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Impact of Fulltiming on my Marriage

     Today Lee and I are celebrating our 32nd wedding anniversary.  It is also the 6th anniversary we have had while on the road and I thought it might be a good time to stop and take stock of how this lifestyle has impacted our marriage.  Although I have touched on this issue many times, I have been hesitant to write a post solely dedicated to the subject.  Which is weird because it was one of my main concerns when going on the road. I understood instinctively that we were playing with live ammo when it came to that and that level of change would be significant, for good or ill.  

So why have I shied away from talking about it?  Well, it’s highly personal, for one thing and I didn’t want to open myself up to judgement.  Also everyone’s marriage is very different and I hesitated to draw conclusions in case they were misunderstood.  At this point though I feel confident that the folks who read this blog can make the distinction between my life and theirs.  And I am extremely lucky that my readers mostly keep their judgements to themselves 🙂  So draw whatever conclusions you wish to from this post and I will do my best to be as honest as I can stand. 

Those who have been reading for awhile know that I like to look at patterns and timelines, so let me go back to the beginning and see where that takes us.  My very first post about this subject was in Feb 2015 and it was creatively titled First Anniversary on the Road.  I wrote a nice summary of our life together and then wrote, “…if it wasn’t for Lee this wouldn’t be my life.  I would never have had the vision or the courage to completely turn things upside down and start this adventure.  He brings those things to our marriage and I am so incredibly grateful to him for it. Plus he can still kiss me in a way which makes me tingle which is a really good thing 🙂 And he makes me laugh…oh, how he makes me laugh…”

This was written during our first three months on the road and although there was lots of change and stress around that change, Lee and I were a bit giddy and more passionate in our relationship than we had been since we were kids.  I can’t speak to other people’s passion, but I can attest to numerous people I know getting very giddy from their newfound freedom right after they start full timing.  It is definitely a rush with lots of excitement and for us at least some of that emotion translated into passion.  It was also the first time in 25 years we had no children in the house which didn’t hurt either! 

Unfortunately for us those early feelings didn’t last and as more time passed in the lifestyle, that side of things calmed down.  In April I wrote a post called Changing Relationships that talked about what was happening in our marriage.  I wrote, “There are lots of reasons people start full-time RVing.  The desire for adventure, wanting to live with less rules, the need for simplicity in their life, there are a myriad of reasons.  But for me the absolute number one reason was a desire to strengthen my marriage….It has been hard on our relationship these last few months but it’s also been great for our relationship.  We are talking more to each other than we have since we were young together and trying to figure it all out.  We are challenging each other to be better. And most importantly we are loving each other more deeply.”  

Even that early on I recognized that something very important was happening.  I used the blog as a means of writing about those feelings and to help me understand what was happening.  Looking back I am pretty proud of how much time we spent on our marriage during this time period and how we kept it front and center during the transition.  This changed as I grappled with whether or not to quit my corporate job and I spent more time thinking about myself and the marriage took a back seat. I talked about these struggles in Changing the Way I Define Myself and Identity Crisis.  My work was a huge part of how I defined myself and giving that up had a huge impact that took me a few years to deal with. 

During this time period when we were trying different jobs and figuring out how to support our lifestyle working low level positions, I really struggled.  At times I would fall into the trap of blaming Lee for the path our lives had taken and would have to pull myself out of that mindset because I knew we had made the decisions together every step of the way.  In some ways it didn’t help that things were so uneven.  What I mean by that is some jobs were just fine and our time off was great, but when we had a miserable job it was miserable.  In those times, it was hard not to be resentful that I had left a perfectly good job and the benefits of the lifestyle didn’t always outweigh the challenges.  

One thing I realized pretty early on is I needed more in my life.  This caused some friction with Lee.  He was largely very content with our life and the jobs we had and didn’t understand why it wasn’t enough for me.  I knew I was hurting his feelings, which wasn’t my intent, but I was trying on a new suit of clothes and everything felt too tight.  I missed the respect and mental challenge that I experienced in my old job and needed some outlet for my creativity.  Lee has always been a person who finds ways to be creative in everything he does, but for me that ability came late in life and I sorely missed it.  To meet that need I became more involved in the blog (which eventually led to my book) and I started cooking more.  Lee often felt that those activities were ways to avoid being with him, but it really was about me trying to steady myself. 

