 Eight years ago, I was stuck in a job that I hated but I kept that job because I couldn't figure out how to pay the bills without it. And then by a total stroke of luck, I discovered that living full-time in an RV was an option. I've been doing it now for five years. I love it. I do the work that I want to do. I travel full-time and my budget is one-third what it was before I hit the road. You're out there and you're feeling stuck and you're searching for a way forward either because it's hard to make ends meet or you feel like your life is just dripping away and you're hoping you make it to retirement so that you can live a little bit. This video is for you because today I'm going to break down the numbers of my budget. I'm going to tell you exactly what it takes for me to live full-time on the road and then I'm going to tell you what it took to get there. Good morning, everybody. It's Robin with Creativity RV and this is my house. I live in an RV full-time. I've done it for five years and I love it. I could not imagine living any other way. Now, before you start thinking, oh, well, you're different. You grew up camping. You're a naturalist. That's not the case. I had never been in an RV before. I bought one and started living in one and I had never camped before. I didn't know anybody who did and I had no reference except people that I saw on YouTube. Now, if you've got images of Breaking Bad in your head or rows of RVs in a homeless encampment near a city, that is not what I do. I camp in amazing, beautiful places full-time. Today, I'm starting a 10-video series explaining step-by-step how you can make the choice to live in an RV and do it successfully. I actually have to thank my patrons because we had a great live Q&A a couple of weeks ago. It was a great conversation for an hour and a half and the number one thing that people wanted to talk about was budget and then logistics. That gave me the idea for this series. Today, I'm going to go over budget and then after that, in upcoming videos, I'm going to tell you step-by-step everything it takes to live on the road if you think it might be something that you want to consider. Now, if you already follow my channel, you might know some of this, but this series is also for you because it is chock-full of all the information you need. And today, like I said, it's all about budget and what it took for me to get on the road. My full-time minimum budget to live on the road is only $1,550 a month. Now, I'm going to break down the numbers behind that in just a second, but really quick, I'm looking in the background here and it occurs to me. I need to tell my regular viewers where I am. This is my fifth wheel. And you guys might remember that I put the fifth wheel in storage on a rural property and have been traveling in a truck camper. Well, I came through the state where my fifth wheel is to visit my mom for her birthday. The same week the gas prices went up. So I thought, yeah, I'll go stay in the fifth wheel for a week while I wait for the prices to go down. But of course, the prices have been up for a few weeks. They're going down now, so that's good. You know, I've enjoyed staying in the fifth wheel, but I am getting antsy. And as you can see in the background, maybe here, I am packing up to go back out in the truck camper and this thing will go back in storage. But that's one really great thing about RV Life because where you go and how long you stay, it's completely up to you and what works in your life at that time. When I first went out on the road, my budget was $1,300 a month. I did a video on that about four years ago, you may have seen. Now, I'm a writer and a painter. That is not what I did in that sole crushing corporate job that I was stuck in. I couldn't pursue those things because they weren't paying the bills. But I decided on $1,300 a month, I could absolutely make a living as a writer. So when I first launched into my nomadic life, that was my budget. Now, like I said, it's 1550, which is about an 18% increase in five years, which I think is pretty good. Now, if you're new to all this and you think you can just go out and get an RV and hit the road full-time, I mean, maybe you can. But that generally doesn't work out great because it does take some planning and some logistics to get on the road, which is what this series is about. And it's not for everyone. If this is the first time you're ever hearing about it, it's a great thing to consider. But I think people that do better full-time on the road are self-starters. They're independent. They don't need a lot of direction from other people. Now, that's different than doing research and getting support from other people. We all do that all the time. But I think you have to really know yourself and you have to really want it to live in an RV. Now, after I decided I really wanted it, it took me about three years to actually get on the road. And I'll go over all of that after the budget, but now let's go over the numbers. Now, quick caveat and something to keep in mind. This budget does not include health insurance, life insurance, or retirement savings. Health insurance is so individual. You might be a veteran. You might be on Medicare. You might be on Medicaid. You might be on the exchange. You might get a supplement. You might not. You might choose not to health insurance. It's no individual that I did not want to include it. But I have it. I also save for retirement, but those things are not included in my budget. If you want to include them, add them into your budget. Okay, let's start with the whopper. Item number one, this is what I pay for housing expense. Zero. I don't pay anything for