Budget Reports for December and November

Below are the budget reports for December and November. Sorry for the delay in posting November’s report, but I thought it would be important to include with the December one.

- Joshua

December Monthly Budget Report

December was an interesting month for many reasons, but mainly because we spent 23.4% on meals out (much higher than any other month on the trip). I think this was because we didn’t spend many nights in the RV and we have a tendency to eat out more whenever we’re in a hotel or staying with friends and family.

Gas came in second with 22.8% which was pretty unsurprising, because we didn’t travel as much during the month of December as we had in previous months.

In 3rd place came transportation with 13.7% of our monthly budget. This was mainly because of a rental car in Hood River, OR. But also includes a few taxis, a rental car in San Francisco and the ferry from Seattle onto the Olympic Peninsula..

Currently, for the entire trip, we are over budget by 1.7%, to get back on budget we will have to decrease our daily spending by 7.7% for the month of January, which I think is achievable.

Below are the graphs showing spending by category for the trip-to-date and month of December, followed by the November report.






Monthly Budget Report for November

November, the month of Thanksgiving, Eating, sitting around and getting fat. And boy, do our numbers reflect that.

For example, Gas. In October we spent 34.6% of our budget on fuel for the big pig, In November that went down to 11.7% this is because.
A) We weren’t driving as much.
B) We were in Canada for October, and their gas prices were really expensive.

Lodging, the main reasons why lodging fell from 13.2% in October to 8.8% in November are because:
A) We stayed in a lot of friend’s houses.
B) In October we stayed at a few hotels.
C) We got a great deal on a Hood River Vacation rental from www.hrvacations.com please rent from them if you’re ever in the ‘hood.

Also Groceries more than doubled from a small 9.6% all the way to 20.2% in November. I think this was because:
A) We ate more.
B) We had a real kitchen in all of the houses.

Restaurant Meals increased too, by 3.6 percentage points. My ideas as to why this happened:
A) We actually spent more money on restaurant meals in the month of October, but since we spent much more overall in October, meals out was a smaller percentage.

Below is a graph showing spending by category for November

Introducing My New Religion: Humorism

A few days ago, I created my own religion known as humorism. Humorism is all about seeing the funny side of life, and being able to laugh at almost anything. I have also created a blog about humorism, known as "The Humorist Society" here is a link to it http://humoristsociety.blogspot.com/ . I would like you all to know that the reason I have not posted here in the last two weeks is because I have been diverting all of my attention to my new blog about humorism, so if you would like to read my blogs, then I suggest you check out or possibly follow my humorist blog. Hope hear your comments on "The Humorist Society"-Josh

Monthly Budget Report #3 - October 2009

October was an expensive month. As expected, traveling 2000 miles to Churchill, Manitoba was not exactly budget friendly. Gas was a higher percentage than usual (3 more percentage points) because not only did we drive many miles this month, but gas was much more expensive in Canada ($4 per gallon, versus $2.50 in the U.S.). As of October 31st we are over budget by 5.9% (for the whole trip), but the previous two months we were under budget. My plan to keep my family on track is to cut our daily budget by 15% during the month of November. If my plan is successful we will be back on budget by November 30th. This plan is possible because we will be doing less driving, and staying at more houses of friends in November.

The top four categories for October were gas at 34.6%, lodging at 13.2%, restaurant meals at 10%, and groceries at 9.6%. Compared to September, lodging increased by 3 percentage points, thanks to our stay at the Polar Inn in Churchill, and staying in a few hotels in Montana due to snowstorms. Restaurant meals grew by 2 percentage points because it was hard to cook our own meals while staying at hotels. Household expenses fell by 11 percentage points because in September we were spending money on staples and other items we will not need to buy again. Because of our eating out so much, groceries fell by 6 percentage points.

The following graphs show the relative amount of our spending, by category, during the month of October and for the trip to date.

The Eternal Plain

I was inspired to write this blog form the flat plains of South Dakota; it is not about an actual plain, but more of state of a state of consciousness. If you really go into the very core of this poem, you will find that it is all about nothing, and how it coincides with all that actually, or simply is.

The Eternal Plain
Here I lie, amidst all of nothing.
My body is still,
Listening
Waiting
Alas, nothing.
Barren landscape,
Stretching out in mindless enormity before my very eyes.
I see a plain
Covered in grass
And it simply is,
Not was, or will be,
It simply is.
It exists in the same way nothing exists
It simply is.
There are no boundaries for this plain
It goes on
It goes on for eternity.
It simply is.
I am now approaching a town
But the plain does not end where the town starts,
Oh no, the plain goes on…
To eternity...
To forever...
It simply does.

My Experiance with Via Rail Canada

On the via rail hudson bay train I encountered quite an unpleasent experience, I wrote a letter of my annoyance and frusteration to Via Rail's customer relations services, now I will just copy-paste both letters from my email to this blog.


Dear Customer Service Person for via rail Canada,

My name is Joshua Grossman, and I would like to tell you how thoroughly disgusted I am by the fact that you sell alcohol on the 18 hour train ride from Thompson to Churchill, MB. I am 12 years old, and I was traveling from Thompson to Churchill on train 693 on 9 October to see the polar bears in a “tundra buggy” as part of a year-long trip around the world that my family and I are taking. As I was sleeping in one of the passenger cars, I was rudely awakened by an alcoholic fool who decided that it would be a good idea to warn both me and my father of the 20-12 Mayan end of the world. He said, and I quote “You know, we’re all gonna die in 20-12, so you gonna want to be alone and s***, and you’re gonna want to get the f*** away from your family and die alone, you know what I mean?” *all said in the accent of a drunken moron*. I was scared by his aggressive behavior, and was relieved to see that he was in the process of getting off the train in Gillam when he woke me. I was flabbergasted by many things, mainly the rudeness of how he spoke, and that there was even a small amount of alcohol allowed on the train (let alone the massive amount that was actually allowed). And, that your staff continued to provide him with alcohol even after he was clearly very drunk. I request that you immediately cease and desist all alcohol on any train what so ever, as soon as possible.