And to be honest it was a tough transition to spend so much time together.  We went from both working long hours and my traveling to us working and living together all the time.  For both of us this was a transition, because the kids had been a buffer of sorts for many years and now it was just the two of us.  This is a pretty common phenomenon as people go through empty nest, but few people simultaneously are living together for the first time in a 400 square feet of rolling space. In retrospect I think it would have been good to work through some empty nest issues prior to going on the road, but at the time we thought the adventure would help us. 

And it did in some ways.  The constant change of scenery was a welcome distraction and we always did better when we were in new places, but you take who you are with you wherever you go and unless you are willing to constantly travel sooner or later you will be in a place long enough for those distractions to not be enough.   I want to be really clear here this was simply our experience and everyone is different.  For us though a new place was very much a shiny new toy and since we didn’t want to ruin the experience we often kicked our marriage issues down the road….literally. 

One of the reasons I was really struggling was for the first time in years I didn’t feel self-sufficient.  I wrote a post called Solo Strategy that summed up my dilemma if something should happen to Lee.  I wrote, ” Our lives are completely entangled in each other now, in a good way, but what I never really thought about was how vulnerable that would make me. I spent years working myself into a position of independence.  Not because I didn’t love Lee, but because I needed to know I could stand on my own two feet. Over the last three years I have intentionally given most of that away. ”  The combination of not making enough money to support myself and living in an environment that I couldn’t manage on my own really got to me.  I know I am certainly not the only person in the lifestyle to worry about this but I also know that this is not a problem for many people.  As hard as I tried I couldn’t think my way out of these feelings and my unhappiness was really impacting our marriage.  

In January 2019, after a particularly disappointing Work Kamping Job, I decided to seriously pursue consulting work.  Lee was willing to let me try anything that would   make me happy but there were several restrictions around the type of job I could take.  Those restrictions coupled with a “hole” in my resume made the task much more difficult than I thought it would be.  It didn’t help that we were gate guarding and I was working 4pm – 4am shifts and scheduling phone interviews when trucks were rolling by was not easy.  When I wrote our five year summary in January I mentioned our 30 year anniversary and stated, “It didn’t help that in the middle of all this we had our 30th anniversary and even though we luckily had a few days off work we didn’t do anything to celebrate it.  Milestones are important to me, but not so much for Lee, and generally we manage to find some middle ground on celebrating them.  This time though nothing we could do felt right and we ended up doing nothing which really bothered me.  I knew I was unhappy with the way things were going and it became obvious that Lee felt the same way.  I had been so focused on myself and my own feelings I didn’t see that he was also struggling.”

I didn’t really understand at the time how bad things had gotten, because I was really focusing almost solely on myself at that point. Things were not fine from Lee’s side of things, but it wasn’t until the anniversary that I really realized how bad things were.  Since we were going right back to working opposite gate guarding shifts until our break in April, I didn’t think there was much we could do about it and then in March, Lee had a heart attack .  This was a major catalyst event in our marriage for several reasons.  From my perspective some of my worst fears were finally realized and I was traumatized by the fact he had almost died in front of me when we were alone in a remote area.  He woke up knowing just how precious his life was and committed to no longer living in a way that did not make him happy.  

The next year was one of the toughest of our entire marriage.  We weren’t communicating, we both were dealing with individual PTSD and our attempts at counseling in Oregon did not go well.  The one positive event in this year was we became grandparents and that event did help remind us of why we were together.  In September,  I was finally able to get a corporate job and for me at least it was a major step in getting myself back together.  Our marriage though was in trouble, but oddly the thing that probably helped us was COVID.  For one thing it forced us to stay in one place for 7 months and since we were with friends we had to maintain a certain level of politeness with each other.  It also provided an opportunity for us to find a virtual therapist.  Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t easy, but I am not sure we would have gotten serious about therapy unless we were forced to stay in one place for such a long period of time.  

It’s worth noting that the therapy has progressed much slower than I expected.  Seeing people virtually has its challenges and it took awhile for her to really understand our lifestyle.  More importantly the damage that had been done on both sides was more severe than either of us realized and 32 years of stuff can take awhile to get through.  We are making progress though and now that some of the financial pressure is off I think we both feel a bit better.  Things will probably never be the same as they were before the heart attack though, and for both of us that’s a good thing. I often miss what we were, but as Lee reminds me I do tend to look back with rose colored glasses. 

