The books
Where the money went
This is live. Every contribution lands here the moment it clears. Every receipt from the road goes in when we get back to a laptop. On the first of the month we post a copy, and that copy never changes after.
About the mileage row. 390.0 miles over 5 trips, at the 76¢ IRS business rate, an allowance for wear and fuel. No receipt, and no money left an account for it. We book it because a tax preparer would, and because leaving it out would make a stop look cheaper than it is. Every other line here is money that actually moved.
Every dollar is public
Money in, fees out, money spent, what’s left.
Every visit is documented
Warehouse number, date, receipt, and what we ate, which isn’t always a hot dog. The four of us go together; that’s the whole idea.
If it fails, that’s public too
If a million people never turns into more than four thousand, or four hundred, we’ll say so here.
The short version
What you’re paying for, and what we keep
We make something: the write-ups, the photographs, the boards, the receipts. We give all of it away. If it’s worth a hot dog to you, there’s a place to say so. That’s the same arrangement every creator you already follow has with you. Ours is a tip jar with a Costco menu board on it, at a price that hasn’t moved since 1985.
The money pays for the road first. What is left pays for the rest of what this takes, the evenings writing it up, the Saturdays, the two of us doing this instead of something else. That’s what supporting a publication is, and we would rather say it than pretend the trip is the only cost.
Every stop, with what it cost and what we found, is published as one file of data: archive.json. If it ever disagrees with a page here, the file is the one that is wrong.
Where else the money comes from
Contributions aren’t the only line. We also sell sponsorships to businesses that want a region or a stop covered, and we may use affiliate links where they fit, marked as such. Sponsored posts say so at the top, never buried at the bottom. Money can change where we go. It never changes what we say about it.
The Signature
The next Costco, in your inbox.
One email per Costco. The receipt, what was on the menu board, what it cost, and the strangest thing we found in the aisles. Free, and it stops the moment you say so.