budget

Bubbadan · 04-02-2009, 07:20 AM

I am not a full timer as yet but plan to be in the next few years. I am sure muquestion has been beat to death but here goes.
My question is how do you budget the cost of living in you RV, Like propane, elect. cost when you winter in Texas or warmer states and the CG cost is for site only, elect. is on a meter.
Dan

MtManLee · 04-02-2009, 11:08 AM

First off I set my monthly cost for park at 400 dollars. Good average cost if I pay less all the better and money in the pocket. I will not and have not paid more than 380 yet. I also figured what my average propane use and cost was and budgeted 90 a month for propane and thus far been within that amount and if I have to pay elect I budget that at 100 a month and again hope to pay less of, for the most part we have done that, any thing more than that can come out of what we have saved previously.

EngineerMike · 04-02-2009, 12:26 PM

Dan- The biggest variables are personal expenses (some folks like to eat out & go to the opera or rock concerts a lot), and home maintenance. A new radiator for my rig is about $4500 (which I hope not to need). You have to plan for some of that, and the amount by which you can DIY repairs will heavily affect the outcome (tech time is ~$90/hr in most shops these days). Costs go way down if you are learned & handy in rig repairs (like getting free advice from knucklehead buddies here), and if you have time on your hands to get repairs done. Still, I would budget $4-5K/year for maintenance & repair.

paz · 04-02-2009, 02:21 PM

Your first year full-timing budget is a bit of an educated guess. You have past experiences of weekend RV trips and vacations, but you don't really know how you are going to live when you get on the road. Everyone has their own preferences, and those sometimes change over time.

For that reason, we tried to estimate things on the high side initially, and we made changes to our budget after the first year. We still adjust our budget every year when we see how much (or how little) the Social Security increase will be.

As an example, we initially budgeted $25 a month for propane (year-round average), but found that was way too much. We're now down to $8 a month, and that is conservative on the high side. We usually don't stay anywhere (at least not for long) where it gets much below 40 degrees at night. We rarely use our furnace, instead relying on an electric space heater and our electric blanket. We always use the electric heater when there is no extra charge for electricity, and we frequently use it even when there is an extra charge because it's a lot quieter than the furnace and it's sometimes a pain to have to stop to refill propane. Most campgrounds include electricity in their price, but the most common exception is with monthly rates.

There was a recent thread where someone was asking about electricity costs. The numbers were all over the place. Cost per KW-hr varies all over the country, and there was a lot of variability in how much electricity everyone used. FWIW, we used an average of about 600 KW-hr a month this winter in central Florida where it was colder than average. Electricity costs range from about 10 cents per KW-hr (we paid 11 cents where we were) to over 20 cents per KW-hr.

Bubbadan · 04-03-2009, 05:53 PM

Thanks to all who replied the information will be a great help.
Dan

Barbaraok · 04-04-2009, 11:45 AM

How much will you have? Seriously, that will determine what you can spend. If you won't have much, then you will probably spend more time in each spot, which cuts down on park costs, fuel costs, etc.

Like Engineer Mike, we budget for around $5K per year for maintenance and repair (we have an orphan Alpine). The last two years (knock on wood) our repairs have been considerably less - we got most everything done that first year. If you get a used rig (which is usually a good idea) put at least 10% aside (or more) for repairs/upgrades.

We keep our park costs down because we have a membership in WHR plus some affiliates. For us it works because we use the systems at least 2 weeks out of every month. We like to move - 2 weeks or so, then down the road.

We know people that do well on $2000/month while others are stretched at $6000/month. It really depends upon how you live your life. A good way to get an idea of what costs are and how people live is to read the blogs that a lot of fulltimers have online. Also, check out the Escapees forum (www.escapess.com) as there are more fulltimers there than anywhere else that I've seen.

Barb