From 779fef2321f6ea95d669815eaace7c42b11ab61b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: luxagraf Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2019 20:51:39 -0600 Subject: added recent posts --- se-renta.txt | 53 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++---------------- 1 file changed, 37 insertions(+), 16 deletions(-) (limited to 'se-renta.txt') diff --git a/se-renta.txt b/se-renta.txt index fbe2759..48690af 100644 --- a/se-renta.txt +++ b/se-renta.txt @@ -1,38 +1,58 @@ -When we left Dallas a few months ago our plan was to be gone six months. We were going to spend the winter down here, stay warm, improve our Spanish a bit and go back to the bus. Then we were going to spend the Spring traveling the southwest, see some areas of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah that we hadn't seen yet, and then head up to Wyoming, Idaho and Montana when it got hot, to spend the summer at higher, cooler elevations. Then we'd swing south again when it cooled off and come back down to Mexico and work our way down the west coast of Mexico for the winter of 2019/2020. +When we left Dallas our plan was to be gone six months. -It was a pretty good plan I thought. It still is a pretty good plan. But as the man said, it's important that you make them, but it's rarely to actually follow a plan for too long. And that one, much as we still like it, is not going to work out for us. At least not on the timeline we'd envisioned. +We were going to spend the winter down here, stay warm, improve our Spanish a bit and go back to the bus. Then we were going to spend spring traveling the southwest desert, see some areas of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah that we hadn't seen yet, and then head up to Wyoming, Idaho and Montana when it got hot, spend summer at higher, cooler elevations. Then we'd swing south again when it cooled off and come back down to Mexico and work our way down the west coast of Mexico for the winter of 2019/2020. -There are a variety of reasons it's not going to happen, one of them is money. To get where we want to go in the bus, we need to rebuild the engine. We need more power on hills and the only way I've come up with to do that is to either drop in something bigger, a 440 or the like, or rebuild the 318 to get better compression, which means boring out the engine, new pistons, new manifolds, probably a new transmission and quite a few other things that are not cheap. It's all doable, but it takes money and we lost about 50 percent of our income earlier this year. +It was a pretty good plan I thought. It still is a pretty good plan. It's important you make plans but it's rare to actually follow one for too long. And that one, much as I still like it, is no longer *the* plan. At least not on that timeline. -I don't want to sound like I'm complaining or asking for money, I'm not doing either, we're very fortunate to be able to do this and there isn't a day that goes by that I'm not grateful for everything we've been able to do. If we had to sell the bus and go home tomorrow I would have no regrets. We're not ready to do that yet, I'm not even sure what that means anymore, but sometimes you do have to adjust things if you want to keep going. +The new plan is to stay down here an extra year. We love Mexico and we don't want to leave just now. We, I especially, have some larger projects I want to work on, projects that require more time than is easy to come by when traveling the way we were. The truth is it's very hard to write from the road. When you're traveling you're too busy living to do more than scribble notes frantically. To write well about travel, the irony is, you need to stop traveling. -I'm going to get into something very few people seem get into: money. It takes money to travel. For a point so obvious, this one gets little press. Before we left I searched high and low for anyone willing to talk about how much it cost to travel the U.S. by RV and came up with very few hard and fast numbers. Consider this my contribution to anyone searching for information on how much it cost to travel the United States in a 1969 RV. +Then there's a other reason we're staying: money. -First though we need to get some terms down. We track our spending to the penny, so I can give some pretty accurate figures at the monthly level. Ultimately though this is not how much it costs. The real answer is that how much is costs to travel the U.S. by RV really depends on where you are, how many of you there are, and how you travel. +When we parked the bus last year we knew that before it went much further it was going to need some work. Significant, time and money eating work. We need more power on hills and the only way I've come up with to do that is to either drop in something bigger, a 440 or the like, or rebuild the 318 to get better compression, which means boring out the engine, new pistons, new manifolds, probably a new transmission and quite a few other things that are not cheap. It's all doable, but it takes money. -That said, here's a rough number for a family of five: $3000-$4000 a month, baring unforeseen expenses -- which is a euphemism for months where the bus doesn't break