You know I started this post by talking about how the lifestyle impacted our marriage and I have to say that I am not completely sure that things wouldn’t have worked out the same regardless of where we lived.  Certainly the lifestyle makes it harder to hide from each other, and for what it’s worth promotes a certain level of practical co-dependency.  For example, we have to talk when we are getting ready to move, or arriving somewhere, because mostly that’s a two person job. We have to sleep in the same bed, because we literally do not have anywhere else comfortable to sleep.  We have to be sensitive on how we are sharing space because there is so little of it.  

So I guess, yes, it has changed our path.  No way all those things couldn’t impact our marriage.  Long term how it will turn out, who knows?  I am past the hubris of believing our marriage can survive anything.  I will say it has survived a lot, and despite it all we still love each other.  More importantly we enjoy traveling together.  But for me at least it can’t just be about heading to the next shiny thing and I don’t think that is enough for Lee either. The core of who were are is independent of our lifestyle.  That’s what we need to mend. 

 

Supporting our Blog

We very much appreciate your support of our blog.

  • You can purchase the ebook telling the story of how we became full-time RVers.
  • You can purchase our recipe book filled with 80 recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. You can purchase the kindle or paperback version on Amazon or buy the Apple version on iTunes.

 

 

Supporting our Blog

We very much appreciate your support of our blog.

  • You can purchase the ebook telling the story of how we became full-time RVers.
  • You can purchase our recipe book filled with 80 recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. You can purchase the kindle or paperback version on Amazon or buy the Apple version on iTunes.
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January 2021 Budget

       Every January Lee and I sit down and we adjust our budget target numbers.  Generally we use trending data to make those decisions, but that was tougher this year because of COVID and our new way of traveling.  It was a good conversation though and Lee added several new categories because he wanted more data.  If you look at the picture below the new target numbers are in the middle column.  We went over by roughly $1,000 but these expenses were for the truck and new rims for two of the trailer tires.  Since those categories are based more on annual numbers, we are doing good so far!   Please see below for more information.

E- Cigarettes – I finally found a new solution for this and it should cost much less for the year.  I invested in two new dispensers and stocked up on juice locally, because I found a flavor I liked that is only made here.  Instead of spending roughly $5 a day on cartridges I will be filling my own and the juice is  $15 for two weeks.  

Groceries – I wanted to up our grocery budget but Lee wanted to leave it at $750.  We will see how that goes 🙂

Home Repair/Replace – Two new rims for our trailer wheels.  We have had non matching rims for quite some time and Lee finally found exact matches. 

Truck Maintenance – Oil Change and New Wipers 

As long as we are bringing more in than is going out I am good for 2021.  We keep putting a little bit back in savings every month which is great.  

Additional monthly data from Lee…

For December we used 429 GB of data on our AT&T unlimited plan, across all of our devices. (Total for the year is 429 GB, since it’s the first month!)

We took 836 pictures, mostly of Oliver!

This month we stayed in one place, and paid a monthly rate which worked out to $ 30.83 per day.

We didn’t move the rig at all this month, so we didn’t put any miles on the trailer. 

We put a 666.8 miles on the truck.

We burned a total of 49 gallons of diesel, and averaged 13.6 mpg. 

There’s no travel map for January, since we didn’t travel.

Supporting our Blog

We very much appreciate your support of our blog.

  • You can purchase the ebook telling the story of how we became full-time RVers.
  • You can purchase our recipe book filled with 80 recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. You can purchase the kindle or paperback version on Amazon or buy the Apple version on iTunes.
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Playgrounds Galore

One of the downsides of COVID for young first time parents is they face tough choices about socializing their kids.  Many of the normal things you would do are now riskier and thought needs to be put into whether or not to stay inside.  Our grandson is in that group of only children who have largely become mobile in a COVID world.  As a grandparent I really want to take him places and do things, but every choice is a conversation with his Mom and Dad about risk versus reward. That being said I think socialization is incredibly important at this age, so we have been able to take him a few places while we have been here.  Playgrounds seem to be something that works and for the indoor variety we go early in the morning and leave when it starts to get crowded.   It’s not perfect by any means but it has been fun for Oliver and allowed him to be in proximity to other kids his age.  

