Andy Hough

October Savings Rate – 12.4%

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October was not a great month for saving.  I made $803.19 and saved $100 for 12.4% of my income saved.  This was way below my goal of saving 50% of my income.  It is difficult to save much when my income is that low.   I lowered my SWR to 47.67% from 49.28% the month before.  I’m happy that I made a little progress despite my low savings amount.  Gains on my stock investments and the lower expense level helped me reduce the SWR even with the tiny savings contribution for the month.  It doesn’t look like I’ll be able to continue making progress for November or December though.  My income looks like it will stay small and I have to pay my six month car insurance bill, my car property tax, and the remaining balance of the cruise.

The 4% SWR translates into having 25x your annual expenses in savings or 300 months of expenses in savings. Once I reach that point I will consider myself financially independent.  I have 25.17 months of living expenses saved now. My tax job starts in January, but I’m hoping that I can find a temporary job before then so I can end the year on a good note.

Cruise Recap Part 2

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cruiseship This is the last of three posts about the cruise I took last month.  The firs post was about the cost of the cruise and the second post was about the room and the food on the cruise.  This post will be about the ship activities and the port excursions.

Ship Activities

There was quite a variety of activities available on the ship.   Many of our fellow passengers favorite activity seemed to be drinking and getting drunk.  I’m not much of a drinker and the drink prices on the ship were ridiculously high so I did not partake of that activity. Since the motion of the ship made me queasy drinking probably wouldn’t have been a good idea.

The main activities we attended were the shows.  There were only two nights where they had what I would consider a real show being performed.  Those were the shows with singing and dancing and actual sets.  I did enjoy those shows although they were somewhat short and seemed like a random collection of musical numbers rather than a cohesive show.

The standup comedians were my favorite entertainment on the boat.  They also only performed two out of the five nights.  The other nights had amateur shows.  These were basically the ship’s entertainment staff performing on stage without any set other than some chairs.  These shows were actually fairly entertaining despite the lack of production value.

We were on ship for Halloween night and a lot of people dressed up and there were some great costumes.  There was a Halloween costume contest that was won by a couple of guys dressed up as KISS.  They did have authentic costumes and could have easily passed as actual members of KISS.  The runner up was a group of guys dressed as the Avengers. The man in the Iron Man costume made the costume himself from metal and spent over $800.  The costume looked great, but I don’t know if it was $800 great.  Our costumes were much cheaper.  We went as Pornstache and a prisoner from the show “Orange Is The New Black.”

pornstache

Not many people knew we were portraying people from a TV show, but they did still like the guard and prisoner costumers.  We were smart enough not to use blackface to make the costume more authentic.

Ports and Excursions

The cruise left and returned from New Orleans.  It would have been nice to add a couple days in New Orleans to the beginning or ending of the cruise, but we didn’t really have time for that and it would have increased the cost of the vacation a fair amount.

The ship stopped in the ports of Progreso and Cozumel during the cruise.  In Progreso we had booked a tour of the ruins at Dzibilchaltun before we embarked.  This allowed us to pay less than half than what the tour would have cost if we had booked through the cruise line.  The guided portion of the tour was only about a half hour and after that we had time to further explore the ruins and/or swim in a nearby cenote(sinkhole) for the remainder of the tour time.  Since it was hot we opted for the swimming.  The total time of the tour including transportation to and from the ruins was a little under about 4 hours.  This was just about right since it gave us a little time to explore Progreso before going on the tour and allowed us plenty of time after the tour to get back on the ship.  There isn’t a lot to see in Progreso so I’d recommend booking a tour for that port.

In Cozumel we didn’t have a tour booked and decided to just wing it.  The tour guide in Progreso suggested that we go to Chankanaab.  Admission was $21 each and basically all we got for that was access to the beach.  I wasn’t impressed with that recommendation.  We still had a good time swimming in the ocean and relaxing on the beach, but I think we could have done that for less.  If there is a next time, I’ll either book a tour ahead of time or at least do some prior research.

That wraps up the cruise posts.  Going on a cruise was something I’d wanted to do for a long time and I’m glad I did it.  Although I did enjoy this cruise, if I ever go on another cruise it will need to be an even better deal and go somewhere I haven’t been.

 

 

First Cruise Recap

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cruiseship  In case you don’t already know, my girlfriend and I took a cruise at the end of October. I already shared the financial cost of the cruise in my Cruise Cost Breakdown post, in this post I am sharing my general thoughts about the cruise. Since this was my first cruise I can’t compare this cruise to any other cruises.  Any comparisons will be to other similar vacation options.

The Room

We had an interior cabin which was the cheapest option.  Several people had told me that the room would be really small.  The room was indeed quite small, but it was as big as it needed to be.  The size of the room was not an issue for me.  The lack of a window also was not a big deal.  I think a window might have actually been a negative since looking out through the window probably would have made me queasy.

The room was a little outdated.  It was apparent that the room fixtures hadn’t been changed out in a long time.  The TV cabinet was made to hold a tube TV and now held a flat screen TV.  The closet had been broken at some point and the repair job was rather apparent.  The king size bed was two twin beds pushed together.  The bed was very comfortable as long as you didn’t roll into the middle of the bed.  None of these things were a big deal and not unexpected given that this was basically a budget motel room.

On the plus side, the room was very clean.  Our room attendant was very friendly.  It was really nice to have a clean room when we came back from breakfast and to have the bed turned down and a new towel animal when we returned from dinner.  The shower was great.  I was a little worried that the shower pressure would be weak given that we were on a ship.  The shower actually had better shower pressure than our shower at home and the water was piping hot.   The endless hot water led to me taking even longer showers than usual which makes for some pretty long showers.  I do love my showers and the shower was one of my favorite parts of the cruise.

