Budgeting for the RV Lifestyle

With the cost of fuel skyrocketing and the housing market plummeting there is almost everyday on national TV some expert giving us the three best things to do in order to survive the financial crisis. Last week on one particular program there were three experts giving their three best things to do to survive. That was a total of nine best things to do to go along with all the other best things to do. So I thought I’d just jump on this band wagon and offer up a few of my own “best things” to consider when budgeting for the RV lifestyle during these desperate times.

Actually, I think I have jumped the gun already. Although fulltime RVing can occur at any time in life, you encounter it most among the retired. Perhaps I should have called this “budgeting for retirement”, because that was really what it was in the beginning. It is when you are young that retirement planning should take place in order to give yourself enough time to save for the day of your dreams.

The great question to be answered is “How much money will I need when I am retired”? Gene went about answering that question by determining what we needed to live on right now. For two years he kept a record of every expenditure—every cent for every thing. That data gave him a fairly accurate indication of how much we actually spent. It was shocking to realize just how much was spent for things like afternoon coffee, or ice cream, or Girl Scout Cookies (oh my goodness). We then took the data and created a budget that realistically portrayed our spending habits.

The next step was to convert this present time budget into a budget of a time 10, 15 or 20 years in the future. By adjusting the budget for inflation by a rate of 3.5%, Gene was able to determine how much money we would need in any given year in the future. It was a guess, of course, but at least an educated one. He subtracted the amount we expected to get from Social Security and my retirement pension, but the amount we still needed to save was staggering.

But we had a dream and my mama had read to me over and over about the “little engine that could”. There was no stopping us. We lived by the budget and saved every dime we could. Gene found in a magazine a picture of a man in a scuba diving suit climbing out of a fountain with a bucket of change. The caption read, “how will you fund your retirement?” We never did that, of course, but the picture hung on the refrigerator and kept us inspired.

Our dream, of course, was to retire early, while we were still young enough to enjoy traveling and still healthy and fit enough to hike. We had read some about fulltime RVing (living exclusively in an RV) and although that concept may have existed in our subconscious, it was certainly not in the forefront of our planning. Stay tuned to see how these first steps evolved into fulltime RVing.