housing expense. How you might say, I'm going to explain it. You know, before I lived in an RV. My rent alone in Denver was $2,100 a month. Now, if you're from another state where rent's not that high, you're going to think that's crazy. But Denver's expensive. Before that, I lived in Seattle and before that, I lived in Boston. So I was used to these really high expenses. For me, my rent was more than my entire budget is right now. Before I hit the road, it was important that my rig was paid off. I was in debt before I made this decision. And I didn't have the money laying around for an RV. But when I hit the road, I didn't want to be burdened by more debt and a loan payment. I wanted to feel as comfortable as possible when I hit the road. And for me, that was having the lowest expenses possible. So my rig is paid off. And that's why as a line item, housing expense is zero. You might say, yeah, but you have to stay in an RV park and things cost money. I'm going to get to that in just a second. But first, the next few items I'm going to go over are the things that change the most with different RVers depending on what rig they choose and what state they live in. Since I've been on the road, I've actually had four rigs. Now that's a whole different story. I'm going to explain it later, especially when I do the video on comparing rigs. You can also go back and watch some of my past videos. The good news is because of that, in this budget, I can actually compare for you the items that change based on what type of a rig you're considering. For this purpose, I'm going to compare a B plus camper van, a fifth wheel, and a truck camper just to give you an idea how different types and sizes of rigs can change your budget. Let's start with gas. In the truck camper, which is what I travel in now, $250 a month. Now, that might not be as much as you would think it would be because I travel full-time. But I can travel about eight hours on that $250, something like that, because I have a big truck and a big truck camper. My gas mileage is 11 miles to the gallon, I think. What I normally do is I drive about three or four hours and I get where I'm going and I camp for two weeks. I chill out, get my work done, plan my next route, and then go drive some more. In a month, I'm not even driving as much as I did when I was commuting back and forth to work. Now, in the camper van, of course, I spent less on gas because my gas mileage was like 22 miles to the gallon, but I was still spending $200 a month on gas then because I was driving more. I was new, I was more excited. I didn't want to stay for two weeks at one time. I wanted to go, go, go. That changed that a little bit for me. And then in the fifth wheel, which I'm in now, where I got nine miles to the gallon, I did stay a longer period of time in places, but because it was bigger, I was spending about $350 a month on gas. The next item is propane. Now, if you're new to RV life, a lot of times you have to have propane. For me and my truck camper, it powers my generator, which is unusual, and my little mini fridge. Most RV fridges, especially if you're not hooked up in an RV park, run off of propane. So depending on the size of the fridge and the size of the rig, and if you're using it for a generator, this expense will change. In the truck camper, it's 80 bucks a month. In my B plus camper van, where I had a little tiny fridge and my generator ran off of gas, the expense was only $40 a month. But in the fifth wheel, when I'm in here full time and especially if I'm in here during some winter months, I spend about 200 bucks a month on propane. Mostly because look at the height of the ceiling. It's bigger. There's more stuff that you actually have to heat and I have a residential fridge. Now, the next one is irritating to me right now because it's auto insurance and RV insurance. My truck alone is $200 a month and I know a lot of you are gassed. I am a gassed. Auto insurance is more expensive in Colorado but my rates have gone up six times in a row and I'm just about to shop it and I think that is crazy. And that actually doesn't have anything to do with me pulling an RV. That's just the rate. The fifth wheel to be covered as a full timer with all my stuff inside and comprehensive which will cover things like flood, fire, all that stuff costs about 530 bucks every six months and the truck camper is $14 a month added onto my auto policy. So if you're trying to keep expenses low, truck campers are not a bad option because you don't need a separate policy and also you don't need to register them so you get rid of that expense. Right now, my insurance is $235 a month. That's a big part of my budget. In my B plus camper van, my insurance was about $140 a month but that was three, four years ago so I'm not sure what it would be now and let me tell you that insurance is going to change radically based on of course your driving record, your credit, the state that you're in and what type of a rig that you have and if you're a full timer and they know you're a full timer, my advice is get the right insurance, tell them what you're really doing because you don't want to spend a bunch of money on your dream life and then have something happen and you're not covered for it. Just my opinion. Okay, the next thing is registration on the truck and the RV. For me, that's about $100 a month. Again, this changes by state. I know some of you are like, oh my God, I was a resident of a different state when I started out on the road that didn't have sales tax and I think my registration was 29 bucks for two years. It all varies again depending on your state and what type of a rig you have. Remember in an