We made it to Montana. The budget is holding. The snack bag did not survive Idaho.

We're here.

Loaded six people into a 2018 Suburban in Springfield Oregon and drove until Montana happened. Long drive. The usual chaos — someone needed a bathroom stop 45 minutes after the last bathroom stop, the snack bag was empty by Idaho, and there was a period somewhere in the middle where the car was completely silent in a way that meant either everyone was asleep or something was very wrong.

Everyone was asleep. We kept driving.

My mom lives in Western Montana. Sitting on her porch right now writing this while the kids recover from a full day in a car and my wife recovers from a full day in a car with four kids and a husband who kept checking GasBuddy every 40 miles.

The budget is holding. Gas across Oregon and Idaho and into Montana came in pretty close to what I projected — which means either my math was right or I got lucky on gas prices. Probably both.

We budgeted $4,686 for this whole trip. We're tracking close so far. The family stay here saves us two nights of hotels — roughly $360 we're not spending — which means we have breathing room for whatever the Tetons and Minnesota throw at us.

Worth every mile of chaos to get here.

Whether you're meticulously planned or completely winging it like me, these five financial moves take under 30 minutes total and prevent the most common money problems on family road trips:

Call your bank before you leave. Tell them you're traveling through multiple states over the next two weeks. Takes three minutes. Prevents your card from being frozen at a gas station in the middle of nowhere because a transaction in an unfamiliar state triggered a fraud alert. This has happened to more families than you'd think — including people I know personally.

Set a daily spending number before day one. Not a detailed budget — just one number. Ours is $200/day for food, activities, and incidentals. When we're above it we know. When we're below it we feel good about dinner. One number, decided in advance, eliminates 90% of the spending anxiety on the road.

Separate your vacation fund from your regular checking. If the trip money is sitting in your main account it will get spent on non-trip things by accident. Move it to a separate account or a HYSA before you leave. Treat it like it's already gone from your regular budget.

Screenshot your hotel confirmations. Not just save the email — screenshot them. Cell service disappears in rural Montana and Wyoming. A screenshot works offline. A confirmation email requires internet.

Have the "what if something goes wrong" conversation before you leave. Not morbidly — practically. If the Suburban breaks down in Wyoming what's the plan? AAA membership, a credit card with enough room for an emergency repair, and a rough idea of the nearest city with a dealership is all you need. Thirty seconds of thinking prevents three hours of panic.

If you have any kind of trip coming up this summer — road trip, weekend away, anything — do just one thing right now: call or message your bank and let them know your travel dates and states. Takes three minutes. Costs nothing. Has saved more vacations than any amount of planning.

The next two Sundays are going to look a little different around here. We'll be somewhere between Montana and Minnesota, six people in a Suburban, living the exact kind of life this newsletter is built around.

Which means you're going to get the real numbers. Actual gas receipts. What the Airbnb in the Tetons actually cost versus what I budgeted. Whether the cooler strategy held up or whether we caved and hit every drive-through between here and Billings.

The real-time road trip financial report is something nobody else in this space is doing. Real family. Real trip. Real money.

That's the whole point of Four Kids Later.

My dad died when I was 18. I've thought about that a lot lately — since graduation, since Father's Day, and now sitting on my mom's porch in Western Montana watching four kids run around a yard I remember from my own childhood.

He never got to make this drive. There were probably trips he meant to take. Things he was going to do when the timing was better, when the prep was done, when the kids were older and it would be easier.

The timing was never going to be better. The checklist was never going to be done.

I left Springfield two days ago with a half-finished prep list and a full tank of gas and four kids who had no idea how long Montana actually is. We winged most of it. We stopped when we needed to. We ate drive-through food I said we wouldn't eat.

And we're here. At my mom's house. In Montana. All six of us.

That's the lesson. It's always the same lesson. Stop waiting for perfect conditions and go do the thing that matters while you still can.

See you from the road.

Live from the road — real gas costs, real expenses, real moments from the first leg of the trip. Plus the back to school spending breakdown that every parent needs before August hits.