We post this here as a helpful illustration of the sort of things one must deal with when travelling abroad for any length of time - because we aren't simply managing a project, but living here in South Africa. The expenses below are our personal expenses, including travelling here, travelling to and from our project site, and communicating with necessary people and organizations (as well as our friends and families). As you can see, we made a lot of oversights initially, such as forgetting that we would need to buy chairs to sit on and a table to eat at, as well as completely neglecting the cost of cell phone and internet use, too things which are integral not only to the project but life here in SA. As such, we have two budgets posted side-by-side - the first, on the left, was our projected budget, created back in August; the second, on the right, represents our actual expenditures thus far, with some projections through December. The final column, on the far right, displays the difference between the two budgets. Positive numbers (in black) are good; negative ones (in red and in parentheses) are less good. Luckily, we over-budgeted for a few things, such as housing (which costs less than half what we expected), and we've also been able to use mass transit instead of renting a vehicle, which has cut our costs considerably. Thus, even with some oversights, we are still under budget.
Finally, we want to extend our thanks to all the people who have supported us back home and here in SA. We wouldn't be here were it not for the gracious help of: Lititz Moravian Church, the Scibal family, and our friends and family, all of whom gave either love or material support - or both - to help get us where we are today. Thanks!
-Tony and Elyse
P.S.: Below (Figure 2) is a new Excel sheet we've recently created, which shows what we've spent money on, and from whom or where that money has come. The column on the far right, "difference", is $0.00 all the way down, which means the two halves balance - as they must.
Figure 1. Category Totals. Total amount of money spent thus far (as of 30 November 2007), organized by category.
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Personal Budget (29 Dec).gif
Figure 2. Budget and Support. Actual and projected expenditures (as of 30 November 2007), balanced against source of support.
If either of the above spreadsheets are difficult to view, you may want to download them to your PC and view locally.
Figure 3. Exchange Rates. Exchange rates, Rand / Dollar, from 3 September 2007 to 29 November 2007. I've also added two trend lines: one linear, and a six-degree polynomial.