The Food

Whenever I mentioned that I was going on a cruise, previous cruise goers always talked about the variety and quantity of food available on a cruise.   The food on the cruise was okay, but I can’t say I was impressed by it.  Many people telling me about their cruises commented on how much they liked that food was available 24 hours a day.  That doesn’t seem like a big deal to me since if you live in a city with 24 hour drive-thrus and grocery stores you also have food available 24 hours a day. It isn’t too hard for me to indulge my food cravings at home anytime of day so the cruise didn’t seem like that big of a difference to me.  The main difference is that on the cruise you don’t have to directly pay for each meal.  The first night I wanted to get a late night snack around 11pm and all the restaurants were closed.  My free food options were self-serve ice cream or pizza. There was a long line for pizza so I chose to forego my late night snack.    The fact that I didn’t gain any weight on the cruise shows that I didn’t indulge anymore than normal.  Of course, my normal level of indulgence is pretty high so it might be hard for it to get any worse.

We did make it a point to eat in the dining room every night.  I tried to expand my palate a little by having a different item every night and only had my default burger one night.  The menu featured a different “exotic” appetizer choice every night.  The options I remember were frog legs, snails, sushi, alligator.  Since I’d had sushi before and didn’t like it, I didn’t try it again. Growing up in the Ozarks, I’d also had frog legs several times when I was a kid and didn’t have any desire to have them again.  I’d never had snails, but I still didn’t want to try them.  The only exotic appetizer I tried was the alligator.  It had so much breading and seasoning though that I couldn’t even taste any alligator.

The servers provided excellent service and also provided entertainment with a short song and dance routine towards the end of mealtime.  Even though eating in the dining room was a nice experience I probably would have been happier just eating from the buffet most nights.  My favorite meals were the cheeseburger and fries I had for lunch everyday.  I even liked the buffet burger better than the dining room burger.  I guess my unrefined palate just prefers the cheap food so I don’t really get an added value from the fancier food.

This post is already long enough so I will finish writing about my thoughts on my first cruise in Wednesday’s post.

October Expenses – $1021.76

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for October.

Household $414.19
Entertainment

$115.86

Transportation

 $128.58

Food

$76.38
Phone

$26.81
Health

$106.94
Travel

$153

Total

 $1021.76

My October expenses were pretty low considering I went on a cruise at the end of the month.  My expenses were over my stretch goal of $1000, but only because I had $153 of travel expense due to the cruise vacation.  It looks like I should meet my goal of keeping my expenses for the year under the sum of a minimum wage income even with the additional cost of the cruise.

The rest of the cost of the cruise vacation will be spread out over the next two months.  Since my travel rewards card has a 0% interest rate for the next few months it won’t cost me anything to delay paying off the cruise.  During that time I will earn a bit more in points on my credit card that will help reduce the cost of the vacation.

Food cost was very low during October.  This was helped by the fact that I did a lot of fast food mystery shops and the fact that I was on a cruise for the last four days of the month.  I should be contributing more toward the grocery bill which will increase my food cost.

Other than the travel expense and food I expect the other expenses to remain very similar in November.

 

Cruise Cost Breakdown

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cruiseship  Now that I’ve been back from my cruise for a few days and all the expenses have posted on my credit card I’ll share a breakdown of the total cost of my cruise vacation.  This post will just be about the cost of the cruise vacation, I’ll share my thoughts about the cruise in a later post.

I think we did a pretty good job of keeping the total cost of the trip down.  It would have been difficult to cut the level of expenses without impacting our enjoyment of the vacation.  With the benefit of hindsight I might have spent some money differently and if I ever do go on a cruise again I’ll make sure to plan the port excursion days a little better.  The total cost of the trip would have been a lot less if we lived near a cruise port.  One of the many drawbacks of living in the middle of the country is that you are a long way from the ocean.

I’ve broken down the cruise vacation expenses as follows:

Cruise Tickets – $572.94
Air Tickets – $541.40
Travel Ins. – $56.00
Shuttle – $76.00
Parking -$29.00
Cruise tips -$115.00
Other tips -$14.00
Taxi -$22
Progreso – $58
Cozumel -$42
Souvenirs/gifts -$46.85
Drinks -$14

Total -$1587.19

Since we are splitting the cost of the vacation the cost per person we will each end up paying a little under $800 for the trip. That isn’t bad for a 5 night, 6 day vacation. It is a lot less than the trip would have cost us if we had gone during Christmas week.

Some of the expenses have already been paid since they were cash expenses. I tried to put most of the expenses on my credit card since it has a 0% interest rate until May of next year. Since my credit card is a travel rewards card I can also redeem my rewards to pay for some of the travel. Not all of the expenses were categorized as travel expenses so I’ll just have to pay those expenses. It doesn’t really matter that not all of the expenses were categorized as travel expenses since I won’t be able to earn enough rewards to pay off all the expenses that were categorized as travel expenses. My credit card allows me 90 days to redeem my rewards for travel credit. The cruise tickets and airline tickets are already a month old so I only have 60 days to redeem my rewards to pay them. Even if I do some manufactured spend I’m not going to earn anywhere near $1000 in rewards the next 60 days. The on board cruise expenses just posted though so I have 90 days to pay them off with rewards. Even though I won’t be able to pay off all the cruise expenses with travel rewards I should be able to pay off a few hundred dollars worth of the expenses. That will make a fairly cheap vacation even cheaper.

How do you think we did on keeping the cost of the cruise reasonable?