4/30/02 | Six month spending update

Every six months we've been posting a table showing our expenses, so that those of you who are planning to go cruising can see what it really costs. (See our articles and links page for quick access to all the six-month tables.) This update is for November 2001-April 2002.

We track all our expenditures with Quicken. Keeping tabs on our account balances is important since we don't get our mail regularly. The following table was made by creating a Quicken report from our transactions for the last 6 months, exporting it as a tab-delimited file into Excel, and then exporting that spreadsheet into an HTML table. The categories are those we find useful, and we frequently add new ones and combine existing ones. Some categories (indicated by TOTAL after the name) are further broken down into subcategories; one subcategory (Communications-Phone) is broken down into two sub-sub-categories. For example, Auto-TOTAL includes Auto-Gas, Auto-Rental, and Auto-Other. Some categories that we use don't appear in this table because we didn't spend money on those things during this period, or because there were so few expenditures in them that we folded them into the Misc category.

Some notes on categories, and on particularly large or small numbers, follow the table. During this period, we traveled along the Caribbean coast of South and Central America, largely in uninhabited places with nowhere to spend money. In addition, as we are planning to return to the US early this summer, we deferred several purchases that we would have had made during these six months had we planned to keep cruising (e.g. a new laptop computer). Finally, all these numbers are in US$ but of course we spent the local currency wherever we were; for the last few months we don't have the exact exchange rate we received on our ATM withdrawals, so amounts are only approximate.

	11/01	12/01	1/02	2/02	3/02	4/02	TOTAL
Alcohol	212.01	0	0	-10	0	18.5	220.51
Bank Charge	1	0	0	0	0	0	1
Boat-Dockage	0	48	151	0	0	10	209
Boat-Fuel	44	10	0	5	52	114	225
Boat- Maintenance	19	8	71	0	0	0	98
Boat-Parts	0	192	54.85	0	15	2	263.85
Boat-Service	0	0	194	0	0	0	194
TOTAL Boat	63	258	470.85	5	67	126	989.85
Books-Reference	0	115.93	0	0	0	0	115.93
Books-Other	0	0	0	0	42.95	0	42.95
TOTAL Books	0	115.93	0	0	42.95	0	158.88
Clothing-Jewelry	0	0	5	0	0	0	5
Clothing-Other	0	0	0	5	6	14	25
TOTAL Clothing	0	0	5	5	6	14	30
Comm-Internet	4.95	15.95	15.95	4.95	4.95	6.45	53.2
Comm-Mailing service	15.99	13.99	15.99	13.99	15.99	13.99	89.94
Comm-Phone	0	16	0	0	0	0.5	16.5
Comm-Postage	50.93	53.26	20.63	0	84.91	0	209.73
TOTAL Communications	71.87	99.2	52.57	18.94	105.85	20.94	369.37
Dining	79.02	166.2	106	7	111.25	80	549.47
Entertainment-Bar	0	0	3	0	0	5	8
Entertainment-Movies	7	0	0	0	0	9	16
Entertainment-Museum	0	0	29	0	12	0	41
Entertainment-Other	0	0	33	0	0	0	33
TOTAL Entertainment	7	0	65	0	12	14	98
Groceries	455.3	131.22	145.2	22	266.73	59.95	1,080.40
Household	23	0	0	0	0	23	46
Hotel	0	0	0	0	49.5	0	49.5
Laundry	18	0	30	0	4	14	66
Legal-Prof Fees	0	1.5	0	0	0	0	1.5
Licenses and Permits	25	48	5	6	117	55.25	256.25
Medical-Doctor	0	29.5	468.54	0	0	0	498.04
Medical-Medicine	52	0	5	0	35.91	0	92.91
TOTAL Medical	52	29.5	473.54	0	35.91	0	590.95
Misc	4.79	10.84	34.84	11	30	7	98.47
Personal care	0	0	0	0	0	9	9
Recreation-Diving	0	72.85	0	0	0	82	154.85
Recreation-Entry fees	1	0	0	0	0	0	1
Recreation-Fishing	0	0	0	20	0	8	28
TOTAL Recreation	1	72.85	0	20	0	90	183.85
Sewing and Crafts	79	0	47.5	0	0	0	126.5
Subscriptions	0	0	75.47	0	0	0	75.47
Tips	3	0	5	2	2	1.75	13.75
Tools	215	0	0	0	0	0	215
Transit fares	25	16	36	0	54	0	131
Travel-Other	0	0	0	0	40	0	40
TOTAL Travel	25	16	36	0	94	0	171
TOTAL OUTFLOWS	1,334.99	949.24	1,551.97	86.94	944.19	533.39	5,400.72

Notes:

Alcohol

Booze bought from stores. Drinks in a bar are listed under Entertainment-Bar. Negative amount is because we sold a couple of bottles of wine to some desperate cruisers!

Bank Charge

Stupid ATM fees...

Boat-Fuel

Includes diesel, dinghy gas, and propane for cooking. The November charge is incredibly low because we filled up on diesel and gasoline in Venezuela, a major petroleum producer, and it was very cheap.

Boat-Maintenance

Items which must be renewed or replaced regularly. Bottom paint, fuel filters, oil filters, engine oil, zincs, metal polish, wax, varnish, and so on.

Boat-Service

We hired a number of local guys in Cartagena to wash and wax the hull, polish the stainless, and strip some of the teak.

Communications-Postage

This includes sending things out, but mostly it's the postage we pay to have our mailing service send us our mail (in addition to monthly and per-shipment charges).

Groceries

In addition to food, this includes nonedible consumables like paper towels, soap, toothpaste, bandages. We have been told by other cruisers that our spending on groceries is far below theirs -- this is probably because we a) don't eat much canned or prepared food, relying on fresh stuff (which we can keep for several months in the fridge in special bags) and things we prepare from scratch staples, and b) we fish like crazy.

Hotel

We spent a couple of nights in Panama City while in Panama.

Household

Things for the boat which are related to making a home aboard, such as towels, storage baskets, soap dispensers, kitchen utensils.

Licenses and Permits

Cruising permits, check-in fees, and town anchorage fees in the San Blas.

Medical

We would have had a ~$1500 charge here for health insurance in March (covering only major illness or injury), but the insurance company made a major change to the coverage which made things unacceptable to us, so we dropped the coverage and are temporarily uninsured. The large bill in January is for an elective surgery Britt had in Cartagena.

Personal Care

The only item here is Britt's haircut!

Subscriptions

Includes magazine subscriptions and memberships to organizations (SSCA, our yacht club, Boat US)

Travel

"Transit" includes bus and cab fares; the other travel cost was the scenic train along the Panama Canal.

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