October Expenses

Well, I figured that October was going to be difficult to budget for. We came within $200 of our budgeted $1,400 worth of expenses. Too bad it was $200 on the high side of things!

Fuel and entertainment were quite a bit higher than expected, but groceries were lower. Miscellaneous came in on the high side too. Here's how it all broke down...

Gasoline: We spent $224 on gasoline. Consider that we spent $260 on gasoline in September, but that brought us 3,000 kms (1,800 miles) from Saskatchewan to Ottawa! However, we certainly did do some car traveling in October. Our trip in the rental car around south eastern Nova Scotia was around 750 kms (465 miles), plus a lot of day trip type of driving around Ottawa, plus we put some gas in daughter Lindsey's car for picking us up and dropping us off at the airport.

Groceries: Came in at $227, cheaper than planned...however if we look at our Entertainment column below, we see that our meals out are higher than normal so that's where the difference is. Pretty sure we also used up a bit of food in Ruth's father's big deep freezer!

Alcohol: Yes, we bought some expensive Canadian booze this month. Not too bad at $87, but when you consider that is only about 36 beer and 3 cheap bottle of wine...we didn't get much value for our money. However, today is the start of six months worth of reasonable priced beer and wine!

Miscellaneous: Total of $259 We're still paying for our monthly summer cellular internet bill, so September's usage is included here at $115.50. The next largest amount was $47 that Ruth treated herself to a manicure and pedicure. The rest is all small stuff like an oil change for the little blue car and some clothing items. This category adds up so quickly!

Entertainment: $235. Quite a few meals out here, in fact $195 of it was meals out!

Overnight: My portion of the expense for my weekend away with my friends near the beginning of October came to $222. Good thing I had a lot of fun!

Travel: In October, we paid for our United Airlines flight from Halifax to Newark. Yes, that's the flight we're taking today! Total for that flight came to $360.58.

Add it all up, and total expenses for the month of October came to $1,615.81. A little on the high side for us, but we hope to be back to the $1,000 a month mark for the next several months. From the research I've done, we hope to be able to keep to that figure for our exploration of Namibia and South Africa, although there are a few unknowns in there and that doesn't allow for many extras. I'm actually thinking we'll probably be closer to the $1,200 mark, but we'll see.

We're off to New York City! See you tomorrow for our first report from The Big Apple!