We had one of our best months ever with costs of only $2380.44 and revenue of $3500, resulting in a net cash flow of $1119.56. For details on the individual categories please see below. 

Campground Fees –  $0 because we are work kamping. 

Groceries – We spent a little more than last month, mainly because I was pushing to finish some recipes to get the recipe book completed. Still under budget month  spending $558 or $42 less than budget.  I did spend a little on alcohol this month but that was all types of wine for cooking. (Suuuuuure. – Lee)

Dining Out – We spent the bulk of this on our anniversary dinner, but then we did really well and didn’t eat out at fast food places (except I had Burger King once) which kept us under budget by $46.

Entertainment –  No days off and not much to do around here, so we only spent $65.63.  That was going to the movies and Lee bought a video game online. (After owning and playing Call of Duty since 2003 (!!!) for some reason when I sat down to play it once again in all the down time, it wouldn’t run at all. So I bought it again. I figured since I have enjoyed it for hundreds and hundreds 0f hours, they were entitled to another $19.99 – Lee)

Cell/Internet – We went over by 3 Gig or $45 extra in January, which we ended up paying in February.  We have now signed up on AT&T unlimited plan and our new bill should be substantially less, which we are VERY excited about.  Since this is one of our highest budget items, that reduction in spending is going to be significant.  

Memberships – We paid for another year of Work Kamper News , which we use all the time to find jobs and is a no-brainer for us.  We also renewed our Xscapers membership for one more year.   Aside from our one trip to the Rose Bowl, we haven’t gotten much benefit from this membership.  This year I am committed to really finding out if this has value for us.  I want to check out their Job Board and see what’s on there, because that could definitely be helpful. 

Truck Fuel –  We spent $125 which was well under budget.  We made the trip into San Antonio and then Lee made a few more trips to nearby towns and one other trip to San Antonio as well. 

Insurance – Our truck insurance went up $20 a month to $153. Since I really like Nationwide and they covered us with no issue when we had accidental fuel contamination I am really hesitant to leave them, but I hope these $20 a year changes are not going to be the norm.  We didn’t owe RV insurance this month because we paid last month when they had a billing error.  

Home Furnishings – I have nothing in the budget for this category since the changes Lee made to the desk are a business expense.  From a cash flow perspective the materials costs around $150.  I am not planning on skipping business items always (Work Kamper membership is one for example), but in this case I did decide to leave it out since it is directly related to Lee’s editing.  Like I said, I don’t do that often and when I do I will try and mention it. 

So it was another good month.  Lee was able to move $700 into our operating income savings account, which was really nice.

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I’m pretty excited about seeing where we finished up in Year Two, and I will be comparing each category to Year One as we go along along with some fancy charts and graphs. (Happy Birthday Bill!!)  One of the things we tried in Year 2 was to have more categories and this was with mixed results.  We did a pretty lousy job of delineating costs in some categories (groceries expendables versus consumables comes to mind) and in others it’s so subjective what category we place things in,  I am not sure it really provides any value.  Lee and I will be reviewing the categories right after this post is done and you will start seeing the changes in January.  Since we now have 24 data points, we will hopefully be more confident in adjustments to our budget numbers.  In some cases we pick a number and even if we go over consistently we stick with it to try to hold ourselves accountable, but in other categories it becomes clear over time that adjustments are called for.  Then there are the standard cost of living increases (such as higher insurance rates) and those we adjust as the rates increase. 

So how did we do? We were amazingly close in our Actuals versus Budget with a deficit of only $1076!!!  Some individual categories have large variances, but the totals worked out nicely.  We actually spent a little bit more this year than last year with $51,927 in expenses versus $49,410 last year, but before you get concerned about the fact that we spent more this year than last year, keep in mind Alaska.   That trip obviously had a pretty dramatic impact on this years numbers. (And obviously we spent way more than the $2500 difference between the two years while we were in AK, so that shows that this year’s “actual” numbers were really much better than last year. I credit me, naturally. – Lee)

Fair warning for those of you who find all the detail a little boring, you probably want to stop here.  I’ll been promising Lee a trend analysis once I got enough data points, so the rest of this post is going to go into some very specific detail.  That was harder than it sounds, mainly because we changed categories after last year so in order to complete a year over year comparison I had to do some consolidation.  Thus it’s not a perfect year over year comparison, but certainly close enough for our purposes.  I know Bill will enjoy it, but many people might find it a little boring.  No worries if you fall into that category, I promise it won’t hurt my feelings. (This one’s for you, Bill. – Lee)

For those still with me, let’s start with a picture of the detailed break down for this year.

And a chart showing year over year comparison.  Again keep in mind it’s not perfect because I had to combine some categories.

