Well, well, well. What a month it was.
This month took us from looking for jobs in Ecuador and Latin America, to stumbling across a really cool opportunity in…Warsaw, Poland!
Then of course we also had to make a quick trip to Costa Rica for some quiet time. Oh yeah, and then we had to go home to Texas to get our cold weather clothes before heading to Poland.
As much fun as we had, traveling to 4 destinations over 3 continents did not come without a big hit on the little budget.
The numbers
Budgeted cash flow for August: -$3,483.25
Actual cash flow for August: -$7,433.25 (!!!)
No big deal, just 213% OVER BUDGET.
Where did all of this money go?
The biggest expense was certainly for travel. In total we spent $4,843 to go from Quito, Ecuador to San Jose, Costa Rica, to Fort Worth, TX, to Warsaw, Poland.
Unfortunately some of the flights, like Quito to San Jose, could not be covered with airline miles. And the trips that could use airline miles still cost us a couple thousand dollars. For example, DFW to Warsaw ended up costing us about $1,300 in fees when we used airline miles.
Another place that we spent more money that anticipated was for start up costs in Poland. We had to pay fees for our apartment deposits and visa processing fees. Total here was about $550.
Lessons learned?
We certainly don’t have any regrets about any steps we took, but if we were faced with a similar situation, we would probably not take an in-between trip when moving somewhere else. For example, we could have gone straight to Poland from Ecuador, but we decided to go to Costa Rica for fun, then Texas to get our cold weather gear. In hindsight, the more economical decision would have been to axe the middle trips and go straight to the next destination. By doing this we would save enough money to buy new gear (like for cold weather).
The chart
It’s not pretty, but it is where we are! The red line shows that we are pretty far outside of what we had budgeted. Luckily, though, we have plenty of time to stabilize our spending.
Like a rocket going to space, our spending launched straight into the sky
