Month: May 2017

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April 2017 Budget

As I mentioned in previous posts the Las Vegas expenses are not included in this budget.  We spent roughly $2500 on Las Vegas specific activities, which includes a week at Circus Circus campground, food, alcohol, Uber, and tons of entertainment activities, including gambling.  Since we never would have done all that if we weren’t celebrating our daughters 21st birthday, we are looking at this week as a vacation of sorts, and took that money from savings.  I did include clothing purchases, fuel, all campgrounds aside from Circus, Circus, and gifts, because we might have spent that money either way. This was our first real time off in several months and simply put, we went a little crazy. Hopefully that will normalize out at year end, but even if it doesn’t it is what it is.  I am not going to beat myself up over it, because we knew exactly what we were doing when we did it. (Also, it was a planned event, and cost quite a but less than I thought it would. Thanks, three card poker and blackjack! – Lee)

In summary, aside from the $2500 for Vegas, we spent $4598 for the month, which is a chunk of change.  Since we only got paid  $1043 this month, we have a negative cash flow of $3223.  $2500 of that was the overage from the last year, but the remaining $723 will need to be replaced by money we make this summer.  Since we also want to accumulate some funds to cover September/October travel, our upcoming Mor-Ryde suspension upgrade, and visiting my daughter for her wedding, that’s no small thing.  It is unlikely we will be able to make enough this summer to cover all of that, but we will have some Amazon affiliate program funds on the back-end to cover some of the costs.  When it all shakes out we will probably end up in the negative, but hopefully it won’t be too big of a hit.  (I’m more optimistic, and think we will spend less this summer than she does. – Lee) Our plan for the summer is to work and enjoy ourselves and spend moderately, but I have no intention of missing out on Oregon just to cover future short falls.  As always, it is a balancing act and we will of course report back on how it all works out.  For the time being here is this month.

Campground Fees – We went over in campground fees by $78 mainly because we stayed in really nice (but not cheap) state parks in Arizona.  We were also somewhat limited in boondocking options because our furnace is still not fixed.  For the year, however, we are still doing great in this category.

Groceries – Overall we were $40 to the good, which is great because we were with friends and always spend more on food and alcohol when we’re with people.  Eating out of course helps with this category, and we totally blew that one. 

Eating out – We went crazy in this category spending an extra $232 in eating out.  Since quite a bit of it was also an experience it is what it is, and not eating out hardly at all while gate guarding really led to me going a little crazy in this category.  After the excess of Vegas though, I think I can get this back under control.

Entertainment –  We actually got a little bit of the eating out money back by saving $49 in entertainment.  I thought this was great considering all the things we did, because most of them were free.  We did go over in the membership category because we had to renew our Costco membership and replace our lost America the Beautiful pass, but that’s a different category.  Vegas entertainment of course was not included in this.  The bulk of the $2500 spent on that trip was entertainment related. Despite having a wonderful time in Vegas I still received more pure joy out of all the free stuff we did prior to that, which bodes well for our future in this lifestyle 🙂

Internet –  This is a very exciting category as our monthly bill was only $80! We switched to the AT&T unlimited plan (which has been absolutely fantastic by the way) and I won’t know for sure what the true monthly costs are until next month.  We overpaid the previous month so this month is a little low.  That being said it couldn’t come at at a better time.  I’ll take it!

Clothing – We spent $347 in this category.  The wedding dress and shoes were around $70, which was a bargain, and I also bought three pairs of jeans which I really needed.  The rest was us going a little T-Shirt crazy, but since we hadn’t spent money in this category for some time I am hoping it will normalize annually.  We have a $1200 budget for the year, so if we don’t splurge like this again we should be OK. 

Home Repair – We bought parts for the furnace and some other miscellaneous items and I bought some magnets, but we still ended up about $50 to the good. It’s a shame about the money on the furnace parts since that didn’t solve the core problem, but it should help us long-term.