Plus the Averages, Monthly Maximum and Monthly Minimum over the two year period, keeping in mind I had to combine some categories to try and make an apples to apples comparison.

Finally a pie graph with the 2015/2016  totals for larger expenditures. I didn’t include health insurance, because I had corporate insurance all of 2015 and part of 2016. (A pie chart! We’re such nerds! – Lee)

Still with me?  Alright let’s talk about each category in order of 2016 spend amount.

Groceries – We were over budget in 2015 and saw minimal improvement in 2016 despite increasing our focus.  We like food and I like cooking meals.  The only time we ever see a reduction in a month is when we eat out more than we should, which obviously is not a great way to get a budget category under control.  $8,250 in food costs is rough, but so far we are  unwilling to make the changes we would need to make to get these costs lower. At least we are consistent, lol. (And I think our waistlines clearly show a visual representation of our dedication to this. – Lee) Our two year average was $687  with a high of $1078 and a low of $367.  The extremes were caused by being in areas with high food costs (Alaska and Glacier were the worst) but even taking that into account on average we are almost $100 over budget per month. Obviously this is more than two people need to eat every month and where we struggle is that more than any other budget area when we cut back we feel “poor.” That’s a tough mental obstacle for us to overcome and the budget numbers show it. 

Truck Fuel – Not surprisingly we went up in this category with $6250 in spend this year.   Considering we spent at least $1500 in gas  to get to Alaska and back, and more gas than usual while we were there, it wasn’t so bad.  I also didn’t have a company car, like I did in most of 2015, so we used the truck for all our traveling.  If you take those factors out of the equation we actually did better than last year, partly due to the extremely low fuel costs in 2016.  Our average was $456 which is only $50 over budget and I think we did great coming so close if you consider all the miles we traveled in the last two years.   

Cell/Internet/TV – We spent more than $5200 in this category so it deserves some explanation.  We took advantage of a double data deal back when we first started and we have 80 gig of data.  This data level might seem high, but it is for our internet use and our TV solution. Some of that money is tax deductible because we use it for our businesses, but it’s still a chunk of money.  We also have a separate Verizon phone (I used my company phone for most of 2015) with a tiny little data plan which we use when we don’t have ATT coverage.  Since we rarely go without ATT coverage I did look and see if adding a second line to ATT and ditching the Verizon coverage might help, but it doesn’t seem that much cheaper. We have had numerous discussions about going with a cheaper, less reliable option, but that’s a tough sell for us.  I continue to hold out hope that pressure from the Milennial generation ultimately results in reasonably priced data for mobile workers.  In the meantime we are sticking with the devil we know.  

RV Loan Payments – We knew when we chose to sell our house for less than it was worth we would have an RV payment adding up to $4847 a year. Two years later I still don’t regret that decision at all, since the housing situation in Keene is no different now than it was then.  They actually went through this year and lowered the housing values for tax purposes so if we had held out for perceived equity we might still be sitting there.  $404 a month (interest tax deductible) is a small price to pay. 

Health Insurance – Our costs in 2016 ran roughly $4228 and that’s about what we think they will run in 2017. It’s an estimate though because we really don’t know what we will make this year.  Costs may come in higher or lower.  Despite the cost, this is not an area I am willing to experiment with at this time. Plus I am overdue for a mammogram, pap smear, and colonoscopy, so if I find a way to get those tests done in 2017 the annual cost will more than make up for that. The biggest challenge for us will be finding a place where we can get all that done. 

Home Improvement – Despite intense focus on this category we ended up almost the same at $3714.  Tracking these costs in more detail did help though, because we definitely spent more this year on necessary purchases than supplemental.  We had several unexpected repairs and those coupled with one time expenses to get setup for long-term boondocking in Quartzsite accounted for $2211 in spend.  Two years in I don’t see this category ever going down much (although Lee continues to be hopeful), we ended 2016 with a repair and started 2017 with another and we had some sort of repair almost every month in 2016.  At this point it seems to be a natural cost of the lifestyle.  Our monthly average is $311 which is close to $100 more than we want to spend a month.  As you can see from the $942 maximum though that one or two major repairs can really blow the yearly average, regardless of how well you do the other months.  

Dining Out – I don’t know that dividing this into two categories ended up making that much of a difference.  We spent $281 more in 2016 than in 2015 for a total of $3251 and since our budget was only $1800 we went over by $1450. That’s just not OK and it’s definitely residual from our old life.  I love to eat in local places for the experience and Lee loves to eat well. (You don’t get a physique like mine from diet and exercise, baby. – Lee) That combination does not serve us well. If it was just Lee he probably wouldn’t go and if it was just me I could get by on water and an appetizer.  Honestly I don’t know how to solve the problem other than just stop going, but that makes me sad because part of exploring a new place is sampling the local restaurants. We do need to figure this one out though, because $1,500 is not an insignificant amount of money in this lifestyle.  Our average is $259 around $100 over budget (I am seeing a pattern here) and we stay pretty consistent here month over month with the occasional highs and lows.  In this case though the average absolutely reflects our normal monthly spend. 

