The very first tentative route I’m going to take has me starting my trip in Detroit on April 5th and ending in Detroit on June 15th. That is 71 days total from start to finish. If I had a budget of $100 dollars a day for food ($50 for me $50 for Melissa), that equals $7,100 for food. Geeze, that’s a lot of food. As Melissa pointed out we don’t have to eat out all the time so we can save money off that bill. But just for this equation we will eat $100 a day in food. If we got an $80 a night hotel room every single night of the trip we would spend $5,680 in places to sleep. Gas prices are hard to predict. It will be an over 10,000 mile journey so I’m going to say $2,500 in fuel. I also assume about $2,000 in extra expenses. Those expenses sum up to $17,280. I’m just going to do myself a favor and round up to $20,000. The scary thing about this total is it’s without a car. I’m hoping to be able to work with an American car company, test out their product on the trip, and blog about it. I will have to put some more work in over the next few days and see how much it would cost with rental cars.
Have you ever heard of a website called Kickstarter.com. I love this website. It’s a way for young musical artist, poets, writers, etc. to get their projects financed. What the artist (or anybody looking to finance a project) does is offer some level of rewards in return of a monetary donation from a donor. For example, my favorite ever musical artist Five Times August, wanted to raise money to produce and distribute his CD. He needed $20,000. He offered a digital download of a song for $5, a digital download of the album for $10, a t-shirt for $25, etc. etc. The first time he did the project he raised the $20,000 and was able to release the CD. A year later he tried it again but fell short of his $20,000 goal so the people who pledged their money never had to pay. But they never got their rewards either. There is also an international website that is basically the same, indiegogo.com. I have supported an artist by the name of Susan Johnson through that website.
I think kickstarter would be an excellent way to try to reach my goal. There’s just one GIANT problem. I’m not the most creative person in the world and I’m not sure what I would have to offer to people to reward them for their donations. Do you have any ideas? Would you like to pitch in and give me something I can offer to the donors? This is just one area where I think I could raise some money. Any ideas for raising a few dollars?
I love this project. Not only because I’m going to accomplish my dream but also because it raises so many challenges. I can’t wait to tackle them all and earn such an amazing trip!
Check out the following websites:
Five Times August- www.fivetimesaugust.com
Susan Johnson- https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000999566114#!/pages/Susan-Johnson/117300061618226
Kickstarter- www.kickstarter.com
Indie go go- www.indiegogo.com
This is an awesome idea, and I wish you the best of luck.
ReplyDeleteOne idea for a Kickstarter reward...how about a scrapbook of photos of all the stadiums? Of course you would have to work the money of producing that into your total. Another idea would be some sort of free souvenir from each park...if nothing more than a pocket schedule, you should be able to find at least one thing in each stadium.
I'll be watching your progress and again, best of luck!