Is living on the road, in a 340 sq ft RV, less expensive than living in a “sticks and bricks” home?
Well, it depends! There are MANY expenses that we no longer have because we don’t have a regular house, but there are a few expenses that we wouldn’t have the other way around. Because we left our careers and “quit-ired” over a year ago, our income is significantly less, but so are our expenses. You can see from the first photo below, of our monthly budget, that we are a little OCD with regard to tracking expenses.
As you look through some random photos we have taken in the past month, we will break down each expense and share some details. NB: The photos have nothing to do with the expenses!
Enjoy the read!
We use a shared Google Sheet where we enter EVERY expense and then have drop-down categories to place the expense in. Each month we sort the expenses by categoty to see how we did compared to our budget. We always seem to spend less (sometimes way less) than what we have budgeted.
A local ice-cream place.
RV Maintenance – $200/mo – Anything to do with maintaining or upkeep of the RV. For example this past month we had the exterior of the RV washed and waxed. We budget $200 per month, but for the most part never spend much of it at all. We bank the unspent amount for planned or unexpected expenses, like new tires or a needed repair.
RV Supplies – $100/mo – This category includes things like water filters, AC filters, slide lubricants and blade seal treatment.
Carpenter Bees have found their way into one of the cabins.
Camp Fees – $140/mo -Though we don’t pay for our site anywhere where we work, we budget this amount monthly so that over the year we have the money set aside for when we are “in-between” work-camping jobs.
We got a new sign at the campground!
Memberships – $175/mo -This is a surprising budget requirement. This category includes any subscriptions or monthly memberships we pay. Though we don’t have things like Hulu, Star Link or NetFlix, we do have things like photo storage, anti-virus, docusign, Amazon Prime and others of the like.
Say hello to happy Benny! He is 4 months old!
Travel/Vacation – $333/mo – This comes out to $4k per year. While our life is somewhat of a vacation already, we still enjoy getting away to visit the kids, have a family gathering, or travel internationally. We rarely spend much out of this category on a monthly basis, but we will make large expenditures at different points of the year.
One of Ken’s jobs at the campground is to replace faulty pedestal circuit breakers and meters. He’s no electrician, but so far her hasn’t electrocuted himself!
Clothes – $50/mo.
Though we don’t often buy new clothes, we do occasionally. Most of Ken’s clothes are bought through Amazon and Chris makes her purchases from Goodwill!
People use these maps in different ways. People have different criteria for placing the state sticker on the map. For us, we use this map to mark the states where we have work-camped. Illinois made the cut, because the worked out entire careers there.
Dining Out – $200. Lately we have found that we tend to treat ourselves to a meal out a little more than we have budgeted for. That’s OK. We’ve spent our lives saving and pinching pennies, now we can enjoy life some!!
Laundry – $40. Many of our work-camping opportunities provide for laundry on site, free of charge. We do budget for this expense though for those times when it’s not included.
Chris always enjoys having nice flowers at the campsite.
Gifts – $150/mo – This is basic birthday presents and random gifts for the family. It’s no surprise what your gift will be ($50 per occasion) unless your name is Henry or Benson!!
Donations – $180/mo. This covers weekly giving to our home church back in Joliet as well as whatever local church we attend mass at. It also includes raffle tickets and candle donations for prayer intentions.
Truck Maintenance – $200/mo – The plan for this budget line is mostly scheduled maintenance like oil changes, and planning for larger expenses like new tires all around. This past month, though, Ken managed to back into a telephone pole while backing in a trailer, causing the damage shown in the photo. A few choice words emerged from his mouth! Quotes to fix it (without an insurance claim) ranged from $1550 to $2730. We settled for a “Paintless Dent Repair” guy and some touch-up paint for $100.
Wonder Woods now has two RVs available for rent!
Insurance Truck/RV – $265/mo – We have “Fulltimers” insurance on the RV and, of course, full coverage on the truck. Both policies are written through Progressive Insurance. There are only a few large insurance companies that will insure “full-time” RVers. The “full-timers” policy includes full coverage on the RV as well as liability insurance, just like in a regular house, as well as riders for roof damage and rodent infestation/damage.
