Where's the Money?

One of many life lessons learned in college: unfortunately, money does not grow on trees. So how much are we going to pay for this extensive road trip? And where the heck are we going to get that money? Well, I will being working throughout my senior year, and I will take two extra, and I will take on three extra hours per week, which will be about $35/week. That will come out to about $1250 over the course of the year. Also, I will save up birthday money, Christmas money, and Easter money from my family and relatives, which will be around $500. Finally, I have enough money in my bank account accumulated from working that I can dip into $250-$300. All of that puts me up to about $2000, which is the budget that I have set for myself for this trip. As for the other girls, they will also work, save up, and probably sell this trip as the "Ultimate Graduation Gift" - aka beg the parents for a little cash.



Here's the cost breakdown that I have estimated:

1. The trip will cover about 4,135 miles of traveling from place to place, plus at least 30 miles of traveling within the cities. The cost of gas for 4, 165 miles should be about $480, divided among the 5 of us that will be on the trip, that should come out to about $100 per person.

2. Other traveling expenses: taxi rides, trains, shuttles, etc. in the various towns: $100 per person.

3. Food - this is a big one. We will each spend $30 at the outset of the trip on snacks to pack into the car: fairly nonperishable things like cereal bars, cereal, chips, apples, bread, crackers, peanut butter, jerky, cookies, candy, etc. so that we can eat at least one meal per day, as well as snacks, in the car, for fairly cheap. Then there will be eating out in the evenings at the different places that we stop, and sometimes for lunch. The first 2 days of our trip, we will not have to spend money on food thanks to our awesome families. After that, we will eat out about 15 times (not including in Las Vegas, which I will talk about later). We don't want to spend $20 each a nice meal out every night, (although we will go to some nice restaurants) but we don't want Jack In the Box either. And, we will all be 21, so we are definitely going to want some drinks. My budget for eating out (not including Las Vegas) is $300. So overall, with snacks and restaurant food - $430.

4. Hotels - These are actually pretty expensive. Between our stays in Taos, Colorado Springs, Salt Lake City, Santa Barbara, and White Sands, the hotels will cost about $1,5oo total. This comes out to about $300 per person. We will stay for free in Amarillo, Albuquerque, and Phoenix, which helps a lot!

5. Fun activities - White water rafting, entry into various parks and museums, and anything else fun we can find to do in the various cities - $500.

6. Las Vegas - The details of this will be explained in a later post: $670.

7. Souvineers and impulse buys - $200

All of these totals come out to about $2,300. The other girls may set different food and Vegas budgets, but we will probably all spend about that much.