In our stats for April 2021, I mentioned that I thought we might go over budget during May.
That was an understatement.
We’ve done pretty well with our budget over the past 18 months or so, but there have been a few occasions where we’ve gone properly over budget and unfortunately last month was one of those months.
It’s not like we lived particularly extravagantly last month, but a mix of higher than normal spending on accommodation, hotel pet fees and general pet care meant we spent more than we would’ve liked.
Here’s a complete rundown of all our stats from May 2021.
Miles Driven
May began with 157,805 miles on our car and ended with the odometer reading at 159,089. That means we drove 1,284 miles last month.
I’d predicted last month that we’d drive 925 miles but that our mileage could be higher or lower than that because we didn’t have plans in place for the end of May at that point.
As for June, I’ve a feeling our mileage will be a little higher than in May, so I’m going to guess we’ll end up at 1,450 miles by the end of the month.
Money Spent
I’ve already given away that we went over budget last month, but here’s more info about how it went. With 31 days in May, our budget for the month was $3,100 as we’ve set ourselves a $100 per day budget. By the end of the month we’d spent $3,556.72, so $456.72 over budget. That’s the most we’ve overspent since July 2019.
There were a few factors in that. At almost $1,700, our accommodation spending was higher than normal which was due to us spending a week in Flagstaff where hotels were more expensive, as well as having a fairly long stay in Tucson where we spent close to $100 per night.
We also had to pay more in hotel pet fees (~$180) than our average and various Truffles-related expenses (pet food, grooming, etc.) meant we spent an additional ~$275 on her in May.
Here’s a breakdown of our spending for last month…
…along with a chart of our spending in 2021 so far. Even accounting for us going over budget in May, we’re still under budget for the year as a whole which is pleasing.
Looking ahead to our budget for this month (June), I’m fairly hopeful we’ll stay under budget, possibly by a couple of hundred bucks. Most of our stays this month have been booked using hotel points, so that’ll reduce our accommodation spending which should in turn ensure we recoup some of our overspend from last month.
Accommodation Cost
We stayed at six different places in May – here’s how we paid for those different stays.
May 1-3: Courtyard Flagstaff, AZ (review coming in the next week or two). Hotels were fairly expensive, but we found a somewhat reasonably priced stay at the Courtyard which was $143.13 per night with tax. That’s more than we normally pay for accommodation, but we paid for it with Marriott gift cards we’d bought at a discount which reduced the cost to $123.13 per night.
May 3-12: Sonesta ES Suites Tucson, AZ (see review here). This was good value because we got a two bedroom loft suite with a kitchen for only $113.93 per night which is a decent price for Tucson. We booked it through Hotels.com and paid for it using Hotels.com gift cards we bought at a discount and so our net cost was $95.46 per night.
May 12-20: Holiday Inn & Suites Phoenix Airport North, AZ (see review here). We’d stayed at this hotel in April for a few days and decided to return seeing as a) we really liked it and b) we needed to fly out of Phoenix airport as Shae’s dad was getting remarried back in Virginia. This hotel let us leave our car there for only $5 per day and had a free shuttle to and from the airport, so that was nice and convenient.
IHG uses dynamic pricing for award nights which means the number of points you need to redeem can go up and down. All the nights cost 16,000 points other than the 5th night which cost 17,000 points. We have the IHG Premier credit card which gives every 4th night free on award stays so we got both the 4th and 8th nights free. We also have the older IHG Select card which gives 10% back on award stays. That means our net cost was 10,800 points per night for the first four nights and 11,025 points per night for the second four nights.
May 20-24: Hyatt Place Chesapeake/Greenbrier, VA (review coming in the next few weeks). This is the hotel we stayed at for a few days for the wedding. It’s only 5,000 World of Hyatt points per night and a promotion running at the time meant we got back 5,000 of those points, so the net cost was 3,750 points per night.
May 24-26: Holiday Inn & Suites Phoenix Airport North, AZ. This is the same hotel we stayed at before flying to Virginia for the wedding. We got in late when we flew back and we both had to work the next couple of days, so we figured it was easiest to just book another two nights at this hotel. These two nights cost 16,000 points per night.
May 26-31: Courtyard Flagstaff, AZ. Yep, this is the same hotel we’d stayed at the end of April/beginning of May. We returned to Flagstaff to go biking at the Grand Canyon, but that didn’t end up going to plan (more about that in a future post). The hotel was $143.13 per night, but discounted Marriott gift cards reduced that to $121.66 per night.
May 31-June 1: Staybridge Suites Albuquerque Airport, NM. This night cost us 15,000 IHG Rewards points, but we got 10% back from the IHG Select card which reduced that to 13,500 points.
