I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

The Vacation Budget - How Was It?

As I’ve said before, we went on a working vacation (for my spouse) to attend a conference related to his work that was held in Memphis this past week. We drove to the conference, and his employer reimburses him for mileage as well as his meals. The conference provides breakfast and lunch for all of us, so we only had to pay for my and the kids dinners (the spouse’s would be reimbursed). And because the mileage reimbursement more than pays for gas, we figured we’d probably break even on this trip or even come away with a little money. Nice to take a vacation and actually make money doing it, right? Although it wasn’t exactly a vacation for my spouse - but he did get time to relax in the evenings.

So, how did we do? I figured the gas and food reimbursement would end up being between $300 and $400, so I set our trip budget at $300 - $140 for gas, $140 for food, and $20 for miscellaneous (zoo tickets). And we did okay! We came in over budget on food a little, at $154.23, but we came in under budget on gas by a lot (we spent $96.20), and under budget a bit on entertainment (we spent $15).

The gas was low because of two things - one, my car got better gas mileage on this trip than it usually does, thanks to a lot of highway driving and properly inflated tires. And second, gas is less expensive down south. So instead of paying $2.80 a gallon, we paid $2.55 at two of our three gas stops, which really adds up.

The entertainment was lower because of the kindness of friends. I visited with one of my dear friends while we were there and we went to the zoo with her and her son, and she bought our entry tickets as a surprise gift to us. It was so sweet and I was very touched. That surprise gesture allowed me to use my budgeted money to take the kids to the Children’s museum one day as well, which is what I spent the $15 on.

And food. Well… the food was worth it. I had a $40/day budget for Tuesday and Saturday because we had to buy all three meals, and the days we had breakfast and lunch provided I had a $20/day budget (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday). We went over for a few reasons - I actually had to buy lunch the day we went to the zoo and the Children’s museum which I should have thought of but I didn’t, and also we had some ice cream. Twice. It was very very good ice cream. Sometimes you pay for the experience… of eating ice cream. Yum. And it was vacation, after all.

So, overall, we spent $265.43. And my spouse filled out his reimbursement forms today and the mileage credit is a lot more than he thought it was, so combined with his food expenses we should get a reimbursement of about $600. Woowoo! Some of that will go towards the car maintenance budget but the vast majority will get cycled back into our budget. If we get the reimbursement this Friday, we may not have an October budget shortfall after all! We may not get the reimbursement until a week from Friday, but even then, the emergency fund would only be raided for a very short time.

Sometimes life does funny funny things. Like pay you for a vacation. Whoa.

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