CA in March - Working on Budget

Hi everyone.

First off, I wanted to say thanks to everyone who has been contributing to this great site. It's been really helpful!!

I'm looking at starting my road trip in early March. (There is two of us in our early 20's) Flying into San Francisco from New Zealand. Looking to spend a few days there then drive to Los Vegas, spend a few days there, then to LA and then drive the pacific coast back to SF. After all that will fly to New York.

I am working on my budget at the moment and was wanting to check to see if it's realistic.

I have budgeted
$60 per night for accommodation - We are thinking of staying at Motel 6's or similar.
$50 per day for food to cover us both
$50 per day for incidental costs / spending money for us both

I have no idea how much this trip will cost in gas. Can anyone think of a ball park amount?

I will post more info and questions here soon, but these are the most important right now.

Thanks heaps in advance!

Scott

Welcome to the RTA Forum!

Your budget seems lean, but not unrealistic. What I mean is that you should be able to make your trip with that budget, but it doesn't give you a lot of room for error.

$60 for low end hotels is reasonable. However, it may limit your hotel choices inside your destination cities. I don't think you'll be able to stay in downtown SF or on the Vegas strip, but if you're willing to stay farther out - or off-strip/downtown - you should be able to find places within your budget.

$50 for food is again feasable, but won't give you much room to splurge on nice restaurants. If you do some of your eating out of a cooler, and do most of your restaurant stops at casual/diner type places, you should be fine.

$50 for entertainment could be a bit low, depending upon what you have in mind for your trip. If you limit yourself to things that are free or low cost to see (and there are plenty of things that qualify in this area) you shouldn't have any problem. However, if you start doing things like riding roller coasters, gambling, shopping, or anything like that, 2 people can burn through $50 per day pretty quickly.

Gas actually is one of the easier things to calculate. Just use the RTA Fuel Cost Calculator!

Thanks Michael,

I think I will up the entertainment budget to $50 each.

Thanks a lot for the link to the gas cost calc. That helps a lot.

We will be eating from a cooler a lot and perhaps eat out once a day at dennys or something similar.

We are also looking at camping between LA and San Francisco. Could anyone recomend any good spots along the pacific coast? It would be great if we could find somewhere near a beach. Looking at costings and things for that. it may be a way we could afford to spend another week or two.

Thanks again!
Scott