This video is all about our costs to live in an RV
full-time, back in year one of our RV full-time travels.
Hey everyone. We're Christine and Kevin, and thanks for joining us for the next
video on what our RV living costs have been. Last time we told you about our first RVing experience,
just the two of us, six months in a travel trailer, going all around the country,
and living like we are on vacation. If you missed that video, check it out so you can
see the cost difference between an RV road trip and the cost of full-time RV life. Exactly,
this video is all about our costs to live in an RV full time, back in year one of our RV full-time
travels. If you haven't watched our videos before, we're currently part way through year
four of full-time travels with two kids and a dog in a fifth wheel. So here we'll take you through
each category and overall costs like last time, but now with a larger RV and a bigger family,
and show you how RV full-time costs differ from an extended RV road trip. So let us answer how
much it cost us to live in an RV full time. Again, we're sharing this because we just happen to track
this info for ourselves. We find it really useful to see what other full-time RVers are spending.
And we want to inspire you in your own travels and inspire you to create your own RV budget and
see that this is possible. After our six-month RV road trip when we relocated to Denver and
started work again, we thought we'd be there long term. We really did love it there, and in fact
Colorado is still one of our favorite places. But we eventually started thinking about RVing again.
We had our two kids, and I was already working remotely so we thought full-time RV life was
possible and what we wanted to do next. So we bought a fifth wheel at the beginning of 2018 and
moved in right at the end of February. So our RV full-time costs for this first year will be from
March 2018 through February 2019. A quick story about what our first year looked like for some
context for the numbers. This was now our life so we wanted to live a little bit more reasonably,
pace ourselves, and actually stick to a real budget. We were semi-stationary in the Denver,
Colorado area for the first six months and still had our Subaru as a second vehicle
for part of the year. We weren't stationary in one spot but various campgrounds around Denver,
mostly the state parks. We took a trip out to Illinois and another to the west coast, both to
see family and stayed with them so that saved a lot on campgrounds. We went to Germany for a few
weeks, but this was cheaper for us than you might expect, and we'll talk more about that later. We
then headed to Florida at the end of the year to establish residency there. We have a laptop
here with all the data that we'll be referencing and also putting on the screen for you all as we
go along. What's not included in the monthly and total numbers we're about to share with you here,
is the cost of our truck and RV. Because we used money from the sale of our town home back in D.C.
and savings to pay for those outright so there weren't any monthly payments. But the truck cost
$47204 and it's a 2016 Ram 3500 dually. And there were about 31000 miles on it at
the time of purchase. Our RV cost $66981 and it's a 2018 Jayco Pinnacle 37MDQS.
We bought our RV new. Similar to buying our travel trailer for our six month trip, we found that what
we wanted seemed to be more expensive on the used market crazily enough and that we could get
all the options that we wanted or leave off the ones that we didn't want by buying it new. It's
also a mid den / bunk model with a loft that was newer and didn't seem to be as available at the
time. So factor in whatever RV and tow vehicle you choose and the monthly payments for each of those.
There are lots of calculators online that can help you figure out ballpark what a monthly payment for
each of those might be. We also don't include the cost to pick up the truck and the RV prior to us
starting full-time RV living. I took a trip to pick up the truck in Ohio and then again
later to get our RV in Indiana as they were both purchased out of state. So keep in mind you might
get a better deal out of state but then you would have costs to bring it back to where you are.
There were some costs to move into the RV that we don't include since that took place prior to
actually starting full-time like boxes, RV storage for a week, additional camping days to overlap
the last few days in our apartment, and travel expenses to take some additional things to my
dad's storage unit where we were keeping some of our items. And we didn't have the cost of a home
or rental that we were maintaining while on the road, storage fees that we personally
had to pay for, or laundry since we have the units here in our RV. We also don't include our
business expenses. So factor all those into your RV budget if applicable to you guys.
RVing costs can vary quite a bit from person to person depending on how big your family is,
the kind of lifestyle you like to live while you're traveling, how fast you're moving,
and various other factors. This is just what it cost our family in our situation. So here we go:
our average RV living cost per month and stay tuned to the end where we'll give you the totals.
Starting with groceries. For groceries we spent on average $798 per month and $9579 for the year. Now
this includes food and drinks and anything that we would buy in a grocery store. We will share
general merchandise and restaurants in their own categories. Next up are fuel costs. This includes
diesel for the truck and gas for our Subaru that we still had at the time but really used it mostly
just to get around locally in Colorado because we didn't take it on our longer trips and we sold it
before heading on to Florida. This also includes gas for the generator which we didn't really use
very much and propane. This category cost us an average of $537 a month and $6445 for the year.
