Savings Jar

Today we began the planning and budgeting aspects of our road trip. First we looked at the dates we will be leaving and decided we will have 3 weeks exactly to complete the trip. We made a timeline to figure out the main places we want to visit, leaving extra days to allow for longer stays when desired and extra stops when needed [because spontineity is a must in my book, and Devin likes to organize and plan things :) ]. According to google maps it looks like the trip will be a total of 3,685 miles. Given the recent rise in gas prices we figure at $4 a gallon and 25 miles per gallon we will be spending $600 on gas total or $300 each. We hope to be spending very little on food and based on our recent road trip we have budgeted $20 per week each on groceries, which means $60 on food for the entire trip. [Details on how we plan to spend so little money on food to come!] On top of food and gas we will need money for recreational activities along the way including camping and national park entrance fees. We each plan on budgeting another $150 for that. The final and most important spendings will go towards the beer supply. With a 30 rack of Keystone Light at about $18, we will each budget $40 for beer. With gas, food, recreational fees and the beer supply we each need to save about $550. In order to hold each other accountable and save the money that we need we have created a Savings Jar decorated with a map of our tentative route and a record of the money we put in. We have both started the savings process by putting in an initial deposit of $100 each. We plan to save about $50 each week to accumulate the final $450 that we need for the trip.