Location: Tbilisi [Republic of Georgia]
Week 25 is done! Let’s see where I spent all my money….
Transportation
This was limited to a few rides on the metro on Friday, Tuesday and Thursday. I’m told bus rides around the city are the same price as a ride on the metro. It’s so cheap.
Accommodation
This is pretty standard now that I’m staying in a house. We did get our first utility bill in the mail though so next week, I can throw that in as well.
Food
So you can clearly see I went out on Friday and Wednesday. The other days were either spent grocery shopping or not spending any money as I simply cooked what I’d bought earlier.
Other
The obligatory, overpriced travel insurance: $8.64 per day.
On Sunday and Wednesday I topped up my data with my ‘travel’ provider: $25 each time.
Being increasingly frustrated at the Greek carrier that locked my phone down, I decided to just purchase a new one on Tuesday: $175.46. I find it ironic that the new one is cheaper than the old one, and has a better camera. It’s a Huawei P9 lite mini if anyone’s curious.
On Wednesday, I used one of the kiosks all Georgians seem to use to top up my Georgian SIM / plan. There was a 4% charge for inserting cash into the machine: $0.83 on 50 lari. I then used the new balance to purchase 15G of mobile data: for 30 lari ($12.32)! This is an order of magnitude cheaper than what I get with my ‘travel’ provider. So the lesson here is: if you’re going to be in a place for a while, get a local SIM. Now I’m no so worried about the house not having WiFi.
Summary
| Week 25 | ||||||||
| Fri | Sat | Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Total | |
| Travel | 0.21 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.21 | 0 | 0.21 | 0.63 |
| Lodging | 5.67 | 5.67 | 5.67 | 5.67 | 5.67 | 5.67 | 5.67 | 39.69 |
| Food | 13.71 | 0 | 3.41 | 0 | 4.11 | 13.95 | 0.92 | 36.1 |
| Other | 8.64 | 8.64 | 23.64 | 8.64 | 184.1 | 46.79 | 8.64 | 289.09 |
| Total | 28.23 | 14.31 | 32.72 | 14.31 | 194.09 | 66.41 | 15.44 | 365.51 |
So, as we can see here, I went slightly over my $50 per day budget this week. I blame that entirely on the new phone. However, since the price of the entire phone and a new plan are less than 8 refills with the other carrier, and I get 30 times that data….
Or another way to look at it is 8 refills at my current data consumption rate was about 3 weeks (being generous). So after said 3 weeks, I’d save $200.00 on the next 3 weeks. And the data would almost last another 3 weeks after that before needing a refill. So yeah, totally worth it long-term.
Anyway, I hope you’ve all enjoyed checking under my financial hood. I’ll write you all next week.
