Sticker Shock

It is easy to get used to feeding a family of 4 for a couple hundred bucks a month, spending $7.00 including drinks for a Chicken and Rice dinner for everyone was nice…those days are gone.

During our first 3 weeks back in the U.S. our biggest adjustment to life in the states are the prices of everything, $1.00 lunches, $8.00 shoes, and a bag full of organic veggies for $5.00 are now distant memories…replaced with $4.00 cups of coffee, $9.00 sandwiches, and a poor public transportation system.

Where we often went weeks without taking money out of our bank account, instead using the $100 or so of cash in our pockets to live…now we are faced with a daily assault on our savings.

It does not help that motel rooms and dining in restaurants are the norm for us right now, it is expensive to travel in the U.S..

We are trying to combat the high prices by using creativity and spending time thinking about different ways we can save money. Here are a few methods we use to save a few bucks everyday.

Many hotels offer significant discounts through advertisements in Hotel Discount Guides. Rest stops along the interstates often provide tourist information and provide lots of free info and hotel guides. In some cases we saved $30.00 per nite using coupons over the hotel rack rates.

To combat the high cost of eating in restaurants while on the road we often share meals. We actually began this practice years ago to try and reduce both waste and the expense of eating out. Most portions served in restaurants are more than 1 person could/should eat and leftovers usually get pushed to the back of the fridge and thrown out weeks later. We rarely order Gigi a meal of her own – she is just not a big eater and her meals always end up coming home with us.

Gina and I often share a meal – we occasionally run into a place that will want to charge you a “sharing charge” but we have decided we will simply NOT pay these and will get up and leave if they instist. Grant has the biggest appetite these days, but there are times when he may not be as hungry and share a meal with one of us.

Another great way to save money is to simply not order drinks. For the four of us this saves between $8.00 to $12.00 a meal! Besides saving money we avoid sugary sodas or other less healthy choices.

Gina and I both enjoy a cup of coffee but paying $2.50 for a cup is just a bit ridiculous to us. To get our “fix” we make sure to take advantage of the “free” coffee available. First, the hotel room usually has a pot where you can make a few cups to just start your day. Most/many places we stay offer a continental breakfast that includes coffee – we make sure we get our daily quota at these coffee stations. If things get desperate and we have to splurge for a cup of coffee we have 2 strategies.

1) If we purchase coffee in a restaurant we will bend the rules by ordering 1 cup of coffee and sharing the re-fills. We try not to abuse this service and justify it in our heads by drinking less than we would normally if we had paid for 2 cups.

2) 7-11 offers very good coffee with free flavorings. You can get about any type of coffee that you want and save yourself $2.00 to $3.00 for a cup. They have flavored creamers and Italian syrups, and you can even make yourself a mocha.

Everyone likes snacks to nibble on during a long car ride, the kids especially seem to be bottomless pits. Instead of tossing down handfuls of expensive and unhealthy junk food we have found a couple of ways to increase the health and decrease the cost of our snacking.

Our family loves popcorn but without access to a stove it is not possible to make up a batch. An alternative is to purchase microwave popcorn in the grocery store and use the microwave in the motel room and throw it into a big bag for the car ride. While it is not as healthy as raw popped corn – there are many choices on the grocery store shelves that are fairly healthy and certainly a better choice than chips.

Another great snack for long car rides are peanuts. While they are a little messy…they are healthy and if purchased in the shells are fairly inexpensive. There is something about having to shell your own peanuts that make you eat less I think.

So, as we adjust to life back in the states, and specifically the extreme differences in costs of similar items between Latin America and the U.S., we are biting the bullet a bit and looking for ways to save a few bucks along the way. Bouncing around the U.S. is certainly not a long term solution but we are using this time to research different parts of the country for possible relocation and meeting wonderful people along the way.

Want to read more from Sean?  He also writes for AffordableCallingCards.net where he blogs about his life as an expat.   Come by both blogs and share a comment!

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