Grazing Rites

Vacation is a time when I let loose and stop worrying about money – that’s part of the vacation covenant and I don’t want to do anything to break that however I leaned very heavily on my Visa this trip and given some of the difficulties I encountered that bares further thought before any future trips.

For the first time in over a decade I was faced with the prospect of my Visa card being rejected. First it was because of unusual account activity which is normal when you forget to tell them you’re going on vacation, although apparently my mother had taken care of that for me. That one case is generally easy to rectify with a simple phone call which is exactly what happened. But then on the last day of the trip my card started getting randomly rejected. Denny’s, McDonald’s, and automated parking meters would just say ‘Not Approved’ while bookstores, for example, accepted it just fine. When I called Visa after the first instance at Denny’s they said it was a problem with the merchant not my card and that my card would be fine. When the other instances occurred I was on the road and running behind so I didn’t have time for another lengthy phone call where I get put on hold twice for 10 or 20 minutes at a go. So for that last day we pooled our cash and never made purchases above what we had on hand (which wasn’t much), just in case. Gas stations and Carl’s Jr. took my card thankfully and had they not we could have probably just gone to an ATM or bank and paid some insane fees to get cash but it was still somewhat worrying.

Also when I got home there was a little bit of sticker shock with regards to how much I spent, only by a couple hundred dollars versus what I had figured I’d spend but that number was already significant to begin with, essentially an entire paycheque. I think it’s safe to say it’s the most I’ve ever spent on vacation before, although it also lasted at least a day longer than my last few vacations. I’m not entirely upset about that as the economy, particularly in two of the three states we visited, really needed the injection of spending and it was a rather special vacation but at the same time I don’t know that I want either the Visa problems or the sticker shock to become a habit so I thought I would take a look at the trip like I do in one of my one-month challenges. Not for recriminations or might-have-beens but rather just better understand what I did. As such I will talk exclusively in percentages rather than dollar amounts. Keep in mind I am only looking at Visa charges during the trip itself (so cash purchases like concert merch are not included); these figures do not include pre-purchased things like the Grants Pass hotel or concert tickets.

Here’s the breakdown…

Merchandise: 24%
Restaurants: 24%
Gas: 22%
Hotels: 18%
Entertainment: 10%
Fast Food: 3%

First some notes. I included pizza delivery under Restaurants on a count of you tip the delivery person. I included Krispy Kreme doughnuts under Merchandise because we didn’t eat them on the trip. Hotels represent the Motel 6s we stayed at and the upgrade and other fees at the Hyatt – since this does not include all the prepaid accommodations like the Travelodge, original Hyatt charge, or the Wilsonville Inn & Suites it can probably just be ignored. Merchandise also presents a unique case as I did almost all of my Christmas shopping for my son on this trip so that’s hardly frivolous and will represent future savings. I also included things like batteries and wiper fluid in Merchandise which were both usual vacation purchases. I also think my hunt for tax-free used Final Fantasy games was a bit of a one-off (both in goals and success rate – 4 games!!! I was just hoping for 1!) and I’m likely to get months of entertainment out of those.

Looking forward I doubt my next serious (i.e. non-minibreak) vacation will be a road trip so Gas shouldn’t be much of an issue unless renting a car and even then shall be much less. I did splurge on Entertainment but there were some unique opportunities like the San Francisco Bay Cruise and Dune Buggies that were both well worth it, in the future this could easily go either way depending on location – I’m sure my Vegas Entertainment percentage would have been pretty significant as well.

So there doesn’t appear to be any general conclusions that can be drawn other than $50 cash per day is not nearly enough even when you prepay for many accommodations and entertainment (like Six Flags and concerts) and that this was a pretty awesome and exceptional trip.

This entry was posted on September 29, 2009 at 1:16 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.