Road Trip Stats: Month 32 – Aug 2020

Another month has come and gone where we didn’t end up doing much at all due to COVID-19.

We spent most of August in Florida which is another reason we didn’t do much. We’d booked our stay there a couple of months ago just before cases started spiking in the Sunshine State; the Airbnb we’d booked was non-refundable, so we decided to still go but mostly stay at the house to minimize the risk of us getting infected.

Despite doing very little activity-wise, I hadn’t been too sure at the start of the month how we’d end up doing with our budget. The cost of the Airbnb was going to take up about 2/3 of our budget which is a higher proportion than normal, so I figured we’d end up going over budget by the end of the month, potentially by a few hundred dollars.

Our spending didn’t end up being as high as I was expecting though, so it ended up being a much closer run thing than I thought it would be. Did we still end up overspending though, or did we somehow manage to stay under budget? Read on to find out.

Miles Driven

We’d already traveled some of the way from Ohio to Florida at the end of July, so August 1 meant we only had to make the journey from Macon, GA to Inverness, FL. Seeing as Shae and I spent four weeks in Florida hardly driving anywhere, our mileage throughout the month was very low, although we drove up to Virginia Beach at the end of the month which added some miles.

We started the month with 143,476 miles on our odometer and ended it with 145,032 miles on the clock, so we ended up driving 1,556 miles in August.

I’d predicted last month that we’d drive anywhere from 1,000 miles to 1,650 miles depending on what our plans ended up being. The upper end estimate of 1,650 miles was based on if we’d driven up to Maryland, but we only drove up to Virginia Beach. If we’d headed all the way to Maryland, that 1,650 guess would’ve been pretty much spot on for once.

As for our mileage in September, I don’t think we’ll end up driving all that much. We’re heading up to northern Virginia today for a few weeks, but we’re not sure what we’ll be doing from the last week of September onwards. I’ll therefore guess that our mileage this coming month will end up being 1,000 miles or fewer.

Money Spent

Our budget on the road trip is $100 per day, so with 31 days in August we had a monthly budget of $3,100. Despite higher than normal accommodation costs, we ended up spending $3,098.09 and so somehow managed to stay $1.91 under budget.

Going from expecting to overspend by several hundred dollars to (only just) staying under budget was therefore incredibly pleasing. Our accommodation costs ended up coming to $1,920.72, but the rest of our spending was fairly low which is how we managed to scrape in less than $2 under.

Here’s a breakdown of what we spent our money on in August…

…along with a chart showing our spending for the year so far.

Looking ahead to our budget for September, things are looking even more positive. We’re spending much of the month in hotels paid for using points, so our accommodation costs will be minimal. We’re still being careful about what activities we do due to COVID-19, so I doubt our spending in that category will be too high.

When we’ve found ourselves in a similar position in the past with regards to low accommodation costs, we’ve always seemed to end up overspending on eating out, so hopefully we don’t end up going too crazy with that. When we do “eat out”, we’re still only ordering takeout rather than eating in-restaurant right now, so that’ll likely reduce the likelihood that we’ll blow too much money on restaurants.

I’m therefore hoping we’ll end up staying several hundred dollars under budget, but I’ve thought that in the past and it hasn’t come to fruition, so we’ll see!

Accommodation Cost

As mentioned earlier, most of August was spent at an Airbnb in Florida. Shae’s mom and stepdad joined us for a couple of weeks so that Shae and her mom could celebrate their birthdays together, so we split the cost of the accommodation with them.

Here’s a breakdown of what we spent on Airbnbs and hotels last month:

August 1-29: Airbnb in Inverness, FL. Seeing as we split the cost with Shae’s parents, our contribution was $64.29 per night.

August 29-31: Days Inn in Fayetteville, NC. This cost $60.30 per night and so was very reasonable, especially seeing as this stay earned us 7,500 bonus points with Wyndham Rewards thanks to their latest promotion (those points will show up on next month’s stats due to when they showed up in my account).

August 31-September 1: Candlewood Suites Virginia Beach Town Center. We paid for this stay using points; thanks to a couple of credit card benefits that got us the 4th night free and a 10% points rebate, our net cost was 8,438 points per night.

Hotel Points Earned

With us staying at an Airbnb for most of last month, we earned very few hotel points. It might look like we earned a large chunk of Hilton Honors points, but those were points refunded due to us canceling a future stay.

We earned a decent number of Marriott Bonvoy points in August though. That was because some of our Marriott credit cards were offering 10x points at gas stations, so I was able to buy a bunch of gift cards to rack up loads of points.

Here’s a list of all the points we earned last month:

• IHG Rewards Club – 25
• Hilton Honors – 98,954
• Marriott Bonvoy – 41,803
• World of Hyatt – 8,893
• Radisson Rewards – 6,350
• Choice Privileges – 0
• Wyndham Rewards – 0
• Hotels.com Rewards Credits – 0
• Chase Ultimate Rewards – 1,877

Hotel Points Redeemed

Our upcoming three week stay in northern Virginia is at a Hyatt House we booked using points, so we redeemed just over 100,000 World of Hyatt points for that stay. Thanks to their latest promotion though, we’ll get 25% of those points rebated after our stay, so our net cost will end up being only 78,750 points.

Other than our four nights in Virginia Beach at a Candlewood Suites (and IHG brand), we didn’t redeem any other points in August.

• IHG Rewards Club – 45,000
• Hilton Honors – 0
• Marriott Bonvoy – 0
• World of Hyatt – 105,000
• Radisson Rewards – 0
• Choice Privileges – 0
• Wyndham Rewards – 0
• Hotels.com Rewards Credits – 0
• Chase Ultimate Rewards – 0

Total Hotel Points Balances

Our overall points balances stayed pretty much the same last month seeing as the number of points we earned and redeemed were similar – here’s how they ended up.

• IHG Rewards Club – 640,507
• Hilton Honors – 966,617
• Marriott Bonvoy – 521,439
• World of Hyatt – 30,115
• Radisson Rewards – 277,542
• Choice Privileges – 38,643
• Wyndham Rewards – 46,600
• Hotels.com Rewards Credits – 10
• Chase Ultimate Rewards – 370,938

Here are all the points details in table format for those who prefer it to be presented that way:

Jogging

With it being 90° or more with 100% humidity most of the time we were in Florida, I didn’t go jogging at all in August. I tried to make up for that by going swimming as much as possible during our stay, increasing the number of lengths I did each day. I’d originally planned to swim every single day, but that didn’t end up happening. I did go swimming on about 60% of our days there, so that was still more exercise than I’d gotten recently.

I’m hoping the weather in northern Virginia will be a little cooler now that we’re further north and we’re into September, so I’m planning on getting back into jogging this month.

Blog Stats

After taking a big dip for 2-3 months after COVID-19 started really affecting things in the US in March, our website traffic recovered a lot over the last few months. It dipped a little last month, but not by any significant amount.

• Number of blog posts published – 9
• Page views – 26,746

Final Thoughts

It was a pleasant surprise to finish August under budget, even if it was only by less than $2! September is looking positive budget-wise too, so hopefully we can set ourselves up well to help ensure we remain under budget through the end of 2020.