Making the Internet My Accountability Partner

Subtitle: Expensive Education

I finally crossed Montreal off of my bucket list this Labor Day Weekend. It was an overall incredible experience. The night before I left for the trip I decided to sit down and estimate how much this trip would cost me. I didn’t include the hotel since I had already paid that when I booked it. The hotel I chose was $352 for two nights. The week of the trip I booked three excursions, one for each day I was there. Those had totaled about $90.

Beyond lodging I identified four areas of expense transportation, food, activities, and souvenirs. I had estimated I would spend a total of $520 over those categories including the $90 already spent on activities. For transportation I knew I’d be spending about $70 in gas, I figured I’d likely spend about $20 on public transportation and about $40 in tolls. I estimated that each meal would cost around $25 each and I’d be in Montreal for about 8 meals so that would equal $200. For activities I estimated I would likely spend $50 on additional outings. I then gave myself $50 for souvenirs.

Turns out I spent $26 on public transport and no additional money on tolls. Turns out my meals were not as expensive or as frequent as I estimated, so I only spent $92. I didn’t find many souvenir stops and not much that caught my interest so I only spent $30 on souvenirs.

Activities is where the expensive education happened. One of the prebooked activities I had planned that I was really looking forward to was a river cruise. I was when planning this I was about to pay for the Montreal River Cruise when I got worried that the tour might be in French. I went back to the website to verify language options or find a tour that confirmed it would be available in English. So I found one and booked it. The night before the cruise I looked up the directions to the dock to plan out breakfast beforehand. I was told it was a 3 hour drive because I accidentally booked the river cruise for Quebec City. I was upset because I would not be spending 6 hours round trip for this cruise and missing out on my one full day in Montreal. The lesson I learned was always double check your ticket is for what you think it is. In part of because, of this mistake I wound up spending a total of $116 on activities which is still less than I anticipated.

In total I spent $335 on Montreal instead of the $520 I estimated. I feel really good about this and my ability to rebuild my short term savings after this spend. It also makes me feel better about having another trip booked for this coming weekend. It’ll just be one overnight and I will be splitting the costs with the special someone I’m seeing.