One of the most common questions I am asked when I tell someone myself, my husband and our four kiddos travel and live full time in an RV is, “How much does it cost?!”. That is a deeply personal question of course, but we get it so often I thought sharing our budget information may help others plan a realistic budget for their RV travels. 
Before we hit the road we did a bit of research, and research shows that families who travel full-time often spend less on living costs than your typical family in a “traditional” home. We have no heat, electric, HOA, cable, water, landline phone, security system, property taxes, mortgage, etc. For us, this lifestyle is, by far much more affordable than our sticks and bricks home was and feels just as much (if not more) like home to us.
Our monthly travel cost is listed below and is just an example of what it can cost to travel full time. As one would imagine there is no standard answer. The answer is highly personal and varies from person to person based upon personal living style and income. This should by no means be an indicator of what it could cost you, but it is a general guideline.
Our Full Time RV Living Cost
| Truck Loan | $1100 | |||
| Van Loan | $325 | |||
| 5th Wheel Loan | $560 | |||
| Vehicle Insurance | $236 | |||
| 5th Wheel Insurance | $85 | |||
| Internet | $175 | |||
| Thousand Trails Membership | $50 | |||
| Laundry | $70 | |||
| Mail Forwarding | $50 | |||
| Food | $1500 | |||
| Fuel | $700 | |||
| Other | $400 | |||
| TOTAL | $5,221 |
Keep on reading for explanations of a few odd columns. Some people reading this will wonder how a family of 6 gets by on so little, some will think we are living an overly indulgent lifestyle, but this is just a raw and honest explanation of our budget.
Mail Forwarding: Since we don’t have a piece of property, we do not have a street address. In order to recieve important mail, register our vehicles, get insurance, etc we needed to use a mail forwarding system that provided us with an address. We chose Saint Brendans Isle. They are only $11.99 per month and we opted to add the Mail Scan Pro for $7.99 which allows me to view my incoming mail online the day it is received. We budget more than that because my husbands medicine is shipped there and we have to then pay them to ship it to us. More info here.Other: This includes clothing, shoes, haircuts, toilet paper, toothpaste, school supplies, oil changes, tires. urgent care visits etc. It varies from month to month, but I set aside the same amount each month. What we don’t spend one month, rolls into the next month where we may spend more then. I also wrote a post about the hidden costs of RVing. You can find that here.
Health Insurance: My husband is a disabled veteran, health care for veterans is sub par, but free. This is a large bill for most other fulltime families and should have a budget of $500 plus for typical families of 6. You can also look into medical share companies.
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Things I did not include in our budget above include, but are not limited to RV maintenance, retirement, savings account, yearly registrations, credit card debts. I plan to make another post in the future covering most of these. There are no state taxes in Florida.
May I ask what the original allure was in the 2500? I bought a dually even before I had a big enough camper to need it for two reasons:
1- Just in case.
2- Ya never know.
Both of which I see as valid reasons.
I’m glad I did because we ended up with a behemoth! Any time someone asks “what truck?” My answer is always, “the biggest you can find.” You can never have enough truck.
OK, enough of my rambling. Back to my question. What made you decide on the 2500?
There were a few things..
1)There were NO duallys anywhere around where we were shopping. Like none for 400 miles I think it was. We needed was a 6 seater. It was literally like searching for a needle in a haystack. They all had gorgeous center consoles, but I can put a kid in a center console.
2)We knew nothing about tow ratings, GVWR, transmissions or wheel ratios. We had a minivan- lol. We knew we wanted a cummins engine and trusted our sales man (big mistake) that the 2500 could pull anything, It was after all, the biggest truck on their lot!
I sent my dealership 600 miles to pick up the truck I wanted. Told them either they were driving to get it, or I was. Their choice.
That was just so I could get the AISIN transmission!
Our 3500 was 447 miles away. They went to pick it up only after we sat in the dealership for 3 days in a row with all 4 kids. lol
I’ve never heard of Thousand Trails..we travel year round as well with a family of 6 I’m definetly heading to their website! Your expenses are fairly spot on to ours. My husband’s truck is $1200 mo and our rv is $700 but I don’t think that’s the case with most ppl!!!
thanks for sharing…we also purchased a Dodge 2500 4×4 Diesel, then when we got weighed, although not overweight, we were too close for comfort, so we traded for a 3500 dually 4 x 4 diesel, we were very pleased with the trade in price for our 2500, but the new truck was 10k more…we got lucky though in that it had been about a year between transacations, and our interest rate fell from 5.25 to 1.99…payment did go up about $35 per month! Mountainview Dodge in Blue Ridge Georgia gave us a very fair trade value and new price on car…I highly reccomend them!
When we are looking to trade her in, Ill for sure make sure I see what they have in stock!
Thanks so much for this post. What about campground fess/rent? For the times when you aren’t staying in TT’s.
Thus far we have only stayed at Thousand Trail parks. We have no need to visit other ones, there are TT parks everywhere we have traveled so far!
TT parks are far from everywhere! They are good basically for the coasts, but once you get into the middle of the country much more than Ohio or so, it stops being an option. I have the 81 parks or so and found that we used TT parks for about 1/2 of our first 6 months. Without it, we couldn’t have gone to a lot of places so conveniently- Colorado Springs, Chicago, family in Indiana, Cincinnati, and on and on.
We use it when we can and like it a lot. But it’s certainly not everywhere.
I am disabled vet ( Desert Storm and Somalia conflicts) as well and thank your husband for his service.
