Money Monday: By The Numbers: October

Finally, things have simmered down enough and it is time for my monthly spending recap, along with a few other random stats! For the month of October, my bike trip was slightly winding down, and I spent a lot more time visiting and housesitting than I did riding. All of the below numbers are as of October 31, 2024. 

Montreal bike (they were everywhere!)

Mileage To Date:

Total Days on the Road: 222

Total Days Ridden: 153

Days Ridden in October: 10

Total Miles Ridden: 8,540

Average Miles Per Day Ridden: 55.8 (vs 56.57 as of Sept 30)

Max miles per day: 101

Accommodation To Date: 

Airbnb: 12

Established Camp: 35

Friend: 36

Housesitting: 18

Motel: 69

Warm Showers: 9

Wild Camp: 40

Train: 3

Total Days: 222

Total average cost per day: $39

Verdict: Although October involved a lot of housesitting and stays with friends, the motels were more expensive than normal and there was no wild camping. This only brought the average per day down from $40 to $39. 

Total Cost: October

*Please note that I eradicated my travel category since basically all my costs are what I would have categorized in travel before. 

Accommodation: $1,106 (↓ from September by $15!) Includes any place where I rested my head for the night. In October this included housesitting (13), Motel (9), Friend (5), Airbnb (2), Established Camping (1) and Train (1). 

Dining Out: $174 (↓ from September) Includes coffee, ice cream shops, snacks and meals at a restaurant, including bakeries and the train canteen. This was down about 30% from the average for this trip. This is likely due to the fact that I was not on the move as much so could plan my groceries and meals out better. However, I did go out and get food in Montreal and Quebec a few times, and went out with Elisabeth! I feel like this was more quality than quantity though. 

Groceries: $254 (↓ from September) Includes food and snacks from a grocery or convenience store. This is down about 20% from the average for this trip. This is likely due to the fact that by housesitting or staying with friends, I tend to be able to shop less often so can stock up on more things. 

Health: $234 (same - insurance premium) Includes my health insurance and any costs for health care (which I have luckily not had!!!). I expect to go for my colonoscopy procedure in the next six months and it will be interesting to see what the out of pocket is for that with my new insurance plan. (by interesting, I mean please don't hold your breath!) 

Misc.: $33 (↑ from September) Includes CFA membership, shipping, gifts, personal care (as you can see, there is not much of that happening)

Shopping: $4 (↓ from September) Includes costs associated with cycling maintenance, cycling gear, running and camping gear and other clothing or toiletries. The $255 average for this trip is mainly because I've spent about $1,100 on bike maintenance, which equates for about 62% of this category. Luckily in October, I barely spent anything! Bob sure is high maintenance! (*Dad joke)

Transportation: $169 (↓ from September) Included one flight for me and Bob and a couple of local bus and train rides in Montreal and Quebec. Why is it so low, you ask!? I used points for a lot of this, which I talked about in my last Money Monday post! 

Utilities: $232 (↓ from September) Includes a monthly breakdown for the following, even though some of them are charged only once per year: phone, Garmin charges, subscriptions, credit card fees and internet security (NordVPN). 

Total Spent: $2,205 (↓ 20% from average and ↓ 27% from September)

Verdict: Pretty much all categories went down from September and most were lower than the average for the trip. I am still trying to figure out what I should target for my budget for next year, but I am thinking that $2,500 a month may be a good number to start with. I do think that there will be a couple of things that I will need to upgrade next year (for example, my normal travel backpack is from the 90s!) but hopefully they will not cost more than the cost of bike maintenance, so it will even out. 

This brings to total spent for seven months to $18,407 or approximately $2,600 per month. The highest month is still the Tour Divide (July) and the lowest is April with October coming in second lowest.

Verdict: Being on the move more or trying to go faster equals more expensive for the most part. Being able to slow down and buy things in larger quantities and stay in one place for a week really does make a difference. 

To end this number heavy post, here are a few non-cycling related stats! 

Favorite Ice Cream: The Real Scoop in Wolfville. 

Favorite New Town: Wolfville, although Mahone Bay was pretty dang cute

Favorite New Water Related Venue: Hubbards Bay or Blomidon

Favorite Food Item: I really loved the family dinners at Elisabeth's house! However, I had a blast getting a loaded poutine at La Banquise in Montreal. Was it touristy? 100% yes. However, it was still a lot of fun and it was very filling! 

Favorite Book: God of the Woods. I will be doing a post about what I read later, or you can find my list on my Goodreads page here! 