upcoming video, I'm going to be going over resident state and I'll tell you guys what your choices are and what you might want to consider when you're choosing your resident state. Definitely insurance and registration is a big thing. I had reasons for moving all that back to Colorado and I'll go over that later, but that's what it is in my budget, $100 a month. Okay, now let's get to more of the fixed expenses that haven't really changed much for me in five years and they won't change a lot because of your rig or the state that you're in. I'm going to start with the first one that is the game changer for me and this is how I kept my budget really low. The next item is what I call parking. I spend $200 a month on parking. Now remember my housing expense is zero because my rig is paid off and I budget $200 a month for parking which is for me anywhere that I need to take my rig overnight to stay. Now, you might be saying how is that possible? Don't you need to be in an RV park which must be $1,000 a month? Well, my budget for parking could actually be zero if I wanted it to be because most of the time I stay in places that are totally free and I'm going to get to that in a second but I do like to budget $200 a month in case I want to stay in an RV park for a couple of days and have a hookup or I want to stay in like a National Forest Campground that might be $14 a night or $20 a night or I really have to pay for a parking lot because I'm in a city. Now, this is the fun part and I'm going to do a whole video on this so you really understand it but the reason that I'm able to camp in my RV for really no money is because I boondock. Now, if you've never heard the expression boondocking before basically here's what it means. It means that you camp in your RV and you're totally self sustained which means that you're responsible for generating your power and bringing along your water and packing out all of your trash. You are not in an RV park where you are hooked up to those facilities. Over half this country is public land that's available for recreation that means us and we can camp there for free. There are several federal agencies that oversee this and I'm going to go through it all but in general, you can go out in your RV in a lot of these places and stay for 14 days absolutely free. Now, if this is new to you I'm sure you're wondering if it's legal. Yes, it's totally legal. Of course there are rules. You know, you can't dump your stuff on the ground. You can always stay for 14 days stuff like that but that is how I camp and I stay in the most amazing places you guys. You know, I can stay for a day. I can stay for up to two weeks. Sometimes I go to what's called a long-term visitor area which is $180 for six months and I'll stay in one of those types of places for a couple months more on that in an upcoming video but this is a great way to travel the US and keep your expenses down. If you want to stay in an RV park that's totally fine. There are really decent RV parks you can stay in for $650 a month. Of course, they're farther away from the city usually and, you know, they can be up to $1,500, $2,000 a month for, you know, really nice RV parks. You might want to do that if so put that in your budget and I know a lot of people that kind of split it. That's what's nice about RV life. You decide how you want to camp. Don't let anybody else tell you how to do it. You decide how to do it for yourself. Maybe you want to stay in an RV park for six months and hit the road for four months and stay in an LTVA. It's totally up to you. For me, I boondock almost all the time. Yes, it's less expensive but I actually really prefer it. So it keeps my expenses low. Like I said, $200 a month. Oh, and just really quick for any of the ladies out there. Yes, I do this solo. I travel by myself and an RV to these places. It's totally fine. I'm going to go over safety and all that stuff and some upcoming videos or you can go back and look. But I did a poll of my patrons and you might be interested to know that 66% of them were planning to travel solo and the vast majority of them are women. There's a whole bunch of us out there. In fact, I've made the best friends on the road who travel just like I do. For food supplies and entertainment, I spend $400 a month. That hasn't changed. You know, with inflation stuff is going up but here's what's funny. I don't spend as much when I'm traveling as I do when I'm living in a regular house or I'm staying just a few nights in a city because what I do is I go get my supplies and I'm not near restaurants. I'm not near the movie theater, right? I'm out in one of those beautiful places. So I plan out, you know, what food I'm going to have for those two weeks and that's what I get. And then I go back and get more supplies when I'm done with that part of my trip. Okay. The next item for me is cell service and unlimited data. I spend $130 a month for my cell phone, which has unlimited data through that provider on my phone. And then I spend $145 through Nomad Internet. They give me unlimited data through cell towers through another provider. Their link is below if you want to check them out. And I have to have this expense because I work on the road full-time. And before I did YouTube, I did not have this much expense because I didn't need this much data. But because of the work that I do, I need to make sure I have a cell signal and I need to make sure that I'm not strapped when it comes to the data. Now, recently, I did a video about Starlink where I said I wasn't a fan of how they prioritize the RV plan, but I'll tell you I am testing it right now. While I'm in one place, it's been pretty good, but I