Truck/RV Insurance and Registration – Combined these totaled $2769 and the truck insurance at least has been well worth it.  We got a windshield replaced and of course had a brand new truck engine in 2015.  We have never used our RV insurance, but at this point are not willing to give it up. It is essentially our homeowners insurance and covers our RV and the stuff in it.  Since almost all of our worldly possession are in this rig, that’s a big deal.  Also after having seen pictures of two rigs that burnt to the ground last year, this is not something we personally are willing to go without.

Campground Fees –  We only spent $2,633 this year which was a huge improvement from last year.  We have been under budget in this category for both years and it has been a huge budget saver.  Partly this is because of work kamping, but also it is because we invested in solar and a generator and can boondock.  We could do even better in this category, but we tend to choose expediency over cost when we are traveling. The most we ever spent was $778 and those high costs were all when we first started.  This is one area where we have seen a nice downward trend over time, which is encouraging. 

Truck Maintenance – We got whacked in this category, despite having two excellent warranties, spending $1755 on new tires and an alignment.  Both of those purchases were absolutely necessary because of our Alaska trip, but it definitely wasn’t something either of us originally expected.  I had hoped this category would “normalize” in 2017, but as I was writing this post we took our truck in for it’s 60K maintenance and were told both front tires needed to be replaced. The quote for that along with the alignment is $555.  This category like RV maintenance appears to be the cost of doing living the RV lifestyle. This is another category where a few high ticket expenses can really impact your annual budget.

Entertainment – We did great in this category spending $1,736 and ending up $64 under budget for the year and $289 less than 2015.  It’s particularly impressive because it not only includes outings but also music and book purchases.  We stayed on budget by focusing on Activities under $10 . We did splurge occasionally but generally every month we are under budget in this category.  That shows a real shift in focus versus our old lives and I wish we could emulate this trend in other categories.  This was probably our most consistent category with the two year average at $146 right below our monthly targets.  We had a couple of high months but those were offset by very low months and it worked out very well in the end. 

Clothing – We focused on this category and actually did pretty well in it considering we had to buy clothes for the beet harvest.  We spent $1305 for the year and this includes T-Shirts (which shows remarkable restraint for us) and normal replacement clothes.  We were within $100 of our budget which is something we can live with.  

Cigarettes – At $1260 for the year we were both under budget and under last years costs.  Lee has taken the state by state cost variation out of the equation by buying in bulk through the mail.  This was something that was not available in 2015, and really helped us keep those costs normal during our time in Alaska.  We actually took in enough tobacco to last for two months and then received the rest that we needed in the mail.  This was a major budget saver as tobacco (like everything else) was extremely expensive in Alaska.   And yes, obviously this is an optional cost, but as compared to the $6700 a year we were spending a year in our old lives this is a huge improvement.  

 Shipping/Postage/Mail Service – Despite intense focus this year we were actually a little over last years number at $815.  Most of this though can be attributed once again to Alaska.  We shipped some presents home, which are in the category and got whacked a couple of times with very high shipping fees to get our mail to us.  Lee continues to make this a priority though and if you take Alaska out of it, I definitely think we are seeing improvement.  

Memberships –  Spending over $700 a year in this category may seem steep, but we have the America the Beautiful Pass, Escapees Membership, Passport America, Costco, Work Kamper News,  and an American Express Gold Card.  We have done the cost analysis on all of them and they all saved us more money than they cost or provide sufficient value that we retain them. We continue to evaluate these every year though. The credit card in particular we have discussed changing, and could probably do better with multiple cards used based on what pays the most points, but we really like the company and their fraud protection.

Gifts – In more than any category we saw YOY improvement with only $669 in 2016 purchases versus $1066 in 2015.  Essentially I adjusted my gift giving to match our income. I really thought it would have been harder to make this adjustment emotionally, but it turned out it was pretty easy. Plus the fact that almost everyone I know makes more than me at this point really helped 🙂

Storage – We reduced our spend in this category to $540 this year by asking the kids to pay their share.  We both really want to go back and clean this storage area out, but New Hampshire is in the opposite direction where we want to be so this is easier said than done.  Also I think its worth mentioning that although I can’t remember much about what is in there, a few items do stick out and we want to hang onto those.  Lee’s parents offered storage space in their basement and we will definitely take them up on that for the remaining items. 

