2021 Full-Time RV Travel Budget in Review

Posted on January 20, 2022 by Believe and Budget

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Food

This is a tough one to break the budget in a house or traveling full-time. I will tell you with the change of places it is hard to get used to a grocery store or knowing what the prices will be. We even have 10 years of grocery store experience and had struggled with finding really good deals and so you just go in and shop and leave.

Our grocery budget is usually around $400 every month give or take some months we would try to stay under $300, but that is really hard. We spent a total of $4,464 for 2021, which breaks down to an average of $373.02 per month. Now, we do not have any food allergies and do not necessary only eat organic either, but we do eat healthy. We buy a lot of food from the produce department because my husband was a produce manager for years. It is just in our nature now to buy a bulk of our food from this department. I am also from the Midwest so my mom made a lot of meat, potato, and veggie, therefore I do this too. It is easy and fast.

Our eating out budget varied throughout the year, but we always planned to go out to eat at least twice sometimes four times a month so I was very surprised by this number. We spent $1,044 on our eating out budget for the year and that breaks down to $87.04 per month. Now, some months we took full advantage of apps such as fetch app to receive free gift cards. We also are very wise on where we eat out at. We love to support local pizza places because we can usually get out of there only spending $25 with a tip. We also sparingly had lobster night and went all out of those nights, but only went out to eat twice that month.

Gas

Our gas budget this is one where it will vary on what you drive and what you pull. We drive a 2012 Thor Four Winds 32 foot RV and pull a 2015 Chevy Cruze. We traveled from Virginia to New Hampshire to Utah, which is approximately 4,000 miles with extra stops along the way. Our gas budget for the travel months was insane! We budgeted $500 and thought we would be dandy, well I was wrong. One month we spent $700 and the other was $800! Our total 2021 gas spent was $4,144.21, which averages out to be $345 per month. We were also stationary from January through June in Virginia enjoying paying off our RV 100% to be 100% debt free.

Rent

Our rent we paid $360 per month in Virginia and worked out utilities off this was for 6 months. We work camped in New Hampshire from four months and received free rent, utilities, and laundry. We also work camped in Utah at a state park two months and received free rent and utilities. When we stayed places along the way we choose frugal places, such as state and national parks. We also stayed at a few crackle barrels, wal-marts, and bass pro shops. Our rent for the year was $3,293.35 which comes out as an average $274.45 per month.

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Maintenance

Our RV maintenance was low this year because we knew we were going to travel full-time in 2021, and therefore we really prepared in 2020 with making sure our RV was ready to travel that many miles and not leave us somewhere on the side of the road. We prepped ourselves with a tire pressure gauge, air pump, and always checked our levels before we left a site for safety reasons. Our total maintenance for 2021 $1,086 and this does include our tow dolly purchase as well for $700 off of facebook marketplace. Averages per month is $90.54 for us.

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Laundry

We were really lucky on this to receive free laundry for 4 months. It was nice and helped our budget a lot plus when we stopped at friend’s house and our parents houses. We spent $193 for the entire year of 2021, which is an average of $16.13. We usually budget $40 per month and we do laundry twice a month. This means we wear our jeans more than once you guys, and we have enough socks and undies to last us 2 weeks!

RV propane

We filled up our RV propane in January, February, and May once, and it cost us $100.08 for the entire year. Luckily Virginia was mild and we did not have to use that much propane. To reduce this cost, we use two small electric heaters to keep our home warm. We also prepared for the winter by making a home-made skirt and insulating our windows. We used a big comforter to keep the draft from the front cab of the RV and we mostly kept upstairs closed above the cab.

Our total spending for our 2021 Full-Time travels was $14,506 for the year. We had 2 camp host assignments, which helped our budget a ton. July – September which allowed us to have free rent, utilities, laundry and November – December to have free rent and utilities. Overall, I think we did excellent on our budget and if you do not care about all the amenities that certain parks have than you can do it on a frugal budget too. We really care about having a nice view, paths to enjoy, and close or on water.

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Category: budget, legacy, moneyTags: budget, budget tips, full-time living, how much to spend, living tiny, money tips, rv life, Spend, travel tips, traveling

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