RV Travel Expenses – 2018-19 YTD

Now that we have been on the full time RV travel journey for two and a half years, I decided to get back into the accountant mode and do a little financial analysis. No, not going back to work again. Just getting off the bench for a brief few minutes to do a checkup on our spending rate. Maybe by sharing we can help others planning an RV life, just as many others helped us. So, here’s a quick update on our RV travel expenses for almost two years.

Overview

From a total spending rate, we are continuing to spend at a higher rate than my pre-retirement budget estimates. But, that is still okay since after fixed income sources, we are withdrawing at less than 4% from savings. Also, the stock market has done very well over the last 2.5 years.

Compared to our budget, we are significantly higher on a couple of categories and on budget or lower on most of the others. The higher categories are camping fees and supplies. I’ll go into some more detail below.

We can always take many measures to reduce expenses, if the economy goes into a recession. I’ll discuss some of these below. So, I’m not too concerned at this point.

All of our other living expenses are about the same as living in a fixed home, such as insurance and restaurants, except that we do not have any mortgage or rent expense.

RV Park Fees

In comparing our spending to other full-timer’s published spend rates, we are on the higher side for RV park fees. The spending range that I have seen published is from $100 per month to $3,000 a month. That is a wide range for sure!

The difference is in how you choose to camp. If you plan to do a lot of “boondocking,” that is camp in places with no hookups or not in established parks, then your fees would be nearly zero. Out west there are many places where government land allows you to camp for two weeks for free or nearly so. Or staying at Walmart, Cracker Barrel, or Cabela’s parking lots.

On the other end of the spectrum is staying at RV resorts. They have all the amenities of any hotel resort such as pools, tennis courts, golf courses, on site restaurants, and others. We try to stay at a mix of state parks, private parks, and a few resorts thrown in.

Another method to reduce RV park expenses is to stay at least a week. Most places will throw in a free night if staying 7 nights. Even more savings is staying a month. Monthly rates can be discounted as much as 25-30% off the nightly rate.

We actually try to stay for at least a week, except when we have many miles to cover and not much time. Then it becomes more costly on a per night basis. At some point in our fulltimer travels, we may begin staying a month in the desired locations. That would be less moving stress, less costly, but we would not be able to see as much of the country. Oh, the tradeoffs…

We could reduce our RV park expenses by staying in some of the older, more run down parks that have lower ratings. And we have done that, but found it can be a little sketchy. As my brother-in-law Mike says, “life is too short to drink cheap beer.” The same analogy can be made here.

Another option is to stay at more state parks or Corps of Engineers facilities. State park fees have risen and can be a little pricey and sometimes just do not have the RV site length for our super sized 41 footer. But we love the wide open spaces and outdoorsy feel of these parks.

Another timing issue is that when we book out for the entire year the required deposits will be reflected in the month the reservation was made, likely December to February. Some parks will require 100% up front, such as state and national parks.

The almost two year average is about $1,300 per month and replaces mortgage, utilities, real estate taxes, and any home maintenance that we would incur if living in a house.

Fuel

Fuel is another one of the variable expense categories that varies from almost zero to up over $700 per month for us. This is obviously dependant upon how many pulling miles that we have planned at 10 mpg in the big truck.

Having two vehicles has not made much of a difference in our fuel expense. We use the little Honda in most all of our local exploring and at a 35 mpg it has reduced our fuel usage while at a base camp versus 17 mpg in the truck.

The flip side is that we need to commute two vehicles whenever we move to a new place. So, on relocation days our fuel expense is higher than before we had two vehicles.

Our preferred travel model is to move 150 miles per week and stay in a location for a week. This adds up to 600 miles per month and at $3/gallon, diesel fuel is about $180 per month and gas for the Honda adds another $150 for all the local exploring. This is a total of $330 per month. Our average actual fuel expense is about $360 per month.

Summary

Most everything else is about the same as for people living in a fixed house. Our supplies and groceries are more costly than when we lived in Christiansburg, Virginia mainly due to the prices. Many small towns and tourist areas charge 30-50% more for the same items!

Some of our other categories include restaurant expense. This has probably increased as we will eat lunch in town when going in to do something. We eat out maybe 3 times per week. More than our pre-retirement amount, but about on my budget estimate.

Hopefully, this information will be of some help to others planning to begin an RV journey. It is an incredible way to experience retirement life and see our beautiful country. If you don’t want to travel full-time, then be a weekender to start out. If you do not want a big 40 foot rig, then start out small with what you can afford or are comfortable with. The Sprinter van type of RVs have become very popular and can go just about anywhere.

Contact me if you have any questions or if I can assist. Thanks for following along! Take care and God Bless.