Hiking the Katy Trail on the Cheap

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I’m currently hiking the Katy Trail.  It is primarily known as a bicycle path, but it can be hiked also. The trail is about 240 miles long.  I’m hiking out and back to my car each day which means I’ll have hiked about 480 miles if I complete the whole thing.

Since I’m hiking back to my car each night I can drive to get food or to find somewhere to sleep.  I plan on camping or sleeping in my car most nights to keep the cost of the hike down.  I will have an occasional hotel stay so that I’m not always roughing it.  My travel rewards credit card will reimburse me for the hotel stays up to about $350 so that shouldn’t add to the cost of the hike. I also plan on coming back to KC at least once to break up the trip.  My meals should be pretty cheap too.  I don’t plan on spending more for food on this trip than I spend when I’m at home.  I’m also doing some restaurant mystery shops to help keep that cost down.

Yesterday was the first day of my hike.  I hiked 18.2 miles which was definitely too far for my current fitness and fatness level.  It was cool and intermittently sprinkling when I hiked out and I felt good.  When I started back the sun came out and my energy level was quickly depleted.  When you’re doing an out and back hike though once you’ve hiked out you have no choice but to hike back.  The town I started from offers free showers and free camping to those using the Katy Trail.  I felt a lot better after taking a shower and getting some food and beverage.  The free campground was too brightly lit and too close to the highway noise for me to be able to get to sleep.  I gave up on sleeping in the campground and went to my car to sleep.  It wasn’t the most comfortable sleep, but I was tired enough to fall asleep anyway.  Now I know that I can in fact sleep in my Ford Focus.  With the back seats down I can just barely stretch all the way out if I lay diagonally.  I might spend a little money to improve the car sleeping situation.  Since sleeping in the car is a lot cheaper than a hotel I can justify the expense.

That is my plan for hiking the Katy Trail.  The hike shouldn’t cost me any more than what my usual daily expenses are and it might be even cheaper.

 

 

Blogging and Traveling

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I’m leaving tomorrow for another hike.  The hike will last somewhere between a few days and a month.  It depends on whether I feel like hiking the entire trail.  I’ll give more details about my hike in a later post.

Usually, when I go hiking or am otherwise traveling I just let the blogging slide.  This time around, since I am taking my car and should have access to the internet and a reasonable amount of free time everyday I plan to continue blogging.  I’m hoping that I will be able to do more writing than I normally do.  Now that I’m no longer working I have plenty of time to write, but I’m very good at finding other things to do besides write.  Even though I like writing I often end up doing everything else first and leave writing last.  I’m going to try to change that habit while I’m on this hike.  I know there are a lot of traveling bloggers so I know it is possible to travel and blog at the same time.  I like to think that I could one day be a traveling blogger.  If I can’t write regularly when I’m away from home though then being a traveling blogger isn’t going to happen.

There shouldn’t be a need to update this post.  If you see new posts coming out three times a week or so then you will know that I’m meeting my goal of blogging while traveling.   If it seems like I have just disappeared from the blog then you will know I haven’t managed to blog while traveling.

 

 

Save Money With DIY YouTube Videos

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My car has been having a lot of problems the past few months.  I made it through August with no repairs so I was hoping that all of the issues were taken care of for a while.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.  The passenger side window in my car came off track last week.  I was able to push it back up so the window isn’t down all the time, but I couldn’t get it to work again.

Some internet research suggested that taking the car to an auto glass  shop be the best solution.  The technicians would be skilled at taking apart car doors to get to the window and should be able to get the window back on track for only $25 or so.  That price was cheap enough that I didn’t think it would be worth my time to try to do the repair myself.  When I took the car to the auto glass shop I was informed that the power window regulator was out and the repair would be about $210 with a $125 of that cost being for a new regulator.  That was more than I was wanting to spend.  Now, doing the repair myself looked like it might be worth my while.