I wanted to share some of the pictures, because well he is a cutie patooty. These moments are not grand, sweeping nature vistas but they are just as precious to me. 

I finally got to go to Inslide Out…loved it

And I picked out his first build a bear

When he gave his new stuffed kitty a kiss…goodness full heart

Going by bye’s with grandma

he loved this really cool bell clanger

Lee sticks his tongue out like that 🙂

Swinging with grandma

When it got crowded we went and ran around in the baseball field

 

My beautiful daughter !

Finally we went to busy bee

This one is much larger and has a nice little restaurant

I’m ready to get in there !!

Grandpa is not a huge fan of taking his shoes off, but he will do it for Oliver

Oliver has no fear of the bigger play area which was fun. We got a work out following him

The individual play areas were really great.  Once again the grocery store was his favorite

Grandpa liked the movie theater

After all that hard work we were all hungry so left (again as soon as it got crowded) and went to an early lunch at Olive Garden.  It was Oliver’s first time and he did great!!

Took him a minute to appreciate the breadsticks

 

Supporting our Blog

We very much appreciate your support of our blog.

  • You can purchase the ebook telling the story of how we became full-time RVers.
  • You can purchase our recipe book filled with 80 recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. You can purchase the kindle or paperback version on Amazon or buy the Apple version on iTunes.
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An Unsettling Week

As a general rule I am not a huge fan of the first week of the New Year.  There is too much pressure on making resolutions, which I am not a huge fan of, and it’s also the time when people (news outlets) complete a retrospective on the closing year.  In general I am a person who likes to look forward, so I am not a big fan of that, and for 2020 in particular the retrospective is pretty depressing.  Personally I think Lee and I did the best we could with the information we had, and thankfully to the best of our knowledge we managed to avoid COVID.  This is no small feat considering how much travel we managed to squeeze in this year and some of that is due to luck, but it is also due to the extreme precautions we have taken. 

Maybe because of the year, or maybe not, we actually made a joint resolution this year.  We were watching a morning show and heard about picking one day a week as a “non-spend day”.  It sounded interesting and since our costs have been steadily going up we decided to give it a try.  We picked Monday, and its too early to tell if this will have any impact at all on our overall spending, but its an interesting experiment. 

I also committed to finding a cheaper solution for my e-cigarettes.  I was surprised to learn I spent more last year than both of us were spending previously on real cigarettes, and am attempting to switch from cartridges (which are expensive and sometimes difficult to find) to Vape juice. The added benefit of switching also adds “friction” to the system.  I listened to a really good NPR story about breaking habits and they have done scientific studies to show adding friction matters.  Their example was people whose gym is less than 3 miles away go 5 times a month, where people who have to travel 5 or more mile only go 1 time a month.  Essentially, people are kind of lazy, and if you make things harder they are less likely to do it.  I certainly resemble that remark, so having to fill a vape pod manually adds friction to the system, which will hopefully help me quit over time. 

All of those types of thing paled in comparison to the upcoming layoffs at my job.  One of the negatives of corporate work versus work-kamping is layoffs and restructuring are pretty common.  It was general knowledge that COVID was continuing to impact our business and right after the holidays is a pretty common time for changes to be made.  Normally in these circumstances I assess my position in my group (based on what my boss values) and I have a general idea of whether my number will come up depending on how deep the cuts go.  Unfortunately in my particular group there has been a ton of turmoil over the last several months and I really had no idea where I stood. 

In situations like this our lifestyle can really help us.  Having proven to ourselves we can live on far less money makes keeping my job less of an imperative than it would have been as a home owner, and we are truly mobile which means I can look for work anywhere.  The only downside is depending on who I am working for there may be a bias against all my travel.  Although I am getting better at explaining the lifestyle to my bosses, it takes time to prove to them that it really won’t impact my productivity.  As I often say, you shouldn’t notice anything other than a different view from my window, but that’s easier to say and takes some time to prove.  I am currently presenting the situation as a fact rather than an ask which has helped lower my stress rate quite a bit.  Since I was hired in with this understanding and we all work remote anyway to this point those conversations have gone well.  An unspoken bias against the travel could exist though, which might put me higher on a list of people to lay off.  I really have no way of knowing.

