April 2020 was the first full month of our road trip where we didn’t really do much other than visiting Petroglyph National Monument a couple of times.
As a result, we hardly spent anything on activities last month. As I’m sure a lot of you are experiencing, we spent more on groceries than average although our eating out expenditure was down.
April was also the first month of our road trip where we paid for our accommodation all month rather than using any hotel points. Did that extra spend on hotels and Airbnbs mean we went over budget or did we manage to stay under budget again? Keep reading to find out.
Miles Driven
We started April with 138,408 miles showing on our odometer. By the end of the month it was showing 139,033 miles which means we only drove 625 miles.
That’s not too surprising because other than driving from Albuquerque, NM to Pueblo, CO, we hardly spent any time in the car. I’d predicted last month that we wouldn’t drive more than 650 miles, so that was a pretty accurate guesstimate.
I’m not entirely sure how many miles we’ll be driving in May. We’re booked into an Airbnb until May 13, but we don’t have anything booked beyond that. Our plan is to head back east this summer, but we might stick around Colorado for another few weeks. If we do, our mileage will probably be 650 or less again. If we start heading back east mid-month though, it might be closer to 1,200 miles.
Money Spent
Although we got good deals on our hotel in Albuquerque and our current Airbnb in Pueblo, paying for accommodation all month meant we spent almost $1,500. That accounts for half of last month’s budget seeing as our April allowance was $3,000 (30 days * $100 per day).
By the end of the month, we’d spent $3,164.68 which means we were $164.68 over budget. That’s disappointing as I thought we’d stay under budget, but part of that is due to the above average accommodation spending.
Most of the rest of our spend – $987.88 – was for eating in and eating out, with 3/4 of that coming under the eating in section. We’d stocked up on food and still have enough to last us for the next week or two, so hopefully our grocery spending in May will be a little lower. Some of what was allocated under eating in was spending at the liquor store. We probably have enough booze to last us through May, so that should help reduce this month’s bills too.
What ultimately pushed us over budget was credit card annual fees which came to ~$250 last month. Those were all credit cards which come with free night certificates or bonus points and so we’ll get more than $250 of value from them, but those savings will be in future months whereas their costs are accounted for now.
Here’s a breakdown of our April spending…
…and a chart tracking how we’ve over or under spent each month of 2020 so far.
I’m not sure if we’ll be staying under budget in May seeing as I’ve no idea if we’ll be paying for a hotel/Airbnb for the second half of the month or if we’ll be using hotel points. If it’s the former, it could be close as to whether we stay under budget. If it’s the latter, we should be well under budget provided we’re not then tempted to spend money elsewhere from the money we’re saving on accommodation!
Accommodation Cost
Here’s a quick breakdown of the cost of our hotel and Airbnb last month:
April 1-13: Candlewood Suites Albuquerque, NM – This cost us $63.77 per night including tax, so that came to $765.24
April 13-30: Airbnb in Pueblo, CO – This cost $45.07 per night which was a great cost for a nice apartment all to ourselves. That means it cost $811.26, but our net cost was actually lower than that. We paid for the stay using gift cards we’d bought at an average of 15% off, so our net cost was $689.58.
The Candlewood Suites stay was booked after clicking through from TopCashback (my referral link), so that’ll earn us $53.76 cashback because that 8% rate is calculated on the pre-tax room rate. That booking has tracked on TopCashback although it’ll be another few weeks before it becomes payable, so that’ll be added into our budget next month or the month after.
Points Earned
Seeing as we only stayed at one hotel in April, we didn’t earn many hotel points last month. Candlewood Suites is part of IHG, so that’s how most of those IHG Rewards Club points were earned.
The other points listed below were earned as a result of spending on some of our various hotel credit cards.
- IHG Rewards Club – 61,440
- Hilton Honors – 0
- Marriott Bonvoy – 316
- World of Hyatt – 120
- Radisson Rewards – 2,125
- Choice Privileges – 2,024
- Wyndham Rewards – 0
- Hotels.com Welcome Rewards Credits – 0
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 8,784
Points Redeemed
We didn’t spend any points last month, so this list is straightforward:
- IHG Rewards Club – 0
- Hilton Honors – 0
- Marriott Bonvoy – 0
- World of Hyatt – 0
- Radisson Rewards – 0
- Choice Privileges – 0
- Wyndham Rewards – 0
- Hotels.com Welcome Rewards Credits – 0
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 0
Total Points Balances
Although we didn’t earn many points in April, the fact that we didn’t spend any means we boosted our points balances to just over 2.5 million which is always a nice threshold to get back over.
Here’s a breakdown of all those points…
- IHG Rewards Club – 681,236
- Hilton Honors – 713,564
- Marriott Bonvoy – 384,956
- World of Hyatt – 125,643
- Radisson Rewards – 201,629
- Choice Privileges – 34,965
- Wyndham Rewards – 46,600
- Hotels.com Welcome Rewards Credits – 20
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 317,487
…along with all that information in a table.
Blog Stats
Our website traffic started dropping when COVID-19 hit and it’s not recovered yet seeing as people aren’t traveling at the moment. That’s not had a huge impact on us financially, but it’ll obviously be nice when traffic does start to recover.
Here are some blog stats from April:
- Number of blog posts published – 12
- Page views – 9,970. That’s a 53% drop on this time last year.
Final Thoughts
Losing website traffic and overspending budget-wise means April 2020 wasn’t our greatest month stats-wise. It wasn’t terrible though and we can hopefully get back under budget in May.
[…] putting together our road trip stats for April, I said that I wasn’t sure if we’d end up being under budget in May because at the time […]