After going over budget by about 15% in May, I’d been hopeful we’d be able to get back on track in June. Our accommodation expenses were due to be lower than normal and so I was feeling optimistic, but that’s been the case before and we still ended up going over budget due to spending more money on activities and/or eating out.
Thankfully we did manage to keep our spending somewhat reined in, although we got a helping hand from a hotel which meant we ended up being more under budget than I’d been expecting.
Keep reading for more about how our budget went, as well as all our other road trip stats from June 2021.
Miles Driven
Our odometer reading at the end of May was 159,089, while at the end of June it was 160,568. That means that we drove 1,479 miles last month.
I’d predicted that we’d drive 1,450 miles, so my estimate was fairly accurate for once. Looking ahead to our mileage for July, it shouldn’t be too high as we’re staying in Denver the entire month. However, we will be going on a few longer drives (e.g. to Rocky Mountain National Park), so I’m going to predict that we’ll drive 1,100 miles.
Money Spent
Our daily budget for the road trip is $100 per day, so with 30 days in June we had $3,000 to play with. By the end of the month we’d spent 2,702.40 which means we were $297.60 under budget in June. That doesn’t quite make up for how far over budget we went in May, but it’s far easier to go significantly over budget than it is to stay under. Besides, spending 10% less than our budgeted total is a solid result that I’m really pleased about.
We did get a little lucky though. One of our hotels listed a pet fee of $20 per day; we stayed 12 nights and so we were expecting to have to pay $240. That’s a ridiculous amount for a pet fee, but we were staying on points and so it’s not like we had that expense too. Thankfully they didn’t charge any pet fee at all when checking out, so that helped us stay so far under budget.
Some other categories were the cause of us not being even further under budget. While not excessively high, our gas spend was the third highest it’s been in the last 15 months. Our activities and eating out categories were also the third highest they’ve been in the last 15 months.
Here’s a breakdown of our spending in June…
…and a chart tracking our spending in 2021 so far.
Looking ahead to our spending for July, it’s not looking good. In fact, it’s only July 7 and we’re already over budget for the month. It’s not that we’ve spent extravagantly, it’s just that we’re paying for our hotel this month and it costs $84.15 per night. While that means we’ll be over budget, it was our most economical option. I think we still have some Marriott gift cards we bought at a discount, so if that’s correct then that’ll give us a little more to play with.
Accommodation Cost
We stayed at four different places in June – here’s where we stayed and how we paid for them.
June 1-3: Staybridge Suites Albuquerque Airport, NM. We booked this stay with IHG Rewards points. It cost 14,000 points per night and we’re getting a 10% points rebate thanks to having the old IHG Select credit card, so our net cost was 12,600 points per night.
June 3-14: Hyatt House Colorado Springs, CO (review coming in the next week or so). This stay was booked using World of Hyatt points; it’s a category 1 property which means it cost 5,000 points per night. A Hyatt promotion at the time was offering 2,500 points for every two nights stayed if you were a credit card holder, so we got back 12,500 points from that. We also got awarded 10,000 points due to some problems with our room during our stay. That means our net cost ended up being 2,954.55 points per night.
June 14-26: Holiday Inn Express Montrose, CO (review coming in the next 2-3 weeks). This was another stay booked using IHG Rewards points and it was due to cost 16,000 points per night.
However, the IHG Premier credit card gives you every 4th night free on award stays, so with us staying 12 nights we got the 4th, 8th and 12th nights free. The IHG Select credit card got us another 10% points rebate, so our net cost was only 10,800 points per night.
June 26-July 1: Element Denver Park Meadows, CO (review coming in a few weeks). This is the hotel we’re currently staying at and so is the one that’s costing $84.15 per night. That’s the cost before taxes; because we’re staying more than 30 nights, Colorado doesn’t charge the normal hotel taxes which is one of the reasons we’d booked such a long stay.
Hotel Points Earned
June 2021 was a great month for earning hotel points. Our Chase Ultimate Rewards balance (which can be transferred to Hyatt if we want) had a big increase thanks to a credit card signup bonus posting to Shae’s account, plus I’d put quite a bit of spend on my Chase Ink Plus card the previous month which earns five points per dollar at office supply stores.
Our Hilton balance went up, mainly thanks to bonus points from credit card referrals. Our Capital One balance also went up by a significant amount because we met the spending requirement for the second part of a two-tiered signup bonus.
Here’s a list of all the points we earned last month:
- IHG Rewards – 21,725
- Hilton Honors – 96,173
- Marriott Bonvoy – 7,512
- World of Hyatt – 15,875
- Radisson Rewards – 0
- Choice Privileges – 200
- Wyndham Rewards – 0
- Hotels.com Rewards Credits – 0
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 126,944
- Capital One – 69,890
Hotel Points Redeemed
Our only redemption in June was with IHG for our stay at the Holiday Inn Express Montrose.
- IHG Rewards – 146,702
- Hilton Honors – 0
- Marriott Bonvoy – 0
- World of Hyatt – 0
- Radisson Rewards – 0
- Choice Privileges – 0
- Wyndham Rewards – 0
- Hotels.com Rewards Credits – 0
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 0
- Capital One – 0
Total Hotel Points Balances
Although we had a sizable IHG redemption, we more than made up for that with all the other hotel points we earned during June 2021. Here’s how our total balances looked at the end of the month:
- IHG Rewards – 170,745
- Hilton Honors – 889,049
- Marriott Bonvoy – 702,252
- World of Hyatt – 67,863
- Radisson Rewards – 93,092
- Choice Privileges – 38,845
- Wyndham Rewards – 66,577
- Hotels.com Rewards Credits – 19
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 644,211
- Capital One – 154,192
Here’s all that information in table format:
Hotel Free Night Certificates
We redeemed quite a few Hyatt certificates recently for an upcoming stay, so our total number of free night certificates has gone down. Here’s what we’re left with:
- 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) – 2
- Hyatt (category 1-7) – 1
Jogging
My walking category has been upgraded to jogging – woohoo! Now that we’re fully vaccinated, I’m comfortable with using hotel fitness rooms again. I’d procrastinated on that front in late May/early June, but finally got back on the treadmill mid-June.
I only jogged 9.85 miles in that time, but I’ve been jogging every 2-3 days and increasing my distance by 0.25 miles each time, so my total by the end of July will be much better.
Blog Stats
Our traffic went down quite a bit compared to the previous month or two as it seemed like some of our posts from New Mexico had been getting widely shared before, with that now dropping off.
- Number of blog posts published – 14
- Page views – 31,588
Final Thoughts
June 2021 was a pretty good month for our stats. We stayed almost $300 under budget and our hotel points balances got a decent boost. Our website traffic dropped, although it went back down to normal levels having had much higher than usual traffic for the previous month or two.
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