After going way over budget in October, I’d been hoping that we’d manage to limit our spending a little more in November to get our spending back on track.
Our accommodation spending was due to be lower than average, but that’s not always a sign that we’ll spend less in any given month.
How did we end up doing with our budget? Read on to find out about that and the rest of our road trip stats for November 2022 – our 59th month on the road.
Miles Driven
November began with our car’s odometer reading at 188,998. By the end of the month it was at 190,574 which means we drove 1,576 miles in November. I’d predicted we’d drive 1,250 miles, so I was a little off with that guess.
We’re spending the entire month of December in Virginia, going from Sterling to Yorktown to Virginia Beach. Although we’re remaining in the same state, we’ve done a bit of driving around in that time, so I’ll guess again that we’ll drive 1,250 miles this month.
Money Spent
We upped our budget at the start of the year to $125 per day which means we had $3,750 to spend last month. By the end of November we’d spent $3,643.15, so that meant we stayed $106.85 under budget. That’s not quite as far under budget as I’d hoped we might stay, but it’s still a pretty good result.
There are a couple of reasons we didn’t spend even less. At almost $335, our spend on activities was higher than nearly every other month on the road trip. Our spending on groceries and eating out was also pretty high; part of the grocery spending was due to Thanksgiving, while overspend on eating out was more due to drinking out thanks to lots of great breweries, meaderies and distilleries in Delaware – more to come about those in a future post.
Here’s a breakdown of our spending in November…
…and a chart tracking our spending in the first 11 months of the year.
Looking ahead to our spending in December, I’m pretty confident that we’ll stay under budget. However, it’s unlikely that we’ll stay $714.69 under budget which is what would be needed to stay under budget for the year as a whole. There is still a chance we’ll be able to do that though, so fingers crossed!
Accommodation Cost
Even though we moved from Pennsylvania to Delaware to Virginia in November, we only stayed at three different hotels. Here’s how we paid for them all.
November 1-7: Homewood Suites Mechanicsburg, PA. We booked this stay using Hilton Honors points. We stayed there a total of 10 nights (we’d checked in towards the end of October) and Hilton gives every 5th night free on award stays for anyone with status. The redemption rate was 34,000 points per night, but getting the 5th and 10th nights free meant our net cost was 27,200 Hilton Honors points per night.
November 7-18: Hyatt House Hyatt House Lewes / Rehoboth Beach, DE (review to come in a couple of weeks). This hotel can be very expensive in the summer, but in the off-season it can be much more reasonably priced. We paid $95.82 per night including tax, but also got $37.95 back as a statement credit by paying with a card with a Hyatt Chase Offer loaded to it. That reduced our net cost to $92.37 per night including tax.
November 18-December 1: Hyatt House Sterling/Dulles Airport-North, VA. Shae and I spent the rest of the month just outside of Washington D.C. and booked this stay using World of Hyatt points. The property is a category 1 hotel which means it costs 3,500, 5,000 or 6,500 points per night depending on if it’s at off-peak, standard or peak pricing. It was a mix of off-peak and standard pricing during our stay, so our average cost was 3,969 points per night.
Hotel Points Earned
November wasn’t a big month when it came to earning and redeeming points. We did earn some points during that time; mostly from credit card spending, but some from stays too.
- IHG One Rewards – 23,089
- Hilton Honors – 14,997
- Marriott Bonvoy – 2,206
- World of Hyatt – 22,303
- Radisson Rewards – 0
- Choice Privileges – 0
- Wyndham Rewards – 23
- Hotels.com Rewards Credits – 0
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 8,928
- Capital One – 20
Hotel Points Redeemed
Most of our hotel stays through the beginning of February 2023 were already booked heading into November, so we didn’t need to redeem many points in November. The 15,000 points with Hyatt covered three nights for an additional room at the Hyatt House Sterling/Dulles Airport-North for Shae to stay in after I tested positive for COVID after Thanksgiving.
- IHG One Rewards – 6,000
- Hilton Honors – 0
- Marriott Bonvoy – 0
- World of Hyatt – 15,000
- Radisson Rewards – 0
- Choice Privileges – 0
- Wyndham Rewards – 0
- Hotels.com Rewards Credits – 0
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 0
- Capital One – 0
Hotel Points Balances
Based on those minor changes, here’s how our points balances ended up at the end of November.
- IHG One Rewards – 643,647
- Hilton Honors – 821,920
- Marriott Bonvoy – 101,868
- World of Hyatt – 42,849
- Radisson Rewards – 73,092
- Choice Privileges – 96,665
- Wyndham Rewards – 44,669
- Hotels.com Rewards Credits – 2
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 803,343
- Capital One – 296,592
Here’s all that information in table format:
Hotel Free Night Certificates
I realized last month that we had both a Marriott and Hilton free night certificate due to expire without us having any plan to use them. While I was laid low with COVID, I booked Shae a couple of nights in downtown D.C. so that she could stay close to the Smithsonian museums she wanted to visit down there which would reduce the need for her to drive back and forth from our hotel out by Dulles airport.
Meanwhile, our stay at the two Hyatt Houses under Shae’s account meant we earned enough elite nights for her to earn Globalist status too, with the 60th night also earning a category 1-7 free night certificate on her account.
- IHG (up to 40,000 points per night) – 3
- Hilton (any property worldwide) – 3
- Marriott (up to 35,000 points per night) – 4
- Marriott (up to 40,000 points per night) – 0
- Hyatt (category 1-4) – 0
- Hyatt (category 1-7) – 1
Blog Stats
COVID hit me far harder than I was expecting considering I’ve been vaccinated and boosted. That meant I had a hard time having enough energy to get caught up on blog posts, but we did get at least one post published each week in November.
- Number of blog posts published – 6
- Page views – 15,537
Final Thoughts
Overall, November was a fairly average month for our road trip stats. We stayed under budget by just over $100 and didn’t earn or redeem large amounts of hotel points. Hopefully our stats for December show that we’ve stayed under budget for the year as a whole, although I’m not convinced we’ll be so fortunate.
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