A little more research showed that I could buy a power window regulator for $67 online.  This would be a nice $143 savings from the quoted price.  I found some good instructions on how to replace the power window regulator in a Ford Focus ZX3.  The instructions weren’t quite thorough enough for a novice like me.  They glossed over how to take the door panel off.  A search on YouTube found a video on how to replace my power window regulator and it showed in detail how to take the door panel off.   I needed to find the instructions and video before attempting the repair.  I’m not exactly handy.  Nobody calls me “Handy Andy.”  The women don’t find me handy, but at least a few find me handsome. 🙂

Although I’m talking about car repair in this post, the same idea can be applied to other expenses.  There are lots of other DIY videos.  Even if you decide that you can’t do it yourself sometimes the video or repair instructions will inform you of a cheaper option.  For example,  when I was looking for instructions on replacing my catalytic converter a couple of sites suggested that a muffler repair shop would be cheaper than a general auto repair shop.  I already had a repair quote from my usual auto repair shop so I called a muffler shop for a price quote.  The muffler shop was over $500 cheaper.  That was a nice bit of savings for just spending a little time looking for a cheaper alternative.

I had to order the power window regulator online, which I did using Mr. Rebates in order to save a little money.  I’m still waiting for the part to arrive and will update this post after I receive the part.

 

****Update***

Things didn’t go exactly as planned, but I do now have a working window and I saved a fair bit of money.  It turns out that the part I ordered online wasn’t the correct part and I had to cancel the online order.  Since I’m leaving for a hike on Thursday I didn’t have time to place another online order and I also didn’t want to take a chance of ordering the wrong part again so I bought the part at a local auto parts store.  The regulator ended up costing $125 which was the same price as the auto glass shop was going to charge me.  I didn’t end up saving any money on the part.

I’m happy to report that I was able to do the job myself and now have a function power window.  The entire job took maybe 3 hours, that is including going to the auto parts store and back.  I did do the job at a very relaxed pace and I could probably do it in an hour if I had to do it again.  I saved $85 by doing the job myself.  Since I’m currently unemployed I think this was a good return for my time.   Now that I have this repair under my belt, I am more confident that I can handle future repair jobs and save even more money.

August Savings Rate – 72.3%

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August was a great month for saving.  I made $3661.68 and saved $2650 for 72.3% of my income saved.  It is very easy for me to save money when I actually make a decent amount.  This good month of savings will be a big help in reaching my goal of saving 50% of my income. My expenses were also lower in August which helped lower my average monthly expense total which helps with my safe withdrawal rate. My stocks lost money or I would have done even better.  I lowered my SWR to 52.2% from 58.13% the month before.  I have a long way to go to get to my goal of a 4% SWR, but at least I’m making progress again.

The 4% SWR translates into having 25x your annual expenses in savings or 300 months of expenses in savings. I have 22.96 months of living expenses saved now. That is a little bit higher than the month before and still below the 24 months of savings I had earlier this year.  Now that I have more months of expenses making my average monthly expenses, one good expense month doesn’t change the average that much. I expect to save a decent amount again this month so the SWR and months of living expenses saved should continue to improve.

August Income – $3661.68

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Here is a breakdown of my income for August.

Online Income

 $467.28
Interest

$2.20

Dividends

$19.46

Cash Back

$46.18

Sell Stuff

$6.16

Job

$2745.90

Mystery Shops

$24.50

Medical Study

$350

Total

$3661.68

August was a great month for income.  I made over three times as much money as in July. Having two full paychecks from job helped a lot.  I also made almost $1000 from alternative income and passive income.  I wish all the months could be this good.  My income has varied a lot this year.  Until I get a permanent full-time job the swings in income will likely continue.

This month will still be pretty good.  I’ll get two paychecks from job again.  One of the checks will only be for one week and there is no overtime on the other check so the job income will be down a bit.  It will be enough to make a good income month even if my other sources of income don’t contribute much.  I’m not sure how the rest of the year will be for income.  That is something I’ll worry about more next month.