Okay it's your turn!! Have you read God of the Woods? What was the best (or worst) thing you spent money on in October? What month is normally your highest spending month? 

If you haven't already, you can fill out this form with any questions you want answered for my upcoming ask me anything post!!

This post is part of NaBloPoMo. You can find the rest of my posts for this challenge here. You can find the list of participants and their information here. 

Money Monday: Credit Card Hacking

Let's talk about getting to travel for free! 

But first, I realized in last week's post that I kind of jumped into the middle of the saving topic without covering the basics! However, for those of you who have not seen some of my prior posts, I do think that if you are just going to do one thing, it should be to pay into your 401k (403b/RRSP etc.) at least up to whatever your employer will match. If you don't have an employer who offers this, there are other ways to save, but I will cover them in a future post! You can find posts about a lot of these subjects on my Tips and Hacks page, but also here are a few of my favorites.

Every Quarter Counts: Three Tips for Growing Your Wealth Early 
Saving My Latte For a Rainy Day: Saving for Retirement
Make a Dollar Out of Fifteen Cents: What I Splurge and Save On 
My Last To Do List: Trusts and Other Documents 

The second thing that I think is important is to pay off all of your credit card debt. I did a review of a friend's finances once and the two things that really stood out to me were that (a) he had multiple charges for some subscriptions that he hadn't even realized because he was not looking at his statements and (b) he was not paying off his credit card in full every month! This can really add up! 

For example, if you have a balance of $5,000 with 25% interest rate and you pay it down $100 a month ($1,200 total), by the end of the year, your balance will be unchanged, at about $5,056, and you would have paid about $1,256 in interest that year. If you pay it down $200 a month ($2,400 total), your balance would be about $3,700 and you would have paid about $1,100 in interest. You would have to pay $475 per month to get it down to $0 by the end of a year, and you would still pay about $700 in interest. That is a lot of money to pay to the credit card companies! Obviously there are emergencies, but I think putting money aside for them in advance is much more prudent. 

So before I begin this post, I have to throw out the disclaimer that you should not do this if you can't pay off your card in full every month. Now let's talk about credit card hacking! If you are unfamiliar with this, it involves opening a credit card to get the welcome bonus, using the points for free stuff and possibly closing or downgrading the card later. Personally I like travel related cards, and Chase has one of the best values for that, so let's talk about that first. Side note: to my foreign friends, I am sorry, but these are US centric cards. However, please feel free to go to the bottom and let us know what card you use or any tricks you have to get the best value for your money!! 

Travel card ($600 - $1,500 bonus value) / $95 annual fee. The Chase Sapphire Preferred is currently offering $300 Chase Travel Credit + 60,000 bonus points (please verify by going to their site). What does this mean? Basically this can be worth anywhere from $600 - $1,500, depending on how you use it. Once you spend $4,000 in the first three months, you will get 60,000 points, and when you purchase any travel related items through their portal you will get up to a $300 credit. This includes the obvious things like flights, hotels and car rentals, but also has activities and cruises. 

For the points, at the very least, they can either be used to get cash back or buy gift cards at around 0.01 per point (value of $600) or you can use them to purchase travel through the portal, which is usually about $0.015 (value of $900) or you can transfer them to airline or hotel partners, which is where you can get the best bang for your buck. For example, if you transfer these points to Hyatt and use them to book a hotel room with points, the value will be about 0.02 per point ($1,200). This card does have a $95 annual fee, but it also gives you a $50 annual statement credit for hotels booked through their travel portal, so if you use this, it is only $45/year. This card also gives higher points per dollar in categories like travel and dining out and has no foreign transaction fees. 

In conclusion, if you travel at least once a year, this card may be a great fit for you! And if you don't love it after a year, you can cancel or downgrade to a no fee card. Basically with the current welcome bonus, you could stop using it after you get the bonus and still get value out of it for approximately six years (or more). If you travel a lot, you may want to go with the Chase Sapphire Reserve which gives you extra perks like lounge access and TSA Pre/Global Entry, but comes with a higher annual fee. 

Cash back card ($200 bonus value) / $0 annual fee. If you don't really travel a lot or you don't spend a lot on travel related items, you can get the Freedom Flex card, which currently has a welcome bonus of $200 after you spend $500 on purchases in the first 3 months. It gives you 5% cash back for a quarterly rotating bonus category, which includes groceries, gas, Amazon and pet services, which if you max this out, could equate to $300 per year. It has no annual fee and a 0% introductory APR. There are tons of different cash back cards with different % for different categories, so a combo of best bonus + best % for what you spend on is the way to go! 

