Traveling With a Budget {Math in Real Life Linky}

It’s the first Wednesday of September which means it’s time for our new linky – Math IS Real Life.  Last month was super successful!  We’ve even created a Pinterest Board of all the posts that were linked up last month.  We will continue to pin them each month to keep all of these AMAZING posts in one location!

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Many of you know that over the last few months I have been doing my fair share of traveling. In the past I have always traveled for pleasure so the “budgeting” hasn’t been as important as it has become lately when I have to make sure my expenses aren’t more than what I budgeted for them as part of my approved purchase order. Crazy talk… I know!

So let’s play with some imaginary numbers…. say you have allotted $450 for travel for 3 days. That will include 2 nights in a hotel, 2 1/2 tanks of gas, as well as 7-8 meals.

I always start with approximating gas…. right now here it is $3.39 per gallon but that can vary so might as well round up to $3.50 to be sure. 20 gallon tank x $3.50= $70 x 2.5 fills = $175 spent ALREADY! Budget is down to $275 and you haven’t gone anywhere!

Now I had on over my choice of online hotel sites (mainly because I have their rewards card and they are really nice to business travelers in my experience) and I see that a hotel room is $66.30 per night PLUS taxes!   Bonus… the hotel includes breakfast so that takes care of TWO of your meals! Now, that leads to determining percents and adding some decimals together so roughly for the two night stay (I normally predict 20-30% taxes depending on the area… was surprised last week to only have 14% taxes!) $66.30 x 2 = #132.60 * 1.2 (20% increase) = $159.12.

Now I’m down to $115.88 and I have 5-6 meals to take care of while I am away since breakfast is taken care of by the hotel. Most of the time my lunch on the day that I present is taken care of but I always take care of the tip and I tip nicely (as if I was paying for my personal meal) so knowing that I have to take care of lunch and dinner on the first night, tip at lunch and my own dinner on the second night and then lunch on the trip home (and sometimes dinner depending on the traffic) is a good basis for me to know how much I am able to spend.

Life is all about budgeting once you have an income to be able to afford things that you want. Find a way to incorporate this into your lessons every year with your students and give them real life situations so that they can make connections with how the knowledge of money (and how to spend it within budget) is a skill they definitely don’t want to lose out on.

There are so many other variables that you could throw into this as well… bringing an assistant (I did that twice this summer), renting a car, flying to the location, tolls, checking bags if you are flying, etc. Have fun with it!

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We are so incredibly excited to read about how YOU use MATH in your REAL LIFE!!!