RV Living Fulltime Cost- For a traveling nurse family (and how I find out if a job meets our budget needs)
What is the budget or cost for full-time RV living? Is RV living cost effective? Can you live a fulltime RV lifestyle on a budget?
I know many other RVers have covered these topic in blogs, vlogs, and on Facebook, but it truly is different for each type of fulltime RVer.
I want to help you understand what type of RV category we fit into, what we budget as fulltime RVers, and how we determine if jobs on the road will cover our budgeted costs or not.
Let’s begin with what type of RVer we are.
What do I mean by type?
I think RVers fit into 4 categories.
1. The constant traveler- this style of RVer is the person/family that moves every 3 weeks or less. They never stay put for long and spend a good but of money in fuel to get from one location to another.
2. The monthly traveler- this style of RVer is the person/family that moves every 1-3 months. They take full advantage of monthly discounts at RV parks and may be following a seasonal job around.
3. The boondocker- this style of RVer is the person/family that avoids the cost of RV parks. They stay off the grid and spend their money on dumping the tanks, propane, and fuel.
4. The stationary fulltimer- just like the name sounds, this style of RVer stays put in one place for 6 months or longer. This could be due to work, being in the military, or setting up a RV on their own property.
So, knowing what type of RVer you want to be can help you to better understand what the cost behind RVing is. We fall into the monthly traveler category with the boondocker sprinkled in between monthly moves.
“I am a travel nurse. We operate this blog. We own a soap business. We have a toddler. We have a life that unfortunately does not allow us to just continuously travel, but we do still travel. ”
I am taking 13-week contracts as a nurse, and that means we do receive the monthly rate at RV parks. However, we also love to travel. So, to compromise, in between contracts at hospitals we do try to get some boondocking and sight seeing in.
I am going to give you a complete breakdown of what budget for every month, but keep in mind that if you are not the same type of RVer as us, then this may be completely different for you.
Monthly Expenses
Truck- $700
Truck Insurance- $150
RV Insurance- $83~ (We pay yearly, $1000 a year)
Phone Bill- $90
Hotspot- $40
Credit Cards- $200
Child Saving Account- $25
RV park- $430
Power at RV park- $75
Food- $400
Dog food/expenses- $25
Diesel- $100
Budget wiggle room- $250
Total Expenses for 1 month- $2,568
A more in depth look at each of our RV living expenses:
We still owe money on our truck. We did get out RV paid off, but unless a miracle happens, we will still be paying on the truck for another few years. If you can avoid this expense I would, but if not it is doable.
We pay a pretty good amount on our truck insurance, that’s because it includes full coverage on the truck plus jewelry insurance. It is insurance through USAA.
We pay our RV insurance in yearly installments. It is just cheaper that way. However, I have broken it down in what it would be for us in monthly payments. It does include fulltimers insurance, so basically RV + homeowners’ insurance. We have this through Progressive for USAA members.
Our phone bill is for two phones. It is Straight Talk. It runs off of Verizon towers, and it includes unlimited talk, text, and data for $45 per phone.
Our hotspot is through Visible. It is also unlimited talk, text, and data PLUS unlimited hotspot. It does run off Verizon towers also. It could work as a phone also, but we prefer to have a designated hotspot instead.
Our credit cards, we each have our own, and we do use them. On travel days in between contracts, we use our credit cards to cover fuel and food costs. We tend to boondock on these days, so we don’t have additional RV park expenses. This may seem a little crazy, but we want to keep our credit scores high and the only way to do that is to keep our credit line open.
Our son’s savings account does count as an expense for us. If money is tight, it is the first expense to be put on hold, but we dedicate $25 each month for him and $50 for holidays/birthdays. A savings account for him is important to us and something we consider a priority.
Our current cost of a RV park is $430 a month. This is for an extra-large site in a good quality RV park. Because we stay for 1 month at a time, we are able to save money on this. I think the current rate per night in this same RV park is like $40 a night. For 30 nights that would be $1200, for the exact same site.
Depending on what the current season is, and if we are using electric heat/AC, our power bill may fluctuate, but we usually average $70-$80 a month.
Food is going to be a big place where budgets are going to differ. I prefer to stick with less processed whole foods, and that makes our grocery bill higher. Remember, it is only 2 adults and 1 toddler living in this RV. But if we go to a butcher and get a meat bundle that will last 2 weeks, it will be about $130 every 2 weeks. We also have the added expense of vegetables and lactose free milk for our son. I do tend to buy items in bulk and then freeze portions of them to get us better grocery prices on our veggies. If you can spare the room to buy anything in bulk, it will absolutely pay off. Our favorite bulk buys are dried beans, rice, flour, sugar, toilet paper, and paper towels. Now I know bulk buying and RV living don’t necessarily go hand in hand, you just don’t have enough room to store things. However, we have an outdoor kitchen with an extra fridge/freezer, and we have an entire bunkroom for just a toddler. We use the outdoor kitchen to freeze additional meats or store veggies. You can also store extra beans, rice, flour, sugar, etc out here but make sure it is in hard packaging. If you store them in their original packaging, then you may be giving mice a delicious meal.