So, not a total disaster, but of course not our best month.  Still, we had loads of fun this month.  By the way, I am typing this in the last campground before we get to our summer job and scheduling it for publication on May 4th (cool feature that.)  Still not sure what the internet situation will be, so there might be a delay in getting the next post out.

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Las Vegas Vacation Overview

I wasn’t going to write about this week at all, but after experiencing it I thought there were a few subjects I should touch on. I don’t think I could have planned a week more different from our day to day life as this one was, and since the contrast was so stark it really provided a good opportunity to look at our mobile life versus our old life, and contrast and compare.  Since the analyst in me can rarely pass up this kind of opportunity I am going to take a crack at summing my thoughts up.

First, and most importantly, Lee and I were separated for almost all of the week.  He spent the week with our youngest daughter Kay and several good friends from his former professional life, and I spent the week with my Mom in her time share at Polo Towers. We haven’t been apart since January 2015 when I stayed in Quartzsite and he went to work for a week in Phoenix, and overall I think the break was good for both of us.  RV living provides few opportunities for alone time, and although we love each other and enjoy being together, some outside socialization is not a bad thing.  My Mom and I really enjoy each others company and vacation well together, so our time together was very special to me.  Similarly, Lee has a great relationship with Kay and has really missed her these last couple of years, so spending one-on-one time together (especially since she is being deployed overseas in August) was a really good thing.  He also got to spend time with some really good work friends and Nick, who we have known since he was 15 years old flew in to hang out with them for the week as well. (Nick is also a friend, but he’s in a class all by himself. He’s practically a son. – Lee)   We try to see people from our past lives as much as we can, but with our travel/work schedule that is getting harder and harder.  Bringing people together in a central location was a wonderful way to reconnect, and since the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) trade show was this week, they all could combine seeing each other with a work related activity.  Win- Win. (Yeah. Work. That’s what it is. – Lee) 

The second biggest change was the constant going out to eat. It’s been a looong time since we ate that many meals out and although Mom paid for several of them I was still pretty conscious of money spent versus relative value. The meals that were part meals, part experience were generally good, but the few times we ate out because we had to were not so great.  Lee had one meal that ended up getting comped because the service was so bad, and almost everything was way overpriced.  Still, it was fun to not have to worry about menu planning, but after months and months of austerity in this area it was pretty weird.  Basically, I don’t miss it, and can definitely say that cooking at home is the better choice with the exception being special experience meals.

The third and last change was not having to worry about every single purchase.  All in we spent about $2500 in one week and with that kind of budget (along with the extra things my Mom bought for me) you can pretty much do anything you want.  It was nice being able to have all the activities without worrying so much about cost, but again experience versus value was always in play.  In my mind none of the things we did were better than most National Parks and given a straight up choice I still think I would choose the “nature” option. (My apologies. Trace is a little dehydrated and talking crazy. I’m a fan of National Parks and all, but given the choice, and not having to worry about the budget, I would choose Vegas most of the time. There are hardly any bears there, and I’ve never met an animal that can deal blackjack properly. Nor has any scantily clad animal ever offered me a cocktail while on a hike. Not even Deb. – Lee)

Lee and Kay did 1-2 things every day. His favorite, as always, was seeing David Copperfield, and they all got pulled onstage for one of the illusions. (I can’t help it, I’m a sucker for Copperfield, have been since the first time I saw him on TV when I was a little kid. And I’ve been up on stage with him three times. I never get tired of it. – Lee) Mom and I did at least one thing most nights as well (My favorite was a Round The World Food tour at Fleur a Hubert Keller restaurant!)  Mom and I also spent a ton of time shopping, because I was looking for a dress for my oldest daughters upcoming wedding.  Walking the shops in Vegas is actually pretty fun because they have lots of high end stores you never see anywhere else.  So it’s pretty ironic that after trying on numerous dresses I ended up with a fantastic dress from Ross Dress for Less that cost $16.99.  Score!!  The main reason I bought it, it fit and looked good, I was pretty surprised when I looked at the price tag. I have never shopped there before but now I am a huge fan.  I saved so much on the dress I splurged on three pairs of jeans and a light jacket and I still spent less than $75.

