GR "Scott" Cundiff

Well, I'll put my 2 cents in (pun intended) ! Now, we have NEVER rv'd, but we are getting ready to go to full time in April 2017. We are both pretty good with budget and we like to have fun, so we kept in mind our lifestyle. We have sold our house(no house expense, but that $$ is in a CD and will not be used). We wiill be pulling a 5th wheel. I have prepared a budget based on our current living expenses and adjusted for the items unique to being on the road. I went by 2-3 other budgets I found on-line and adjusted for inflation. The total doesn't not include a truck or RV payment. We won't have a truck payment and IF we have an RV payment it will be around $100, but we may not carry a payment. Now this is not a tried and true budget so it will be interesting to see how close I am. Right now we put everything on a credit card and pay it off every month. I am able to go on our card and get a breakdown of where our money has gone and that is what I used as the basis for my numbers then I added a little "fluff" just to make sure. This number does NOT include donation to church(as I backed that out) or repairs, but there is plenty left for that. It DOES include every insurance, including life. All the necessities to live. Some fun stuff. Having said all that...we came in at $40,032. We are hoping that we will come in a bit under and can toss that extra in savings, even though we have budgeted an amount for savings. I hope my thought process is right. If anyone sees flaws, please advise.

Your approach of using your current expenses as a base is the one I used. Granted, some things, like eating out and sightseeing (entertainment) will likely increase so you have to take your numbers with a grain of salt.

Another thing to think about is what I call "Second Wave Expenses." These are generated by things you started off with that begin to wear out or need to be upgraded. For us, this has been a year of such expenses. It worked out nicely for us because we ended up taking an interim position and traveled hardly at all. We took advantage of the unexpected savings from not traveling to update several things on the rig. I wrote about it here: http://pastorscott.com/travel/budget-second-wave-expenses/

Anyway, good luck on your adventure. I hope you enjoy the lifestyle as much as we do.

Thanks for all the responses - interesting.

For anyone still following, do your hose failures generally happen as you are extending/collapsing the hose or while you are dumping? As you can guess, spewing contents would be worse than it just cracking while being stored.

Our Rhinoflex has been in daily use for 3 1/2 years - still in good shape, no problems. However, someone posted on Facebook what I think is a very good deal, $17.32 for the complete 15' kit ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002OUMVWY ). I bought it for a backup, but got to thinking that you really don't want to wait for the sewer hose to fail before replacing it! That got me to wondering how long of service other fulltimers get out of these hoses. As I say, we're at 3.5 years on ours. How about you?

I've been recommending this thread to people on Facebook who ask what the average Fulltimer needs to budget.

By the way, our out of pocket expenses are actually a bit lower than I report. We volunteered for a campsite for three months of the year. To better give people doing research I give those months a camping cost of $325 each. If we weren't volunteering at east one of those months would be spent at Thousand Trails paying $5 or $10 a night so I think the $325 figure is pretty reasonable.

I finalized our 2015 expenditures and was pleased to see that we had finally dropped below $40K for the year. Our first two years out we had, not only the much higher fuel prices, but a lot of repairs as well. For instance, in 2013 we ended up buying new tires for everything - 12 new tires. We also had to buy new batteries for everything - 5 batteries! Ouch!

We had similar expenses in 2014. Both of those years came in at just over $41K each.

This year, thanks to lower fuel prices and only one bigger repair, we came in at $36K on the year.

My annual budget info is here.

There are:

• touring fulltimers
• workcamping fulltimers
• point to point fulltimers (winter in one place, summer in another)
• working fulltimers
• stationary fulltimers (in a RV, permanently parked)
• seasonal fulltimers (a bit iffy, but fulltime just part of the year)

And likely several other flavors. Then, to complicate things a bit more, many of us flow between two or more through the year (like workcamping only in the summer, etc.)

At least that's my view of it.

From the responses, including the good article Kirk referenced, it seems we are in a target of high $30's-low $40's for an average.

Then, an entirely different topic is "how low can you go?" and some have stayed well below that average.

We at least stopped wearing ties a few years before I retired but even then it was "business casual" with only collared shirts and no jeans.

Roger on ties! When I retired I took an entire box of ties to the church and put a "free to good home" sign on them. The quilter's group said they could use them for quilting and I gave them all the ties. Hopefully they now make up lap quilts for the folks at the nursing home. If so, they are finally being put to a reasonable use.

 

Just to clarify... you're asking for "nut" budget figures, right? Just what's necessary for day to day travel/life, lodging, maintenance, etc. Minus any 'optionals' like entertainment, donations, upgrades, etc. Ie., include things like internet, cellular, satellite, clothing budget, eating out, etc., but exclude entertainment/sightseeing, donations, one time costs.. like a roof replacement, etc? Just so everyone is on the same page.

Good question. I read it to mean everything except indebtedness.

And, what is included is always the problem in asking or responding to this question. For instance, if people are work camping, are they including value received or just reporting $0 for camping expense? Then there are intangibles like "free" health insurance via a previous employer that don't make it into the reported expenditures.

If the idea is to collect information for those researching the lifestyle, then some level of standardization is probably needed or else the amounts don't tell us very much.

However, if enough people answer, then, even without some of these concerns being met, a general average can be found.

As I said in a thread earlier this year, I think the average retired fulltime couple spends about the same amount as any other retired couple spends which is around $41K, although the fulltimers might be just a bit under that.

Over the past 3 years we're averaging just under $40K. That includes everything from new tires to church giving.

Lots of personal budget information here: http://pastorscott.com/travel/tag/budget/

Our inspection stickers expired last fall. Is there a grace period when you reenter the state? Thanks.

 

Jeff

Here's the information from the Texas.gov website:

The Department of Public Safety extends the time within which a certificate of inspection shall be obtained by a resident owner or operator of a Texas-registered vehicle, when the vehicle has no valid inspection certificate. The extension will be granted only on the first occasion of operation in this state during an inspection year and only until the resident owner or operator of the vehicle has arrived at his home, station, or destination in this state and for three days thereafter.