can't recommend it until I travel with it. So Starlink is 135 a month, and I'll let you guys know soon if I think that's better or if Nomad Internet is better. Of course, if you don't need that much data and you don't want to be connected that much, then take that out of your budget. So altogether, if you add all that up, it's $1,550. That's the minimum for me. That's where the rubber meets the road. That's what I know I need to make to stay on the road. If you think about it, it's not so different from a budget in a house. Instead of paying for cable, you have a cell phone bill or a data bill. Instead of paying for water and electric, maybe you're paying for solar and propane. Besides that, a lot of it is the same. If you need to have a loan on your RV, put that in your budget. If you've got some other expense that you need to handle, put that in your budget. It's going to be totally individual. This is what I spend and I hope it gives you a good idea of what it's really like. Now that we've gone through the numbers, let me tell you a little bit about what it took for me to get on the road. Like I said, it took almost three years. Now, you might be totally different. You might just go do it or you might do it part-time or you might plan for 10 years before you go do it. But for me, what was really important was not to be stressed out. I had already been stressed out. I had already been in debt. What I didn't want was to take that stress and that debt with me on the road. Okay, so here's what I did. The first thing is I moved away from Seattle and I sold my condo. I used the equity in that condo to pay for part of my first rig. I did not have a lot of equity. I had just bought the condo a year before. But I scurled that money away for two years until I was ready to buy my rig. I moved back to Colorado to be closer to my family during this planning stage. And I took a part-time work-from-home consulting job that I could do for about half the day and then I could write for the other half of the day. During that two years, I wanted to create a mobile income stream. So I wrote a couple of romance novels and I started a website which I had never done before so that I would have income coming in. Those are the things I worked on the other half of my time and I was very frugal and I paid off my debt. Now, when I look back on it, when I had a really good job, I still always have this credit card debt. It just never seemed to get paid off. And now, you know, in hindsight, I realized that I was spending money trying to stay happy so I could stay in that job. I mean, maybe it was going to happy hour, going to dinner or buying a suit for the dumb job. And as soon as I made my decision that I wanted to be a nomad and I was only working part-time, I was making less money but I was paying off more debt because I had a goal in mind and I didn't need to be spending money on that stuff anymore. Maybe it'll be the same for you, maybe it won't. Now, let's get back to making that income stream while you're on the road. Listen, you do not need to be a writer. To make a living on the road or start a website. You can make a living on the road a bunch of different ways and I know because I actually wrote the book on it. So if you're chomping at the bit, you can check it out now. It's available on Amazon. There are hundreds of jobs in this book that you can do with links to apply, tells you how much they pay and what they're looking for for all different types of people no matter what your skill set is. I'm actually working on the 2023 updates for that book also right now and what's really exciting is that all of this has changed in the last 5, 10 years. A lot of people can make a living on the road. Now, if you have a job that is location dependent, like you're a doctor maybe, this might not work for you but you would be surprised how many jobs can be translated into mobile jobs or all new jobs that you can get to supplement your income while you're on the road. So don't think I'm special because I was able to make a living as a writer on the road. You don't need to do that. Whatever it is that you do, believe me, there's going to be a way out there that you can make this happen if you want to. It wasn't fast and it wasn't easy for me to get on the road but it was worth it. Planning stage almost seems like a dream. It just went by like that. So if you're in the planning stage, just know that you can get there because I did and if I did it, believe me, you can do it too. My budget is a third what it was before and so what does that do for me? It gives me options. I can work as much as I want to. I can stop working for a little bit. I can work on the projects I want to work on. I can see what I want to see. You know, I could sit outside a chair and watch a bird fly by if I want to. It is a completely different paradigm than the one that I have before I got on the road. Has it all been rainbows and unicorns? No. Living in an RV is still real life and, you know, in life stuff happens. The difference is that when stuff happens now I have more control over it than I did before. I'm going to be telling you all about the realities of RV life coming up but I would not change it for anything. If you're looking for a way to save money living in an RV might be an option. If you want to live your life now and not wait for retirement it might be an option. It might not be the best option for you but I hope either way that you found this video to be helpful. Again, please subscribe and hit the little bell so you get notifications of all of these upcoming videos until I see you then. I hope you're all doing well out there. Have happy travels and be free.