Road Trip Stats: Month 53 – May 2022

After spending the first three months of 2022 going over budget, we finally reversed the trend in April by managing to stay slightly under budget.

Heading in to May, I was fairly confident that we’d be able to stay under budget in the fifth month of the year too and was even hopeful we’d do that by a couple of hundred bucks.

As it turns out, my hopes and expectations not only came to pass but were greatly exceeded. Here are our road trip stats for May where we share how well we did with our budget along with all our other stats.

Miles Driven

We started May with 177,876 miles on the clock and ended the month with its reading at 180,805; that means we drove 2,929 miles last month. I’d predicted at the start of last month that we’d drive 3,000 miles, so that guess was more accurate than normal!

Looking ahead to our mileage in June, we’re spending most of the month in Nebraska before heading one state over – Iowa – at the end of the month. As a result, we won’t be driving anywhere near as far, so I’ll predict that we’ll drive 1,200 miles in June.

Money Spent

At the start of the year we increased our daily budget from $100 to $125. That means our total monthly budget for May was $3,875. By the end of the month we’d spent $3,399.32 which meant we stayed $475.68 under budget. That makes up for all of January’s and February’s overspend and part of March’s, so it’s great to be back on track.

At almost $500, our gas expenditure was the highest it’s ever been on the road trip. Our spending on groceries and eating out was fairly high too. What saved us was how much – or more like how little – we spent on accommodation. Most of the month was spent in hotels booked using points, so we only spent $695.96 on hotels and Airbnbs in May, as well as $200 on hotel pet fees.

Here’s a breakdown of our spending for last month…

…along with a chart tracking our overall spending for the year.

Looking ahead to our spending for June, I think it’ll be close as to whether or not we stay under budget. We’re currently due to spend about $1,900 total on accommodation and hotel pet fees this month, so about double what we spent in those two categories combined in May. Our food and gas expenditure should be lower though, so I’m hoping we don’t spend over our $3,750 budget.

Accommodation Cost

Although we stayed two weeks in the same Salt Lake City hotel in May, we also moved around quite a bit which resulted in us having seven different stays last month. Here’s where we stayed and how we paid for them.

May 1-3: Airbnb in Flagstaff, AZ (see the listing here.) This was our most expensive accommodation of the month, but that’s because Flagstaff is an expensive place to stay due to its proximity to Sedona and the Grand Canyon. It cost $195.56 per night; we paid with Airbnb gift cards bought at a discount which made the nightly cost $176 and therefore made our half of the cost $88 per night (this was when my parents were still with us on the road trip, so we split the cost.)

May 3-7: Tempe Mission Palms in Tempe, AZ (see my review here.) This is a category 3 Hyatt property; in the past it would’ve cost 12,000 points per night, but with the recent introduction of peak, standard and off-peak pricing, award costs can differ per night. The first three nights of our stay cost 12,000 points per night (standard), while the final night cost 9,000 points (off-peak.) That made the total cost for four nights 45,000 points or an average of 11,250 World of Hyatt points per night.

May 7-8: Airbnb in Fredonia, AZ (see the listing here.) This was a cute studio suite I’d booked halfway along the route from Tempe, AZ to Salt Lake City, UT. It cost $112.25 for the night which we paid for with discounted Airbnb gift cards, so our net cost was $101.03.

May 8-23: Residence Inn Salt Lake City Downtown, UT (see my review here.) This was booked using Marriott Bonvoy points. The total cost was originally 223,000 points, but the price subsequently dropped to 218,500 points and so I rebooked our stay to save the 4,500 points. The 218,500 points total takes into account Marriott’s Stay 5, Pay For 4 benefit which gives a free night for every five nights you book using points. At 218,500 points for 15 nights, the average cost was 14,567 points per night which was fantastic value for a one bedroom suite with a kitchen in downtown Salt Lake City.

May 23-26: Airbnb in Page, AZ (see the listing here.) After Salt Lake City we headed back down to Page, AZ because we had tickets to hike Upper Antelope Canyon. The Airbnb we found cost $127.98 per night, but discounted Airbnb gift cards meant our net cost was $115.18 per night.

May 26-27: Econo Lodge in Grand Junction, CO (I’m not planning on writing a review for this stay.) After Page we headed northeast to Nebraska. That’s a long journey though, so we stayed overnight at this Econo Lodge because its pet fee was minimal for one night ($10) and only cost 10,000 Choice Privileges points. Other hotels in Grand Junction were pretty expensive, so this was a better choice for a quick overnight stay where all we wanted was somewhere clean and comfortable which this was.

