2 Adults 2 Kids » Finances

Finances: July 8 – 16, 2008

KJ — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:33:17 +0000

I finally sat down and added up all of our receipts. Here goes nothing:

Groceries, Meals at Restaurants, and Snacks – $394.16
Entertainment – $4
Campgrounds – $96.2
Diesel – $589.79
Misc. – 107.71
Total = $1191.86

July 5th Finances

KJ — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:36:31 +0000

Keeping track of the Day 1, Day 2, etc. was starting to stress me out, so I’m just including dates from now on.

Lunch – $17.66 (Poor planning, we should have cooked our own food.)

Snacks – $1.55 (Mostly sodas to keep us awake.)

Tolls – $24 (For 2 cars)

Gas – $117.20 (For 2 cars)

Total – $160.41

Day 3 Finances – Playing Catch Up (KJ)

KJ — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 02:50:49 +0000

So I need to update our finances for Day 2. The only problem is that I can’t find the receipts at the moment, so I’m going to “guesstimate”.

I know we didn’t spend any money, so basically all we paid for was the camp site for $20. Now that I think about it, I left out the camp site fees for Day 2 as well. So altogether, we spent $40 yesterday.

The Countdown is Out and “Money Spent” and “Miles Traveled” are in. (KJ)

KJ — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:00:41 +0000

Did you ever noticed how my countdowns on the sidebar were always off?? As soon as I made a countdown for picking up the RV, the dealer called and told me he needed me to pick it up now. As soon as I made one for NY, a campground reservation opened up in Jersey. CM & I joked that I need to make a countdown for us winning the lottery because everything has been happening sooner than we expect.

This endeavor has taught us to be flexible, really flexible.

That being said, no more countdowns. Now I am going to keep track of how much we spend and how far we travel. I’m still up in the air about whether or not to include the RV payment in our expenses.

What do you think?

Day 2 – Finances

KJ — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:15:02 +0000

Even though we spent most our day mulling around camp, we ended up spending quite a bit of money yesterday. Here’s the breakdown:

Groceries for 4 days: $75.76
Portable Grill (and Accessories), Deep Fryer, and a few other items for the RV: $102.22
Gas for the Van: 61.92
Total: $239.90

We are going to have to buy chairs soon. Our camp site has no place to sit.

Hindsight 20/20 (KJ)

KJ — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 12:05:11 +0000

Most of the time when people say that, it’s because they are regretting some past action. Maybe they went right when they should have went left. Maybe they left a secure job for a higher paying job and then got fired. Today I can honestly say that I’m glad I made the wrong decision. If I hadn’t I wouldn’t be preparing for a cross-country trip.

If you were with me at the beginning o this blog you would know that when we were trying to figure out how we were going to pay for the RV I really goofed with the numbers. I included some money I thought I was getting. As it turned out, I wasn’t getting it and that meant we were short several thousand dollars and we ended up having to charge the balance. I really beat myself up about it.

I was talking to CM this morning and he told me that he would have never gone through with the plan if he had known that we were going to have to put even $100 on credit. Knowing that, I’m glad I goofed. It was the best goof of my life and our lives and going to be so much more enriched because of it.

By the way, we have finally sold enough of our furniture to pay off the balance on the credit card we used. Yea! Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Reader Question #1 – Show Me The Money (KJ)

KJ — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:26:09 +0000

Question: I am curious to know how you will finance the RV trip if you are skint. Do you plan to work along the way? If not how will you manage financially?

Answer: I have been at the same job for 10 years and I have built up 3 months of paid vacation. I plan on taking all of it. I also have the option of flexible scheduling at my job until December. So as far as finances we should be pretty well covered.

CM and I joked that after December we might have to rename the blog 1 Adult 2 Kids. In all seriousness, we are doing everything we can to make this work while still keeping my job. I move a lot and I regularly travel. Having the RV will allow my whole family to go where I go.

I have been contemplating what will happen when I go back to a 9-5 schedule. We’ve decided that we’ll find nice RV or state parks and camp there during the week and as soon as I get off on Friday, we’ll hit the road and not be back until Sunday night.

We are committed to maximizing our family time. Gone are the days where I skip vacations and work late. I will never hoard vacation time again. I’m going to be with my family at every opportunity.

I hope that answers your question, if you have anymore, ask away!

Books, Knowledge, and Me (KJ)

KJ — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:44:38 +0000

We have a ton of books. This morning a book dealer came buy and bought about a half of them and all of our children’s books. I think he gave us a fair price, but I still feel violated. I had a lot of books on different software programs and various internet programming languages. I’ll be honest, I bought most of them, put them on the shelf and hadn’t looked at them since. But now I feel like I’ve lost something. I think I have been gauging my knowledge not by what I actually know, but by the books I keep on my shelf. I feel like this whole RVing thing is really forcing me to get down to the essence of myself, if that makes any sense.

For so long I have dreamed of having a library in my house, but like everything else, what’s the point of having a bunch of books if I’m not going to read them. Seeing the various titles really made me feel like I need to recommit to learning this new stuff. However, I felt the exact same way when I put those books on the shelf a year ago when we moved into our apartment.

I need to learn that I am not my books. More importantly I need to learn that I buy a lot of stuff that I never use. The result is that we save less and one day our family will feel the effect of the lost savings. Technically, we felt it when we were trying to come up with the money to purchase the RV.

Is there anything that defines you that you would have to give up if you moved into an RV?

Some Progress (CM)

CM — Sat, 31 May 2008 02:23:26 +0000

Today we made some progress in making our financial goal. We are not where we need to be yet, but it is good that we are on the right track. I think that is one of my biggest worries, that after selling all our stuff we will not have enough. Which is crazy to think about if you think that we have spent $50,000 over the years on the stuff laying around our house, and we are only trying to get $8000.

We got rid of most of our electronics today. Most of the things we have left are worth a lot less money, and it is going to take many more sales to meet our goal. We hope to have the finances wrapped up by the end of next week. Time will tell I suppose. If you are reading please keep your fingers crossed for us.