Personal Care – We also saw great YOY improvement in this category spending $448 which was $307 less than last year!  How did we do it?  We both extended the time between hair cuts (pretty easy when the closest hair cut place in Alaska was a couple hours away) and I eliminated most of my extra beauty expenditures.  I still had my eyebrows waxed a few times and I think 2 pedicures, but those events were few and far between.  It’s probably not surpising that I never care about that stuff when we are surrounded by nature.  I only start thinking about it when we are in an urban environment. 

Propane – We included propane costs in campground fees for most of 2015 but this year we separated it out and only spent $225.  The more you boondock the more you spend in propane, but you can also rack up propane costs if you don’t have an adequate electric heat source.  Lee spent some time putting in extra outlets so we can run three heat sources simultaneously (as long as we are on 50amp) so we never have to use our propane furnace unless we are boondocking.  (Technically if we are at a site that has 30 and 15 amp, which is pretty common, we can still run all three. Not much more, but it keeps us warm and snuggly. – Lee) This saves us quite a bit in propane costs and takes full advantage of any hookups we may have.

Alcohol – We didn’t separate this out last year so I have no idea how we compared but we only spent $181 which I think is very reasonable.  Our drinking patterns are odd, because we only drink when we are with other people that drink, but then we tend to buy lots of alcohol.  I do recommend tracking this category though if you are a frequent drinker.  Those costs can really add up.

Laundromat – We spent $164.25 at the laundrymat this year and most of that was while we were in Quartzsite.  We use our Splendide 2100 almost exclusively (with the occasional exception of sheets and blankets) except when we are boondocking.  The more boondocking, the higher the laundry costs.  Our camp host job in Alaska also had the extra benefit of a full washer and dryer which saved us any laundry fees throughout the summer. 

Wood – This was another category we lumped into campground costs in 2015 and this year we spent very little.  We had free wood while camp hosting in Susanville, the Redwoods, and Alaska and lived in “no fire” areas during the Beet Harvest and Christmas trees.  We were going to buy wood for Quartzsite in 2016, but are waiting until we are 100% sure that is where we will be.  We talked about propane campfires, but I just don’t care for them, so we will continue to buy wood whenever it makes sense.  Free wood is always a nice perk though, and we have taken advantage of it when we are given it. So we only spent $20 but we also filled up with wood at the end of 2015 and will buy wood again at the beginning of 2017.  We also intentionally ran out of wood early in 2016 because we knew we would have to cross the Canadian border and we couldn’t take it with us. So really half the year we were abnormally “wood free” in our truck.

If you have made it this far, and good for you by the way, you might think this is all pretty hopeless.  That’s how I felt when I looked at other people’s budgets before full timing, but let me tell you what the numbers don’t say.  First, there were lots of expenses in year one I just didn’t report on.  One time discretionary purchase and health insurance costs never made it to that first year, so even though it looks like we spent the same amount of money we really didn’t.  Year two is more representative of our true costs, although I still am not including our business expenses in this reporting.

Secondly, more than anytime in our lives we have choice.  We also have a much better understanding of exactly what we spend and why, and with the exception of repairs and the RV loan we have the ability to impact the costs.  We could in almost every other category reduce those costs.  We chose not to. And that’s a big deal because it means we can choose to do something different in 2017.  I am not saying we necessarily will, but we can and I rarely felt that was an option in my previous life.

At this point we have three choices to make this lifestyle sustainable for us.  We can spend less, work more, or get jobs that pay more.  Pretty simple, and we get to decide.  And every single person I know who is living this lifestyle is going through the same thing.  Even the people who on the surface are making plenty of money, are looking to the future and making those choices.  And that’s a good thing, an important thing.

It’s easy to look at the total dollar amount and dismiss the lifestyle as impossible.  I certainly was guilty of that early on in my research, but I am hoping that if you are a person who made it this far you are also a person who can see beyond the high level. And please keep in mind that despite the cost, we paid our bills. We didn’t dip into our savings and actually managed despite the Alaska trip to break even.  That is no small thing. Is the lifestyle sustainable for us? I still don’t know, but I firmly believe it could be.  We get to decide if it’s worth it to us.  Either way we still have our savings, we still have our contingency fund, and we even had 2016 tax money set aside.  That is no small thing considering all we managed to do in 2016 and a success story in my opinion.