We had a great day at a BBQ at Sheila and Amber’s. Liam made the trek from Fort Wayne as well!!
Insurance LTC/Life – $760 – This category is by far the largest monthly budgeted amount. We have always carried large life policies and some of them have a investment vehicle built into them. To help ease the burden of nursing home care down the road, we both have Long Term Care policies. It’s not for everyone, and some would argue that it’s all a waste, but it is what we want.
We bought two of these Intek inflatable kayaks. They deflate and roll up into a backpack and weigh only 30lbs each. They are easier for us to transport than regular plastic kayaks.
Entertainment – $300/mo – We really rarely treat ourselves to “entertainment”, but the kayak purchase came out of this budget line. Most of what we do for fun is free!
Benny got into the baking action with Mommy and Henry!
Groceries – $500/mo. This seems like a lot, and it is, but we HAVE to eat! We will typically do major grocery shopping once about every three weeks and fill in with necessities from the Dollar General in town as needed. For this category, though, it includes all grocery foods as well as cleaning supplies and personal care items.
This is a pic of the campground handyman installing a new streetlight over the parking area and entrance of the park.
Health Coverage – $407/mo – We call it health “coverage”, not insurance. We don’t have “health insurance.” We are members of a “health sharing ministry.” We did a detailed post about it back on January 24. Anyway, we send our “share” of $407 to someone in need every month.
Health Expenses – $150/mo. This amount is a set aside amount to help offset “unshareable” health expenses, like well-care visits, annual blood work, x-rays etc.
Medications/Vitamins – $100/mo. This one is self-explanatory. We use Amazon Pharmacy for our medications and have some money allocated for other medicines and vitamins.
For the Fourth of July we sat down on the shore of Round Lake and watched the fireworks over the lake. It was great!
Propane $50 – This expense is a variable one. Sometimes we can go for three months on two 30-pound propane tanks, and then some months we can go through three or four tanks, all depending on whether we run the gas furnace for heat or not. It costs about $25 to fill one 30# tank.
Cell Phone $40 – After thirty years of paying big Verizion bills, we left Verizon and went to “Visible” by Verizon. For both phones with unlimited text, call, and data, our monthly bill is just $40!!
Internet $129 – We typically can lock into the local wifi network wherever we are working. When we can’t, we activate TravlFi and pay month to month. We’ve only had to do this a couple of times over the past year.
Over the fourth of July weekend, the lake that the campground is across from had a boat parade! The theme was “Sports”. There were all sorts of different designs and decorations! Ken took this pic from the kayak.
Miscelleanous – $50/mo. There are a lot of things that used to be in this category, but have since earned a budget line of their own. This is where we put something when it doesn’t fit anywhere else!
Sean popped over for a visit!!! It was Awesome spending the day with him.
RV Storage – $30/mo. Though we are “on the road” most of the time, when we travel abroad we need to store the RV and the truck somewhere. This is the amount we allocate for that. FOr example when we went to Ireland/England last summer for 5 weeks, we had the RV and Truck in secure storage.
One of our friends just retired from UPS. We caught this shot as we were leaving DFW heading back to SBN a couple of weeks ago.
Beer – $80/mo. One of us enjoys her craft and local beers. Lucky for the other of us, snacks and sweet treats are calculated in the “grocery” line item!!
Crafts -$30/mo. Chris still enjoys sewing, crafting, creative memories, and making things with her Cricut. This line item helps to keep those expenses in check.
Postage/Mail – $30/mo. We use a “mail processing” company to handle all of our mail. We will do a post about this later. We pay a monthly fee plus additional fees if we need something forwarded.
While visiting Maggie and her family in Texas, we rented a car. The car we rented wasn’t available, so they gave us this Electric Vehicle! It’s cool, but we’re not a fan of the charging requirements.
Diesel/DEF – $300/mo. We typically spend around $220-$250/mo with regular travel. We budget a little higher to help cover those long trip relocations from one job to the next. For example, it took A LOT of diesel and DEF to get from the Texas panhandle to SW Michigan.
