New Year, New Things

I have been delaying a "New Year" post for quite some time, because really, we're still trying to figure things out. We do have some financial goals, however, and since some of you can relate to that, I figured I would share (especially since I just e-mailed my husband with this week's plans and I am about to head out to the gym and grocery store).

When we first got married, we constructed a very strict budget via a Google Spreadsheet which accounted for each area of our finances, especially debt. I'm happy to report that we have been diligently paying off debt (no credit card or car loan debt for either of us now!), but in the other areas we eventually started slacking. My income is not fixed because I am paid per the hour so sometimes budgeting for us is a little weird. We find extra money here and there, and after about six months of being married, we stopped being so strict and started tapping into that money.

Right before our first anniversary this last year, my brother moved in with us. This of course would change our budget (especially for food) but we didn't make any changes to the spreadsheet because we weren't sure what to expect. I think we were also lazy and didn't want to have to think about it. We had all that extra money laying around, remember?

Our credit card bills kept getting higher and higher, but since we were able to pay them off each month, I didn't really investigate. There were so many variable things going on... school tuition for me, travel expenses, a new house -- all of this would be repaid from our savings account, so it didn't really "matter."

Well finally in December, I went ahead and took a look at the past four months to see what we were spending money on to make our credit card bill increase so much. It was immediately apparent that our food budget took a great hit. We were actually spending two to three times the amount of what our budget allowed! At first I thought it was from the holidays (and sure, that accounts for some of it), but in reality, we spent more in one month than we did in September which was when we spent a week traveling and practically eating out for every meal. Aye carumba.

I think the last few months of the year were extremely stressful for me, so it was much easier to suggest going out for dinner than cooking something. And when we would cook something, we wouldn't plan ahead so there would be a lot of wasted ingredients in our fridge that ended up being thrown out. Remember, we don't really cook meat, so if we didn't use all of those vegetables or fruits, into the garbage they went [we are looking at buying compost bins].

As you might imagine, I kind of freaked out when I realized how much we had been spending on food. A lot of our friends are able to stick to a really strict budget and they blog about it often. I felt really defeated and down about the whole situation, but after talking about it with J., we realized we just needed to get back on task about our budget and not spend money so frivolously.

When we got home from our short stay in Florida, I immediately started making our weekly meal plan. We are now in week five and things have been going great. I am excited for this month to end so I can tally up how much we actually spent. Since I have been doing a good job planning, I thought I could also post our meal plan for the week on this blog as a way to maybe keep me accountable. We'll see how long it lasts!

Our Upcoming Trip!

While financial/healthstuffs have been really stressing me out in the evenings after I get off of work, I am everyday looking more and more forward to our upcoming trip. I sort of forgot how soon it was (12 more days!) until our good friend Melanie, who we'll be visiting in SLC, recently emailed me about info. !!!!

In truth, I have been planning this vacation for over 6-months. Of course that wasn't every day planning by any means, but I made sure to book the necessary campsites exactly six months before our intended arrival to the several parks we'll be canvassing. These places get competitive! I'm really happy we're going right as the season opens because that should mean less crowds and crisp weather. I can't wait to fall asleep at night alongside my husband in the desert air.

I wanted to share our itinerary (shorthanded) with you all, as I think I did this for our Chicago trip. I was also going to provide a price breakdown, like last time, especially since I receive questions from friends about "how" we make travel happen within our budget and time. Yes, we will be spending a lot of our time driving. I'm sure by the end we will be sick of it, but I am excited to see everything outside of wintertime.

Itinerary

Day 0, May 25 -- leave CLT for SLC, arriving at night
Day 1, May 26 -- leave from SLC to Zion National Park, UT
Day 2, May 27 -- Zion
Day 3, May 28 -- leave Zion for Grand Canyon NP (North Rim), AZ
Day 4, May 29 -- leave Grand Canyon for Bryce NP, UT
Day 5, May 30 -- leave Bryce for Capitol Reef NP, UT (lunch stop), arrive in Arches NP, UT
Day 6, May 31 -- day in Arches, head back to SLC in the evening
Day 7, June 1 -- leave SLC for Idaho Falls, ID (lunch stop), arrive in Yellowstone NP, MT/WY
Day 8, June 2 -- Yellowstone
Day 9, June 3 -- Yellowstone
Day 10, June 4 -- Yellowstone
Day 11, June 5 -- leave Yellowstone for Grand Tetons NP, WY, arrive back to SLC
Day 12, June 6 -- leave SLC for CLT

Approximate Costs (for two people)

- Airfare: $612.80
- Car rental: $185.39
- Lodging: $141.00
- Fuel: $320.00 [based on approx. 2000 miles of travel (rounding up), a vehicle with 25mpg (rounding down), and gas $4.00/gallon (hopefully rounding up??)]
- Food: $150.00
- Activities: $150.00 (being generous, as most of our activities will be hiking)
--TOTAL: $1559.19 (and this amount reflects about 6-months of our allotted travel savings money)

I don't know what most of our friends spend on trips, but at $780 per person, I don't think this too much travel money for such a long trip to so many places, and for what we consider one of our "big vacations" of the year. We might be overdoing it with all of the driving, but that will be a lesson learned at a later date. Surprised by our car rate for 12-days of renting? I'll share details on that soon. Impressed with our lodging costs? Try camping next time you travel. This will be our first flighted camping trip and we're super stoked. I am doing a mock pack trial this weekend (keep in mind we're utilizing duffel bags instead of backpacking frames) and plan to take some photos to show you all how this can easily be done!

What do you guys think? Are we going to kill one another after driving for so long? Did we spend too much on this trip? What activities would you be keen to do if you were on a similar trip?