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Before our cross country road trip, I shared an estimated budget for our travels. I had a pretty good sense of what expenses we’d have day-to-day and I wasn’t far off. The road trip was a blast [and exhausting!]. If you want to see some what we got up to, check out my road trip highlight on Instagram. I will be doing posts and videos on the trip and Nutmeg’s experience. Luckily Nutmeg did really well on the trip – she’s a well-traveled cat now!
Let’s get into it!
Gas:
Gas ended up be slightly less than we’d predicted. We spent $393.83 [while $415 was our estimate]. We spent $33.38 on tolls – way less than we originally estimated [$100]!
Lodging:
We ended up upgrading our Ohio lodging a few days before the trip – we went with La Quinta over Motel 6. This raised our lodging expenses up to $140.44 for two hotel nights. As I mentioned in my budgeting post, we stayed with friends/family for the other two nights.
Food:
We were a bit under budget on food. We spent $397.23 [$100 less than our original estimate]. We did skip a couple breakfasts so we could get on the road and our final dinner was with the in laws. I do think we did pretty well though!
Entertainment:
Our entertainment was the same as our original prediction – we spent $10 on parking at Mount Rushmore. If we hadn’t needed to drive as much each day, we probably would have added in some more fun activities.
Total: $974.88 [$150 less than our estimated total!]
Have you ever done a cross country road trip?
