Budget is $60 a day...so how much have we spent in the USA?
Short answer - more than that! $40 more a day to be exact.
While that seems like a sure way to turn an 'adult gap year' into an 'adult gap few months', $100 AU a day ($77 US) has bought us a lot of good food and priceless memories.
Quiggy and I sat down this morning to look at the budget, something we've kind of been avoiding for the past 6 weeks. We know we haven't been extravagant but we also know we haven't gone without during our time in America. So where has the money gone?
1. Food. The biggest expense (about half of total costs) has been eating. We love food and we like to eat well. We also like cappucinos and that alone has cost around $15 a day. We just can't bring ourselves to drink drip filter coffee which is cheap and nasty so we coffee snobs are spending way too much money on pretty ordinary coffee. No wonder Jobe Watson opened a cafe here, Starbucks virtually owns the market.
We've been fortunate to be able to cook many meals during our home sits but we've eaten out every day whether that be breakfast, lunch or dinner, or all three. We've eaten fresh seafood in famous restaurants, dreamy pancakes and french toast from french patisseries, the best smoked ribs that smother sauce all over your face, rustic pizzas from swanky pubs, gourmet cheese and charcuterie from skilled artisans, freshest berries from farmers markets, the best chocolate from Ghirardelli, and all the snacks you can think of between. Yes we are putting on weight. At home I am a svelte 55 kgs, here I am a tank at 123 pounds!
2. Car hire and petrol. 25% of our money has been spent driving across Nevada and California. Although we only hired cars for 13 days, (we have been fortunate to have access to private cars during our home sits) we have driven in excess of 3,200 km's. Compared to Australia, car hire and petrol is cheap here. The longer you hire a car, the cheaper it is.
A 10 day car hire plus insurance cost $37 AU a day. The next time we hired a car for just 3 days which cost $100 AU a day. Same company but different drop off point. Petrol is only $3 a gallon (3.78 litres). We've also caught a taxi, used UBER, taken the train and a boat but these costs are less than $200. You really do need a car here, it's a big place and the best way to see it is from the convenience of your own car, even if it means driving on the 'other' side of the road.
3. Hotels. We have so far been very lucky to have stayed most of our time in 3 wonderful homesits and with our beautiful friends in Beverly Hills. In the times between stays we have booked hotels online. Las Vegas is by far the cheapest and best accommodation you can get on a budget. The rest is 'you get what you pay for'. We always check reviews before we commit and if possible do a drive by, if it looks ordinary we move on. We expect that this expense will move up the list depending on whether we accept future homesits and where we decide to go next.
4. Phone/Internet. When we landed the first job was to buy local sims for our phones. Roaming our plans from home was not an affordable option. There may have been cheaper options but we chose sims from AT&T at $60 US a month for unlimited calling, text and internet. After a month here, as free wifi is available at most places, we downgraded to a $40 plan which includes unlimited calls and text but only 6 gigs of data.
5. Tips and everything else. We don't know how much we have left for tips but it's usually a percentage of what you
spend where you have been served or what you think appropriate. A drink, a meal, a taxi or uber, a tour guide, it all adds up so we keep the small notes for these spends. There's other stuff like parking fees, entry fees, and other random stuff but generally the above covers it . Oh and Vegas. We did have fun in the Casinos but the wins covered the losses..almost.
It's only been 6 weeks and yes the budget is over but we have had an awesome time. Much of the best experiences here have been free. Seeing the different breeds of seals along the beaches in their natural habitat, watching mad surfers in wild oceans, hiking along eroding cliff trails, and watching the sunsets knowing we don't have to go to work tomorrow have been my favourite times and maybe the best is yet to come.
#Back to the coffee shop
#Skip the drip filter
#Go give 'em a tip...on how to make a good cappucino