You will have daily costs that you will have to cover, and then there are the expenses such as payments on the RV, and insurance. You may also have to pay property tax on the vehicle if you live in certain states. This varies from state to state.
How you can figure out what it will cost you to travel per month?
You can get a rough budget together to see about what it will cost you to travel for a month at a time. Then you will just have to multiply that by how many months you want to travel, and how much your budget it. Budgets can be very flexible, you can spend a lot or do it very cheap, this is totally up to you on how much you are and can spend while traveling.
The fixed expenses will be the insurance on the vehicle, the Motor Home payment, and certain bills like cell phones, satellite TV if you have that, and if you have a data card for internet access those are usually fixed expenses. These are usually the same amount every month. You may have other expenses that you have to pay monthly, such as health insurance, and other bills that you haven’t paid off. You will need to take all that into consideration and make that part of your budget.
Once you have the fixed bills figured out, then comes the tricky part of the budget.
The flexible costs of traveling.
These costs can vary greatly, and you may even have an emergency that will cost more than you expect. You may have a breakdown that will cut into your budget that you didn’t play for, and may cut your vacation short. The flexible spending part of your budget can be thrifty if you want it to be. We budget higher but try not to spend as much as we budgeted for. This part of your budget can make your trip longer or shorter depending on how much your flexible part is.
The items that are part of the flexible parts include food, eating out, entertainment – park entrance fees, sightseeing, gas, fuel, and maintenance, costs of parks at nights, incidentals, souvenirs, shopping and other unexpected expenses. As you can see this really depends on your personal preferences. Maybe you decided to go cheaper, and won’t go out to eat nightly; this will decrease your budget. You may want to go see movies but go during the cheaper matinee rates and sneak in your own popcorn so you don’t have to purchase it. There are many ways that you can cut your expenses here.
How we do it cheaply
We don’t go out to eat very often. Maybe once a month we will order pizza, other than that, we cook ourselves or eat at friends. That cuts down our food budget part. So we figure what we usually eat every week, made a detailed list of what we need to purchase monthly and add about 15% to that total so that we are covered for food. If we stop somewhere and find things on sale, we usually stock up if we can, and if room allows us to do that. Usually we stay under our food budget. While traveling you will probably find yourself eating fewer meals and eating lighter than you did at home. Some nights we are tired and only eat a bowl of cereal. We have a menu for the month with the items we need to purchase which then doubles as our shopping list. If we do eat out – we find specials, and eat buffet during the daytime hours where it’s cheaper. Usually we don’t eat at fast food restaurants, we found that they don’t fill you up very well, and they are expensive. We may stop at subway where we can save part of the foot long for lunch the following day.
Saving money on groceries
When we stop somewhere, I look up the store and see what they have on sale from the parking lot sometimes. Then I look online to see if there are any coupons that go with that product and print the coupons off online. This helps save money at the store. We eat very cheap, simple meals so that helps saving money on groceries. You may want to shop at a warehouse club once a month and get all your items, we stock up whenever we run low. There is no set times we go shopping.
Fuel costs:
This is very unpredictable. We have a set limit on how much we can spend for fuel each day. The key to this is being flexible. Someday we don’t go as far as we wanted to because we didn’t budget for the extra cost of fuel, those are the days where we seem to find the best places to visit. We don’t have a set schedule of where we need to be day to day, so being flexible can also help you budget your vacation. You will also want to take in consideration that going up mountains will use more fuel, so make that part of your budget too. We could put more fuel in on the days where we are near or over budget for fuel, but instead we choose to stop. The other option would be to take from somewhere else in the budget and use it towards fuel.
Campground costs:
we try to stay free as much as possible. If we are stopping for the night, we will try to stay at rest stops, Wal-Mart’s, and other store parking lots. Truck stops are good to stop at with plenty of spaces to park for the night. We usually only stay at campgrounds and RV parks if we are staying somewhere a few days. WE always ask for discounts when staying at an RV park for more than a week. They will usually have a weekly rate and a monthly rate. It never hurts to ask for a discount. Especially if it’s a mom and pops RV park, you may get a discount. After all, it’s all about saving money when traveling.
Maintenance:
This includes belts, oil changes, and other items that we will need to maintain the motor home. We carry extra parts such as belts, fuses, and other things we think may break and we would need to replace. We also carry enough oil and supplies to do 2 oil changes if necessary. This doesn’t take much room and gives us peace of mind. This part of the budget would also include getting the vehicle repaired if necessary. We try to keep things up on the motor home to avoid repair costs, but sometimes things happen.
About Health Insurance:
This is a personal choice for us to carry health insurance. I’m kind of a klutz. I can hurt myself doing the simplest things. So we carry it. We carry the insurance just for emergency; we don’t have doctor visits that we would really use, because of the higher co-pay on that. If we have to visit a doctor, we just have to pay cash when we go there. We also have to pay for prescriptions which make the insurance affordable for us. We actually only carry it for the major catastrophic medical part of it. You may feel comfortable without medical insurance; this is a personal choice that you will have to make.
AAA
We do carry AAA for the motor home, this is incase we need towed in somewhere and this will cover it for the most part. This is inexpensive and due yearly but gives us peace of mind. We also carry sea-tow for the boat for the same reason. We use our AAA card to get discounts at places also.
Internet costs:
Since I work online I need reliable internet. This is a must for us. We have a data card that runs us about $50 a month. But with that card, I can get online just about anywhere I can get cell phone service. This is something that you don’t have to have, but if your need your internet, you will want to add this into your budget.
Satellite:
You can get satellite TV that you can take with you on the road. This cost would vary depending on your package. We choose not to get the Satellite, we watch what we want to online at places like Hulu.com, and others and we have a cable that will hook up to the TV and we watch it on the TV. Usually when we watch TV shows online, we will use the connection of where we are staying and try not to use the card for this. For us the data card doesn’t work very well for streaming video. This is one way that you can lower your budget by not getting TV, and watching what you need online. Many times local newstations will have their whole newscasts broadcasted live.
Other things that you may want to budget for:
Entertainment costs: How often will you go out and have to pay entrance fees? Will you go to Amusement parks? Movies? Shopping? Take all these into consideration when making your budget.
Toll Roads: You may have to spend money for tolls.
Hobbies: You may have a hobby that you will spend money on.
These are just some things to consider what you will need to budget for.
The best advice we can give you is to overestimate on repairs and maintenance, leave room in the budget for the unexpected, and have a few months’ savings as a cushion all the time. Make a budget, figure your costs, and just do it. You will not regret it, and you will have the time of your life.
