So, I recently told you about the vacation that my family took this week. I am amazed at what a budget did for us.
We budgeted to spend $750, outside of lodging, for the 5 day stay at the beach. Here’s the breakdown:
- Misc Groceries for the room: 25
- Breakfast Money: $70
- Lunch Money: $90
- Dinner Money: $190
- Entertainment: $175
- Random Shopping: $200 (I had to let Terri be herself for a little while)
So get this… we arrive at the hotel to find that our Breakfast was INCLUDED with the room. This wasn’t a “continental” breakfast. This was a hot breakfast meal. Grits, Eggs, Waffles, Pancakes, Fresh Fruit, Cereal, Bacon, Sausage.. and to top it off. A BUFFET! Sweet.
We checked in and headed to dinner at TGI Fridays. we have a rule when we are out of town; We don’t eat at restaurants that are available in Florence. We pulled into the parking lot at Fridays, to be greeted with a sign that said, Kids eat FREE Sunday through Thursday…. SUH-WEET! So, instead of spending $40 to get a nice meal, it costs us $24. cha-ching. Another savings.
Then we headed to the grocery story to get what we needed for misc snacks and lunches. We were expecting to spend around $100 to be able to eat in the room for 4 of the 5 days at lunch and to give us some snacks to munch on. Somehow, it came out to $31. Sweet! again…
Anyway, I’ll keep it short. (there are other savings…) Here was the final breakdown.
We had $220 leftover from a budget that we felt like was pretty good from the start.
Here’s what I believe to be the morals of the story.
- Set a budget and then work to stay within the budget.
- We took CASH… no Credit card allowed. Credit Cards are too easy.
- Look for opportunities and take advantage of them (i.e. kids eat free). We almost ate at TGI Fridays AGAIN just for the savings.
What else did I miss? what other morals do you see?
All in all, this allowed for us to spend more family time together also! and we had fun too!
2 comments:
Hey Dean,
Awesome you had a great vacation and came in under budget (I love your budget posts - they help me in real life too).
I do have one comment though...
Now, I know there are 4 of you all, and two for me (myself and Mom), but you budgeted $100 for misc. groceries for the hotel room...that came in at $31 (which is great, and more what I would expect...but...I spend $100 on 2-weeks worth of groceries for myself and Mom on a normal week at home. That includes:
-breakfast for both of us for 14 days -lunch stuff for her 10 days
-lunch stuff for me to take to work 8 days (I have 1 "eat out day" each week)
- 1 weekend lunch for both of us (we usually eat lunch out at least one weekend day)
- "snacks" for both of us for 2 weeks
- 13 suppers for both of us (we eat dinner out, usually at Taki's on whatever night we go to the grocery store, which also means we are "full" when grocery shopping...this helps too).
In fact, we normally come in around the $80-90 range at the register.
I don't know what your average grocery bill is at home for a 2-week time span (and might not be any of my business), but you might consider taking my Mon grocery shopping with you one time - she can stretch a dollar so far at the grocery store it's unbelievable :-)
Anyway, have fun in Colorado, and see you next week!
Thanks for the post. Very helpful and encouraging.
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