Before August, we’d had four months of going over budget and three months where we managed to stay under budget.
I wasn’t too optimistic heading into August that we’d stay under budget. Almost two weeks of the month was due to be spent in the Chicago area, so we knew it could be expensive. Even though we found loads of free things to do in Chicago, eating out and parking could prove to be costly.
So how did we do? Were we able to stay under budget or did we go over budget yet again? Read on to find out.
Miles Driven
We’re doing our 5 year, 50 state road trip in a 2004 Toyota Corolla. At the start of August, it had 94,145 miles on the clock. By the end of the month it read 96,929, so we drove 2,784 miles in August.
That’s the second highest number of miles we’ve driven so far on the road trip. The reason it’s so high is because we drove from Illinois to Michigan and back again for the Insane Inflatable 5k in Grand Rapids. We also drove from Naperville in north Illinois to Marion in south Illinois and then back up to Schaumburg in the north of the state.
As you can see, our road trip isn’t particularly efficient.
I’m going to guess that our mileage will be around the 1,750 mark in September. We’ll be moving from Illinois on to Oklahoma in a week’s time, so that’ll add some miles. We’re going to be spending nine nights in downtown Tulsa during September, so we probably won’t be doing that much driving while we’re there. Ten nights will be in Oklahoma City and while we’ll do a bit of driving around there, I don’t think we’ll end up going too far afield.
Money Spent
This section is always the juicy one. Did we go over budget?
Sadly, yes.
Our budget is $100 per day which has to cover accommodation, gas, activities, food, etc. As there were 31 days in August, that meant our budget for last month was $3,100.
In reality, we spent $3,357.09 which means we went $257.09 over budget. That’s disappointing, but given how much we spent in the first half of the month, it’s not as bad as it could’ve been.
We ended up spending $200 on gas which was more than normal. Part of that is due to how much we drove and part is due to how expensive gas is in and around Chicago.
Parking cost more than $100, whereas it’s usually less than $10 per month. Our accommodation costs were also a little more expensive as we had fewer stays than normal using our hotel points. Food and drink seems to be what caned us though. We spent ~$900 on food and drink (both eating out and in), but there were just so many great places to eat!
We did get a bit lucky with our budget. A couple of hotels didn’t charge us a pet fee, otherwise we’d have been closer to being $400 over budget.
Here’s a breakdown of the month’s costs by category…
…and how our spending has progressed over the year:
Points Earned
We had quite a few paid stays in August, although about half of those nights were in Airbnbs and so didn’t earn any points.
We managed to rack up a few points though – some from stays and some from credit card spend. The Marriott Rewards and SPG schemes finally merged in August, so that’s why the Marriott balance went up so significantly – we didn’t actually earn almost half a million points.
- IHG Rewards Club – 12,905
- Hilton Honors – 1,542
- Marriott Rewards – 451,477 (mostly from SPG 1:3 conversion)
- World of Hyatt – 5,199
- Radisson Rewards – 1,750
- Choice Privileges – 200
- Wyndham Rewards – 0
- Hotels.com Welcome Rewards Credits – 6
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 3,623
Points Redeemed
We didn’t book many stays on points for future stays in August, so didn’t redeem many points last month.
- IHG Rewards Club – 0
- Hilton Honors – 80,000
- Marriott Rewards – 0
- World of Hyatt – 5,000
- Radisson Rewards – 0
- Choice Privileges – 0
- Wyndham Rewards – 0
- Hotels.com Welcome Rewards Credits – 0
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 0
Total Points Balances
Based on all the above changes, here’s what our total points balances looked like at the end of August 2018.
- IHG Rewards Club – 343,145
- Hilton Honors – 594,800
- Marriott Rewards – 624,969
- World of Hyatt – 11,183
- Radisson Rewards – 333,433
- Choice Privileges – 39,251
- Wyndham Rewards – 45,000
- Hotels.com Welcome Rewards Credits – 20
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 319,375
As always, here’s that information in table form for those that prefer to consume the details that way:
Blog Stats
Here are some stats relating to how our blog did last month:
- Number of blog posts published – 21
- Page views – 15,614
Final Thoughts
Another month, another case of us going over budget 🙁
I’m more hopeful than usual that we’ll be able to stay under budget in September though. Nearly all of our stays have been booked using points, so our accommodation costs will be much lower than usual. We should also be driving less than August, so that’ll reduce our spending on gas. We just need to keep our food and drink budget under control too!
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