Sincerely,
Joshua Grossman.



Here is their reply:

Dear Mr. Grossman:

Thank you for your email concerning your recent trip with VIA Rail Canada between Thompson and Churchill.

Please accept my sincere apologies for the discomfort caused to you during your trip aboard Train 693 on October 9th, 2009 due to the reported disruptive behavior of a drunk passenger. Although our personnel can and have refused transportation to inebriated passengers, discretion and judgment are always required, as improper behavior is not always evident or predictable when such a person boards the train. The reported behavior of this individual is unacceptable, and I regret that this situation was not addressed in speedy manner for the benefit and comfort of all passengers.


I should mention that VIA personnel have been advised to politely refuse the service of alcoholic beverages to passengers who, in their judgment, have consumed enough, particularly if their conduct is disturbing other passengers. Again, I apologize for the inconvenience caused to you on this occasion. I can assure you that this incident has been reported to the manager responsible for follow-up with the involved employees.
Again, thank you for writing and allowing us the opportunity to apologize and take remedial action.


Lise Richard
Customer Relations Officer

I was frusterated by the fact that they did not agree to make any changes to their policy, but at least they responded and said that they would alert those responcible for that particular train.

My Arctic Adventures

For the past three days I have been residing in Churchill Manitoba, where I have been on a dog-cart, a 4-wheel drive pickup truck, and a tundra buggy.

On October 11th I went dog sledding, well actually it was dog-carting because there wasn’t enough snow to go dog sledding, so we did pretty much the same thing, but there were wheels, making it a cart. My family and I went at about 15mph, being pulled by eight dogs. It was really fun, my favorite dog was Zaboo, he was an orange-goldish color, and very energetic. On the actual ride I took a video, (which I will include later) but the snow and dirt kept flying in my face and I was afraid it would damage my camera’s lens so I had to stop it short.

The next day we went on something called a “tundra buggy” it was like a really big bus, but it was completely customized so that there was a bathroom and a kitchen, and an observation deck at the back! So we were driving around the arctic tundra in a big bus-thing for about eight hours! We saw a total of four polar bears within those eight hours, but we only really got close to two of them, the first, and the third. The first bear we saw was pretty young and after about three minutes took shelter from us in a large outcrop of rocks. The second was just a sleeping lump in the distance and so there isn’t much to say about it. Then there was Paul, well I named him Paul because he reminded me of a character in my friend Jaret’s story. At the end of fifth grade we had to write a narrative for an assignment in English class, Jaret and I made a decision to include each others characters in our stories. Paul was the name of Jaret’s character and this polar bear, for some strange reason, reminded me of Paul. So Paul was a pretty lazy polar bear who woke up about every five minutes, once he woke up for about three minutes. I have a pretty good video of him which will be up on my blog later. The final bear was probably the second bear, just this time he was awake, but he was pretty far off in the distance so there isn’t much to tell about him this time either.

The next day was the trip home, but I convinced my parents to rent a car for three hours and we drove around all of the back roads in search of polar bears. We actually found one, we had heard about a man who owned a team of dogs, for dog sledding, and according to the story whenever he fed his dogs, he would throw out a fish to “the bear”. Now, the town didn’t like this at all, because he was taking money away from tundra buggy companies, he would charge people to drive around on his property, and they would get to see the bear. But then he sued the town because he said that if he stopped feeding the bear, it would come and eat some of his 180 dogs, he actually won the court case and kept feeding the bear. So we drove over to his property, and just kept on the outskirts but, there we saw it, a very large, well fed bear! At first it was hard to see, because it looked like there were 20 of them, but after a closer look we saw that 19 of them were incredibly large, white huskies. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of him, because my video camera ran out of battery, but it was still a great last minute experience.

I think this was a great trip because there is so much of a difference between looking at the taxidermy polar bear at the London Museum of Natural History, or going out in a tundra buggy for eight hours. Another reason I’m liking the big trip, and this section in particular is because it is teaching me so much about the difference between seeing, and doing! I will try to get the videos up as soon as I can but it may take awhile, so bear with me, I assure you that some of them are pretty good.

Monthly Financial Report #2, September

It’s now October 8th and I have finally finished with tracking the September expenses, and we actually turned out to be under budget by 0.33%. Gas topped the charts again at 31% of the budget, followed not so closely by groceries and household expenses both amounting to 15% of our monthly spending. Gas at 31% of our budget came 5 percentage points more than last month!

I am happy that we have been able to spend less than 10 percent of our monthly funds on restaurant meals; I think this shows how we have been able to cut back, even on things that we really enjoy. Other key differences between September and August were: in August admissions were 17% of total spending but in September they were only 3%. Household expenses had the reverse situation where in August they were 2% but in September they were 15%. One of the reasons admissions was much higher in August is that we bought an annual National Parks pass, which we then got a lot of value out of September. I’m not really sure why household was higher in September, but will be watching it closely.

So far, we are just slightly under budget on a trip-to-date basis, but October is likely to be a very expensive month, mainly because of our trip to Churchill to see the Polar Bears.