My questions are:
1. Does your husband work a fulltime job now? Work camp? or own his own business with you?
2. Do you home school your kids or do they go to school where you are?
3. Which Thousand Trails package/membership do you currently have and if you have more than the basic membership, how much did that package cost without financing?
4. How do you budget in your annual fees like Truck registration, trailer tags and so forth, Also may sound silly but i only seen truck/5th wheel insurance as well as Some healthcare too but what about life insurance for husband or yourself? I know living on a fixed income is hard to budget for things like vehicle/5th wheel repairs but do you budget for those things as well as maintenance like oil changes?
Thanks,
Alan ( RV ADVENTURER)
Thank you for your service as well.!
1. Nathan is a stay at home dad. He spends a lot of his time taking care of the kids and helping them with schoolwork.
2. We are currently homeschooling three of them. Cirriclum was much more affordable than I thought it would be. Extra stuff we need comes our of our “other” fund. We always ask for art supplies for birthday gifts, so that cuts down on those costs a bit.
3. There are so many different options for Thousand Trails memberships. I believe ours is called Platinum Plus? I’d recommend calling the sales team to get a price, they vary from 4,000 and up. Ours allows 21 days in a park, then we need to move to another one. We can stay in the next park for 21 days, or move back to the park we were at before after 7 days.
4. Good question! We actually just had to register the camper, then get our drivers licenses switched to Florida. Like we just did that Monday. That cost us $268.00. Half we took from our “other” budget. The other half we took from our food budget. We will just be more careful about what we eat. Have pasta 3 times this week instead of steak.
Neither of us have life insurance! I know that’s not what you want to hear. But when your 20 something, its just not on your list of things to have. Once we are out of credit card debt, it high on our list of things to do!
Thank you for answering my questions and it isn’t a matter of what I want to hear or not but instead what and how do you plan for these things now and in the future. I know it is hard to “Plan or Budget” for every little thing. So what I am saying is: We all learn from one another in this RV Lifestyle. Older folks can learn from younger and vice versa!! I am closer to the older folks and have kids your age and older. I find their knowledge of technology is far advanced from mine and will always seek out the advice of the younger folk for things like that. In turn, Younger folk learn from the experiences that older folks have. 🙂
We have the TT Elite package which is similar to yours 21 days at a park and we can go straight to another TT park. Yes they have benefits for membership. May I recommend Passport America at some point as well.
I am sure you both are realizing the pluses and minus’s to being a full time family!!
Thanks,
Alan ( RV ADVENTURER)
We have been looking at RVing full time for the last year of so, and the Thousand Trails camping pass sounds awesome. But I was looking at their disclosure sstatement & it says, “Your ZPP may be used for recreational purposes only, and may not be used to create residency at any of our preserves or preserves
affiliated with us. Violation of this condition may result in suspension or revocation of your ZPP.” and “You may stay at one preserve up to 14 consecutive nights. If you stay at any preserve for more than four consecutive nights, you must wait seven nights before you can stay again at any preserve.” Am I looking at the wrong pass or is there something I’m missing? I think this sounds like it could work for us if we can use it every night!
From reading that disclosure, it appears that they dont want people using their campgrounds for residency purposes. We use Saint Brendans Isle for that. Their address is where we register our vehicle, get our insurance quote from, etc.
It looks like you also have a zone pass, not a more expensive pass that allows you to stay longer without breaks between stays.
Please share your internet plan. We are planning on going full time later this year and this is one of the things I am working on.
The person we rent from doesn’t have any additional units available. Search eBay.
Skye, Thanks for sharing your expenses. That is helpful and our potential cost of living is unknown to me and somewhat concerning. We are seriously considering fulltiming but I find that I keep coming back to purchasing a motorhome (leaning toward a Class A diesel) and pulling our small car. Schooling the kids during the drive is my main reason. I want to be on the road often and enjoy as much of the country as possible for a year or so. Did you consider a motorhome and if so, why did you decide on a truck & 5th Wheel? Seeking out the pros and cons of each. Thanks for your feedback!
We certainly did consider a motorhome!! Looked at quite a few models actually. The main problem for us was space. They simply do not offer the amount of storage and interior room when parked that a 5th wheel can. Living in something fulltime means there will be rainy days, sick days and days where you just end up hanging around in your home. A 5th wheel will give you more space than a motorhome.
Additionally, there really is no safe places for kids to ride inside a motorhome. Every car seat manufacturer forbids their use in them.
Oh I hate that about your truck. We pay around $2100 a month for our bills, vehicle payments, progessice etc. I would be more than willing to lay the extra to get to travel the country.
Yeah the truck is a real kick in the teeth every month I send a payment :/
very interesting,,didnt realize there was so much expense involved,but if you enjoy it then its totally worth it
Wow. That’s more than we spend (family of 7) with all of our extra activities. What sort of job do you have that provides for that? This is such an intriguing idea for us, at least for a little while, but no way could we afford that.
This blog is our main source of income. Hubby also gets a bit of VA disability.
This is something I have always dreamed of doing. Perhaps, once the kids go away to college?
This was eyeopening! Thank you for being so forthright about how much it costs–it ain’t cheap! LOL. Having said that, your kids will have AWESOME stories and memories. I think it is a GREAT idea.
Corp of engineers parks good place to camp seniors national pass half price free or disabled people 80 dollars for lifetime pass
Yes!!! We’ve stayed at ACOE parks a few times. They end up being way more expensive than utilizing our Thousand Trails pass though, even with my husbands America The Beautiful Pass!