Budget crisis of sorts

$15	Dinner (Jamaican food)
$14	Dinner (Mexican street food)
$8	Luggage storage
$88	Greyhound bus fare
$9	Popeye Chicken
$60	Corktown Motel
$14	5 Guys Burger
$32	Tech something Motel
$6	Arby’s
$5	KFC
$10	Burger King
$3	Chips and peanuts
$32	Tech Motel
$165	Laptop
$20	Schwinn Bicycle
$53	Phone service for a moth
$10	KFC
$32	Tech Motel
$9	Taco Bell
$275	Room for rent
$5	Miscellaneous (lock for bike, batteries, etc.)
$25	First food shop (Wal-Mart)
$11	USB cable for camera
$14	Shaver (forgot US-Europe adapter)
$12	Bus fare
Total
$927	Total spent so far from the available budget
-$320	Money I had prior to the trip
Total
$607

As you can see, I have actually gone over the budget. I would have only $73 until the end of the month if I didn’t have the $320 from the month before.

Technically I should have ended this month with a $320 surplus.

In hindsight, I see a couple of ways in which I could have saved money. If I had skipped the motels and gone straight to a room (provided that I had made arrangements prior to the trip) I would have saved $156 (60+32+32+32). Perhaps I would have also saved part of the money spent on junk food, about $40 (excluding the money spent in NYC) had I started cooking my own meals earlier.

 Rounding it up, I would say that $200 could have been saved with a little more planning.

This was of course a networkless affair. It is cheaper if there are contacts in the area one is going to buffer the shock of the first few days, but that is not always possible.

This has been a car-less affair. I always make a conscious effort to use internal combustion engines as little as possible. Somebody I know calls the EHDUs (earth and human destroying units) – MEHDUs (medium earth and humans destroying units) OEHDUs (oversized).

Detroit is crawling with those things and I look odd riding my bicycle. I can tell they think it’s a strange thing to do when there are cars which are faster and more comfortable to get around with. I think they are the strange ones not knowing the cost of using those things. I went to war because of them, but that’s a different story.