So that was my situation on Weds, when word started trickling in that people in my group were being let go.  After a few tense hours it became clear that the management team were the only people directly impacted and I called Lee to let him know.  His response was “have you turned on the television?” and that’s how I found out about the people being in the capital building.  Normally we don’t have TV in places we are staying, so I never have it on, and I was shocked when I saw the images.  I have to say at that point my brain just sort of shut down.  I have very strong feelings about what happened in the Capital, but I was also talking to people I cared about who had suddenly found themselves out of a job.  Since there wasn’t anything I could do about DC I focused on the people closest to me, and it took a couple of days for what happened in DC to really sink in. 

As someone who for the first time in her life participated in a peaceful protest this year, I was horrified by what I saw.  I will also say that when we marched to the Supreme Court building we couldn’t get anywhere close to the doors and we were largely a group of middle aged women.  That being said, there was no way the police could have kept us out if we really wanted to because there were so many of us and few of them.  What stopped us?  Patriotism.   

This is what it looked like when we approached the Supreme Court.  They wouldn’t let us anywhere close.

 

We certainly had enough people to push through this barrier.  Instead we peacefully protested outside it.

 

Contrast with this scene from last Weds (picture from Vox new site)

 

I am going to leave it at that.  I am grateful I still have a job.  I am saddened and disgusted by what I saw on Wednesday, and I fervently hope that 2021 is better than 2020 for all of us.  

 

Supporting our Blog

We very much appreciate your support of our blog.

  • You can purchase the ebook telling the story of how we became full-time RVers.
  • You can purchase our recipe book filled with 80 recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. You can purchase the kindle or paperback version on Amazon or buy the Apple version on iTunes.
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2020 Annual Budget

2020 was an unusual year.  Not only because of COVID but also because this was the first full year since 2015 that I had a corporate income.  Both of these factors impacted our spending, but overall I was somewhat surprised at how little the costs varied.  There were some big changes of course, but it wasn’t as stark a contrast as I thought it would be.  Before diving into 2020 in detail I wanted to show the comparison between the years. 

I think the most interesting fact is the averages.  When looking at trends, when we made more we spent more, and when we traveled more we spent more, but the averages take all that into account.  The six year view is not perfect, btw, as not all expenses are included in the main categories.   An example of an expense left off was when I paid for my daughter’s wedding for example, but the basic costs are all included.  In my opinion, that makes the $4,058 average monthly costs figure pretty accurate.  You can certainly use that figure as a base cost if you live frugally and do some volunteer/work kamping along the way.  If you would like to see detailed posts for previous years you can access that on our Budget page here. 

Below is a summary of this year, with some high level details.  As always we will be adjusting our budget going forward using past data. 

 

Campground Fees – This year we spent an all time high, $6,266 in campground fees.  This is actually pretty similar to what we spent the first year when we did minimal work-kamping.  It is definitely a concern though because we spent this in 6 months.

Groceries – This year we hit an all time high of $10,521 in groceries.  This was absolutely influenced by COVID as we stocked up on groceries several times when there were empty shelves.  We also paid what we had to for a variety of items we wouldn’t normally buy (ie: sanitizer, disinfecting wipes).

Gifts – This year there was a huge spike in this category, mainly because of my new grandson.  I expect another big year in 2021 because I am having another grandbaby.  Obviously this is completely discretionary (as you can see from prior years ). 

Healthcare – If you are seeing a difference between the 2020 totals here and in the year over year comparisons this is a big reason why.  Generally I do not include healthcare expenses in the basic categories because it varies so much from person to person.  I did include additional healthcare expenses in our budget this year though, because those costs have gone up for us as we have gotten older. 

Home Improvement – We have seen a stark uptick in the costs we spend on home improvement over the last two years.  Part of this was  voluntary improvements, but the other factor was things starting breaking at the 5 year mark and they keep breaking.  I will be interested to see if the bulk of the items have been taken care of at this point or the trend will continue. 

Tolls and Parking – This is another item that is absolutely an anomaly. Because there is very little of that in prior years this total of $1039 is also not included in the year over year comparison.