Hotel card ($500 - $1,000 bonus value) / $99 annual fee. If you travel at least once a year and stay in at least one hotel/motel per year, I highly suggest getting a hotel credit card. I think the current best bang for your buck is either the IHG Premier or the Hyatt card. Let's talk about the IHG card. This is good for hotels like the Holiday Inn, Intercontinental and Staybridge Suites (list here). The good thing about IHG is that they are literally everywhere, versus places like Hyatt and Marriott which are sometimes pretty few and far between (or very expensive). 

It currently has a 140,000 point bonus (please verify by going to their site), which they state is up to 4 nights free, but I just booked a Holiday Inn Express in Strasbourg for ~24,000 points per night, plus with this card you get the fourth night free, so my four nights cost me 71,000 points, so this could possibly be more like eight hotel nights (or more in places like SE Asia or South America). If I would have paid for this room, it would have cost me about $500, which means that if I can book another at the same price, the welcome bonus would be worth about $1,000. In addition, you get an annual free night's certificate, which is good for up to 40,000 point hotel, which could equate to a value of about $200. This card does cost $99 per year, but if you use your certificate for a $200 hotel, it still "saves" you money! Last but not least, you get automatic Premier Elite status, which can give you perks like upgrades, early check in, late check out, and possibly a snack or a drink. Once again, if you decide this is not for you after a year or two, you can downgrade to a no fee card with no ding on your credit, or you can cancel if you choose. 

One last thing I want to talk about is a card that does not currently offer a bonus so is not really one for "hacking," but could be a great option for people who pay rent and that is the Bilt Rewards card. Please note that I have not used this myself, so you will have to do your own research. However, my understanding is that you can use it to pay your rent with no credit card transaction fees, even if you normally pay by check (they will issue the check for you) and you will get one point per dollar spent on rent plus extra points for other categories on rent day (the first of the month). You also get points for travel and other categories and it has no annual fee. You can then use the points for free travel, to pay part of your rent or for gym memberships etc. FYI currently a RT flight to Europe in Feb would cost about 40,000 points. 

Have you fallen asleep yet? No? Great, because one other thing I want to add is that if you do travel, many of these credit cards also come with added perks like rental car collision (LDW) insurance (normally $10 - $30 per day), travel trip delay or lost luggage protection, purchase protection, roadside assistance (~ $99/year value), TSA-Pre (~$100 value every four years), cell phone protection (~$75/year value) and more. These extras may cover the cost of your fee in some cases! 

Have you ever done any credit card hacking? Do you already have any of these cards? What is your favorite credit card and why? 

This post is part of NaBloPoMo. You can find the rest of my posts for this challenge here. You can find the list of participants and their information here. 

Money Monday: Easy Ways to Save or Make Money

You know I like a good bargain just like the rest of you, and I am frugal to a fault in some people's eyes. However, I don't think that I give up quality in many cases, and I do prioritize quality in others. For example, I don't need to pay an extra $50 for a hotel with free breakfast when I would rather hit the streets and buy breakfast along the way or have a snack of peanut butter and a bagel in my room. Or, I don't need to eat three meals out when traveling, when I can just as easily eat a bagel and peanut butter in my room and then splurge on lunch. I guess the key is that you have to be willing to eat a bagel and peanut butter! Here are a few other ways to save without sacrificing happiness. 

Be aware. This is the number one thing in my opinion. This kind of goes along with culling your subscriptions, which I talk about below, but I think that you should take a look at what you are spending each month or quarter or year and then change what needs to be changed. Even if you think that nothing needs to be changed, I think it is important to know what you are spending your money on instead of just letting it all go out the door without thinking. This is easy enough as a lot of our banks will let us add external accounts so we can track our spending, but I use Fidelity's Full View. This is free for customers, and if you are not already a customer, you can open a cash management account, which is what I did. 

Open a high interest savings account. The reason I opened a cash management account at Fidelity is twofold. First, they reimburse all ATM fees, so when you are traveling abroad or are going to be in small towns where you may not find your regular bank, you can withdraw money with ease. I rarely withdraw cash, but when I do, it is nice to just be able to get out a little bit and not worry about the $9+ fees that my brick and mortar bank sometimes charges me each time. I was often getting out more (too much) cash because I did not want to go back again for another withdrawal.  

