In the years leading up to full-time RVing, and in the year since we began our travels, we have done all we can to learn from others. It is a particularly well known fact that campers love to help other campers. A generally friendly bunch, campers in today’s world are helpful in many ways other than saying hello to your campsite neighbor. Now campers share with others via Facebook groups, Youtube, blogs, eBooks and eNewsletters as well.
We have devoured all of these mediums over the last five years or so, and without a doubt, the most often asked questions center around “how much does it cost to live and travel in an RV”? To that end, I thought that it was time to “pay it forward” and share a little bit of our experiences.
We recently celebrated our 1st “Nomad-i-versary” on July 17th! To celebrate our year on the road, I’ve put on my nerd hat (or perhaps my recently acquired cowgirl hat from Wyoming), run the numbers, and am ready to share a little bit of what it cost us to live a year as a nomad. Note that this isn’t ALL of our budget. I am only sharing the numbers for those budget categories that are generally affected by traveling full time.
Here are the basics of our 1st year full-time RVing financials:
FOOD – $19,652
HEALTHCARE – $11,749
TRANSPORTATION – $14,596
HOUSING/UTILITIES – $23,525
One year of full-time RVing: PRICELESS.
Let me break it down in each category:
FOOD
It should also be noted that it is a little more difficult to shop for food inexpensively when traveling. You cannot always find the less expensive stores (I miss you Aldi!), and sometimes the food options are fewer, farther between and therefore more costly. We have collected a lot of “store shopper cards” along the way, trying to at least gain the benefit of the weekly sales at the stores we shop, but it is difficult to save on the “buy two, get one free” sales when pantry space is so limited.
If you look at the details of our food costs, we spent nearly $6,500 on restaurant and on-the-road snack foods, but we did so as a conscious decision, knowing our budget and wanting to experience great cuisine in every place we visited! We have an unwritten rule that we will only eat at restaurants that are local (no national chains) and we have stuck to that pretty closely (with the exception of our Chick-fil-a habits, lol).
Can you do food cheaper than us? ABSOLUTELY! Can you spend more than us as well? YEP. Decide what you can afford and follow that budget. This expense category can be the same as you have in your sticks and bricks life, but with a little more effort to find the food sources that meet your financial needs. If the grocery stores are more costly where you are traveling, then you may have to modify WHAT you are buying to make up the difference, but overall, you can make the budget category of FOOD meet your budgetary needs even when you transition to a lifestyle of full-time RVing.
HEALTHCARE
This category is so specific to each household, that the numbers shown here are probably not valuable. Instead, HOW we acquire healthcare is perhaps the more helpful information to share. We have always lived by the belief that health insurance is a must-do item in our budget. But as pre-Medicare aged adults, health insurance coverage can be one of the more difficult hurdles to a full-time RV budget.
We made the decision early on that we were going to free up as much of our time for travel experiences as possible. Full-time travel, for us, won’t be forever, but rather “for now”. Therefore, my husband quit his full time job last June (he is in an industry that could allow him to work from home/the road, so it gives him employment options once we choose a new way of living). In the last 22 years I was mostly a stay-at-home mom with part time employment, with the last kiddo leaving the house at the time we launched full-time RVing, so in a sense, part of my “job” went away automatically (it actually just changed, but that is perhaps a blog post for another day). The other part of my job is running our short term vacation rental business. Considered “passive income” it requires me to “work” a little nearly every day, but it is easily done from the road and it is work that I enjoy.
The plan had always been to quit working (for a while), sell our home and to use the proceeds and our savings to launch our nomadic ways. So we knew that acquiring health insurance could get tricky. Had my husband continued working, as many RVers can now do in more location-independent workplaces, we would have continued to have some of the same health insurance challenges that we face today. His employer-sponsored monthly “family” coverage used to cost us about $1500 each month, and that provided us with an HMO that was heavily managed and had a provider network that was limited to Maryland, DC and Northern Virginia.
