BUDGET

This exercise is fraught with challenges.  I've not tried to "hide" anything except personal gifts, and what we may or may not donate to charity.  Those are simply too personal.  Our starting budget and projections are given toward the bottom of the page, and the rational that went into our assumptions back in 1998 when we started this life style.

At the bottom of this chart are some explanations of what might be included in the various arbitrary categories we use.  It's our hope that by "exposing" ourselves a bit, it might be of some use to those of you who may be considering what it costs to live like this.

Please remember as you look at this, that it's very personal.  What we spend is in no way an indication of what you should spend.  We all have different desires and needs, and your costs could vary considerably from ours.  It's largely dependent on what your income may be.  It costs something to live and not travel, and this happens to be what it cost us to live while we travel.

The year 2002 is skewed a bit, and it's because at that time we had different tracking methods, and it got too confusing to sort out, so I didn't do it.  Perhaps I should have left it out, but decided to include what I had so we'd have some kind of record of expenses.

"Fuel" includes both motorhome and Jeep.

"Other Vehicle" includes oil changes and maintenance, and whatever gadgets we may buy for either vehicle

"Cash" is money we "lost".  In other words I bought a hamburger and didn't keep the receipt so we could log it.

"Household" will include linens, any parts that I replace myself (paid repairs are under "other vehicle"), and useful kitchen gadgets.

"Medical" includes out of pocket expenses.  It does not include insurance premiums, which in our case are deducted from a pension payment.  If they were, then the "Insurance" category would be much higher than it is.  It does include the cost of medications, eyeglasses, dental work, etc.

"Memberships" might well have been included under "Rent", because it's the annual dues we pay to belong to Thousand Trails, RPI, and those.  We keep it seperate just so we can monitor changes.

"Personal" includes haircuts and other things that don't seem to fit nicely someplace else

"Recreation" will include the entry fees for parks, museums, any tours and things like the bicycles, camera gear (which might also appear under Household - the printer cartridges are there) and anything we do for fun that costs money.

"Rent" is for things like the daily fee for an RV park that we pay up front.  If we pay extra for 50A service, it would go under "Utilities".

"Utilities" includes the TV subscription, the phone, the ISP fees for internet access, our once a year propane purchase and that electricity I mentioned above.

As of October 2001

This is a tough topic, because different people have differing "needs" in their lives.  We simply had to have some sort of a "base" to go from (back in 1998) to stop saving money and start spending it.  And that transition in itself, we've discovered, is a difficult one, but that's another story.

We recognize that many of the purchases we've made would not be needed or even desired by others.  We all need to find where our own comfort level is.  What we've learned over this past year and a half is that, by and large, most RV people would rather have fun chatting about things they have in common than concern themselves with who has what.  

There are several RV websites where the writer shares his/her budget, and we gave each one its due.  The principal example we used was the one that Ron and Barb Hoffmiester share in their book, "Movin' On."  And if you're serious about doing the RV thing, you should by all means add this well-written and fun book to your library.  After you've read it, of course.

What we did was take their budget, and the one they included from Bob and Carol, whoever they are (friends/neighbors as I recall), and plugged in our own numbers.  Here's what it looked like when I did it back in early 1998.

And after 16 months on the road, we took the last 12 that we have full records for, and came up with the actuals.  You'll notice that there have been some changes in the categories for obvious reasons.  Barb and I are not accountants like Bob and Carol or Ron.  We're just concerned about outliving our money.  We really don't want to have to go back to work or adjust our lifestyle because of needing money.  At the same time, we're not wealthy and have a limited amount of resources.  Barb's retirement package includes the premium for health insurance, so that's not included in our numbers.  Both Ron and Bob had retirement packages that took care of their health insurance as well.  They considered nothing for making payments on their rigs.  For tax reasons, we elected to borrow the money rather than pull it out of our retirement accounts as a lump sum, and for us it's working well as of this date.  Since our truck payment is made directly from a retirement account, it's not shown here.  We re-arranged all of the categories to be more compatible with our system of tracking (Quicken) and for space reasons, have not included the above chart.  What follows is "just the facts, mam" as Joe Friday would say.  I'll add some footnotes below the chart.

By "Cash" we mean that amount that we "loose" somewhere.  I bought a hamburger and didn't tell Barb about it.  "Misc" is composed of items that didn't fit any other category comfortably, but at least we know what we spent the money on.  We joined Thousand Trails in June along with another "home park" so we could transfer our Coast to Coast membership, and that's reflected in the "Memberships" for this period.  In order to see where the money went since we started traveling, I've included other "one-time" purchases.  I did that because if you don't have some kind of reserve for things like this and then find you really need/want them, it could be tough. 

I blew it pretty bad in a couple of areas, as you can see.  The largest was perhaps the fuel.  We have over 43,000 miles on the truck we picked up new in March 2000.  That's way too many for that period of time, and we fully intend to slow down now that mothers on both coasts have seen the rig.  I really enjoy eating out, and Barby has promised to "help" me cut down in that area.  I think I may have about run out of "gottahave" gadgets for the rig, but don't bet more than your small change on it.  The cell phone numbers include a major mistake I'll take credit for while we were volunteering in Avon Park; I got a land-line from Sprint, and will never do that again.  Not only did I fight with them every month about the overcharges (which they willingly corrected, but it's a hassle I don't want again), but my usage was a lot heavier than it should have been.  Also, I'm a verbal Vesuvius and enjoy too many long conversations with friends and family for our budget.  I can assure you Barby will help me there too!  The "Entertainment" includes very expensive seats for the 12-hour race week at Sebring, and we'll not do that sort of thing again in the near future.

Please do not gauge your own ability to afford to full time on our numbers.  Build your budget based on your own habits, needs, and desires, OK?

I'll be happy to answer questions you may have, as I understand only too well that my accounting system may not be clear to everybody.  Sometimes it's confusing to me!!  Just lemme know and I'll do my best to explain.