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Thursday, August 3, 2017

2017 Expenses in our 1st two months of Full-Time RV Living

We have been on the road since June 12th, almost 2 months so I decided to plug in some numbers into our spreadsheet just to be able to start comparing how we are doing and start making some projection of future cost and comparisons.

I have backed out any expense related to our home in Las Vegas from both months (we just received a final water bill for the Vegas property, but hopefully all those expenses are paid now). It looks like the expenses are a little more than I had expected but not by a whole lot.

I have costed out the cost of the Drone over the rest of the year ($214 for 7 months) and moved some RV camping fees we paid in advance to the actual month we will be in the site. I have also amortized our auto and rv insurance ($2100) as well as the Thousand Trails annual dues ($607) out over 12 months.

I am sure there will be new expenses popping up each month that we haven't planned for, but hopefully we will be able to keep the total monthly cost down to under $4,000, at least on average as some months will be up and hopefully some will be equally down.

If you scroll down below the budget, you will see our 2017 Itinerary along with the mileage and that is where the RV mileage numbers come from in the top section of the expense line items. I also entered the times we have (or plan to) move to a new location. Below that, the number of nights we will be staying in a Thousand Trails (TT) campsite (read FREE) along with nights we will be in a regular RV park, Walmart parking lot, or someones driveway. Some of these nights will be free and some will be expensive but on the whole, campsite expense should be fairly low with our TT membership. As you can see, for the 18 days in June it averaged $19.45 but July was only $1.63. Hopefully we can stay well under $10 average per night over the span of the year ($8.40 for June & July).

The Diesel expense can't be used to compute miles per gallon as we use a system called Aqua Hot that burns our diesel fuel to heat up hot water for showers and dish washing as well as heats the motor-home when necessary, although we will more often use electric heaters or the electric heat pump when we get free electricity which is most of the time so it is close but not exact. We also have a 10K generator that burns our diesel fuel when we use it, but that is mostly when we are boon-docking or traveling down the road and need the Air Conditioners running and now that we are trying to stay in milder climates that doesn't happen as often as previously.

We paid for the registration on the Lincoln prior to leaving Vegas so it isn't included but the RV registration is most of the June RV: repair-tags-etc $452 expense. If I am still doing the expense report next year, I will probably amortize those items out also.

If you have any questions or comments please leave them as we are definitely open to improving our budget and/or saving money. We are also open to any great places to go and check out that you may know of along out travel route even if we have to add another line item to account for it.


2017 Expenses

JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC Totals
RV Miles (Actual & Projected)  1499 387 520 2740 1312 120 6578
Times we Moved 7 5 4 8 7 1 32
Thousand Trails nites 11 31 31 20 18 30 141
Out of the TT System 8 0 0 10 13 0 31
Campsite average cost night $19.45 $1.63 $8.40
Diesel Fuel 242 762
Campsites ($51 TT dues) 370 51 51 51 103 51 51
Motorhome-repair, tags, etc 452 304
Auto-gas, repair, tags, etc 185 173
RV & Auto Insurance 175 175 175 175 175 175 175
Groceries 774 891
Dining Out 295 193
Internet & Cell Phone 147 147
Directv 118 118
Medical 242 242
Pet Care 55
Leisure/Hobbies/(Drone/7) 602 235 214 214 214 214 214
Computer 101 469
Clothing 51
Mail 5
TOTALS 3809 3765




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