We also use the top bunks in the boy’s room as extra storage space. It holds our empty water jugs for boondocking, extra paper towels/toilet paper, and any additional items that we just could not part with when hitting the road.
Dog food is another thing I buy in bulk. We have one medium sized dog and he eats about 2 cups of dog food a day. We buy his dog food in 50lb bags that last us about 2 months at a time. On off months of purchasing dog food we buy flea meds. He gets heartworm prevention injections every six months and vaccines every year. These are additional expenses that go one the credit cards.
Diesel is something that may be high on your budget that is low on mine. This is only including the cost of normal weekly driving; this is not travel expenses. We do not budget for travel fuel because it fluctuates so much depending on distance driving and the cost of fuel along the roadway. Instead we put travel fuel costs on our credit cards and pay it back monthly in our credit card payments. This is just what works for us and it has caused us not to stress over expenses on travel days. If this does not work for you, just budget additional money to go into a savings account for travel days.
Our budget wiggle room category is extremely important. Things go wrong or you really want to splurge on a fun activity, and you should be able to! What is the point of living this lifestyle if you do not get to have fun with it? I do try to keep everything within reasonable limits, but I love that we have this extra money built into the budget.
One thing you do not see in our blog is contributing to our savings account. Why is this? I think it is important to add to our savings account, but I do not allow that to stop me from having a great experience somewhere. I do know I want to contribute to our savings account though, so once I know how much I will make at a certain job, I take the amount that will be over our monthly budget, I divide that in half, and I make that amount my goal to contribute into our savings account. For example if I am estimating I will get paid $3,000 a month and our budgeted amount is $2,500, then I know I have $500 over what is needed to meet our budget. I will then make $250 (half of 500) my goal to contribute to our savings account each month.
Our total monthly expense according to our current budget is $2,568. This means that when I look into accepting contracts it absolutely must be over this amount for a monthly pay total. This is only $642 per week in pay. That is not that much and should be pretty reasonable for pay. Now where this changes some is if you are work-camping. This means that you are working for a free or discounted site. We did this when we were in Yellowstone National Park for 3 months. I did work there at Canyon General Store and because of this we paid only $35 a week or $140 a month for our RV site. I took that into account when looking into our budget and determining if the money I would make there would be worth the cost.
How did I figure out if it was worth the cost?
So I took our monthly expense of 2,568 and I added back in the money would save on a RV site by staying in Yellowstone National Park.
$430 (budgeted amount) - $140 (actual amount) = $290. This means that our budget was actually $290 less than originally estimated.
$2,569 (budget) - $290 (amount saved on RV site) = $2,278. This was the updated monthly budget when taking into account the money saved by work-camping.
Then I take that total monthly budget of $2,278 and divide it by 4 weeks. This is important. I do 4 weeks because every single month, including February, has at least 4 weeks. Most months have over 4 weeks, and some even have 5 weeks, and that’s ok. Think of this as a bonus. On months when you get a 5th week, that’s just an extra paycheck that you get as a bonus.
$2,278 (monthly budget) / 4 weeks in a month = $569.50 This is the amount I would have to make each week to meet our budget. I can further break this down into how much I would need to make per hour, also.
For example, $569.5 / 40 (the hours you are going to work in 1 week) = 14. 24 per hour to meet our budgeting goal.
But wait, what if you get additional pay from something like disability, child support, retirement, etc.
If you get additional income from an outside source, then you will want to subtract that amount from your original monthly budget BEFORE dividing the total by 4 weeks.
For example, if I got $700 a month in disability, I would take our monthly budget of $2,278 - $700 (or your additional income) = $1,578
Then divide that by 4 weeks and repeat the steps previously stated.
$1,578 / 4 weeks = $394.50
$394.50 / 40 = $9.86 per hour.
You can see how that additional income drastically decreases the amount I would need to make per hour for the exact same number of hours worked. This is the key to opening up your horizons. You can play with these numbers and have them work for you in any combination.
Do two of you work? Well that decreases how much you need to make per hour, or how many hours a week you have to work.
That is why RVing works for so many people.
If you can decrease your budget, then you can decrease how many hours a week you will need to work to cover your monthly expenses. This gives you more free time and is the key to a happy RV life.
Did this budget break down help you?
How much do you budget for in your RV life?
I know some individuals who spend less than $1,000 a month on their RV travels, but that just isn’t us.
In the hiking world we would say Hike Your Own Hike, meaning do things your own way and do not try to imitate someone else. In the RV world I guess we could say, Drive Your Own RV or Stay in Your Own Lane.
These travels are about you and your family, no one else.
Sit down and think of what is important for y’all and what expenses come with that and build your own budget. Then find jobs that meet that budget. There are so many out there and knowing what the lowest you can go will help in the selection process.