How much does it cost to travel fulltime in an RV? This is a loaded question. Some people believe that it’s cheaper because you don’t have the amount of repairs, mortgage costs, electric/water/sewer bills, and the list goes on.
Before I dive in, I want to clarify that this is something people will argue with me about more often than not. It’s a hot topic. What I’m about to share with you is regarding OUR personal budgets and for full time TRAVELING, not being stationary.
While you may disagree or think you can save more is a personal opinion. This blog is meant to help you get a rough idea. If you’re looking for remote work to afford this opportunity then click here.
I hear of some people spending 1k a month and others 10k. These are the factors that will help determine how much you’ll spend:
How often you eat out. I’m not going to include any budget for eating out.
Any debt that you have in addition to this lifestyle. If you need to pay off credit card bills, vehicle payments, rv payments and such then factor those in on your own.
Clothing budgets are not included because you may shop at Target or you may shop at Gucci, I don’t know your habits so therefore I cannot predict a budget for this. You will shop less and avoid urges to pick up the “small things” because they’re on sale when shopping overall.
Now that we have that out of the way, here’s an idea of our budget currently, remember that we’re in the year of 2022 so things are higher than they were when we first started in 2019.
2022 Budget
Fuel - factors include how often you’ll move, how many mpg you get and what the per gallon rate is at the moment. We’re getting ready to head from The Florida Keys to the west soon. Our diesel budget will be higher than usual as we don’t travel that long in distance in this short amount of time often. You can also calculate your fuel cost with websites like this.
$500-$1200 diesel. We drive a 2016 Chevy Silverado 3500 dually, deleted and tuned. It gets about 9 mpg while pulling our 42.5’ toyhauler.
$200-500 gas. We recently purchased a second vehicle. I’ll go into details about this another time.
$200 vehicle/rv insurance. This is for high coverage with a car, truck and toyhauler.
$500 private health insurance. This one is tricky because Joseph and I are USMC veterans. Private insurance wouldn’t cover me but they would Joseph and the kids. I have VA insurance and Joseph and the kiddos are on private insurance. If you’re looking for a health insurance agent, I have an amazing one who was a fulltimer and has his own family so he’s been super helpful. We’re able to use our insurance nearly everywhere in the US.
$135 internet. We’ve used multiple providers which all rounded out to about $100 a month but we recently switched to Starlink. To be mobile it’s $135 a month. This doesn’t include the $600 equipment fees at the beginning.
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The above is $1535 - $2535 per month.
Now let’s talk campground fees:
We use Thousand Trails which is a membership plan. There are multiple packages, add-ons and levels. We have the highest membership with all add ons, the adventure package. The membership is just under 20k for a lifetime and the membership dues are around $500-600 a year. Think of this as a time share, it’ basically the same thing except for campgrounds. Why did we invest so much into a membership? It’s cheaper in the long run. We started with the camping pass, a one year pass for $700 ish, then we realized we LOVE meeting families at Thousand Trails so we upgraded to the membership. The way we see it, we can pay for campground stays or invest our money into a membership and use it as an asset.
Using the Thousand Trails membership also keeps our costs down. Paying $300 a month for unlimited stays can be cheaper than paying for state parks, private campgrounds and such.
So let’s run through some numbers using hypothetical nightly stays:
$300 unlimited Thousand Trails membership stays per month (not available in all states though).
$600 for state parks. $20 a night x 30 days a month. This can fluctuate depending on if you have a discount card/senior card and such. A lot of these places give discounts to veterans, senior citizens and more which can be up to 50% off per night. Remember, a lot of state parks don’t have full hook ups; meaning that you don’t have a sewer connection.
$1050 - $9000 for private campgrounds. Obviously this is variable. Before some come at me for saying 9k, just know that I’ve personally seen $300 a night parks. Private campground fees depend on multiple factors, time of year, size of site, how long you stay, if utilities are included, how far in advance you book and more.
Boonedocking is also an option but if you use a generator then you are spending money on fuel. Another option is to invest into solar but it’s pricey too.
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$300 - $9000 variable campground fees.
Confused yet? Feeling like you’re at square one? I understand! If you were to ask someone who lives in a sticks and bricks how much they pay each month then you know that can vary too. It’s the same, just different costs associated with the lifestyle. Some people pay for rent, others a mortgage. Some people pay $700 a month, others pay in the thousands per month.
Don’t forget other variable budgets such as Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries, haircuts and more.
Now… how much do we typically spend? We’re a family of 5, all of our kiddos eat and dress as adults. No more kid meals or shopping in the kids section for us. We need a minimum of 4500 per month, that’s not eating out or spending much on tourist things.
Additional variable include:
Maintenance - $100 per month at minimum, that’s only 1200 per year.
Repairs - We’ve spent about 50K within 2.5 years for repairs. This is a whole blog post in itself on how. Don’t discredit this though because most other fulltimers that have been on the road for a couple of years also have very high repair costs! We’re not the only ones!
Utilities - If you stay at a campground for more than a month then you’re probably paying for water and/or electric bills too. I’ve seen a lot of people complaining of the prices going up this year in electric and paying $200+ per month at their campgrounds. Usually if you stay less than a month then you don’t have these bills.
Let’s rap this up. As you can see, you can spend money left and right or you can save a lot. If you come from a high cost of living state (New York, Cali and such) then this can be a cheaper option. We’re from the rural areas in Ohio so this is not cheaper for us.
For those that say they can live on 1k-2k a month, I’m super impressed because I cannot fathom how they get buy with that little of a budget unless they’re living in a super small rig, barely move and there’s only one person.
The next step is to find remote work. This is my specialty so click here to see how it can be possible for you to work virtually.
If this helps, I’d love if you bought me a cup of coffee and/or sign up for our email list so you can learn more about fulltime rving. I promise not to spam ya, I only send about 4-6 emails out per month.
See ya on the road! - Amanda