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Well, here we are at the end of 2015 with our very first annual financial summary.  Although we did some research when we started, many of our budget categories were wild guesses and I was so pleased by how many were at least close to our projected numbers.  I can’t stress enough that the costs in Year One will probably be higher than in subsequent years, but it is also fair to say that we were trying to be careful with our money.  Our operating costs were $49,409.98 and many of our friends who were out the first year were also spending about $4K a month.  (This summary does not include all of the one-time expenditures, for more information on that please see the First Year By the Numbers post.)  Let’s put that into context; we were living on more than twice as much when we were in a sticks and bricks, and more importantly, as soon as money came in it went right back out again.  What matter the most to me is that we landed only $2,590 over our estimated budget for the year, which is awesome, and frankly somewhat miraculous.  The great thing about Year 1 for us was I still had my corporate job so that gave us tons of breathing room.  Year 2 will be much leaner as we rely on the income we can make on the road.  Our stance next year will be putting money in and taking money out of our $30,000 in savings.  If we spend down to $10K we will have to stop and get serious about making money for awhile, but it feels great knowing we have easy access to 6 months worth of costs. This lifestyle for us is an adventure and many other wonderful things, but it is also an experiment.  Can two people with good health and good skills make enough money on the road to cover their costs AND continue to live a life full of enrichment?  Next year will be the real test without a guaranteed source of income, but I feel so much better about the probability of our success after seeing these numbers.  So let’s dive in!

Campground Fees – We budgeted $750 a month and only averaged $434 a month!!! What a great story, and largely due to work kamping, staying in state and county parks, and using our discount memberships.  And for the record, we only had one Walmart stay and one Cracker Barrel stay in the entire year.  I am going to reduce these costs in the FY16 budget, you can see the detail below.

Groceries – We budgeted $600 a month and ended up spending $701 a month. Anyone who reads the blog knows how we have struggled with groceries.  Small, pricey rural grocery stores along with  inadequate meal planning and eating joint meals with friends led to higher than expected costs.  We have taken several major steps including meal planning and reduction of waste to help keep these costs down.  We are also going to track this category in more detail in Year 2 separating food from non-food items and adding alcohol as a separate category as well.  So I will be keeping the overall budget at $600 a month just splitting the money between the three categories.  I will say though that we ate well and Lee lost 15 pounds this year.  I have rediscovered my love of cooking and now we eat mainly fresh and local foods.  Yes, we could eat cheaper tomorrow if I was willing to give up those fresh ingredients and meals with friends, but I am not. Let’s see if we can eat well and stay in budget in Year 2. As a side note Ellen asked what we spent in a sticks and bricks.  That was about $800 a month or more so this is definitely progress.

Dining Out – We thought this category would be our biggest challenge and it was. Our budget is $150 a month and we spent $247 a month. Early on we started looking at eating out in two ways.  Fuel (when we just need to eat) and experience (want to try the local cuisine, or go out with other people).  Later in the year we tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to pack more lunches or to schedule our sight-seeing around meal times.  This had some effect, but those only seeing things before noon or between noon and 6 is hard to do, especially since we like to take long day trips.  Since most of the year we were packing everything in on the weekends, I am hoping this gets a little better. I will say this is WAY lower than it was in the sticks and bricks.  We were spending hundreds a month in this category so it’s a major improvement.  We have done an excellent job of not just picking up the check for everyone and that was really hard for Lee, but split checks is now the norm.  We had a major struggle with drinking water instead of soda (at an extra $2.50) per meal and we are doing much better on that. Also, you see major spikes when we are around our family. On the positive side we did a great job when hanging with friends and although that hit us a little harder on the grocery side we definitely saved money overall.   I am not changing the budget amount on this one.  We simply have to do better.

Truck/Relocation Fuel – I am absolutely thrilled at this category because we ended up $500 to the good in aggregate. Unfortunately for the 2016 budget I had a company car with free fuel for the first 9 months and I am already seeing these costs rise.  Our “hub and spoke” approach to traveling keeps our relocation costs down but adds to our “local” fuel expense.  I am leery about using the numbers from the last three months only to set next years budget, but I am also aware we are traveling up to Alaska from Tennessee in May which will be a big fuel hit.  But, we will be staying in one place from Mid May to Mid September, so hopefully it will balance out. Plus the cost of diesel has been very low most of the year and we can’t necessarily expect that to continue in 2016.  So I think I am going to combine the categories into one Fuel cost and raise them a little.  Unfortunately it’s going to take at least another year’s worth of data before I feel comfortable with what these costs will be.

Entertainment – Absolute home run, spending $375 less than our budget. We did really well in this category by focusing on free or near free activities. See my Things to Do under $10 page for more details.  Occasionally we splurged but mainly we consistently stayed in the budget in this category.  I am not going to change the amount for 2016, but I hope to see further savings in 2016.  Truly, its all about the nature to keep this category low, but since we also like to experience other activities we sprinkle those in to keep it fun.  One of the keys is to remember you can go back and you don’t have to do absolutely everything in an area. 

