Monday, February 18, 2013

UK 2013 part 8 - Floating costs: Fuel, Food, Parking

Budget, budget, budget!

Yup, we need to figure out whether or not we can afford the trip.
All the time taht I am planning transportation, lodging and attractions, I a also noting the cost of each, as you can see on my trip itineraries.

But what about expenses that we can't pre-pay or book such as food, fuel, park charges, and souvenirs?

Souvenirs? What souvenirs?
Well, souvenirs will have to wait for their turn. If we can we can, if we can't, too bad.

Meals
How did I plan our meal expenses?
Well, in most cases our breakfast is included. There are only 4 days in which it isn't.

So we mostly have 2 extra meals to pay for.

What did I plan on? About £25/€25 per meal for 2.

How did I get to this price?

I did some online searching for typical prices of meals - eating cheap, like pub grub - and it turns out it ranges between £5 to £10. I figured then we might spend an average of £25 per meal. Some days might be slightly more, others slightly less. We might skimp on lunch to splurge on dinner. Either way, the idea is to average £25 or €25 per meal and try to not go over this price. That means try to not eat fancy.

How did I figure out those typical prices? Bing searches for "typical meal prices in ____" and google docs for local restaurants.

Doing it backwards is also an option. That's how I do when we go to Orlando and Brazil. I have an idea of what is realistic to expect of course. Then I establish how much I can spend meals, divide it by the number of meals, then find the places that will serve food for that price.
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Fuel
Gee, that's the hardest part. What I did was find the approximate mileage that we would be driving. Figure out the average mpg of the car we will be driving. Then I check websites that give us prices of fuel in England (in liters.

After I get all this data I use the following formulas:

Total of Miles/Miles per gallon = total gallons spent.

Turn gallons into liters.

Liters * pounds per liter = total pounds spent on fuel

http://www.petrolprices.com/
http://www.pumps.ie/

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Parking

That's not really hard, just time consuming. What I did was find the parking lots (car parks) on google maps or one city websites. Some city websites will also give you the cost per hour. So I could calculate the approximate amount of money spent by the approximate amount of hours we were going to spend at the place.

I also checked for places where I could park for free. Some street parking is free at certain times of the day and on certain days of the week.


1 comment:

  1. thanks, city, but there really wasn't much here when you cheked. I hope you enjoy this more complete posting.

    ReplyDelete