Shae reminded me, we should celebrate our wins, so yay for us for being under budget!
Here’s a breakdown of our spending for March 2018…
…and a line graph with our spending so far this year:
Points Earned
The first couple of weeks in March were spent in Airbnb properties, so those stays didn’t earn any points. The rest of the month was spent in hotels using points, so we didn’t have any paid hotel stays.
That limited how many points we earned during the month from hotel stays. We were still able to earn quite a few points along the way though, primarily from people applying for a credit card using a referral link I’d provided.
- IHG Rewards Club – 0
- Hilton Honors – 48,798 (45,000 points came from referral bonuses)
- SPG – 499
- Marriott Rewards – 20,500 (20,000 points came from a referral bonus)
- World of Hyatt – 2,500
- Radisson Rewards (used to be called Club Carlson) – 30,725 (Most of these points came from getting 30% back on a reward stay from this promotion)
- Choice Hotels – 2,489
- Wyndham Rewards – 0
- Hotels.com Welcome Rewards Credits – 0
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 33,014 (30,000 points came from referral bonuses)
Points Redeemed
17 out of 31 nights in March were spent in hotels using points to pay for our stays. Some of those stays were booked last month though and so were allocated in February’s stats.
Here’s how many points we redeemed in March:
- IHG Rewards Club – 0
- Hilton Honors – 0
- SPG – 0
- Marriott Rewards – 40,000
- World of Hyatt – 0
- Radisson Rewards (used to be called Club Carlson) – 75,000
- Choice Hotels – 0
- Wyndham Rewards – 0
- Hotels.com Welcome Rewards Credits – 0
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 0
Total Points Balances
Based on all the points we earned and redeemed, here are our total balances at the end of March.
- IHG Rewards Club – 539,307
- Hilton Honors – 695,389
- SPG – 104,774
- Marriott Rewards – 302,780
- World of Hyatt – 15,123
- Radisson Rewards (used to be called Club Carlson) – 296,963
- Choice Hotels – 42,903
- Wyndham Rewards – 45,000
- Hotels.com Welcome Rewards Credits – 9
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 382,446
We’ve received a request before to have this information in table format, so here it is 🙂
Blog Stats
Following a request a couple of months ago, here are some stats relating to this blog:
- Number of blog posts published – 25
- Page views – 11,893
Final Thoughts
Despite my initial disappointment from us not being as under budget as I’d originally hoped, looking back at this stats has been a positive experience.
We’ve managed to live on under $100 a day which is great. Considering we did this while living in hotels and Airbnbs, traveled around, ate out a lot and had loads of fun in March, doing that on a budget this tight is encouraging.
We also earned far more points than I initially realized, mainly due to referral bonuses. That’ll get us more free hotel stays in the future which will help us stick to our budget.
Most of April will be spent staying with several sets of friends all over Ohio. That’ll greatly reduce our accommodation costs, but that’ll make it all the more tempting to spend more on eating out and activities, so hopefully we can be (somewhat) sensible with that. Stay tuned to see how that works out!
Question
Is there any other information or stats you’d like included in these monthly posts? Let us know in the comments below.
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