Roadrunner Financials - October 2013

We continued our time in California taking our time along from the Bay Area heading south to just north of Los Angeles

Roadrunner Recap

We wanted to see the Monterey Bay area because of its beauty and history.  It gained notoriety in John Steinbeck's famous novel "Cannery Row" and was close to the fantastic and memorable Pebble Beach and Carmel coasts.  We thoroughly enjoyed our time there.  Moving south, we stopped in San Luis Obispo.  We were quite a bit more isolated there and had some good downtime.  Next, we went farther south to Port Hueneme where we spent a couple of weeks.  While there, we played some golf and went to see the Ronald Reagan Library. Finishing up the month, we stayed at March Air Reserve Base FamCamp.  The best thing about it was its close proximity to Redlands where we spent lots of time with old friends from our time at Norton AFB in the 1980's.

Specifically, we spent time at the following sites:

• A - Monterey Bay (Monterey Pines Navy Campground) -  6 days
• B - San Luis Obispo (Camp San Luis Obispo Army National Guard) - 8 days
• C - Port Hueneme (Fairways RV Resort Navy Campground) - 14 days
• D - Moreno Valley (March ARB FamCamp) - 3 days

Good News Areas We Are Under Budget

Biggest Expenses
Our campground fees in California continue to be higher than we like, but not much we can do about that.  
- We finished up the month at March ARB FamCamp which only cost $17/night but we the Navy campgrounds are $30/night.
An upgrade on the MacBook laptop cost me $216.  
- I found a Mac Superstore in San Luis Obispo that was great.  They said according to Apple I can only get 4GB of ram on my machine, but they actually doubled it.  That sped things up a bit so it was well worth it.
We were pretty close on groceries this month but still went over.
We were $179.83 over in Misc.  
- I wish I could point to one thing but it was a lot of things:  new comforter for the bed, hats and sweaters and ball markers and gifts from Pebble Beach, more golf than we usually play in a month, a Presidential Pass (that gets us into  other Presidential Libraries)...

Large One Time Cost Item
Our yearly RV and car registrations are due, so we paid an even $700. I logged it into the RV Maintenance row with a comment to note what it was for on my spreadsheet.  It was easy to do online as a South Dakota resident.
Another big one was a new RV CD/Radio we had put it at Best Buy.  While it was only $216.56, it accounted for a large part of the overage in that area.

Monthly Average

 We are into the 5th month of our 5th year and are about on track with our monthly spending.  If I had prorated our upcoming car and RV registration over the entire year, we'd be right there.

That about does it for this edition of the Roadrunner Chronicles!  Really appreciate all the comments and to those that emailed me separately, hope you find the budget spreadsheet helpful.  If anyone else would like a copy, I'd be glad to send it out to you ~ just let me know.
Until next time...