Chickery's Travels

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February 5, 2019 by Guest Post 14 Comments

Full-Time RV Expenses

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In this article we’ll share our expenses for the top three categories of campgrounds, fuel, and entertainment over an entire year of full-time RV travel. We’ll share the average monthly cost of each category and explain what occurred in the high and low months as well.

Full-Time RV Finance is designed to help you realize your full-time travel dreams. Over 25 video lessons, we will help you chart a course towards financial freedom, create a realistic full-time RV budget, and learn how to make money and save money on the road.

One question we hear often is, “Can you full-time RV for less than $1,500 a month?” The answer to that is maybe. I say maybe because it really depends on what your full-time travel dream is. If you want to stay at full hook up campgrounds or RV resorts, not likely. If you want to travel a lot of miles, that is going to be difficult as well.

The thing about budgets is that they are very personal. It all comes down to your wants and needs. In this article, we’ll share our expenses based on our preferences. The hope is that they simply provide food for though and help you create your own budget.

  • Campgrounds
  • Fuel
  • Entertainment
  • Total Expenses
  • Related posts:

Campgrounds

Except for 2 short dry camping stints, we stayed exclusively in full hook-up (water, 50 amp electric, and sewer) campgrounds. We read reviews and try to find campgrounds or RV resorts that have good WiFi (to save on our hotspots), heated pools, and fitness rooms. 

This year we stayed in 18 different campgrounds: 11 Private, 5 Military, 1 Corps of Engineer (COE), and 1 Country Fairgrounds. We post reviews of all our stays on our YouTube channel. We also prefer to travel slowly and take advantage of monthly rates when we can. 

  • Total Campground Expenses for 2018: $9,139.13
  • Average Monthly Cost: $762
  • Highest Monthly Cost: $1500
  • This was at Fort Belvoir, VA in the Washington DC metropolitan area. While it was an expensive campground for us, it was worth it to attend our oldest son and daughter-in-law’s wedding! You can see our review of the campground here.
  • Lowest Monthly Cost: $495 We spent the month of July at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, FL. You can see our review of the campground here.
  • For those who don’t have the option to stay at military campgrounds, we’d like to give you an idea of the cost of campgrounds that anyone can enjoy. Our least expensive was a COE campground. They are federally managed by the Army Corps of Engineers and open to the public. We paid $13 per night at Gunter Hill Campground. On the high end of the spectrum, we stayed at the Tucson Lazy Days KOA for the entire month of December. We paid $821 for the month including our metered electricity.  

Fuel

We pull a 30’ Fifth Wheel with our Chevy 3500 HD Truck. We typically stay in place 4-6 weeks before moving which helps keep costs down, but the truck is also our only vehicle for local drives. 

  • Total Diesel Expenses for 2018: $6,038.28
  • Average Monthly Cost: $503
  • Highest Monthly Cost: $848 This was in June when we drove from Texas to Virginia for our son’s wedding. 
  • Lowest Monthly Cost: $301 This was in April. We were in San Antonio where two of our sons live. We didn’t travel much outside of the area and they often came and picked us up when we went places in the local area.

We also spent $298.28 on propane over the year. We stayed at full hook-up campgrounds in warm climates most of the year and predominantly used propane for cooking (stove top and oven) on a daily basis. A few of the summer months we didn’t have to refill our propane at all. The weather was unseasonably cold in Tucson this winter, so in December we paid $67.66 for propane to run the heater every night. 

Finally, we paid $228.54 for gas for our generator during the year. Normally we only run the generator 1-2 hours per month according to the regular maintenance schedule. However, we had to run it all day every day for a few weeks in May when we were dry camping during an unseasonably hot spring in Texas. 

Entertainment

Entertainment costs include things like museums, movies, parking, etc. Our total entertainment expenses for 2018 were: $2,663.64. 

  • Average Monthly Cost: $222
  • Highest Monthly Cost: $695
  • Lowest Monthly Cost: $62

Our highest month was in September. We were having work done on the RV and stayed in a resort in Orlando. While there we went to Disney and several other expensive tourist attractions. Our lowest month was in February. We spent some time at the beach in Florida and with the State Parks pass parked for free. Then we traveled to Texas for a conference, so we didn’t have too much additional time for entertainment. 

Total Expenses

If you add together all our expenses our average monthly cost to RV Full-Time this year was $4,022.32. Almost half of that was campgrounds, fuel, and entertainment. So what was the other half?

That is the real catch to full-time RV travel, there are so many other expenses that you don’t hear about from connectivity to maintenance and a million things in between.

