budget
hey i know there are a lot of ansewers to questions like this but i wanted to know how much you spend during the anthrocon for everything (travel/food/shelter/etc.) so short answers are fine i just want to get a idea on what others spend on average.
I'd say food for most people tends to run more towards $20-40, including occasional sodas and snacks.
I'd also toss in the following category: "Emergency". Have a $20 bill set aside from your wallet, in a secure and accessible place. Do not spend the $20 until you walk in your front door, or until you absolutely need to.
I was going to say that......
But note that someone really ruthless about keeping expenses down could definitely eat
and keep expenses below $20 a day.
Let's suppose someone cheap AND hungry.
If one did nothing but eat Furnando's special ($5), and ate 3 full meals a day
(more than I did this year, actually), the meals would cost $15 (not counting any tip)
and fill someone who didn't have a tapeworm.
This leaves $5 per day for a soda and some snack food- which is odd to be hungry for
if you really ate 3 specials in the last day.
There's other possibilities too, like $8 Chinese lunch buffet which filled you for 1/2
the day, and so on. (Liu Huang could do that, and they've been nice to us
conventioners in my experience, and they're a few doors down from Fernando's.)
Food at $20 a day can theoretically be done, yeah. But, as you say, it takes a significant concerted effort, and some prior knowledge of where the food is dirt cheap and filling.
If it were me, i'd probably budget $40 a day to be safe the first year. Then, if you find after a few year that your expenses are a lot lower in that area, you can readjust. It also means that if you start coming in way lower at the end of the con, you'll have a nice little bit of extra that you can put into shopping in the dealer's room and bidding on art.
We've had far more folks than i would like at AC who think that food is something that can be skimped on when money (or time) is tight, and i'd really like to discourage that. It's not healthy, even in the short run.
For the convention, you will need to provide money to cover several categories, which I'll divide into Travel, Hotel, Food, Registration, and "Other."
For Travel, you can either fly, take a bus/train, or drive yourself or with someone else, in descending order of expense. From Texas, your most viable options are to drive/ride, or take a plane; a plane ticket will probably cost about 300-400 dollars round trip, once you figure in all taxes and fees.
The Hotel will cost about $135 dollars a night, divided by the number of people in the room. You will also need to pay one-night advance deposit when you reserve a room, and this is NOT refundable if you must later cancel.
Food will be about $10-$20 bucks a day if you buy around the city, but it can run less if you purchase sandwich ingredients or bring your own food.
A basic registration last year cost $40-$50, depending on how early you registered; preregistering for the con early lets you get lower prices, get into the con faster when you arrive, and saves the registration director's heart a few beats.
And "Other" covers anything else. Buying art/commissions at the convention, souveniers, snacks, tourism. This money depends entirely on what you think you'll spend and be able to do.
This has been covered in further detail on the forum somewhere, but I can't find the link; someone else can feel free to provide it.
Hope this helps in the meantime!
--Fandom Track Lead