Hey everyone! Happy Monday. This past weekend was nice and relaxing, but the weather was all over the place. It was 16 degrees on Thursday or Friday, and then on Sunday it was a warm 80 degrees. Makes no sense!
Here are some pictures from our trip to Gulf Shores.
Gulf Shores
For some reason, I thought I already did a recap on our trip, but I can’t find anything! We had a great time in Gulf Shores, but it was like a ghost town.
We stayed in a beach house, and there was not a single person staying in ANY of the houses around us. The restaurants were also completely empty.
For example, many of you said that we should go to The Hangout, and when we went there was literally only one other group there besides us, so that can show you how much of a ghost town it was.
It was nice though, and we knew we were visiting during the off-season. It was very calming and relaxing. We laid on the beach a few times but it was just a little too chilly to even think about getting in the water.
We took our dogs with us, and sadly this was our first road trip with our dogs. It went very well! We converted the back of our Jeep (took out the seats) into a full dog bed so I’m sure they couldn’t have been any happier. Just the life of a crazy dog-momma.
One bad thing that happened on the trip? I dropped my iPhone getting out of the car to go to the bathroom and completely shattered the screen. Boy was that an expensive bathroom break!
Our expenses:
Rental house ($650) – We rented a beach house for 4 nights/5 days. The total for this including all taxes, cleaning, pet fees and so on was around $650. We could have saved money if we weren’t so close to the beach and we didn’t have dogs, but that’s not we wanted.
Gas ($200) – We thought we were going to spend a lot more on gas, according to my calculations. I must have way over estimated because somehow we managed to do much better! The Jeep usually gets around 15 to 18 miles per gallon, but a lot of the time we were able to get 22 or 23.
Food ($250) – On some days we splurged on food and other days we just bought groceries and cooked at the house.
We didn’t really buy anything else besides that! It was a fairly cheap vacation, and it was mainly a working vacation. It was just a nice little change in scenery 🙂
Spending
We are doing okay with spending. We spent around $500 on carpet for one room in our house (got a great deal because we kept holding out!). We are getting around $400 off so we are really happy with that.
We also spent around $500 on hiring someone to fix some leaks in our house and while they were here we just had to install some new faucets and sinks (all for that $500 price). Some of the valves for our water pipes were dripping like crazy. Yes, we could have just done it ourselves but we have had some pretty bad luck with trying to fix water problems ourselves so we did not want to risk it again.
Water + House = my nightmare pretty much.
The only thing that we really need to do now is to replace the garage door. I can’t wait until that’s done because our house will be PERFECT after that.
Business Income:
Self-employment is still going great. November has been a very busy month and I have added a few new clients so far this month already. Even though November has been busy, I still have had a lot of free time and it’s been really nice.
Since we plan on going on a two to three month trip, I do need to start figuring out a way to schedule some of my work ahead of time. I don’t want to eliminate any of my jobs, and I of course don’t want to risk the quality of my work. Luckily I can schedule a lot of my writing ahead of time so that will be a lifesaver.
If anyone needs any help, check out my Hire Me page and let me know what services you are interested in. Lately, a few other website owners have asked me to help run their website while they are gone for just a month or two, so this is a new service that I am also offering. If you are starting a new job, about to have a baby, want to do some long-term travel or something else, please let me know.
Posts from Making Sense of Cents:
Where should we travel to? – We are still trying to decide where we should travel to. There are just so many choices! If you have any ideas or any tips, please head on over to this post and help me out.
How to become a full-time freelancer – I’ve been freelancing for a full years and just recently left my day job to do this full-time.
Our Wedding Plans – There are so many things to do!
When Being Frugal Isn’t Enough – What would you need to do to if you needed to find an extra $500 in your budget?
Being healthy
My sister has been reading my weekly updates (oh hey Lexy!) and she thinks I have been too positive about my progress in my “being healthy” section. Haha and she is right. I have been doing so bad! I really need to buckle down and start focusing on working out more. And eating healthier…
Wedding Planning
I have actually done quite a lot of wedding planning in the past few weeks. I have looked into caterers, DJs, florists, and rental companies. I just need to finalize the agreements soon and sign the contracts.
Have you been doing well with your extra income, spending and being healthy?
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