In a nutshell, it was a wonderful week, and I am especially grateful I got to spend time with my mom, but I am not looking to quit the lifestyle in order to have more of that in my life.  The simplicity of how we live does have its own challenges but compared to that excess, I’ll take what I have!  Here’s the pictures though, and as you can see we had a really good time.  I intentionally left my camera in the rig so these are taken from my Iphone 4 and the quality is pretty terrible, but you’ll get the gist.

(For those who are interested, here’s ALL the stuff we did….Greg and Cori stuck around in town for an extra day and got to meet Kay, and we all had a wonderful dinner at an off strip resort. We went to an Asian market where Kay showed off her Korean skills for us, and we had lunch at Tracy’s favorite Vietnamese place, and we had a great group dinner with everyone except for Nick who hadn’t arrived yet. In addition to seeing Copperfield, Kay and I also went horseback riding at Wild West Horseback, which was a lot of fun, and I highly recommend, even though my horse tried to kill me. We shot a variety of firearms, including some fully automatic, at Machine Guns Vegas, which I also highly recommend. We saw Beatles LOVE, of course, which I cannot recommend highly enough, even though they’ve made some changes to the show which I do not approve of. If you see it, see the 7pm show, then go out to the portico to watch the volcano. It’s cheesy and getting old, but hey, FIRE! We also did the Fremont Street Experience and the Zoomline, neither of which is for the faint of heart. The Zoomline is a blast, I felt like a chubby James Bond flying over all those people. We also did the Baja chase at Sunbuggy, which I really enjoyed the last time I went, but I no longer recommend it. The company has really gone downhill, and the experience was not even close to what it should have been. It didn’t feel nearly as safe, and we didn’t get nearly the 60 minutes of ride time we paid for. If you do decide to go, do yourself a favor and refuse to start the chase until you are 100% comfortable with your harness and the operation of the buggy. This is an extremely intense experience, and if you’re not comfortable, then you should ride instead of drive. It’s a pretty expensive thing to not enjoy.- Lee

I also went to see Tape Face, which was incredibly fun and fresh and clever.  As far as gambling goes, while I normally play nothing but blackjack, we did play a little craps (horrible game, not good for stupid and/or drunk people) a little roulette (might as well just give them your money and go see a show) and slots (boring) so Kay could have a little taste of why it’s a bad idea to gamble for money instead of entertainment. Then she suggested we try three card poker, which I really enjoyed, and quadrupled my money in an hour or so of play. So thanks for that, Pooh! We eventually played a little blackjack as well, but her assessment overall on most of the gambling was “It’s not much fun when all you do is lose.”  I also learned how to use Uber, and saved a fortune getting around town, plus avoided having to pay for parking at the casinos. Did I mention that most of the casinos charge you for self parking now? I’d like to have a meeting with whatever moron came up with this idea and smack him or her right in the head. And as an added bonus, since I tend to accept cocktails when they are offered to me (my mother taught me to be polite) I also didn’t get a DUI driving around Vegas three sheets to the wind. So Uber is cool. As always, I see the fountains at Bellagio as much as I can. I can watch those things for hours. I was there in the middle of the night many years ago when they were programming them before they started, and spent the whole night just chatting with the programmers and watching them. Big fan. And while I enjoy wandering through all of the casinos, Bally’s is my true home. Trust me, just try it. IMO it’s the best choice on the strip, most bang for your buck, best overall vibe, and a truly fantastic location right smack in the middle of everything. Ask for an upgrade to a Jacuzzi suite, and if you don’t get it, pay for one anyway. The price is actually pretty reasonable for what you get, and there’s nothing like stretching out in a full size sunken Jacuzzi (not just a tub with jets) and soaking away the end of a hard day in Vegas. And somewhere in all that we spent some time wandering the vendor exhibits at the NAB show, where as usual I found someone who had something I wanted but wasn’t available yet, and I gave them a hard time for teasing me with the exact thing I wanted, and offered to buy the prototype, and as usual, was turned down. It was all a lot of fun, and I while I doubt I will be able to do it every year any more, maybe we’ll get back from time to time for a reunion tour or something. Sorry there’s not a lot more pictures of us, but Kay isn’t wild about having her picture taken, and we were too busy having fun for me to push the issue. I have the pictures in my head. – Lee)