The second reason I did this is also due to their high interest rate. You can either leave your funds in cash, which will get you about 2.44% as of the time of this writing, or you can buy a money market fund, which is currently yielding about 4.50%. If you have money sitting in a checking or regular savings account, I highly suggest you move some of it to a higher yielding account. If you don't like Fidelity, there are also high yield savings accounts online like Marcus or Citizens which also will give you a better rate (FYI: currently my main brick and mortar bank checking account has 0% and my savings has about 0.03%, vs. the high yield accounts, which are around 4.0% - 4.5%.) It literally takes two minutes to open and maybe one or two days to transfer the funds over to a new account. 

Change your phone plan. People, we are past the era where we need to be paying $75 or $80 per month for a cell phone plan. There are so many plans out there now that are cheaper, and they are not worse quality! I personally have Google Fi (this is not a sponsored post, but if you click this link, you can get $60 off) and I have had it for years now and I do not miss my expensive AT&T plan! I was paying $80 per month, and now I pay about $80 for myself and two other people. Before I added the family members, my bill was about $30/month. Google Fi also triangulates between T-Mobile and US Cellular, so it will pick up the one that has the best service and use that. Also, it works internationally with little to no extra charge. When we traveled to Mexico, a friend of mine who had Verizon paid $10 a day to have international roaming, therefore adding about $100 to his bill that month. I paid NOTHING. 

I don't know all about the other plans, but I think Mint Mobile has a deal for $15 a month with unlimited data. Also, the All The Hacks podcast did a more thorough review of all of them if you want to learn more. However, the bottom line is that you pay per GB if you don't use a lot of data, or you can get unlimited data if you need it. Most of us are at home or work most of the day, where we have WiFi, and when that is the case, you do not use any data. I use less than 1GB of data every month. 

After reading this post by CCR, I am adding an addition to this in that if you are traveling internationally, even if you have the expensive Verizon plan, you do not need to pay the $10 per day international fee. Most newer phones now support e-SIM cards, which means that all you need to do is download an app (I use Airalo and if you use my referral code KYRIA0085, you will get $3 off your first purchase). From home you can load up some GB of data and then as soon as you step off the plane, your data will work. Easy-peasy. If you have an older phone, you can also get a real SIM card at most airports or city centers. You can then download things like maps, podcasts and audiobooks so that they can be used offline, use any streaming while in WiFi land and you will barely use any data on the road.

Speaking of referral codes. Before buying most things or signing up for anything, I check Reddit to see if there is anyone offering a voucher or a referral code for it. (I also use cash back apps, which I will discuss in a future MM post). A lot of the time, you will get a discount and probably the person referring you will get something too. Sometimes it can be as high as $60 off, like my Google Fi code, or sometimes it is a % off, or a discount on your first purchase, like Airalo. And I am sure you yourself have referral codes for things you use; you can post them on this site and if someone clicks on it, you may get a bonus too. I have received statement credits on my Google Fi account of $600 (the max allowed) by doing this! You can find my referral codes on my travel tips and hacks page if you are interested in getting a discount or giving me some extra points for something you were going to get anyway. :)

Cull your subscriptions, or alternate them. I know that it is easy to just set it and forget it, but do we really need to have four or five different streaming subscriptions at the same time? What if you make a list of which shows you like on each platform and then alternate one every two or three months? This does require a little organization, but it is worth it. Also, see above; maybe your library app has the show you like! Also, often the channel itself will show the show for free; for example, ABC has the option to watch past seasons of Grey's Anatomy right on the ABC website for free. And who doesn't love Grey's Anatomy? 

Additionally, things like Amazon subscriptions can pile up (hello TP and cat food, I am looking at you!) and so it is worth reviewing them every quarter to see if you really need more of the items on your list. I make a point to review my credit card purchases every month to see if there is anything out of whack, but if you don't have time for that, I think at least once a quarter is a good idea. Even if it is something like a credit card fee on a card that you meant to cancel, you can call them and often get it removed retroactively. And...if even once a quarter is too much, there are apps like Rocket Money or Pocket Guard that will do the work for you, and will even suggest or negotiate better deals for things like your cable or phone bill. (disclaimer: I have not tried either of these apps myself) 

During NoBloPoMo, this will be a once a week feature, so stay tuned for next time, when I talk about credit card hacking! Also, if there is something you want to learn about, or any questions you have, let me know! 

Do you keep track of your spending? If so, what tips do you have? What phone plan do you have, how much data (non WiFi) do you use each month, and how much do you pay per month? Do you have a high yield savings account? 

This post is part of NaBloPoMo. You can find the rest of my posts for this challenge here. You can find the list of participants and their information here.