May 27-June 1: Holiday Inn Express Scottsbluff, NE (review coming in a few weeks.) I’d originally booked the first four nights as a paid stay and the second four nights as an award stay because there weren’t rooms bookable with points for those first four nights. Thankfully I checked again about a week before our stay and saw that there was now points availability, so I rebooked those first four nights to save us money.

IHG has dynamic pricing nowadays, so May 27 to June 1 cost 22,000, 23,000, 16,000, 17,000 and 19,000 points respectively. With IHG’s 4th night free benefit for IHG Premier credit cardholders and the 10% points rebate on award stays for IHG Select cardholders (both of which we have), our net cost for the first four nights was 13,725 points per night and the 5th night was 13,500 points. We’d bought those IHG points for 0.5 cents per point, so the first four nights effectively cost $68.63 per night and the fifth night $67.50 which meant it cost us about half as much compared to what it would’ve cost if we’d paid cash for the stay.

Hotel Points Earned

May 2022 was a good month when it came to earning hotel points, most of which was earned via manufactured spending on our hotel cards. A couple of exceptions were the 40,000 Radisson Rewards points which came from renewing my credit card and I think 60,000 of the Ultimate Rewards came from credit card referrals.

• IHG One Rewards – 23,686
• Hilton Honors – 87,695
• Marriott Bonvoy – 2,019
• World of Hyatt – 8,434
• Radisson Rewards – 40,000
• Choice Privileges – 4,596
• Wyndham Rewards – 20,472
• Hotels.com Rewards Credits – 0
• Chase Ultimate Rewards – 79,237
• Capital One – 48,400

Hotel Points Redeemed

We didn’t redeem anywhere near as many points as we earned last month which is always a nice thing to see. The IHG redemption was for our Scottsbluff, NE stay, the World of Hyatt points for a room at the Tempe Mission Palms for my parents and the 55,500 Marriott points for an overseas stay next year which I’m excited to share more about in the future.

• IHG One Rewards – 61,000
• Hilton Honors – 0
• Marriott Bonvoy – 55,500
• World of Hyatt – 12,000
• 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

As a result of our earning and redeeming, here’s how our hotel points balances ended up by the end of May:

• IHG One Rewards – 507,632
• Hilton Honors – 1,107,559
• Marriott Bonvoy – 190,312
• World of Hyatt – 58,898
• Radisson Rewards – 43,092
• Choice Privileges – 96,165
• Wyndham Rewards – 151,493
• Hotels.com Rewards Credits – 10
• Chase Ultimate Rewards – 767,344
• Capital One – 275,572

Here’s all that information in table format:

Hotel Free Night Certificates

We earned three new category 1-4 Hyatt free night certificates this past month. Two of them were thanks to Hyatt’s Brand Explorer feature which gives you a free night certificate for every five different Hyatt brands you stay at.

The Tempe Mission Palms is one of their Destination brands which neither of us had stayed at before. We booked our room on my account and my parents’ room on Shae’s account; this happened to be the 10th Hyatt brand we’d stayed at on my account and the 5th on Shae’s which is why we each earned one of those certificates. I think the other certificate was earned by spending $15,000 on my Hyatt credit card this year as that’s one of the card’s benefits.

Here’s how many different certificates we now have:

• IHG (up to 40,000 points per night) – 2
• Hilton (any property worldwide) – 3
• Marriott (up to 35,000 points per night) – 1
• Marriott (up to 40,000 points per night) – 1
• Hyatt (category 1-4) – 7
• Hyatt (category 1-7) – 0

Blog Stats

We only published 11 new blog posts last month, but our blog readership increased a little compared to the previous month.

• Number of blog posts published – 11
• Page views – 21,169

RAGBRAI Update

Training this month has been up and down. After Stephen’s parents left I went home to Virginia for a week and while they had an exercise bike in the gym, it was incredibly uncomfortable so I only got one ride in.

In Salt Lake City, UT I rode on the Jordan River Parkway Trail several times and it was a beautiful ride. When we moved on to Page, AZ, I tried to keep up with my momentum, forgetting that I’d gone back up in elevation yet again. I found a loop through the city at the top of the hill it rests on and that made my ride in the heat tolerable, especially since I didn’t also have to contend with the elevation gain.

Overall, I’m a bit behind on mileage but still within my training plan for RAGBRAI in ~40 days!

Final Thoughts

May 2022 was our best set of monthly stats for a long time. Almost $500 under budget, almost 200,000 more hotel points and three more free night certificates than we started the month with – a great result! Hopefully that continues into June.