Hotel Points Earned
We earned a reasonable number of points in May. Some of those were due to paid hotel stays, some were from cancelled award bookings and the batch of Radisson points is thanks to a credit card renewal.
Here’s a breakdown of what we earned:
- IHG Rewards – 51,701
- Hilton Honors – 8,662
- Marriott Bonvoy – 18,621
- World of Hyatt – 10,819
- Radisson Rewards – 40,000
- Choice Privileges – 0
- Wyndham Rewards – 0
- Hotels.com Rewards Credits – 9
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 9,415
- Capital One – 10,980
Points Redeemed
We had three points redemptions in May – the IHG points were used for our stays in Phoenix and Albuquerque, the Hyatt points for our current stay in Colorado and the Wyndham points for a stay later this year that we wanted to lock in now so that it doesn’t get booked up.
- IHG Rewards – 43,000
- Hilton Honors – 0
- Marriott Bonvoy – 0
- World of Hyatt – 55,000
- Radisson Rewards – 0
- Choice Privileges – 0
- Wyndham Rewards – 54,000
- Hotels.com Rewards Credits – 0
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 0
- Capital One – 0
Total Hotel Points Balances
Based on those earnings and redemptions, here’s where our points balances ended up at the end of May 2021.
- IHG Rewards – 295,722
- Hilton Honors – 792,876
- Marriott Bonvoy – 694,740
- World of Hyatt – 51,988
- Radisson Rewards – 93,092
- Choice Privileges – 38,645
- Wyndham Rewards – 66,577
- Hotels.com Rewards Credits – 19
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 517,267
- Capital One – 84,302
Here’s all that information in table format:
Hotel Free Night Certificates
In addition to our hotel points, we have a number of free night certificates earned from credit card spending, renewing credits cards or through stays. Here’s how many certificates we currently have available to us:
- IHG (up to 40,000 points per night) – 3
- Hilton (any property worldwide) – 3
- Marriott (up to 35,000 points per night) – 3
- Marriott (up to 40,000 points per night) – 2
- Hyatt (category 1-4) – 6
- Hyatt (category 1-7) – 2
Walking
Um…the less said about this the better.
Blog Stats
I think some of our posts from New Mexico continued to get shared on Facebook or something because we had a nice bump in website traffic last month.
- Number of blog posts published – 17
- Page views – 60,194
Final Thoughts
May 2021 certainly wasn’t our most successful month on the budget front seeing as we went several hundred bucks over budget. It was to be expected though considering the cost of our accommodation and Truffles-related expenses. June is looking a little more positive though, so hopefully we don’t have any unexpected expenses before our next round of monthly stats!
Finally! Cmon man it’s June 10th! 😛
I wouldn’t worry too much about going over budget – you’re talking about barely 10% of your monthly budget. Two of the things that I have written down on our budget spreadsheet are:
When the Month Doesn’t Balance, Look at the Bigger Picture
Remember It’s Not a Diet
Also, I am going to have to call you out on making a prediction that you will “drive 925 miles but that our mileage could be higher or lower”. If you’re going to make a prediction you can’t say that it could literally be either higher OR lower!!!!!
Thanks for the posts – these are my favorite posts to read
Hahaha! Yeah, I’m a little behind on posts at the moment – hoping to get caught up on them over the next few weeks 🙂
When looking at it in percentage terms like that it doesn’t seem so bad. It just always feels much easier to go over budget by 10% than under budget!
As for the higher or lower than 925, a man’s gotta hedge his bets 😉
Sure – 10% under is better than 10% over. But like you said, you’re still under for the year and that’s a good thing.
And I feel like hedging your bets is only allowed in one direction. You can either hedge more or less, but not BOTH!!! 😛
I’m just covering the spread 😉
Are you noticing, when booking ahead, higher hotel pricing now that that somewhat post-pandemic summer travel season is under way? I am wondering if I’ll be paying more with points than dollars this summer because I can’t very well hack exorbitant hotel prices…
It’s hard to tell because we’re visiting new places and so I don’t have any experience as to what their standard hotel pricing would be.
We’d originally planned to visit Oregon this summer but switched to Colorado because hotels and Airbnb were simply too expensive for our budget. However, I’m not certain if that’s because prices have been inflated or if it’s just because Oregon is a popular place to visit in the summer.
My guess is that prices are a little higher this year due to pent up travel demand from the pandemic, but there are still some good deals to be had depending on if you have flexibility with your location and/or dates.
As for hotel points, that’ll depend on which points you have. Both IHG and Hilton use dynamic pricing, so if cash prices are higher then there’s a good chance that the number of points you have to redeem will be higher too. That’s not always the case, but in many cases it will be.