Argh!
We were so, so close to staying on budget last month. With one day left of July, we were still $25 under budget. We’d planned to be at the hotel all day as I had to work which meant we wouldn’t be spending anything. Unfortunately, a last minute emergency meant we had to drop a couple of hundred bucks on medical care.
You can find out more about what happened below, so read on for our stats from month 7 of our 5 year, 50 state road trip.
Miles Driven
We started July with 92,509 miles on the clock. By the end of the month the odometer was showing as 94,145, so we drove 1,636 miles in July – the lowest mileage since we started the road trip on January 1, 2018.
That wasn’t too surprising as the first half of the month was spent in Wisconsin, while the second half was in Illinois. These two states share a border, so it didn’t require a long drive to get from one state to the next.
Pretty much all of August will be spent in Illinois, so I’d expect us to drive a similar number of miles this month. Having said that, we’re taking a detour up to Grand Rapids, Michigan this weekend for an inflatable 5k run, so that’ll add a bit more to our mileage this month.
Money Spent
As I mentioned at the start of the post, we were incredibly close to staying under budget. Sadly, some unknown insect had other ideas.
A couple of nights before the end of the month, the critter (we think a spider) bit the side of Shae’s face.
And eyelid.
Several times.
Her face was swollen the next day, but it wasn’t too bad and so we waited to see if it’d get any worse. Unfortunately it did. So much so that she could barely open her eye when waking up on the 31st.
Concerned that it might be something serious, we headed to an urgent care clinic. Thankfully it didn’t turn out to be too serious and they prescribed steroids to reduce the swelling and an antibiotic to ensure her eye didn’t get infected. The cost for the visit – including medication – ended up being ~$200 which is why we went over budget right at the end of the month. Still, it was a necessary expense, so we don’t feel bad about going over budget.
At the start of the month, I’d expected we’d actually be several hundred dollars under budget. What I’d forgotten was that we were due to have several credit cards renew in July which meant a few hundred dollars in annual fees. Those cards all come with a free hotel night that we can redeem for stays worth more than those annual fees. That makes the fees worthwhile, but it did blow up our budget a little.
We had $3,100 to play with in July as our budget is $100 per day. We ended up spending $3,275.61 which means we went $175.61 over budget.
As always, here’s a breakdown of our costs by category…
…as well as a line graph tracking our spending so far this year:
Points Earned
We didn’t have any paid hotel stays during July, so we didn’t earn many points. Any large increases were simply due to moving some points balances around, while the miscellaneous amounts are mainly from credit card spending.
Our only paid stays last month were in Airbnb properties – if only they had a loyalty scheme!
- IHG Rewards Club – 12,591
- Hilton Honors – 3,378
- SPG – 27,746 (26,666 transferred from Marriott Rewards)
- Marriott Rewards – 0
- World of Hyatt – 45,510 (45,000 transferred from Chase Ultimate Rewards balance)
- Radisson Rewards – 3,900
- Choice Privileges – 4,138
- Wyndham Rewards – 0
- Hotels.com Welcome Rewards Credits – 0
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 3,723
Points Redeemed
About half our stays in July were award stays paid for using points, but those redemptions were allocated in previous months when we made the reservations.
We did end up booking several award stays for upcoming months though, so we redeemed quite a few points which are shown below.
- IHG Rewards Club – 70,000
- Hilton Honors – 80,000
- SPG – 0
- Marriott Rewards – 140,000 (80,000 transferred to SPG on a 3:1 basis)
- World of Hyatt – 50,000
- Radisson Rewards – 0
- Choice Privileges – 0
- Wyndham Rewards – 0
- Hotels.com Welcome Rewards Credits – 0
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 45,000 (transferred to World of Hyatt)
Total Points Balances
Taking into account all the points we earned and redeemed, here’s our hotel points balances as of the end of July.
- IHG Rewards Club – 330,240
- Hilton Honors – 673,258
- SPG – 144,099
- Marriott Rewards – 173,492
- World of Hyatt – 10,984
- Radisson Rewards – 331,683
- Choice Privileges – 39,051
- Wyndham Rewards – 45,000
- Hotels.com Welcome Rewards Credits – 14
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 315,752
Here’s all that information in table form for those that prefer it presented in this way.
Blog Stats
We know some of our readers enjoy seeing stats about the blog, so here’s what our readership looked like last month:
- Number of blog posts published – 26
- Page views – 18,659
Final Thoughts
It’s a little disappointing that we went over budget after coming so close to staying under budget. Hopefully we can get back on track in August.
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