Storage Unit – We kept a 10×10 for a few of our things and our two daughters.  Starting in March we will be splitting the cost three ways with our daughters (every little bit helps) and then our plan was to get to New Hampshire to empty our piece and take it to my mother-in-law’s basement.  I also need to get a physical so I originally thought I would do all that at once, but with Alaska I’m not sure what we will be doing there.  In any event, I don’t regret this in the slightest.  $840 was a small price to pay for not having to purge everything all at once and I am fine with letting it sit until I can deal with it.

Cell Phones/Internet/TV – To many this budget amount is ridiculously high and there is some fairness to that.  We took advantage of an ATT double data deal right before we went on the road and have 80 GB of data available each month, and we use every bit of it every month. Plus we have added a second Verizon phone with 1GB of data for those areas where ATT doesn’t work, just so we can always have phone service.   Every time we talk about changing this up we decide not to yet because we are mobile workers who rely heavily on the internet.  Yes, there are some grandfathered unlimited plans out there, but we have a friend who works at Verizon and she was very clear that they put you in the slow speed traffic lane with those plans.  Lee has had some success using free WiFi at libraries, coffee shops etc, but the bandwidth of those places is very hit and miss.  Part of his video business is uploading huge files and we simply cannot always be someplace where there is free wifi or wait the 8 hours it might take on slow bandwidth to upload a file.  We also tried Direct TV, absolutely hated it, and now we just download any TV we watch. We love this “on demand” approach and since we have been many places where we got no antenna television it continues to be important.  So after much discussion we are going to leave this one alone, just change the budget to include the Verizon phone.  We are always on the lookout for a truly stable internet solution, but until something better comes along, it is what it is.  The good news is we can write-off 40% of these costs for business expenses which is a good thing. 

Home Improvement – We spent $314 a month in this category.  If Lee ever gets our Mods page done I could show you all the cool stuff we got for that and then maybe you would nod your head and think “not so bad”.  Keep in mind this is parts only as I am lucky enough to have free labor with Lee.  It is almost all modifications or enhancements to our living situation and every single one of those purchases made my life easier.  So I struggle with this one as usual.  What do we set it at for next year?  Lee feels we have done most of what needs to be done but I do not agree.  There is always new stuff you can do and Lee likes to tinker.  It makes him happy.  If we had plenty of revenue I would say screw it and raise the budget, but that’s probably not going to be the case, so we may leave it alone at $200 a month and see what happens. 

Truck Insurance – This ran us $1505.56 and was worth every penny.  When Lee put regular gas in the diesel engine Putting Regular Gas in a Diesel Engine  and we lost our engine we filed a claim and ended up getting a new engine for the $1000 deductible which was a savings of $18K for the engine and a months worth of rental car fees.  I don’t know yet if they will be raising our rates for this year but I am extremely happy with the service we received from Allied Insurance which is a policy we got from Miller Insurance company that specializes in full timers.  Since this is the first claim we have filed in the 25 plus years we have carried our own car insurance I don’t feel bad overall, but since we were relatively new with Allied when we filed the claim unless their prices become extremely unreasonable we will be staying with them for a long time to come. 

RV/Truck Maintenance – We had $600 dollars for the year here and ended up going over by $831 for the new front tires and alignment we needed on the truck.  We had two great maintenance plans with Ford and everything including oil changes is covered, but tires and alignments are not.  We believe that the truck tires were not aligned properly from the factory (since the wear was even on both front tires) and hope this was a one-time occurrence.  The other money we spent was on my mobile office equipment in the truck and on putting Lee’s tools in the truck, also one time expenses. We will probably leave this at $25 a month though for windshield wipers and fluid, DEF outside of our schedule oil changes, and other incidentals, but hopefully it comes in under budget next year.

Gifts –  Despite Lee giving me a hard time about this category I only spent $1055 or  $88 a month on average and we used to spend that on Christmas alone.    Still I was definitely over budget by $505. I have settled on just buying for nieces and nephews and our girls and their spouses. I am also buying my parents a mothers day and fathers day present.  So I will budget that out and maybe add a little extra for the very occasional unplanned gift such as a wedding or special birthday.  This is my Home Improvement category because I think all gifts are good all the time.  But we don’t have an unlimited budget so will need to try to do better.  Honestly though I am not trying that hard.

Electronics and Software –  We spend $10 a month on Microsoft Office (which is tax deductible) and this includes music and games money.  This category made me nuts in the beginning because there is nothing concrete to show for it, but really for the year $400 isn’t that much for all things software.  I will adjust the budget to reflect the $400 a year as I think that is a fair dollar amount. 

RV Registration – We are Florida residents and RV registrations are always in December so this is actually 1-1/2 years of registration.  VERY reasonable compared to other states.  For example, New Hampshire was around $1400 the first time we registered.  If we would have registered in North Dakota we would have had to pay a one time tax of $2500 ( because we bought the RV in a no tax state).  So really overall I was happy. 