General Merchandise / Miscellaneous. This includes things that aren't food and drink but we can't
just buy at a regular grocery store. Things like clothes, presents, toys and games, other supplies,
postage, ATM withdrawals that we didn't tie specifically to another category, essential oils,
electronics, etc. It also includes RV specific items which this year were items like a bike rack,
a shoe rack, our awesome dishwasher, tubs and organizational items, the generator,
a weBoost, HEPA filter, EasyStarts for the ACs, you get the picture. We did have to buy a lot
for the RV to start this first year. This category cost us an average of $675 monthly and $8099 for
the year. Medical, Dental, and Vision Care. Remember on our six-month RV road trip costs
I told you that this category basically killed us because of how much it cost? Well this time
it's thankfully easy, and it is $0 and that is awesome. Since we were working while traveling,
unlike last time, we were covered through my company and an HSA. Entertainment and Travel. This
category contains everything that we do for fun. We find a lot of cheap and free things to do while
we're on the road, but at times we pay entrance tickets, museums, events, festivals, state parks,
you name it. This also includes our national parks pass which we feel is essential. Travel includes
any flights, hotels, or rental cars, and in this year our trip to Germany to visit family. So the
travel portion is actually pretty low because once we got there, we stayed with family and we shared
food costs. So it was pretty inexpensive all in all. This category also includes any tolls or
parking fees. So this category was an average of $205 per month for a total of $2464 for the year.
Restaurants. We definitely like to eat out at restaurants and did more of this at the time.
It was a fun way to explore local places and enjoy the experience. But back then we didn't typically
have to buy much extra for the kids because they were so young, they would typically share.
This category cost us an average of $377 monthly and $4522 for the year. Recurring costs. For us
these include truck, Subaru, and RV insurance, phone and internet connectivity, mail service,
and long-term care insurance. At the time we still had our vehicles and the RV rolled into
a single USAA insurance plan. Combined insurance was an average of $213 a month. Phone and internet
were $75 a month. Kevin's phone plan was still a business expense at the time, and we just tethered
from our phones. That also included Netflix for a couple months until we cut that. Our mail service
was $40 average per month and that was because we started with a P.O. box in Colorado initially
and then we moved to using the St. Brendan's Isle mail service in Florida once we headed
down that way. All these recurrent costs were an average of $346 per month and $4155 for the year.
Vehicle Maintenance Budget. It cost us on average $258 per month for a total of $3097 for the year
to maintain our truck, Subaru, and RV. Here's the breakout. These included routine maintenance as
well as repairs, plus any RV projects. There are things like oil changes and alignments,
filters, new tires, a windshield replacement, replacing the RV
door latch, generator oil, building a gate for the RV loft, TV antenna repair, and
so on. Though there seemed to be less maintenance this year with a new RV compared to later years,
we do recommend that you budget for things like this because they will happen.
RV Rent. We paid an average of $716 per month and $8586 for the year for camping sites.
This includes traditional campgrounds of all types, minimal dump station fees which we incurred
a couple of times, as well as a Thousand Trails membership that we bought in October for $748 and
which we used mostly in Florida after we made it there. If you're not familiar with Thousand
Trails, it's a membership of campgrounds around the country where you can stay without paying an
additional nightly fee. But the length of time that you can stay in the campground, how far in
advance you can book your stays, and whether you have to be out of the system between your stays,
are all dictated by your specific membership and the contract. We started with the annual camping
pass with one zone, of which there are five. And we added the Trails Collection package which meant
there were additional Encore campgrounds in which we could stay with our membership. We could stay
for 14 nights, but then we had to be out of the system for 7 days and find other accommodations.
My dad who is also an RVer had been using the membership for years and told us about it. So we
bought it and when we were around Thousand Trails campgrounds it worked out really well. We actually
ended up upgrading our membership eventually, but we did that in year 2 so we'll tell you about that
in the next video. Overall our RVing costs for the year were much lower than they would have been if
we hadn't stayed with family for so much of our time during the year. When we weren't in Colorado
we were visiting family on the west coast and in Illinois and staying on their properties. So that
really offset a lot of the costs that we were paying for campgrounds otherwise. Thousand
Trails definitely helped us save money on the monthly RV budget, but we really didn't see
that take effect until the following year. So that brings our grand totals to...drum roll please...
$3912 per month for our first year as full-time RVers and that cost us a total of $46947
for the year. So now we've shown you our one-year RV full-time costs as we initially hit the road in
our very first year. What do you think? We'd love to answer any questions you have on this topic.
Stay tuned for the next episode where we talk year two and how the RV cost picture changes when we're
not semi-stationary for half the year and instead do a ton of awesome traveling. Subscribe so you
don't miss it. In the meantime, check out the link to the blog post below that has even more of
the details. On our blog we also post our current monthly RV expense reports that are very in-depth.
We'll link that below as well so you check those out monthly and you can even download the
spreadsheets, graphs, and charts that we use to track our RV budget. See you all next time. Bye.