Truck Fuel – This figure was also absolutely impacted by COVID.  We did VERY little travel the first half of the year and it shows in the all time low spend of $3616.  

So that’s the main information.  I have included a more detailed view including Min, Max, and Averages for the year. 

 

For those of you who made it this far, I hope this was helpful.   Will be interesting to see what happens in 2021!

 

 

Supporting our Blog

We very much appreciate your support of our blog.

  • You can purchase the ebook telling the story of how we became full-time RVers.
  • You can purchase our recipe book filled with 80 recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. You can purchase the kindle or paperback version on Amazon or buy the Apple version on iTunes.
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Christmas with an 18 month old…it doesn’t get any better than this!

Despite the crazy year and all its challenges all I really wanted was to have Christmas with my Grandson.  18 months is a magical age and the day went beautifully.  The key, by the way, with kids this age is to let them go at their own pace and to not get caught up in any one particular thing.  Plus naps…a long nap is essential for a happy day 🙂

Since my son-in-law was working Christmas Eve we went over and helped Kyrston put some presents together.  I have been wrapping presents for a long time, but even I was challenged by the trampoline.  It turned out OK though!

 

 

The next day we went to Kyrston’s house at noon and started a Zoom clal with the other kids at 1pm.  It was amazing for us all to be together in some small way even more because my second daughter Kat (in Minneapolis) officially announced she was pregnant!!!  All her tests look great and she had passed the 12 week mark which was a wonderful Christmas present in and of itself. 

Jeremy, Oliver, and Kyrston in matching Christmas PJ’s…so cute

 

All Oliver really wanted was the phone in Lee’s pocket

 

Setting up the zoom call

 

Our daughter Kay calling in from Connecticut.

 

Opening presents

 

While the family watched

 

Here’s a screen shot of us from their view

 

The trampoline from Aunt Kat and Uncle Adrian was a big hit

 

And this giant present was from Grandma and Grandpa

 

Hooray a Fisher Price Food Truck!!!

 

Jeremy bought him this cool bike

 

Which he immediately climbed up on 🙂

 

But the best present was the large slide!

 

 

After presents we had a fantastic meal of Prime Rib and tons of side dishes.  It was a lovely Christmas and we feel so blessed to get to spend it with Kyrston, Jeremy, and

Oliver.

 

 

 

 

After we came home that night Jack bone. He was in dog heaven and yes, we kept a close eye out to make sure no splinters.

 

Supporting our Blog

We very much appreciate your support of our blog.

  • You can purchase the ebook telling the story of how we became full-time RVers.
  • You can purchase our recipe book filled with 80 recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. You can purchase the kindle or paperback version on Amazon or buy the Apple version on iTunes.
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First Time at South Carolina Aquarium

I love aquariums, and since Kyrston has a year long membership to the South Carolina Aquarium  I was excited about the chance to take Oliver there.  It’s not that I don’t remember the challenges of taking a toddler places, but that’s what Grandmas are good for and I was excited to see how it went.  

It was a drizzly day when we pulled up but at least it wasn’t raining

The aquarium is on the small side, but plenty to explore for a little guy, so off we went.  I definitely got my steps in keeping up with him, but it was a ton of fun, so let me just share the pictures. 

He really liked the huge aquarium

And the little ones too

I liked this bald eagle…we could get really close

 

There were a couple of outside areas

 

 

The inside was on the small side, but lots of areas for Oliver to run along.  He’s tough to catch, but between the two of us we managed (barely) to keep up.

 

Woah…big teeth!

 

Oliver loved the jelly fish

 

And the giant turtle statues

 

But wasn’t crazy about the area where we could touch a fish.  He liked the water just fine, the manta ray not so much. 

Washing our hands

My biggest disappointment was how small the little kids area was.  They could double this easily for the smaller kids.  There was a nice section along one wall though with bubble lights that worked on a motion sensor. 

Actually my favorite part was the giftshop.  I have been waiting to buy him his first present and ultimately we settled on a drink cup and a book with an orca finger puppet in it.  Decisions…decisions. 

We had a great time!!

 

Supporting our Blog

We very much appreciate your support of our blog.