RV Insurance – We have a Full-Timers policy with $30K in personal items insurance, so I feel this is a very reasonable price.  Thankfully we haven’t needed to use it, but well worth the piece of mind and although you might be able to find a cheaper policy, having one that knows you are a full-timer was really important to me.  Again the Insurer was Allied and we purchased through Miller Insurance out of Oregon.

Tolls and Parking – Once we left Florida this pretty much stopped being an issue, but we did spend quite a bit in the Florida area.

Truck Registration – This was more than we expected, but the bulk of it was a one time transfer expense and again this was way higher in our prior home state of New Hampshire.

Clothing – At $1400 this was much higher than we thought but around $500 was clothing purchased for Katy’s wedding.  Some of it was normal clothing expenses, but mostly it was T-Shirts from the places we went.  I have this idea that I am going to make a quilt out of all these shirts some day, plus I like the two shirts which are clothing and serve as a memento.  I think the original amount of $600 a year was fair, and if you take out the big dollar purchases for special events we are probably close to that.

Laundry – Thrilled that we only spent $70 in laundry this year. We love our Splendide and use it for almost everything only going to laundromats when we are boondocking for long stretches or the laundry has piled up to the point that we need to do several loads at once. Work Kamping often provides free laundry facilities or full hookups so the laundry expense has been a nonissue for us. I am going to adjust this down to $10 a month next year.

Propane – We spent a ton of money in Glacier on propane and with the rain and cold in Quartzsite are spending more again here.  Generally though we use very little and with the free propane in the Redwoods and the propane credit from Susanville we actually only spent $16.81 total!!  I am going to leave this at $10 a month though for next year.

Membership Fees – This included our $100 for our annual Amazon Prime membership, our American Express card,  the current cost of my blog website, our Escapees membership, and Passport America.  $551 seems like quite a bit but we feel the extra AmEx points, free Amazon shipping, and campground discounts more than made up for most of it it.  I am going to adjust the budget to reflect what we are actually spending.

Income Tax Prep Fee – Since we had a house sale last year and we are filing a Schedule C this year for the first time, I will be using a professional for the time being.  This year I plan on using Travel Tax who specializes in people who work in multiple states and will increase the budget to $300. 

RV Loan Payments – We are now totally debt free except for our $400 monthly RV loan payment.  Obviously it would have been better to have no loan and we did talk about staying in New Hampshire and living in an apartment for an extra year to pay off the camper, but if I had to do it again I would do exactly the same.  Getting a one year jump start on this life is so worth the payment and I don’t think the $400 will make or break us.  If it was $1000 yes, I would say to stay and pay down that debt first, but I can live with one “house payment” plus the interest is tax deductible since this is our primary residence.

Miscellaneous – This included some of the one-time costs for the year but certainly not all. I didn’t take it out though because it also has some uncategorizeable expenses and it really wasn’t that much money in the grand scheme of things.

Mail Service – Mail service includes any money we spent on shipping or postage, and was much more than we anticipated at $800 for the year. Much of that were one-time priority mailings associated with house closings, becoming new Florida residents, and me quitting my job and we do not think those will occur again.  You also need to be careful about mail services, because they do really charge high fees for priority mail, so some of this was a learning curve as we understood how the process works. Next year we did increase the budget to reflect more priority shipping because when you are moving frequently you need to pay extra for 2 day shipping sometimes. Oh, and we do everything online that we can, but don’t kid yourself.  There is still lots of stuff out there that is only sent through regular mail.

Cigarettes – This was by far the most exciting story as we went from $600 a month in a sticks and bricks to $120 a month on the road.  We simply could not have afforded this lifestyle with that big of an expense and rolling our own makes it work.  I get a lot of questions about this category because it varies so much from month to month, but basically, when we are someplace that the prices are good, we pre-buy as much tobacco and tubes as we can and store it. Tobacco costs vary significantly from state to state.  I promise if I quit smoking I’ll let you know, but in the interim a zero for the month in this column simply means we are using what we’ve stocked up.

Personal Care –  This is haircuts, nails, waxing etc.  I was routinely spending $100 a month alone in this category before and starting out at $50 a month for both of us was too aggressive.  Then I adjusted to $100, but it turns out we spent $63 a month on average.  I am going to put this at $75 and see what happens, but this is not an insignificant change for most women.  To acheive this kind of budgets I do my own nails, only got 2 pedicures last year, and pretty much stopped getting my hair dyed.  It hasn’t been a huge sacrifice or anything but it did require some changes to how I thought about things.