The free Solarium at Bellagio is always a treat

This was the oddest salad I have ever had in my life. It was pretty but  difficult to eat

We saw the fountains at Bellagio several times

Only in Vegas and no I didn’t get one!

The Polo Towers where we stayed had a rooftop pool which was awesome

Loved hanging out in the hot tub with the city noise and lights around

My $16.99 special. I like it because it helps hide all my problem areas 🙂

Mom treated me to the Wynn Buffet which was pretty good. Loved the decorations

This was my desert selection lol. Who says you can’t get your money’s worth on a buffet

Love my Mom

We saw the Backstreet Boys in concert and it was really good

The girls were all going crazy. Great energy in the room

Lee and Kay

Lee zip lining over Freemont Street. He loved this

Mom treated me to a spa day at Cosmopolitan which was amazing

The Turkish Bath was separated by male/female and clothing was optional (I wore my suit) This huge hot tub had a rain shower in the back and the eucalyptus steam room was awesome.

Lee can’t do Vegas without taking the girls to shoot guns

That’s my girl

 

We all met up for Beatles Love and Mom treated everyone to a Brazillan Steakhouse something I have always wanted to try. Kay and Nick getting some meat from a skewer

I had to try the Brazillan Rum Punch. It was really good

Lee calls Kay Pooh Bear and found this drink for her

From left: Me, Mom. Kay, Nick, and Lee

Kay in front of the Beatles Love sign

Mom (who has always been a huge Beatles fan and loved their retooled show) in the phone booth

And we topped it off with watching the Volcano at Mirage

Lee’s favorite show was seeing Tapeface who we loved on America’s Got Talent.

Fleur was really cool on the inside

The Round the World menu was phenomenal. $150 total for two people; alcohol was extra.  I just had a glass of wine since a drink per course would have put me under the table

The scallops were my favorite course.  Pretty and delicious.

But these garlic french fries were amazing and fun to have in the middle of a fancy 5 course meal.  The french newspaper was a nice touch.

I should also mention that at Fleur I had the best service of my entire life.  They replaced the dishes and the silverware after every course and as soon as I was finished eating the food was gone.  I don’t like sitting at a table with food in front of me when I am done eating and that was really enjoyable in and of itself.  Plus once again I want to thank my Mom for her extreme generosity this week.  I would have been fine hanging out and having pizza, but I certainly appreciate all the fun things we were able to do.  It was a very special week and I am glad we got to spend it together.  I love you.

Lee and I were also very grateful to be with Brian, Nick, Mark, Ernie, and Dave.  Thanks for hanging out with us and Ernie thanks for reading the blog!  Kay, sweetie, we love you. So glad you had a good time in Vegas!

Back to regular life now and we need to drive straight to our summer job in Oregon.  Originally we had an extra 5 days, but they spilled Lee’s urine sample (I know crazy right after all the trouble we went to to get that done) and at this point they recommended getting it done at their testing facility in Oregon.  Since we didn’t want to mess with our time in Vegas, we agreed so we will be arriving May 2nd for a May 3rd test and then have some time off until our start date on May 10th.  Fair warning, we are hearing there may be no cell coverage in our site and we might have to drive a couple of miles to get a signal.  Not sure how that is going to work with the blog yet because there is no off line option for making blog posts with Word press that I am aware of.  Anyways, don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me for a few days until I get it worked out.

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