Therefore, healthcare.gov became the most cost-effective way for us to acquire traditional health insurance while RVing full-time. It still didn’t solve the geographic coverage limitations we faced, but it at least provides us coverage for medical needs that could be financially burdensome or worse yet, catastrophic. Because the Healthcare Marketplace is state-based, we need to schedule annual check-ups with planned travel to Florida every year, and if we need some on-going medical care, we may have to return to Florida. We occasionally just shop around for cost-effective medical care in whatever state we happen to be at the time and pay for care as we go. We pray that no big emergencies happen, but if they must, we then pray that they happen while we are in Florida!
For the last six months of 2020, our health insurance cost on the Marketplace (for the two of us and my 19 year old college-freshman daughter), was $8,150. That cost bought us a Blue Cross PPO plan in the state of Florida (our domicile state) with a hefty $8,000 per person deductible ($16,400 family).
Once we got to 2021, our health insurance costs for a ZERO deductible Blue Cross plan became $0. This change was because once we started a new year, our projected earned income became zero. Since we were living on our savings we had no “earned income”, the Healthcare Marketplace health insurance tax credits helped us significantly, allowing us to get a better insurance plan at no immediate cost to us (if our expected earned income works out differently by the time we file our taxes next year, we may have to pay back some or all of those tax credits).
The balance of our expenses in the HEALTHCARE category of our budget were out-of-pocket care such as dental (we did not purchase dental insurance), out of network services, or provider and prescription copays. To cover these costs more comfortably, and to save on taxes, we funded a Health Savings Account (HSA) in the years leading up to full-time living. We draw on that account to pay for our out-of-pocket health-related expenses.
If employer-sponsored or marketplace health insurance plans are not available to you or the right fit for your needs, and if you are healthy, you can explore an indemnity health insurance plan. They are helpful for travelers because you can seek healthcare in most locations and have more ability to shop around for the most affordable services. There are also non-insurance healthcare cost-sharing programs that many healthy RVers participate in. These can be more affordable and still provide some good coverage. No matter what you choose, choose carefully and read the details, but choose SOMETHING. Determine if you want lower deductibles or higher maximum payout limits. Determine which coverage gives you the right financial and health peace of mind.
TRANSPORTATION
Transportation costs are greatly impacted by the style of camping you may choose. We live in a 36’ fifth wheel. Therefore we have a hefty truck as well. In order to go full-time in our RV, we upgraded our truck (a Ford F350 DRW diesel) and sold my car.
The cost breakdown for our first year is as follows:
- Insurance – $3,631
- Fuel – $5,631
- Parking – $40
- Service, Parts and Misc – $4,978
- Tolls – $315
Insurance – We have different insurance companies/policies for our RV and truck. That is a disadvantage that we have not yet found a solution to. We also are domiciled in Florida where insurance rates went up from our home state of Maryland (that was a surprise to us), so that is also a disadvantage. Our truck is a 2017 and our RV is a 2018. Shop carefully and frequently, and hopefully you can save a bit over our costs.
Fuel – Diesel fuel has been inexpensive but has been rising. Stay longer in each location, slowing your speed and your travel and you can save in this category. There are also a few discount fuel programs and apps out there to help you save. We have signed up for a few but just haven’t used them yet, so there is room for improvement here. In one year, our RV traveled about 7,500 miles, but I unfortunately didn’t track the additional mileage with just the truck, sightseeing, running around town on errands, etc. Suffice it to say, you can make this cost drop significantly if you travel less.
Parking – This cost might be a little higher than represented in our Quicken accounting system, as I probably missed a lot of quarters being dropped into meters, but this cost really depends on how often you visit cities.
Service, Parts and Misc – What can I say, diesel trucks are not cheap to maintain. We did not have any real repairs in the last year. We did buy some new tires (both in the RV and the truck), so those are reflected in these numbers, but really, oil changes, brakes and maintenance can be costly, so plan on a realistic number for this category.
Tolls – Sometimes you have to pay a slight premium for this category. We have the east coast EZ-pass, but it doesn’t work in many parts of the country. We investigated getting some additional passes in some states to save on tolls, but it really only made sense for us in one area – Florida, where we spend parts of our winters and medical downtime.
HOUSING/UTILITIES
This budgetary category is perhaps the “meat and potatoes” of what folks want to know about when contemplating a life on the road. This category, like food, can be as varied as the types of RVers out there! But here is our story.