Healthcare – I did NOT include healthcare in my budget numbers last year, but it ended up I was spending about $368 a month as subsidized by my company.  That subsidy is gone in March and COBRA jumps to $1K a month.  Yes, that is not a typo.  That is definitely not going to work so I put in a $150 placeholder in the budget below.  We don’t really know how much money we will be making next year so it is really tough to tell what our costs will be.  We decided we would underestimate our income and pay the lesser amount because we believe there is no penalty.  As soon as we settle into the Affordable Healthcare coverage we will let you know.  We also have $12K in HSA funds available to us so thankfully we will have no additional out of pocket expenses unless something catastrophic happens.

2016 Budget using the spreadsheet from Rv-Dreams to track which I highly recommend. 

So we are still looking at $46K next year and that is assuming very low health care costs. That number is not so scary though if you look at it a couple of ways. Lee and I are both able bodied, so we would just need to bring in $23K each to make that worth.  Plus, this is in no way a bare bones budget.  There are several areas where we could trim the fat, the question becomes do we want to?  There is a tipping point between working so much you don’t enjoy your life and not having enough money to have a quality life.  Where that point is every individual person needs to decide, and it could change over time.  What I thought was an absolute requirement a year ago, is different than how I feel now and I expect next year I might feel differently again.  I do know that I will keep talking about it in the blog next year.  I will keep reporting our expenses, talking honestly about what the life looks like for us on a budget, and let you know what is working and what is not.  That is what Howard from RV-Dreams did for me and ultimately his honesty gave me the courage to try this lifestyle.  The least I can do is pay it forward a little bit, but please please remember: your mileage will vary.  This is our truth, and yours will ultimately be what you make of it.

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We knew we were going to blow the budget for December, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, plus we finally got one full year’s worth of numbers which is exciting but I am going to cover that in a separate post.  So here’s December, but keep in mind it included Christmas, 10 days with my youngest daughter, much more entertainment activities than we would usually do, and The Rose Bowl Hop.  It could have been tons worse!!

Campground Fees – We’re really happy with this category.   We had the end of work kamping, then the Monterey Racetrack, which I would never stay at again but was light on the budget, and the Rose Bowl, which was included in the package price.  I considered the HOP our “vacation” for the year and since it came out of savings the cost of the HOP itself is not included in this budget.  The incidentals are here, which were significant, but those are in the dining out and entertainment sections.

Groceries – This is high because we stocked up for Quartsitze on dry goods.  We are not the only ones.  Lots of folks did that before coming here and I don’t regret it, although there are more grocery store options here than I originally thought.  We are stocked up on condiments and dry goods for a while so hopefully that will help us in early 2016.

Dining Out – This is the highest for the entire year.  Kay paid for her own meals, but we ate out with her and Nick and Slushie a few times.  Plus many of the activities we chose to do didn’t lend themselves to packing a lunch.  I’m not saying we couldn’t have done it, but it would have been awkward.  We ate twice on the Hearst Castle day and lunch on the Equefest day all of which were expensive.  Thankfully the Rose Bowl Parade and the Parade of Floats eating out hit the next year.

Entertainment – For all that we did I was pretty happy where this ended up and we did show some self restraint by skipping Alcatraz and the Monterey Aquarium.  This dollar amount included the Winchester Mystery House and Hearst both of which were hefty days along with the Star Wars Movie and It’s a Wonderful Life.  Sometimes you just have to say “What the heck?”, and enjoy yourself.

Truck Fuel – Very high because of all the local running around we did.  This was without driving at all the last week of the month too (we used the tour bus) or it would have been much worse.  We ran Kay back and forth between the campground and her school several times, traveled along the coast several times, and had two relocations.  But we did watch out for the cheaper gas prices which helped and stayed away from buying gas near San Francisco when we could.

Home Improvement – There was a camping world close to the campground in Pasadena and we bought a pump for getting freshwater into the rig (needed it for Quartszite) and a Magma Saute pan which we have been looking for but didn’t know it actually existed.  It is the only thing missing from my awesome stackable pans.

Clothing – I spent $55 on a Rose Parade Bowl fleece (and don’t feel bad about it in the slightest) and we both bought Lions Club float shirts which is more of a donation since 100% of the revenue goes towards a very good charity.  Plus we got a cool shirt out of the deal.

Propane – The check for propane from Susanville finally came and since this is a direct benefit of a work kamping job I am removing it from the yearly budget.

Misc – We spent $90 for a truck full of wood stocking up for Quartzsite

Memberships –  I am going to dissect this category more in my annual summary, but this was our annual Prime Membership fee.  Thanks so much by the way for folks who are buying Amazon items through our link we provide below.  That is helping us offset the cost of the blog and some of our memberships.  It does add up, and it costs you nothing extra, so if you would like to help, just click on the link below and navigate to any Amazon page and make a purchase.  We get a small percentage for the referral.

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