Going in to July 2021 I knew it wasn’t going to be a pretty month for our budget.
The entire month was going to be spent in a hotel we were paying cash for rather than using points, so that was going to take up 84% of our budget. That left us very little leeway, especially when taking into account fixed expenses each month, let alone food, gas, activities, etc.
It was therefore a little demoralizing – but not surprising – when we ended up over budget about a week into the month. Going over budget that early in the month meant that it was only going to get worse by the end of the month. But how much worse? Keep reading to find out.
Miles Driven
At the start of July 2021 we had 160,568 miles showing on our odometer, while at the end of the month its reading was 161,850. That means we drove 1,282 miles in July.
That’s not strictly accurate though. I forgot to make a note of our mileage until I’d run a few errands on August 1, so the true reading probably would’ve been ~15 miles fewer than that, but not a substantial difference. I’d predicted that we’d drive 1,100 miles in July, so I wasn’t too far off with my guess.
As for August, our mileage will be minimal. We’re spending most of the month overseas, so I’ll predict we’ll only drive 250 miles.
Money Spent
From the somewhat good to the downright bad and ugly. Our daily budget on the road trip is $100, so we had $3,100 to play with in July. By the end of the month we’d spent $3,949.97 which means we went $849.97 over budget. We’ve only ever gone over budget by more than that amount once on the road trip, so in theory it was an abysmal result.
However, it really wasn’t too bad depending on how you look at it. The only reason we went so far over budget is because of our accommodation spending. We’d booked a long term stay in a one bedroom suite with a kitchen at a hotel in Denver. That cost $84.15 per night which is a very low price for that kind of accommodation and so it was worth it versus how many hotel points we would’ve had to redeem elsewhere.
We’re due to earn ~$160 cashback having clicked through from a shopping portal, so that’ll help offset some of that cost once it becomes payable in the shopping portal. We also earned ~25,000 Marriott Bonvoy points on the stay which isn’t as many as we’d have earned staying at most of Marriott’s other brands. That’s because we stayed in an Element which only offers 5 points per dollar rather than 10 points per dollar.
With our accommodation spending hitting ~$2,600, that means we only spent ~$1,350 on everything else in July which wasn’t as much as normal. The overspend can therefore be attributed wholly to our hotel costs which is why I don’t feel too despondent.
Here’s a breakdown of our costs for last month…
…along with a chart tracking our budget progress so far this year.
Despite the fact that we overspent so much last month, the fact that we’d stayed under budget for much of 2021 so far means that we’re only over budget by about $200 for the year. We can therefore hopefully make up that different by the end of 2021.
Accommodation Cost
This section is nice and easy this month because we only stayed in one hotel last month.
July 1-31: Element Denver Park Meadows, CO (review coming up in the future). Due to the fact that we booked a long term stay, our room rate was only $94.93 per night including taxes. However, it ended up being even cheaper than that. Some states don’t charge you taxes if you stay in the same hotel for 31+ nights and Colorado is one such state. As a result, the taxes were removed for our stay and so we only paid $84.15 per night.
Hotel Points Earned
July was a fairly good month for boosting our points balances. Our largest increase came on our Choice balance as I earned the welcome bonus of 75,000 points when signing up for their credit card and spending $2,000 in the first six months.
The Hilton points were mainly earned from credit card spend, while the Hyatt points mostly came from a combination of 10,000 points from a Milestone Reward and 24,000 points as compensation for an upcoming stay that Hyatt cancelled due to the hotel not opening on time.
Here’s a breakdown of everything we earned in July.
- IHG Rewards – 38,100
- Hilton Honors – 40,611
- Marriott Bonvoy – 6,803
- World of Hyatt – 37,376
- Radisson Rewards – 0
- Choice Privileges – 83,220
- Wyndham Rewards – 0
- Hotels.com Rewards Credits – 0
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 21,794
- Capital One – 6,000
Hotel Points Redeemed
We didn’t redeem points with many hotel programs last month, but the two redemptions we did make were fairly large. We redeemed 50,000 Hyatt points for an upcoming stay, along with 100,000 points for a ten night stay in September at one of Marriott’s brands and a five night stay at another of their brands costing 57,500 points.
- IHG Rewards – 0
- Hilton Honors – 0
- Marriott Bonvoy – 157,500
- World of Hyatt – 50,000
- 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
Based on those changes above, here’s how our total hotel balances ended up by the end of July:
- IHG Rewards – 208,845
- Hilton Honors – 929,660
- Marriott Bonvoy – 551,555
- World of Hyatt – 55,239
- Radisson Rewards – 93,092
- Choice Privileges – 122,065
- Wyndham Rewards – 66,577
- Hotels.com Rewards Credits – 19
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 666,005
- Capital One – 160,192
Here’s a table listing all that information:
Hotel Free Night Certificates
In addition to our points, we have a number of free night certificates with hotel programs. These are earned in a variety of ways – some at renewal on hotel credit cards, others through spending a certain amount on hotel credit cards, others from staying a certain number of nights with a hotel program, etc.
- IHG (up to 40,000 points per night) – 3
- Hilton (any property worldwide) – 3
- Marriott (up to 35,000 points per night) – 5
- Marriott (up to 40,000 points per night) – 2
- Hyatt (category 1-4) – 2
- Hyatt (category 1-7) – 1
Jogging
My jogging routine continued increasing last month, starting at 2.5 miles per session at the start of the month to 4.5 miles per session at the end of the month. We also went hiking a few times in July, so I was fairly pleased with my exercise level, although it would’ve been nice to have done a little more.
Blog Stats
Our page views unfortunately dropped again last month from the month before – there’s been quite a bit of fluctuation this year.
- Number of blog posts published – 14
- Page views – 24,555
Final Thoughts
Our budget took a big hit in July, although that was entirely due to high accommodation spending rather than lavish spending in other areas. Thankfully we’re not too far over budget for the year, so hopefully we can make up ground in the next few months.
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