That is why we created a program called Full-Time RV Finance to help others financially achieve their full-time travel dreams. Over 25 video lessons we help you chart your course towards financial freedom, create a realistic full-time RV budget, and learn how to make money & save money on the road. 

It is possible to have a more frugal budget. For example, you can dry camp, travel less miles, find numerous discounts, and employ a multitude of money saving techniques. We share many of them in Full-Time RV Finance and help you develop a realistic budget that you can live with.

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Learn how much it costs to live and travel full-time in an RV. We cover every expense for one full year of RV travel. We also explain variables that apply to motorhomes, fifth wheels, travel trailers and campers.

Related posts:

How We Earn A Living While Traveling Full-Time (And How You Can Too)
Five Credit Card Strategies To Improve Travel

Filed Under: Full-Time Finance Tagged With: cost of RV travel, full-time RV expenses

Comments

  1. Sylvia says

    February 5, 2019 at 10:03 am

    Thank you for such an informative article. We are not full time. We have a small 22 5th and have used it twice for a long vacation(one evening for a three month stint and another for a 3.5month trip.). We know we want to RV full time but with only my husbands retirement our funds are limited. This article put a lot into perspective. Thanks again.

    Reply
    • Julie Chickery says

      February 5, 2019 at 10:25 pm

      I’m so glad you found it helpful. Please feel free to let us know if you have any questions.

      Reply
  2. Ruth says

    February 5, 2019 at 11:42 pm

    Great article! Can you tell me what dental plan you use?

    Reply
    • Julie Chickery says

      February 5, 2019 at 11:58 pm

      We use the VA Dental Insurance Plan available through the Department of Veteran’s Affairs.

      Reply
  3. Liz says

    February 17, 2019 at 11:45 am

    Really enjoyed this summary – thanks for sharing with such great detail. Our expenses are around $1,000 more per month on average but we move every 3 – 5 days, a week typically being the longest stay we do. We also free camp to make up for our higher fuel cost. Keep up the great work! Liz from Eat See RV

    Reply
    • Julie says

      February 17, 2019 at 1:12 pm

      We’re just starting to do some free/dry camping. In fact, right now we’re at a 7-day free dry camping place. I just followed you on IG. 🙂

      Reply
  4. Colleen says

    February 17, 2019 at 2:13 pm

    We boondock and dry camp a lot. So we really have the fresh water dialed in.
    1) we have a water dispenser on a stool in out shower to wash hand and brush our teeth
    2) 5 gallon container for out side use for hand washing and pooch water
    3) we collect water from shower to use in toilet ( we use a bucket when we are getting the temp right)
    4) I have another container for pooch and to make coffee in galley area
    5) we do short showers navy style,
    6) we use a mister buddy during day cause it’s easier to get the small propane tanks
    7) I do dishes after we shower and the water is hot
    That’s all I can remember for now it’s a process

    Reply
    • Julie says

      February 17, 2019 at 5:02 pm

      Wow! Thanks for this. We’re on our first long boondocking experience and were only doing #3 on your list.

      Reply
  5. Alison says

    March 5, 2019 at 9:47 pm

    Hey, THANK YOU for braking out your variable and fixed expenses. We are currently traveling full time around the world trying to leverage a little geo-arbitrage to keep our expenses down. And one of my frustrations is reading other folks travel blogs saying how cheep an area is but they don’t brake out there fixed expenses anywhere on their site. So thank you. At some point we want to come back to the states and try RV’n for a while as well. I’m looking forward to digging into your site more. Cheers!

    Reply
    • Julie says

      March 6, 2019 at 12:53 am

      I’m glad you found it useful. We believe in full transparency. Even if folks can be more frugal than us, at least sharing our expenses can provide a starting point for creating a budget.

      Reply
  6. Mary says

    March 8, 2019 at 8:15 am

    Super helpful that you go into such detail… things many would forget to budget for.
    Also, including the spreadsheet is a great bonus!
    Your sharing is much appreciated.

    Reply
    • Julie Chickery says

      March 8, 2019 at 1:34 pm

      Glad to hear it! Let us know if you have any questions. We love to help fellow travelers.

      Reply
  7. Ed Townsend says

    March 13, 2019 at 3:56 pm

    Thank you for taking for sharing this valuable information with us. We are 10 months out for our lease end here in Navarre, FL and plan to stay at Eglin AFB for the first few months after we get our rig to learn more about it and our son is stationed just down the road at Hurlburt as well.

    Reply
    • Julie Chickery says

      March 13, 2019 at 10:13 pm

      We did the same thing at MacDill with our RV. FamCamps are a great place to test everything out in a familiar environment. Best of luck to you! Let us know if you have any questions. We’re happy to help.

      Reply

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