Before we became FT RVers it was part of our plan to purchase certain memberships that would save us money on camping fees. After much research, we purchased an Thousand Trails Elite Connections membership, a Harvest Hosts Membership, joined the Good Sam Club, Passport America and along the way, have purchased a few state and national park passes. All of these memberships can save us on campsites and admissions.
What we have chosen may not fit the type of travel you will choose, but we have found that stays of two to four weeks is our camping “sweet spot”. In the summer, when we tend to do more long-distance travelling and sightseeing, our stays are often shorter and more expensive. In our first year, we found that we waited too late to make reservations for our summer travel, and we ended up paying a premium at KOAs and “resort” campgrounds because most of the state and national parks were full. Those campsites range from $65 – $109 per night. Perhaps next year we will do better and save a little more.
Therefore, our campsite fees for one year totaled $13,355. Our membership costs and dues totaled $1,624. (Our Thousand Trails initial membership cost us $8,146 but is not represented in these costs, as it was purchased earlier in the year).
We stayed 193 days in Thousand Trails campgrounds from Pennsylvania to Florida and the most common campgrounds we visited retail for about $75 per night. Therefore, our membership provided us with campsites valued at about $14,475!
Our Harvest Host membership cost us $99 for the first year. We stayed at five Harvest Hosts locations, each for a night, but it is important to note that while we can boondock for free with Harvest Hosts, this membership wasn’t purchased to necessarily save money. We wanted the membership for the experiences! As members, in exchange for a free night of camping, we are asked to support the member business in some way. If we are at a distillery or winery, we have a great time tasting and then purchasing some bottles. At a golf course, we go to the clubhouse for dinner. If we ever visit a member museum or farm market, we will purchase a ticket or some roadside tomatoes! In the end, we absolutely spent more money at each Harvest Host location than we would likely have paid for a campsite for the night, but we have found great value in the people we have met along the way.
Our Good Sam membership has provided some discounts along the way, but we will have to evaluate if it is worthwhile, as we try to avoid shopping at Camping World (where we also get discounts with our membership). We have not used our Passport America membership yet…we just have not found that the discount was applicable to the places or dates we were traveling so far.
About halfway through the year we even purchased a KOA membership. This program gives us discounted stays at KOA Kampgrounds – not our favorite way to camp, but we found that with campsites filling up so much, we have ended up at KOA Kampgrounds at least a half dozen times, so this membership was worthwhile for us this past year.
To round out our memberships, we have a National Parks Pass ($80 per year) and a Montana State Parks Pass. We are camping for one weeks in a Mpntana state park campground – the only reservation we were able to get all summer in our western USA trip, but with even one stay, the state park membership paid for itself. In Florida, the discount vs the cost of the membership never would pay off for us (Florida state parks are notoriously difficult to get reservations), so we did not purchase that pass.
The rest of this HOUSING/UTILITIES budgetary category is filled up with a lot of smaller expenses as follows:
- RV Maintenance – $631
- Propane – $83
- DirecTV – $1,153
- Laundry – $83
- Cell Phones and Data – $3,372
- RV Improvements – $2,704
- Firewood – $100
- Mail Processing – $420
RV Maintenance – Included brackets, hoses, caulk, tape, lock pins, bulbs, fork oil, fridge fan, RV battery. It is difficult to predict what you must spend in this category, but make sure you know that this is always an expense you will have.
Propane – We had limited use of propane and instead used our electric fireplace as a free heat source, and a countertop induction cooktop for some of our cooking. We also would expect this cost to increase if we travel to cooler parts of the US during non-summer seasons.
DIRECTV – This includes monthly costs and start-up equipment costs. You could very easily reduce or eliminate this category if you sourced your television viewing from over-the-air antenna, campsite cable channels, streaming services, or simply by sitting outside by the campfire more often.
Laundry – We chose to purchase and install a Splendide washer/dryer combo ventless unit, but did use laundromats for the first couple of months and periodically to clean larger items like blankets, seat covers and dog beds. When we began camping, I was not intending to buy a washer/dryer, but the global pandemic caused me to rethink the decision. Looking back, this was one of the best choices we have made to improve our daily living.