  • You can purchase the ebook telling the story of how we became full-time RVers.
  • You can purchase our recipe book filled with 80 recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. You can purchase the kindle or paperback version on Amazon or buy the Apple version on iTunes.
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December 2020 Budget

December wasn’t so bad, especially considering Christmas.  We spent $6,731 this month with extremely high gift, campground fee, and grocery categories.  One thing I wanted to mention is Lee and I were watching a morning TV show and we saw this idea to make one day a week a completely non-spending day.  We are going to give that a try on Mondays and see if it makes any difference at all in our spending habits.  I also wanted to mention that it is time for my annual budget review.  Hopefully I will have that out soon.  More details for the month of December are below.



Campground Fees – This was one of our highest months ever because of the place we are staying.  It is super close to our daughter and we really like it, but you have to stay at $400 a week (yes per week) until they have a monthly slot open up.  Thankfully it was just one week for us but then we paid the $960 monthly rate in advance, hence the high price in December. 

Clothing – I splurged and got some work shirts this month, taking advantage of the numerous sales.  Thrift stores are great for jeans and more casual wear but I am finding it necessary to buy new clothing for work.

Dining Out – We went over budget by $315.  Part of that was eating out when we were at my sisters, and part was with Kyrston.

Gifts – We spent around $1100.  This included the calendars we gave to friends and family and money and presents for our core family.

Groceries – I am convinced that this category is going up because of the Keurig coffee maker.  Lee said he would start tracking coffee separately so maybe he can give some insight here. Nothing else really stands out.  Again will be working on our annual review so look for that soon.  

Additional monthly data from Lee…

For December we used 557 GB of data on our AT&T unlimited plan, across all of our devices. (Total for the year is 40.154 terrabytes)

We took 553 pictures, bringing our total for the year to 17,240.

This month we only stayed in three locations. The least expensive was the NC state fairgrounds at $30 per night. Our favorite was Ebenezer Park, and it’s only $34 per night for nice big sites with full hookups. The most expensive was Oak Plantation in Charleston, SC at $ 57.98 per night. But those are also huge sites, and it’s a beautiful RV park with lots of massive live oak trees and moss hanging from the limbs. Part of the reason for the price is that they do not reserve monthly sites until you arrive, and so we had to pay the regular weekly rate for the first week. The price goes down considerably when you are monthly. We also had one night where we had already paid for Ebenezer Park but decided to leave a day early and so we ended up also paying for the first night at Oak Plantation. And there was one night where we had a reservation at two different locations in Charleston and had to pay for one night at the location we chose not to go to because I didn’t want to risk arriving in Charleston and having nowhere to go. It was worth the extra expense for peace of mind. The total cost for our “rent” was $1205, which averaged out to $38.87, a little less than last month.

We put a total of only 379 miles on the trailer, pulling it for only two days the entire month. Our shortest travel day was 185 miles, and our longest was 193 miles. Our total travel miles year to date is 6,019.

We put a total (travel and non-travel) of 1,254 miles on the truck, 875 of those miles were without the trailer.

Year to date we’ve put 14,163 miles on the truck , 6,019 of which was pulling the trailer.

We burned a total of 101 gallons of diesel, and averaged 12.3 mpg for all of our travel, with a year to date total of 1,407 gallons at 11.9 avg mpg.

We only used the TSD Logistics card once this month. 

Here’s the breakdown of our visit to truck stops using the TSD card. The “street” price is the price on the pump, and the actual price is what we ended up paying, including the fees.

 

DATE Location Gallons Actual PG Street Actual  Savings  % Saved
12/5/2020   34.64 2.17 95.58 75.13 20.45 21.40

We LOVE using the card. If you haven’t already read about the TSD Logistics card, you can read our post about it here.

Here’s the December travel map:


And the map for the full year of travel. One giant circle!

Oliver says Happy New Year!!!

 

Supporting our Blog

We very much appreciate your support of our blog.

  • You can purchase the ebook telling the story of how we became full-time RVers.
  • You can purchase our recipe book filled with 80 recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. You can purchase the kindle or paperback version on Amazon or buy the Apple version on iTunes.
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Playing with Ollie

Over the next week we got to spend lots of time with Oliver.  I had a three day work event that kept me pretty busy, but Lee and Kyrston went one of those days to an indoor play area called InSlide Out.  Kyrston did a ton of research about COVID protections before agreeing to go and they arrived close to when it opened to be extra safe.  Turned out that was a non issue because they had lots of employees sanitizing throughout the visit and at $8 per kid (adults are free) it was a great bargain.  Lee loved playing with his grandson especially in the little kid area.

