January Review: Day 32 & 33

My current house sitting job ends tomorrow, so a good part of the day was spent cleaning the place to make it look better on their return. Washing, vacuuming, cleaning and all that fun stuff. While doing all that, I began to reflect what I was able to do the first month.

The only major expense I had was my health care premium which I will have every month. I managed to get through the month without spending any money on housing since most of the month I was house sitting at one place or another, and the few days that I wasn’t, I was spending time with family. Since I was house sitting and all of the owners said I was free to eat whatever I needed, I also had very little food costs. And while doing all this, I managed to visit:

• Montezuma Castle
• Petrified Forest
• Tuzigoot
• Walnut Canyon, Sunset Crater Volcano, Wupatki
• Grand Canyon
• Red Rock, Sedona
• Rancho San Antionio
• Golden Gate Bridge
• Annadel
• Golden Gate Recreation Area
• Muir Woods
• Big Basin
• Walking Golden Gate Bridge
• Point Reyes

I managed to get out to visit someplace almost half the days during the month which wasn’t quite and many as I hoped to, but still probably more places than most people living on a minimum wage budget visit in an entire year. I feel that I manage to get through the first month accomplishing the “well” portion of the challenge and hope to continue that in the months to come.

As part of the clean-up, I did head to the grocery store and buy some fresh fruit for their return which set me back $6.13

Day 33

I received some welcome news about house sitting. Upon the return of the owners, they asked if it would be possible for me to house sit for them a number of times in February and March because they had just rented a ski cabin. Since they are retired, they would be going up for the weekdays and coming back on the weekends. The time period is a little shorter than I’d prefer to house sit and I would have normally declined, but with the minimum wage challenge, everyday I can get free lodging is a day closer to winning the bet with my sister. For that reason, I accepted. I’ve also received a number of other offers from people that have heard about my willingness to house sit shorter periods than usual this year. My house sitting schedule for this year currently looks like this:

February 10 – 14
February 17 – 21
February 25 – March 1
March 13 – 21
March 24 – 27
April 1 – 5
April 21 – May 8
May 28 – June 3
July 27 – August 10
September 1 – 17
November 6 – December 7
December 20 – January 5 (2014)

There are some gaps where I will need to figure out how to fill in that time still, but I’m feeling more confident that I’ll be able to make this work without having to rent a place and be limited to a particular area. I knew I would have to be willing to make some adjustments that I would have rather not made (moving from place to place every few days really does take a lot of energy and I would rather not do it, but it makes financial sense within this challenge). It’s also something that even though I prefer not to do, I know I can do and still travel they way I want to. I’ll do a major reevaluation of this at the end of March to see where things stand there, but signs are looking positive that I can make it work.

I received an invitation from my dad to go over to his house for a Super Bowl party, so instead of heading back right away to have the car clutch looked at, I will head down to do that on the 4th. I usually don’t watch the Super Bowl. It’s actually a great time to do anything that you enjoy without a lot of people around because so many people are in front of their TVs. When I was younger, it was one of the best days to go skiing because the slopes would be empty in the afternoon with everyone watching. That being said, it will be a good time visiting with him and I’m sure there will be plenty of great food to eat (that won’t cost me anything).

Today’s & Yesterday’s Spending

Food: $6.13
Car: $0.00
Housing: $0.00
Travel: $0.00
Health: $0.00
Misc: $0.00

Total: $6.13

Total Spending

Food: $27.89
Car: $0.00
Housing: $0.00
Travel: $0.00
Health: $485.00
Misc: $19.00

Total: $531.89

(Photo courtesy of versageek)