Cell Phones and Data – We pay for cell service for four phones total and needed to purchase two replacement cell phones for ourselves in the last year. Additionally, we have made some data upgrades to have enough internet data each month. We have 15 GB of mobile hotspot data on both/each of our phones, plus another 15 GB on a mobile hotspot. There is room for improvement in this category, and a periodic reevaluation of cell service plans is always a good idea.
RV Improvements – These included a washer/dryer purchase and installation, a WeBoost Cell Booster, a truck tool box, and curtain rods and curtains throughout the rig.
Firewood – We love a campfire, and we did purchase a fabulous Solo Stove last fall. But we have found that there are many fire restrictions in place in the areas we have traveled, and sometimes, firewood is just darn tough to find (we had some success with Facebook Marketplace when in Florida last winter).
Mail Processing – We declared our domicile in Florida, so we chose a company called St. Brendan’s Isle in Green Cove Springs to handle our mail. They have been fabulous. These costs represent the monthly fee for their mail scanning service, plus the cost of postage for any mail that must be forwarded to our location. If you are in the early stages of deciding and declaring your domicile state, be sure to contact a few of these companies to help you navigate the sometimes complicated steps.
SO WHAT IS NOT INCLUDED?
The numbers shown here are not the “full freight” for our life on the road. There are items not shown here that have little to do with our lifestyle but are instead just the cost of living. Those include:
Clothing – What can I say? You need VERY FEW CLOTHES when FT RVing. We generally wear our favorite five outfits and the rest of the closet inventory remains unused. If we ever travel to cooler temps, we will make use of perhaps another third of our wardrobe, but much of our clothing lies in wait for use! The clothing we have purchased in the last year is part “fun stuff” (that overpriced t-shirt from Red Rocks that I love) or replacement (“ya gotta replace those worn out shorts and t-shirts, honey”). This category could be less costly if we tried harder, but we had fun buying clothes that represented memories of our travels and high quality clothes that would stand the test of mountain hikes. Make this category what you want when you move to FT RVing but chances are, you could spend less on clothing than in your pre-traveling life.
Entertainment – I throw anything that we enjoy for fun into this category. Cross-stitch supplies, tickets to museums and parks, bison ranch train tickets, Cheyenne trolley tour, movie rentals and purchases, puzzles, park passes, etc. If it is fun stuff and not “must have”, it generally falls under “entertainment”. So whether you are traveling or not, you have complete control over this category. It can be a little or a lot, depending on the choices you make.
Misc – If it doesn’t fall anywhere else, it goes here. Fly swatter, toaster, measuring cup, backpacks, mattress, linens, desk, air purifier, flagpole and flags, hangers, etc. Many of these things are not specific to RVing, but many of the items we purchased BECAUSE we were now in a new RV home. Either way, this category is not greatly affected by a lifestyle change to full-time RVing.
Personal Care – This is basically haircuts. I don’t even color my hair any more (stopped that as the pandemic hit, about six months before we launched FT RVing, which had been my original planned date to simplify my haircare). This category is whatever you make it, and travel doesn’t necessarily affect it.
Pets – This expense, like many, is not affected by FT RVing. This includes vet appointments, medicines, dog shampoo and training collars. We have two dogs and a cat that travel with us (and yes, they LOVE RVing!). So if you spend money on this when you live in your sticks and bricks, those expenses will continue in generally the same pattern once you move into your RV.
The balance of where our money goes – Gifts, Business Expenses, Property Taxes (for rentals and land), Charitable Donations, Support for a Dependent Child, and Entertaining Guests.
For certain, the total cost of full-time RVing can vary greatly, just like the cost of living a stationary “sticks and bricks” lifestyle varies greatly. If you do a good job budgeting and living below your means now, you will likely have the same success once you start full-time RVing. However, if your personal finances are a struggle before travel, those difficulties will likely continue with a more nomadic lifestyle.
The reason for this observation is because WHERE we live (in a house or an RV) does not matter nearly as much as HOW we live. Create a monthly zero-based budget, live below your means, become or remain debt-free, save for your future and stick to it. As always, your personal choices will be the greatest factor to your long term success.
Safe travels and save and spend wisely!