 

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Huge “sand” pit

 

 

Oliver’s favorite was putting the balls in these tubes…he did it for a long time

 

Grocery store play area

 

And veterinarian

 

Loved this sign

 

And this one even better

I can’t wait until it’s my turn to go.  Thankfully I went on vacation and was able to meet Kyrston at Chili’s for lunch.  It was my first Grandma lunch and he did a terrific job.

 

First tortilla chip

 

Trying some chicken enchilada soup…not a fan

 

Playing/eating crayons 🙂

 

But he did like his bite of molten lava cake. Kyrston only allowed one bite because nap time was coming up…she’s no fun 🙂

 

 

This picture says it all

 

Oliver even came over to the RV after we were done but this was a little challenging.  We are definitely not baby proofed, but he had a good time anyways.  Probably at this age being at his house is better though.

 

He loved the fan

 

And the remote

 

But being with Grandpa was the best

Finally we went to the restaurant Kyrston works at…Acme Low Country Kitchen on Isle of Palms.  We got to meet her boss and her co workers and I thanked her boss for the strong COVID precautions they have put in place.

Loved the sign

 

Kyrston and her Papa

 

Fried green tomatoes

 

Lee’s wedge salad

 

And my yummy platter with a crab cake, scallops, and local shrimp!

 

Supporting our Blog

We very much appreciate your support of our blog.

  • You can purchase the ebook telling the story of how we became full-time RVers.
  • You can purchase our recipe book filled with 80 recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. You can purchase the kindle or paperback version on Amazon or buy the Apple version on iTunes.
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Finally Seeing Oliver and the Beach!

After so many months of waiting and cancelled plans to see him we were finally going to see Oliver.  We ended up leaving Rock Hill on Saturday so we were going to have an extra day with him.  I had waited and waited and finally the day had come but I was worried he wouldn’t recognize me.  I was also worried about how Jack would react but that was for another day because we decided to leave him at home for the first visit. Since he was born I have been singing this little silly song every time we Facetime and my plan was to sing it when he saw me in person in the hopes he would recognize me.  I was however fully prepared for him to be shy though, because he hadn’t seen me in person since he was a tiny baby.  Turns out he was initially shy when we walked in the door but when I started singing the song he completely lit up.  Within a few minutes he was in my arms and all was right with the world.  That may sound a bit melodramatic, but all you grandmas out there know what I mean.

 

 

My daughter was thrilled to see us too, especially because we came bearing gifts.  Over the past several months I have scoured thrift stores for good deals on clothes and my sister sent two bags as well.  We filled her living room with clothes sized all the way up until age 5 so over the next few years she will only need to supplement.  That felt great!

 

The next day we brought Jack over and thankfully that all went well.  Jack isn’t fond of little kids, but he is also super jealous so he was more than happy to share my lap with Oliver.  Since it was a beautiful sunny day we decided to head to the beach so we piled three adults and two dogs into Kyrston’s car.

 

 

Unfortunately right before we hit the beach we ran into a fog bank.  It was beautifully sunny until 5 miles away, but then it was like being in a cloud.  We were committed though and Oliver didn’t seem to mind at all especially because Kyrston thought ahead and brought warm clothes for him.  I will say that the adults were a bit outnumbered with dogs and baby running around, but it was a fantastic time.  Lee had been wanting to do this for months and I was so glad we all got to be there together. 

 

Grandpa getting him ready

 

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Finn hasn’t been to the beach since Oliver was born and had a great time

 

He will get in the water but Jack is a chicken

 

Jack did photo bomb us though

 

 

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Love this picture

 

 

 

Lee’s pic

 

Amazing day with Grandpa

Supporting our Blog

We very much appreciate your support of our blog.

  • You can purchase the ebook telling the story of how we became full-time RVers.
  • You can purchase our recipe book filled with 80 recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. You can purchase the kindle or paperback version on Amazon or buy the Apple version on iTunes.