Understanding Our Full-Timing Costs

Understanding Our Full-Timing Costs

An Overview Of Our Expenses

Over the years, since we went on the road as full-time RVers in August 2005, we have documented every penny we have spent.

We have organized those expenses and reported them each year on this website. Our goal has been to present our costs of living a moderate lifestyle on the road.

We view all of our expenses as either Basic Living Expenses, One-Time Expenses, or Business Expenses.

Basic Living Expenses are repetitive expenses and minor miscellaneous expenses incurred in the course of everyday living. These are the expenses that we feel every full-timer will have although the categories and amounts may vary depending on individual lifestyle choices.

One-Time Expenses are non-repetitive, large expenses we have incurred. Some we considered necessary to improve safety. Some we considered lifestyle improvement upgrades that were not necessities. Some were large expenses that were unplanned or unexpected. These are expenses that full-timers may or may not have depending on circumstances and lifestyle choices.

Business Expenses are expenses incurred in the course of generating business revenue to help sustain our full-timing lifestyle.

Note: One thing to keep in mind is that we have absolutely no debt and we don't use credit cards, so you won't see debt payments of any kind as you review our financials.

An Expense Summary (2005 - 2009)

In our four and a half years on the road, we've spent a total of $178,600. That comes out to an annual average of almost $40,000 per year. Yikes! Really?

Basic Living Expenses
Okay, $123,000, of that total has been for Basic Living Expenses. That comes out to a much more reasonable $28,000 a year on average for our 53 months on the road. A summary and line-by-line breakdown of Basic Living Expenses is shown on our 2005 - 2009 Full-time RVing Expense Averages page.

That page also breaks down our Basic Living Expenses by the months we workamp. It shows the difference in expenses between workamping months and non-workamping/travel months. We hope that provides additional useful information for those that don't intend to work on the road as well as those that do.

One-Time Expenses
So, what about the other $55,600? Well, that amount has been for those One-Time Expenses discussed above. I know that comes out to an additional $12,600 a year, but it's really not quite that bad. Almost $20,000 of that $55,600 ($19,845 to be exact) was for the 2007 purchase and outfitting of our 2003 Jeep Liberty.

With the $19,845 removed, now we are looking at $35,755 for our remaining One-Time Expenses. That comes out to $8,100 a year.

That's still a daunting figure, but the vast majority of those expenses have been discretionary and were made when the stock market was up and our cash situation was good. Had things not been so good in our first two and half years on the road, we wouldn't have spent nearly that much. :)

At any rate, you can see the breakdown of those expenses on our One-Time Expenses page. There, you can decide for yourself if those expenses are necessary or unnecessary and see if you need to consider them in your own budgeting.

Business Expenses
Our Business Expenses are shown on our annual Business Summary pages: 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009, . There you will see a total of $24,100 in expenses from 2006 - 2009. The majority of that $24,100 is NOT included in the $178,600 figure at the top of this section, and ALL of those expenses have been covered by our business revenue. However, there is some overlap of our Business Expenses with the other categories, and we've tried to explain that below.

Viewing The Details

For each year, we have created a web page detailing our expenses. Those pages look similar, but they have evolved over the years (hopefully for the better in more recent years). They include both the Basic Living Expenses and most, but not all, of the One-Time Expenses.

The 2005 Expenses page looks much different than later years. Also, since we started on the road in August of 2005, it shows only five months of expenses for the year. In addition, since we paid all of our insurance costs (as well as some other expenses) up front for 2005 BEFORE we went on the road, those expenses are not included in the spreadsheet. They are, however, noted in the footnotes on that page.

Both the 2005 Expenses page and 2006 Expenses page show One-Time Expenses lumped into the "Miscellaneous" category.

Starting with the 2007 Expenses page, we created a category called RV Upgrades/Budget Cushion for the One-Time Expenses. On the 2008 Expenses page and the 2009 Expenses page, we changed the name of the One-Time Expenses category to Emergencies/Budget Cushion.

Also, it was in 2008 when we started showing our total expenses with the One-Time Expenses included and with them excluded. Again, the One-Time Expenses are expenses we incurred that others may or may not incur, so we wanted to separate those out to make it easier to see our Basic Living Expenses.

So, while we want you to be able to see our expenses for each year on the individual pages, it may be more meaningful to look at the averages over the years on the 2005 - 2009 Full-time RVing Expense Averages page. That's a better picture of the Basic Living Expenses that most full-timers will have.

Note 1: Though our 2005 Expenses page doesn't show expenses in many of the categories (because we paid annual amounts before we started), the appropriate monthly amounts are figured into our 2005 - 2009 averages.

Note 2: Though we classify our satellite internet expense as a Business Expense, and it doesn't show up in our annual Basic Living Expense pages, we did include our internet costs in the 2005 - 2009 averages since most full-timers will have a similar expense.

Note 3: Though we mentioned above that some of our large One-Time Expenses were shown in the "Miscellaneous" category in the 2005 & 2006 Expense pages, we took those expenses out when figuring the 2005 - 2009 averages so that they are not double-counted in both Basic Living Expenses and One-Time Expenses. They are included in the One-Time Expenses as described below.

If you want to see our One-Time Expenses totaling over $55,000 in our first four and a half years on the road, go to the One-Time Expenses page. There you will find our large expenses that may or may not fit into your lifestyle.

Note: About $4,800 of expenses on the One-Time Expenses page are for Technology, Cameras, & Laptops. Those items, because of their use in our businesses, are Business Expenses and are shown on the annual Business Summary pages. However, we included them in the One-Time Expenses since they are representative of large costs other full-timers may have that don't have businesses.

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