SELF-REFLECTION WRITING CHALLENGE
One Personal Goal for This Year — Day 7
What is the one goal I have to accomplish by the end of the year?
Thanks again to Dr. Tracy Davis for this brilliant writing challenge. Due to traveling back from the campground to the travel center and getting some much-needed sleep over the last 24 hours, I’m back from a couple of days off from the writing challenge again.
I really only have one goal for this year. I am hoping to make it through the end of the year having saved up some money from changing my lifestyle so drastically over the last year. Mike told me to be patient this year and that we would save money this year. So far, that hasn't quite been the case.
I feel like we’re spending more money than we need to at the travel centers. We have also been spending a lot on gas for the generator for air conditioning power and for fuel to travel in our large rig. My expectation was to get between 15–20 miles per gallon but we’re getting closer to 8–12 miles per gallon right now. With gas prices cresting where they were months ago, that really made our budget ultra-tight for a while.
As the weather starts to cool down, we won’t need to run our air conditioner as much and therefore we won’t need gas for our generator. I think that once summer passes, we will start saving some money again. I just hope we don’t get stuck in a wintry situation again. I want to get us to Arizona for the winter but it seems that Mike might want to stay where it is colder. I told him that I think that we could do cold without the snow if he wants to be more comfortable so I’m sure that we can find a compromise.
Many challenges to our travel plans and figuring out where the weather will be ideal for us will help us determine whether we can actually start saving money. Neither one of us is terrible with our money but when the circumstances arise, we can spend more than we need to.
I think that doing the state park route for four days a week until the close of the season in early October along with staying in the area in general will help reduce those costs. There is a plugin for electricity, free showers, and more amenities we can utilize to our advantage that will continue to help us keep our costs down.
We are also spending less money on food as we are going to Walmart and Dollar General to buy our snacks and fresh food for now. We are keeping our fridge stocked at the moment so that we have about a week’s supply of food at any given moment. We don’t want to have to continue to buy fast food in the travel center at the increased prices. Now we only have that temptation next to us for three days instead of the whole week.
I’m pretty sure that I can resist the urge to go to Denny’s or Country Pride for a weekend at a time. Yeah, I’m definitely going to need to make sure we have enough money saved up going into next year in case we need to make any big purchases to enhance our living space in the truck.
The truck is definitely done to the degree that it can move and is functional but it’s something I purposely avoid showing the interior of a lot because of how messy and disorganized it can still be. I want to be able to make some cosmetic transformations to our space as well so that I can be proud to show people where I live.
For now, it’ll just be our little secret but something we’re still proud that we were able to finish and functionally travel in. At least we don’t have to continue dealing with bad landlords and life-threatening home situations. I mean, money isn’t everything, but it’s everything when you don’t have much and you need as much of it as you can get. I hope that by the end of the year, we have enough to feel secure going into 2023.
Day 6:
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