The ACTUAL Cost of Full Time RV Living (What Does RV Life Cost in 2024?) 

Never said it was cheap, but it is worth it for the experiences for us. Our overall budget is similar to what we spent when living in a sticks and bricks, but now we spend more on fuel and travel

We are full time RVers living on SS, and a couple small pensions for about 1/3 of what it used to cost us to live in our old S&B home. Our homeowner's insurance and property taxes alone on our old home cost us more than we now spend on housing (campground and RV park fees) in 3 years! Our older coach and toad are paid for, and we are debt free, which helps a lot. By buying an older, one owner coach with extensive maintenance records we got a very reliable RV that hasn't seen the inside of a repair shop in the last 5 years. We only paid 15% of what this coach sold for new, letting the original owner suffer all the depreciation. We have no mortgage, utility bills, property taxes, homeowner's insurance, landscaping, garbage bills, cable bills, etc. We boondock most of the time, living almost entirely rent free on BLM and Forest Service land. We sometimes spend $180 for a 7 month permit to winter over at the LTVAs surrounding Quartzsite, AZ/Imperial Dam, Ca. For only 86 cents/day you get not only a safe, warm place to stay the winter, but unlimited water, dump and trash disposal too. You don't need a "tax home" but you do need a legal domicile state. This is where your vehicles are registered and insured, your driver's license is issued from, your bank is at, etc. The nice thing is if you currently reside in a high tax state you can move your legal domicile to a low tax state and enjoy the tax benefits thereof. If you research Escapees, establishing a domicile, they tell you everything you need to know to do it right. We boondocked for 8 months straight last year and will do so even more in the future as we just installed a huge solar system that allows us to be totally electrically independent. We lived FT off of only 620 watts of solar for 5 years, but we now have over 5,000 watts of solar and 23.5 kwh of batteries which provides 24/7 air conditioning and heat and lets us use our appliances just like we are plugged into a power pole at an RV park. This system wasn't cheap to build (around $10k) but now that it is installed, we have eliminated our electricity costs for the rest of our lives and greatly expanded the places and seasons we can live too. We usually boondock all over the western US, but we're in NC now visiting family where boondocking places are hard to find. So we found a nice RV park that is letting us camp in one of their spacious no-hookup sites for only $100/month. We dump our tanks and take on fresh water every 2 weeks at the dump station, just like when we are boondocking in the wilderness. When you have a large solar system, you have lots of options on how you choose to live. Fuel and food are our two biggest expenses, and both are controllable. If we find we are running low on funds we just eat out and travel less. But we never feel deprived. We live frugally most of the time so when the mood strikes us, we can go out and eat at an expensive restaurant, and not have it impact our budget. We travel a lot, so typically burn around $3,000-$3,500 worth of fuel for both coach and toad and eat $6,000-$7,000 of food in a year, though both could be reduced by 25-30% without much hardship, simply by traveling and eating out less. Propane cost us about $400 last year but should be under $300 this year since most of our heat is now provided by our solar/battery powered mini-split heat pump. Our insurance for both car and coach is right at $1,000 a year, plus another $109/yr. for our Escapee Roadside Assistance plan. Registration for both car and coach costs $80 every 2 years in our domicile state. Our FMCA unlimited AT&T wifi is $65/mo. plus whatever Netflix charges these days. We stream free TV from Roku, and our cell phone is only $27/mo.. Our mail forwarding service is $120/yr + postage. Laundry is about $300/yr. We do all our repairs, maintenance and upgrades ourselves to keep the price down. That said, repairs and maintenance average around $1,600-$1,700 a year on both our 1999 National Tropical Class A motorhome and 2006 Chevy Cobalt SS toad. We simply budget for routine maintenance items like tires. We purchased 8 new ones for our coach last year. We plan on doing so every 8 years as they age out before they wear out, so we put $300 a year into our tire fund so there's money there when we need it. Our healthcare is covered by a Medicare Advantage PPO plan (so we can see plan doctors around the country if needed) that is not only free but gives us back $130/mo. from what Medicare part B over charges us in addition to many other benefits. Our total FT budget is around $33k, but our actual expenses run around $29k-$30k out of $44k in income, allowing us an adequate emergency fund without dipping into savings.

@@SuperSushidog That is great! Thanks for sharing

@@SuperSushidog thanks for the great post!

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