Cancun Trip Review

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CAM00444

Last month I had a five day vacation in Cancun with my girlfriend and my mom. The vacation was not quite as frugal as I had originally planned, but I do believe it was a bargain for what we got.  And I think we probably paid quite a bit less than most people who had a similar vacation.

The round-trip airfare from Kansas City to Cancun ended up costing about $70 each. The flight was free, but we still had to pay taxes and fees.  The flights were paid for with points I had earned for opening a Southwest credit card and for shopping through the Rapid Rewards shopping portal. I earned enough points this year to qualify for a companion pass. For the rest of this year and all of next year my girlfriend can fly with me for free, I don’t have to use any points for her fare.  If you would like to apply for the Chase Southwest Premier Card you can use my referral link to apply and you can get 2 roundtrip flights on Southwest with 50,000 bonus points once you meet up the easy promotion requirements. Please note that this card does have a $99 annual fee that isn’t waived.  If you use my referral link I’ll earn some points towards a free flight as well.   If that referral link doesn’t work or if you would like a referral email to Rapid Rewards leave me a comment and I’ll get an email out to you.

The flights on Southwest had both good points and bad points.  The good points were that we were able to check our bags for free and both the final leg of the flight to Cancun and the flight leaving Cancun were almost empty.  I believe the flight attendants said there were thirty-some people on the flight.  This was nice since it allowed us to all spread out in our own row. There was also free in-flight TV which helped pass the time.  The bad was that we had flight delays on both the outbound and return trip. They were able to make up a lot of time in the air so we didn’t arrive too much later than the originally scheduled time. Also, there are no direct flights from KC to Cancun which meant long layovers for us.  The flight delays had the effect of making our long layovers a little shorter so I didn’t mind them too much.

We stayed at the Riu Palace Peninsula and the hotel cost was $160 per night. That was more than I prefer to pay, but when you consider it is for three people at an all-inclusive resort it is actually a pretty good deal.  This room would normally cost over $300 a night, we got the much lower rate since my mom is a travel agent. The hotel and grounds were very nice and the view was great.  My big complaint about the hotel room was that the noise from the bands playing in the bar below made it impossible to go to sleep without earplugs.  I wasn’t impressed with the food at all. I thought the food we had on our cruise last year was much better.  We ate at the buffet most nights since you had to reserve the restaurants ahead of time and we were only able to make one reservation. The one night we were able to eat in one of the specialty restaurants was pretty good, but for the price I want every night to be good. Free drinks including alcoholic beverages were also included.  This probably makes the hotel a great deal for drinkers.  Since neither my GF or I drinks very much this didn’t really provide us with much value.  I did have a few frozen drinks while lounging by the pool. They tasted great, but I don’t think they had much alcohol since I never got even slightly buzzed and I’m a lightweight drinker.

The highlight of our trip was the visit to Xplor.  This is a theme park with zip lining, amphibious vehicles, rafting and swimming in underwater caves.  We were able to do the zip lining, amphibious vehicles, and swimming in the underwater cave and I enjoyed them all.  Since we explored the park at a leisurely pace we didn’t get to do everything.  I would have liked to have had more time at the park.  The park package included transportation by bus to and from the park which kept us from having the whole day in the park.  The park was a lot of fun.  The price of $135 was a little high, but I think it was a worthwhile vacation splurge.

The total cost of the trip came to about $600 each which is a pretty good deal for round-trip airfare for three and three people for four nights at an upscale all-inclusive resort.  I don’t think I would do a similar trip again, but I did enjoy it and I’m glad we were able to go.

November Safe Withdrawal Rate – 38.87%

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Since I was so lazy last month I didn’t get around to calculating October’s SWR. It probably wasn’t much different from September’s.  Since I’m not currently  adding anything to savings there isn’t much change in my SWR.

My SWR for November was 38.87%. That is a slight improvement from 39.48% in September. The improvement was due to value of my stocks increasing.  When I don’t add any money to my savings the only changes to my SWR and months of living expenses saved are from my investment performance and the average of my trailing twelve month’s of expenses going up or down.

My goal is to get the SWR down to 4% so the lower my SWR is the better. That goal is probably many years from being met. 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 30.86 months of living expenses saved which is a slight increase from 30.38 months saved in September. I calculate my months of living expenses saved by dividing the average of my trailing twelve months of expenses by my total money saved.

There won’t be any big changes to these numbers until I start working full-time again in January and can contribute more to my savings. I’m hoping in the meantime they will at least stay about the same.

November Income $684.55

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Here is a breakdown of my income for November.

Online Income

 $0.00
Interest

$8.12

Cash Back

$32.23

Amazon FBA

 $10.00
Dividends $1.14
Jobs $633.06

Total

$684.55

 

My income for November was pretty bad.  Almost all of my income came from my job, I barely made any money from alternative sources of income.  I didn’t do much to earn extra income the first couple of the weeks of November since I was in Cancun and Vegas. I did work a week during the later part of the month, but that check wasn’t paid until this month.

My online income was actually negative.  I didn’t make any money during the month and had to pay my annual hosting bill. I knew a month like this would come eventually. For the year, my online income is still pretty good for the amount of time I have put into it.

My cashback income stayed about the same. If you haven’t joined Mr. Rebates yet you can get a $5 bonus for signing up through my referral link and I’ll make a little money for referring you as well.
Mr. Rebates

December  will be a better month for income. It shouldn’t be too hard to beat November’s tiny total. I keep thinking I must be missing some income, but I really don’t think I did. Since I have a lot of savings and my expenses for the month were fairly small as well I can easily afford to have a low-income month like this.  I’d still like to make more money though.

November Expenses – $1026.75

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for November.

Household $401.60
Entertainment $71.70
Transportation $63.06
Food $152.17
Student Loan $106.00
Travel $149.10
Phone $26.81
Health $56.31
Total $1026.75

 

My November expenses were back at the level I prefer.  I came very close to making my stretch goal of keeping my expenses to $1000 a month.  My expenses would have been under $1000 if it weren’t for my travel expense.  The travel expense was pretty cheap considering I spent five days in Cancun and three days in Las Vegas during the month.  Most of the Cancun trip had already been paid for and the Vegas trip was almost free is why the travel expense was so cheap.

The only expense I’m not happy about is the food expense.  I spent almost $100 on fast food. I plan to keep the fast food expense to less than $50 this month. All of the other expenses will probably remain about the same.  It should be another low expense month.  It is possible that Christmas will somehow mess up my low expense month, but I don’t think it will.

October Expenses – $2275.43

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for October. I thought I had already posted these, but since the post is nowhere to be found on my blog I guess I didn’t or it just disappeared somehow.

Household $464.85
Entertainment $103.51
Transportation $83.94
Food $131.05
Student Loan $106.00
Travel $580.50
Phone $26.81
Health $722.46
Total $2275.43

 

My October expenses were high due to two big expenses on health and travel.  The health expense was big due to the bone graft surgery I had to prepare for getting dental implants next year. The travel expense was high due to paying for my hotel room for November’s vacation and my last-minute passport experience.

I’m okay with the health expenses since getting my implants is important to my future dental health.  Other than the extra $70 I had to pay to get my passport expedited I’m okay with the travel expenses as well.  The Cancun vacation ended up costing a little more than I planned, but it was still a decent value.  As a once a year expense it is okay to splurge a little.