Sunday, March 4, 2012

First Year Expenses for Fulltiming… How much is enough money to fulltime in an RV?

image

Back in the year 1999 when I first started planning to retire at the age of 55 my single biggest worry was whether or not we would have enough money to live out our retirement lives in comfort. How much money is enough to do this seemed to be the overriding question that came up over and over again. As you can imagine there is no universal answer for this. It is much like asking – What is the true meaning of life?

By the time 2009 rolled around we had made a lot of financial moves that set us up for early retirement. A great source of information on many of our ideas came from the great web forum at Early Retiremen Org and another great web source for investment ideas is at Bogelheads. In 2010 we made the decision to fulltime in an RV and the question came up again - How much money will be enough?

Being a numbers guy I came up when a plan and plotted everything out in a spreadsheet which gave rise to our first year budget. We have now been full timing in our RV for just over a year. I went back to see how well we budgeted this year as compared to our plan. The results showed we were over budget our first year by 13.7 percent which was unexpected but the detailed results helped explain why.

Below are some key points about our 2011 budget/expenses that may be useful to others planning on full timing:

  • we were over budget by 5% on taxes and insurance at $185 per month
  • we were over budget by 14% on propane as we boondocked more than planned – $27 per month
  • our average cost for camping fees $20.50 for the year – $24.50 for only those days we stayed in RV parks
  • laundry cost $27.50 per month
  • we were over budget by 200% on Big Ticket items (more on this later)
  • we are fortunate in that our medical insurance is under $400 per month
  • on groceries we budgeted $300 per month and spent$333 per month
  • we spent $243 per month on diesel for the RV and $166 per month od gas for the Honda

Overall I was pleased with the results except for the expense category on Big Ticket items. This was to be a catchall category for one time expenses on future non recurring expenses. A large chunk of the overage in this category was our five remaining car payments at $584.00. Other one time expenses that showed up here that I don’t expect to see again were a $3000 expense for repairs on our home to ready it for sale, the purchase of our brake buddy system and associated parts, and a one time expense to help out a family member. Without these cost we would have been well under our expenses at 89%.

What will we do differently next year? Not much!!! I will tweak the budget very little if at all after further analyzing it. Since we were 10% under budget in fuel I think we will be okay. I expect higher camp costs as well so we may have to boondock more which may result in higher expenses for big ticket items such as solar capabilities. We may have to seek out more weekly stays to save on camping costs to make up for some increases.

But to answer the question – How much is enough money to fulltime in an RV? Well when you consider all associated expenses from taxes and insurance to rent and fuel to groceries etc… The data showed us that we can apparently live very comfortably on less that $100 per day. As you know from reading other blogs everyone’s level of comfort will vary and thus so will their daily expense number. Hope this helps some future full timers plan better.

PS. We stayed a few extra days to let the nasty weather in the Southeast pass and will head out this morning to Albany, Georgia on our way to Red Bay, Al. We are sure glad we stayed put after seeing the destruction and devastation this weather event left behind. Our thoughts are with all those who suffered as a result of these storms…

18 comments:

  1. Good information for us just starting out..Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for sharing this information. We are planning on going Full Time in August and this is very helpful. We are in St. Augustine and heading to Tampa to pick up a new (bigger) RV - then back to Colorado to rent our home (we decided to rent vs sell). We will also so some camp hosting at Glacier National Park. Besides enjoying camp hosting - it also really helps average out expenses.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Replies
    1. the "eating out" category is for restaurants... we really don't eat out very much... I would rather buy quality food and cook it at home!

      Booze is in the entertainment and grocery category. I don't separate it out since it requires more work.

      Delete
  4. How nice to see it broken down into percentages! Have not seen much of that on any other RV blog's budget lists.

    Sooo you gonna solar up and boondock more? That was one of our BEST investments to get done on our rig--- all ready for when we hit the road full time in 2013~

    ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
    Karen and Steve
    (Our Blog) RVing: Small House... BIG Backyard
    http://kareninthewoods-kareninthewoods.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I really want to solar up but will have to justify the expenses to do so...

      Delete
  5. Your biggest expense is camping costs. Our camping costs average $6.00 a night including yearly maintenance fees after purchasing memberships some ten years ago. Like Kevin and Ruth ask, no Booze or restaurant meals there?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have looked at memberships but haven't convinced myself it is what we want to do... See my comment to Kevin and Ruth on booze and meals out...

      Delete
  6. Nice breakdown. Our first year expenses were higher than we anticipated also, mostly from higher ticket items that we added to Lucy. She should be set for awhile now.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. that is what I am hoping with the early expenses...

      Delete
  7. Thanks for breaking that all down for us. I keep thinking we should do that, but it hurts so much!

    Roxanne
    The Good Luck Duck

    ReplyDelete
  8. So, doing rough math, your camping expenses look like about $8400 a year. You could install a killer solar set-up for a fraction of that, and it would pay for itself in months.

    Don't you hate it when people do that? Feel free to say "no duh, Duck."

    Roxanne
    The Good Luck Duck

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. sounds great but I still have to convince my bride that she will love the boonies as much as I know I will... we shall see...

      Delete
  9. Being a numbers person, I love your opening graph. And I have to compliment you on being smart enough to have thought ahead and planned and arranged to retire at 55. Wish we had done that. We weren't clever enough to figure out how.

    We too keep track of every penny we spend so we know exactly what we spent on what each year. Not sure how we could do this if we didn't. We were over the first year on expenses for the rig and insurance. Don't know how you get health insurance for $400 a month for two. That's terrific. Like you, would like to put in a solar set up for boondocking. More than 4 days or so and I worry about our batteries aren't looking pretty propane or no. And I hate the generator noise even though ours is actually quiet comparatively.

    I didn't realized you boondocked so much already. I may go back through and look to see where you were boondocking. We haven't found a lot of places on the East coast where that would be helpful. Too many trees. Out west it would have been a huge budget assist.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sherry we boondocked for 7 weeks on five acres of land that belonged to my daughter's boyfriend's mom... so our experience was all in one place at one time... there is very little boondocking available out east for bigger rigs..

      Delete
  10. Thanks for sharing ... as future full-timers, we always find it interesting to see how others do with their budgets. I imagine the first year almost everyone goes over budget in the 'one-time' expenses ... it is after all the year to figure things out. We seriously want to consider solar panels, but want to get on the road and see how boondocking is going to work out for us ... not so much the first year perhaps as the plan right now is to stick close to the East Coast for our "shakedown year", and as you noted, options are rather limited for big rigs.

    ReplyDelete
  11. The "moochdocking" and staying a full month a a couple places really helped us keep the campground fees down.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I just have an off topic question, but we are brand new to this and have not even picked up our rig yet. Does anyone know if you can purchase snap on or zippered screening that attaches to your large awning? Can't take the bugs east of the ole Miss.

    ReplyDelete