down. +Coming to Mexico was part of that plan, live cheap, save up some extra cash and pour it into the engine. Then, just before it was done, my biggest client decided to scrap the project I'd been working on for a year. I won't lie, it caught me by surprise. It wasn't so much the money, though losing over half your income is rarely good, but it derailed me for a bit. Like you probably do I get wrapped up in the things I make, I want them to good, I want others to like them. No matter how much you like something though, not everyone is always going to like it. It took me a while to get past that on the emotional level, but I finally did and then it hit me, oh right, that was all our money too. Crap. -Yes, that's a big spread. The reason is that roughly 30-40% tends to be food, which varies tremendously depending on where we are in the country. The west is much more expensive in nearly every regard, relative to the midwest and south, but especially for food. Generally speaking the $4000 a month areas would be California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, etc. The midwest and south are cheaper for us because food is cheaper there. In the end things rounded out to just over $3000/month[^1]. +We're very fortunate to be able to do this and there isn't a day that goes by that I'm not grateful for everything we've been able to do. If we had to sell the bus and go home tomorrow I would have no regrets. We're not going to do that, but I don't mind saying that the belts are going to have to be pulled tighter for a while. Sometimes you do have to adjust things if you want to keep going. + +Throughout this trip people have emailed to ask all kinds of questions about money and for the most part I've avoided the subject. Until now. + +It takes money to travel. Sometimes it takes a lot. To get our bus back on the road and house ourselves for nearly a month in California we spent over $7,000. We came close enough to just selling it that I have interior photos I was going to post in a Craigslist ad. That's a lot of money and it was the hardest decision we've ever had to make. + +I tell that story not in search of sympathy, but to point out the obvious. It take money to travel. + +For a point so obvious, this one gets little press. Before we left I searched high and low for anyone willing to talk about how much it cost to travel the U.S. by RV and came up with very few hard and fast numbers. Consider this my contribution to anyone searching for information on how much it cost to travel the United States in a 1969 RV. + +First though we need to get some terms down. We track our spending to the penny, so I can give some pretty accurate figures at the monthly level. Ultimately though this is not how much it costs. The real answer is that how much is costs to travel the U.S. by RV really depends on where you are, how many of you there are, and how you travel. For contrast's sake, to balance out the $7,000+ month in California we spent less than $2000 the month before we left for Mexico. + +That said, here's a rough number: **It costs around $3,000-$4,000 a month for our family of five to live on the road in the United Stats**. This figure assumes no unforeseen expenses, which is a euphemism for the bus didn't break down. Uou need to have extra money available for when it breaks down. It will. + +Now I know that's a big spread, $3k-$4k. The reason is that around half our spending is on food, which varies tremendously around the country. The west is much more expensive in nearly every regard, relative to the midwest and south, but especially for food. Generally speaking the $4000 a month areas would be California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, etc. The midwest and south are cheaper for us because food is cheaper there. In the end things rounded out to $3438/month[^1]. On the flip side of that equation boondocking tends to be easier out west -- there's lots more BLM land, which means you can find a free place to stay much easier -- so you spend less on camping (except in California, Calfornia is just expense). If you're on the Gulf Coast it's going to cost you upwards of $30 a night in to camp in most of Florida (unless you know where to look). -Another thing worth noting is that throughout the course of our trip we've spent less and less per month (except for last winter in California, which puts an irritating bump in the nice downward sloping graph I generated). There are two reason for this I think, first, we're getting smarter about boondocking and finding cheap camping, and two, we went back cross the country to the south and midwest where food is cheaper. +Another way that average is lying is that throughout the course of our trip we've spent less and less per month (except for last winter in California, which puts an irritating bump in the nice downward sloping graph I generated). There are two reason for this. First, we're getting smarter about boondocking and finding cheap camping. Second, we went back cross the country to the south and midwest where food is cheaper. Final point -- we could do it for less. We could probably cut our food bill by 30 percent if we dropped the organic meat and eggs for