The Budget v.1.0

About- well actually exactly- a month ago, I chiseled out a rough budget to go by for this trip:

I’m afraid to fill in the left columns, especially since I’m generally unable to, with my complete lack of accounting. This day I still believe this budget to be viable, but there’s one glaring thing wrong with it: it enables me to save about half of the money I’m planning on. At this rate, I’ll be ready to pack up a clunker in about four years, keeping minimal tabs on my expenditures. This will simply not do.

But take a look at some of the notes. It is clear to me, and soon to be clear to you, that I’m really looking to control my money, and not vice versa. For instance, we’ll take the variable expense of cigarettes (variable only because I’m not 100% faithful in my control, especially when drinking is involved.) Cutting down to a half pack a day takes substantial effort for me. It means constantly looking at the clock to pace myself, and having what up until this point was completely compulsory become a fully conscious effort. Meaning, always on my mind; Transmutating an addiction into a dose.

These last two paragraphs represent two forces that are going to fight each other for as long as I want to maintain control. The very nature that has given birth to the wanting of whim and the unknown that characterize a road trip will always fight against the rigidness of planning and security. But ultimately, one needs the other. There cannot be a whim without security to sustain it. There cannot be a a dam of restriction without freedom of release.

It’s much easier to write about this equilibrium than it is to see its fulfillment. But I will now have these words to look back on, and a snapshot of my attempted mediation to remind me: this is not effortless for me. This will take time, testing, adjustment, realization, mutation, self-control…

This is the budget v.1.0, and it is in its infancy.

Escape Velocity

To say that I’m going to begin planning for this trip is not exactly right, for I’ve been planning on taking it at some point for the last several years. Really what I need to begin doing is buckling down and setting some specific goals so that I can actually make what has up until now been a fantasy into a reality.

The plain truth about a road trip is that it’s meant to seek out, whether it’s a new destination or state of mind, something fulfilling and meaningful. This, to me, is the polar opposite to employment. Employment shackles you down, restricts your journey to only the few hours before your next shift. And if you’re like me, living paycheck to paycheck, the thought of reaching escape velocity seems pretty impossible. My heart is ready to venture out there, it has no problem with leaving the working week behind and exploring, but my mind thinks it unwise. I would have absolutely no way to support a whim like that, plausibly, without a sum of cash to float on.

And so the first thing that I need to focus on, since it most definitely needs the most attention and practice, is budgeting. Up until now my budget has consisted of saving enough money by the end of the month to pay rent and utilities. And even that didn’t happen until the second half of the month- I end up squandering my first two paychecks, then living like a monk to save the next two. In the end, I have no savings.

The largest expenses on the trip would be gasoline and transportation (truck or car). The rest are flexible- food, lodging, etc. The biggest thing holding me back from the road trip is having wheels to grind that road. And so as an initial projection, I am looking to save around $5,500 by the time I pack up and head out. Now that I have a monetary goal, in order to make it a successful one, I also have to box it in a time frame. I should leave in the spring, which means that if I confine it to a year, I would have to save almost $500 a month, which seems unrealistic. So at a locked-in rate, where I know at the current status of my life I can set aside the proper amount, I should be able to set off in two years.

Two years to reach escape velocity.

This is why I started this blog, to remind myself that it’s worth it. To track my progress so that my stagnant present doesn’t outweigh the future trip. Here we go.