Some early number crunching

So I was browsing eBay earlier looking for a car for the trip. Personally I want an early 90's Buick Roadmaster, or Chevy Caprice wagon. My dad was doubting its fuel efficiency, however I was fairly sure I had read that they tend to get 28 MPG highway, not bad for such a luxury ride. With a little more research I discovered I was in fact correct and read many reports of them getting 25-28 MPG on the highway. City milage aint's so pretty, it drops down to 16-19 MPG. The main problem with this car is the price. According to Kelly Blue Book would probably pay about $3000 for a model that would get us across the country, on the other side of the coin, there is that fact that we could sell the car after the trip for more or less the price we buy it for and we wouldn't be piling miles on to my car, or somebody's parents car.

Tell me this wouldn't be a great car for driving cross country. Its roomy, easy to fix, and classy.

So with concerns of gas prices in my head I've started to crunch some number, and well, its kinda scary. I figure we each go into this willing to spend $3 grand, this is a hopeful estimate, especially in certain cases. So with a budget total of $9000, I first looked at the cost of gas.

Triple A puts the national average at $2.99 a gallon, However, I have a hunch that come summertime it will have gone up, so I used $3.20 per gallon. Justin's route as posted earlier took us over 8000 miles and my route was over 9000 miles, I went with 9250 miles for this estimate. So, I figure my beautiful Roadmaster would average about 22 MPG. Our expected bill for gas would be about $1350, which I might be able to live with.

Next, I started thinking about how much time it would take to drive these 9250 miles, and things got a little ugly. We had sort of been operating under the assumption that we had about 3-4 weeks. Well, 9250 miles over 21 days is 440 miles per day (about 8 hours) and over 30 days is 300 miles per day (about 5 hours per day). This math rules out a 3 week trip, it would be all driving. I know that there are parts of the country were we will be driving basically straight through, stopping for only a few hours for food and drink, but there are without a doubt times we will want to spend more or less the entire day in one place. The bottom line is this: 9000 miles is a fucking long ways, and 30 days isn't that long of a time period.

But for the sake of this estimate I will continue with some math. So, of our $9000, we've spent 3 on the car and 1.5 on gas, leaving us with 4.5. Divide this by 30 and thats a daily allowance of $150 ($50 per person). Im not sure, this sounds a bit underwhelming to me, but not by that much, about $100-200. So now, if nothing else, I've given us starting point. I've developed theses overly complex theroretical formulas to figure out the breakdown of our basic expenses and our daily drive time, while accounting for the variables of (B)udget (our combined budget), (T)ime (number of day), (D)istance (miles traveled), dail(Y) budget (for all three of us), (H)ours of driving (per day), (C)ar (price of), (M)iles per gallon (of said vehicle), and (G)as price (we can keep checking the national average as we get closer). Our friend BD would be proud.

Drive time per day:
(D/T)/60 ≤ H
Average drive time must be less then 5 hours per day, so:
(D/T)/60 ≤ 5

On to the daily budget:
(B-C)-((D/M)•G) = Y
With my guess of $3.20 per gallon:
(B-C)-((D/M)•3.2) = Y

I think we spent about $900 on our 3 day trip to Voodoo, about $300 each. I feel this is were we need to be. Meanwhile, we need to save money and perhaps start working on a more concise route and keep working on a more affordable option for transportation, although I haven't given up on my wooden paneled baby. Its still early, we have at least 6 months. So if anyone reading has any great ways to earn cash fast, save money on the road, or advice in general please feel free to share.