conventional and changed our eating habits a bit (in fact we have by necessity here Mexico). We don't, or we didn't in the U.S., because we didn't need to. As I noted in the post on food, food is one of life's most important elements to me. Not that good food has to be expensive, but good quality ingredients in the U.S. are going to cost you even if you do what we do and mostly shop at Asian and Latin grocery stores. -So what's the point of all this money talk? The U.S. is considerably more expensive than Mexico. We spend just over half our U.S. monthly spending here in Mexico, sans bus. You probably could have guessed that, what you probably would not guess is why. +So what's the point of all this money talk? The U.S. is considerably more expensive than Mexico. We spend just over half our U.S. monthly spending here in Mexico, sans bus. + +You probably could have guessed that, what you probably would not guess is why. -Part of it is that some things are cheaper here. Though really, not that much cheaper. I'd say food, which makes up the largest part of our budget, is about 30% less here. That's nothing to sneeze at, it helps for sure, but it's not the real reason it's cheaper for us to live in Mexico. +Part of it is that some things are cheaper here. Though really, not that much cheaper. Food, which makes up the largest part of our budget, is about 30% less here. That's nothing to sneeze at, it helps for sure, but it's not the real reason it's cheaper for us to live in Mexico. When I take a hard look at the spreadsheet, and then rotate it sideways to get a new perspective, what really jumps out is the "miscellaneous" category. I don't get real fine grained with spending categories so miscellaneous holds everything that is not gas, food, lodging or vehicle repair. It holds the non-essentials. That category doesn't exist in Mexico. We have spent less than $200 on misc spending in four months of living in Mexico. Why? It's pretty simple, we don't have access to Amazon.com. -But wait, you're travelers, you live in a bus, you don't buy useless stuff, you can't where would you put it? +But wait, you're travelers, you live in a bus, you don't buy useless stuff, you can't, where would you put it? + +I know right? But it turns out they makes some pretty small and expensive useless stuff you even can fit in a bus. + +Why do we buy it though, surely we know better? -I know right? But it turns out they makes some pretty small and expensive useless stuff you can fit in the bus. +We do know better and yet we still buy it. -Why do we buy it though, surely we know better? We do know better and yet we still buy it, The spreadsheet does not lie, so why? +The spreadsheet does not lie. But why? After spending some time meditating on this I've a very simple answer: access. @@ -68,10 +88,11 @@ This dovetails with a lesson we learned early on in the bus -- once you realize I wanted off that wheel. -If you like to travel there's a good chance you have more D4 dopamine receptors than the average person, which makes you especially prone to wanting, which in turn makes you susceptible to advertising, which in turn, ironically, makes you less likely to be able to save up the money to travel. +If you like to travel there's a good chance you have more D4 dopamine receptors (here's a good link to learn about D4) than the average person, which makes you especially prone to wanting, which in turn makes you susceptible to advertising, which in turn, ironically, makes you less likely to be able to save up the money to travel. +What does this have to do with traveling? Well we sat back and took stock of things, what we all wanted to do, why we wanted to do it, the whole bit and we decided that we wanted to stay here in San Miguel for longer than six months. -What does this have to do with traveling? Well we sat back and took stock of things, what we all wanted to do, and we decided that we wanted to stay here in San Miguel for longer than six months. Not too long after that we found a house that was just about perfect for us so we signed a year lease and we're staying here. We're staying here to slow down for a while, to work on some projects that require the kind of deeper focus that's difficult to manage on the road, to get better at Spanish, to try to move beyond a superficial, compartmentalized understanding of the place we're in, and to save money, both because we can live a little cheaper and because we spend less here. +Not too long after that we found a house that was just about perfect for us so we signed a year lease and we're staying here. We're staying here to slow down for a while, to work on some projects that require the kind of deeper focus that's difficult to manage on the road, to get better at Spanish, to try to move beyond a superficial, compartmentalized understanding of the place we're in, and to save money, both because we can live a little cheaper and because we spend less here. There are other reasons, the kids wanted to do somethings that are hard to do on the road, like take gymnastics and swimming lessons, and I wanted a break from crawling under the bus every other day to see what the mysterious fluid was leaking now. -- cgit v1.2.3-70-g09d2