Cape Cod Trip Report: Cost Analysis

I am a little behind on wrapping up our trip report for Cape Cod with the cost analysis. My goal is to try and determine what was our average cost per day with all expenditures and see how it relates to other trips we have taken. For reference, the rest of our trip reports can be read in the following posts:

1. Cape Cod Trip Report (Day 1): Crayola Factory
2. Cape Cod Trip Report (Day 1): Purple Cow Creamery and Hampton Inn (Milford, CT)
3. Cape Cod Trip Report (Day 2): Mystic Seaport and Foxwoods Casino
4. Cape Cod Trip Report (Day 2): Mohegan Sun Casino and Holiday Inn (Norwich, CT)
5. Cape Cod Trip Report (Day 3): Spanky’s, Cape Cod Chips, Beer, Hyannis Harbor Hotel, and Palio Pizzeria
6. Cape Cod Trip Report (Day 4): Provincetown and Lobster Pot
7. Cape Cod Trip Report (Day 5): Martha’s Vineyard

The following is a summary of our expenses while in the Cape Cod region.

$146.84 – 1 Night at the Hampton Inn (Milford, CT); 2 rooms
$191.46 – 1 Night at the Holiday Inn (Norwich, CT); 2 rooms
$259.60 – Gas, Tolls, & Parking
$80.00 – 2 tickets on Hyannis Harbor Cruises to go to Martha’s Vineyard
$42.00 – 2 tickets with AAA discount to Mystic Seaport
$293.68 – Meals, Beverages
$110.66 – Gifts/Souvenirs
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$1124.24 or $187.37/day

A couple things to note about our expenses. We booked and paid for both our and in-laws rooms for the first couple of nights. In return, they paid for our nights in Cape Cod, which all equaled out in the end. Also, some of the numbers might be slightly low below because we had about $125 in pre-paid gift cards that we have gotten from various sources as gifts. The gift cards are not accounted for in the numbers above as I just want to look at our out-of-pocket expenses. In addition, I had brought somewhere between $100-200 in cash, and I do not recall exactly where all of that was spent. I am drafting this post on the road, so I am just leaving it out of the evaluation, unfortunately.

For comparison, our Finger Lakes trip earlier in the year worked out to $252.13/day. So this trip was a substantial savings; however, I presume by the time I add in the gift cards, and cash, it gets our daily number back up to close to what the Finger Lakes trip cost.

I have found keeping track of trips like this to be a pretty valuable planning tool. When we go on future trips, we can presume we are typically going to spend around $250/day after all expenditures. Most of that is typically eaten up by the hotels.

In all my years of traveling, it has always been about mileage and point accumulation. To this day we have not gotten to actually redeem miles or points, as we have always been saving them for a rainy day (i.e. a future trip to Hawaii). I presume maybe it is about time we really start taking advantage of sign-up bonuses and redeeming miles and points to get our costs down. This becomes way easier now that we are closed on our new house, and we do not need to worry about having any pulls on our credit files. We had been holding off on opening any new cards, and thus missed out on some pretty amazing offers, because we did not want to do anything to our credit files while we were in the planning and purchasing phase of a new house.