{"id":4108,"date":"2013-05-31T10:27:02","date_gmt":"2013-05-31T16:27:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.van-tramp.com\/wp\/?p=4108"},"modified":"2013-06-01T08:16:44","modified_gmt":"2013-06-01T14:16:44","slug":"the-cost-of-may-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.van-tramp.com\/wp\/the-cost-of-may-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"The cost of May 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cost<\/a>OK, it is becoming clear to me that when I sit still in a city, I spend more on things I should not; dining out for instance. Where I should be saving money by buying groceries and preparing my own meals, I have been pretty frivolous with my dining spending. I still blame it on my son, who talks me into Jimmy John’s way too often as he knows I lack almost all will-power. I spent nearly $200 on dining out and another $126 on groceries (half of which is in my fridge right now) for a total of $348 spent on food<\/strong> this month. This is the most I have spent on food in a single month since starting full-timing in the van.<\/p>\n

$142 was spent on gasoline<\/strong>. The Datsun has gone through one and a half tanks this month and the van has moved only 80 miles all month (30 of which happened just yesterday). So, while I have spent $142 on gas, Ive actually used much less than that. It helps when I have a toad to use for my daily driving… I’m considering getting a tow-bar for the Datsun so it can come with me when I drive out of Colorado in another month or two.<\/p>\n

I have only paid for camping these last two nights of the month for $38 total camping cost<\/strong>. I probably should not have bothered paying for these two nights either, since the weather (windy and cold) has still kept me hunkered inside the van (which I can do anywhere).\u00a0 The thought of paying for a place to park and NOT get outside to enjoy the wild really bothers me… so much so that I actually lost sleep over it last night.<\/p>\n

Beyond the big-ticket items, I did well on everything else. Not much waste in the rest of my spending as I tried to achieve a less-than-$30-per-day living expense… which I did, but only just ($29.71 in spending per day for the month).<\/p>\n

I made a few out of the ordinary purchases made this month; $120 in bullets for the guns (right now you have to buy them when you see them or be left without any ammo<\/em>), and $25 to join the National Rifle Association (I need to support the organization that fights for my rights<\/em>). I did not include the costs of the mini-van rescue into my monthly expenses ($89 in airfare and $180 in gas\/food on the drive back<\/em>) nor did I include the money I won playing poker at the Moose lodge as it directly paid for the mini-van rescue.<\/p>\n

Year-to-date figures:<\/strong>
\nGasoline total:\u00a0 $1226 in 2013
\nFood total: $1435 in 2013
\nCamping total: $245 (21 nights total)<\/p>\n

Daily averages:<\/strong>
\nGasoline: $8.14 per day
\nFood: $9.50 per day
\nCamping: $1.61 per day
\nAvg daily spending: $33.38<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OK, it is becoming clear to me that when I sit still in a city, I spend more on things I should not; dining out for instance. Where I should be saving money by buying groceries and preparing my own meals, I have been pretty frivolous with my dining spending....<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151],"tags":[150],"class_list":["post-4108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finances","tag-budget"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9livM-14g","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.van-tramp.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.van-tramp.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.van-tramp.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.van-tramp.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.van-tramp.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.van-tramp.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.van-tramp.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.van-tramp.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.van-tramp.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}