Can You RV FULL-TIME On $2K A MONTH?

so can you actually live in an rv for two thousand dollars a month today we're gonna find out [Music] [Music] i'm amazed you let me do that intro actually the intro so what the intro it's not just about um creative things you can do with money in slow motion it's actually i think there's like two camps of thought when it comes to money and rv living there's there's the one side that says oh my goodness you're like just throwing your money away and then there's the other side i'm gonna save a ton of money by rving but that's we're gonna look at today can you actually save a ton of money rving how much does it actually cost and we have not introduced ourselves you may be wondering who in the world we are i'm nathan i'm marisa uh less job more journey we're in our sixth year of rving trying to have less junk so we can have more journey and then along the way being open and honest about that and how we can help you guys have less junk and more journey in your life as well so if you're like us six seven years ago you're sitting there you're watching the videos you're wondering man that looks really awesome i want to do that but how much does it cost well starting off we were really confused because we had some serious sticker shock with our first rv's campground situation we picked up our first rv we were so excited we had never even camped before when we decided to make this plunge for rv living so this was all the how not to channel yeah for the most part this was all new to us we picked up our first rv we were so excited and it was you know about eight hours away so we decided to get a campsite on the way home and try this thing and we were like oh look it's a jelly stone that looks awesome yeah we talked to some locals when we went in i think at a gas station and they're like go to the gym um so we went and we were definitely surprised at the price well this sticker shop and we thought wow this is exciting look at all these water slides look at all these putt-putt courses fun things to do but then we thought how do people pay this price every single night this is gonna add up fast you know you start going through the calculator in your mind at that point well i mean it's 70 bucks a night and so i'm already doing the math i'm like we're not saving money by doing at 70 bucks a night like we're just gonna stay in our house and not to say you can't stay at a jelly stone they're awesome we love them but we just couldn't stay at a jelly stone 365 days a year so that was definitely a transition going from okay this is not a constant vacation this is a lifestyle we're actually gonna give you guys pretty specific numbers on what things can cost for what kind of lifestyle you're going to live and we'll give you guys some numbers on our lifestyle for 2019 because 2020 just was a dumpster fire the numbers are not accurate at all it's just uh it's it's a mess anyway so the number's gonna be from 2019. they get it you get it you get it so a lot of this their 2019 numbers uh but what i what i thought would be neat so the video is talking about can you live on 2k months so well i'll talk about it like because we've known some people who are living on 2k a month but we also know some people that are living on 4k a month 5k a month and we know some people kind of where we fall probably in the middle in that 3k you know the 2500 to 3500 a month range basically trying to take your current lifestyle in a house and saying how does that transition into an rv and i think the big thing and definitely staying for this we'll be talking about what is the most telling category i think there's a category of these expenses that you can look at what you're spending in your life in a house it's going to translate really really really close to what you'll be spending on the road and i think it can give you a big picture idea of how much you're going to spend on the road so before we really dig into these three things that are kind of assumptions because we all need to be on the same page on this stuff or these numbers don't even make sense uh the first is the assumption that you have some money saved up you're not hitting the road with nothing you've got i like to say three to six months of expenses saved up so once you do figure this stuff out and you've got a pretty good idea of what your expenses are there's some money set aside for not if things will go wrong for when things go wrong and we highly recommend that you have an emergency fund before you get off the road it's emergency fund basically we're assuming because if there's no emergency fund these numbers are not accurate you need to have more money set aside for different categories vehicle payments are not included in this because it could be all over the board based on what you bought what your rate is there was no way i feel like taking that out of these equations so whatever you see you're adding vehicle payments on top of that with the numbers we're going to share and then thirdly we're going to do the 3k a month lifestyle then the 2k a month lifestyle i know these are out of order but i wanted to start with the 3k because i feel like it's going to be the most accurate as far as numbers for most of you so the 3k first the 2k and then the 4k so let me explain the 3k lifestyle a month first when i say 3k lifestyle there's months where it's 2500 there's months you know if we're staying at our home base and expenses are down as far as lodging it might be 2 500 there's months where it might be 3 500 want a very touristy area lodging cost more maybe eat out a little more that kind of thing so it's like it fluctuates in that range for the 3k lifestyle for us at 3k we like to do a lot of state national parks so we're not in jelly stones every night and we look for county parks and city parks to save some money but we do splurge on jelly stones koas fort wilderness you know we got these one two three weeks a year we're like again almost like you're living in a house it's vacation mode where we go to those kind of places that are costing 50 60 80 120 you know crazy prices sometimes in these places sometimes we do eat out sometimes we do excursions you know when it comes to repairs i think you got to factor that in on each of these levels sometimes i pay someone to do a repair sometimes i do the repair myself so i think a lot of you guys fall in that boat where you can do some stuff on your own and save some money but you're not going to hire it all out now the numbers that go with that splitting this up where's the let's get the pie we need some pie okay because we love pie we have a pie chart and this is why our uh literal pie chart yeah this is a literal pie chart just only get one shot at this cutting it the right way no retakes all right so i know two of these all right here we go all right i'm gonna do the first two that are an even 25 i'm going to start with the most telling 25 because i think it's a great place to start so this 25 what you're spending in a house on this 25 this first one is killing me is really close to what you're going to spend on the road in an rv and that's very valuable put that down for a step this is a dangerous video we're creating what you spend on this 25 in the house it's really close to where you're going to spend in an rv and why that is valuable is because you can go ahead and try to if you look at these numbers like man i don't think we can do it you can start working on getting this number so that that 25 is what i'm going to categorize as food but when i say food because it's 25 it's more than that it's uh it's your groceries it's your restaurants and for us just because it's easier to see what the money is and where it's going that includes like if we're at a walmart we do a lot of walmart's when we're traveling just because it's easier more familiar consistent so what's on that belt may or may not be actual food but toiletries toilet paper paper towels all that lumps into here and that's part of why that's 25 for some of you i think if you have a family of four or five six it might be a little higher some of you if you're a couple it might be a little bit lower but the point with this category is let's say you look at your current home budget and you're like we're spending let's say 1500 a month on all that stuff but you're like well we want to live we want to get on the road and only spend 3 000 total well i'm saying i think it's really close to 25 so if you're spending 1500 a month on groceries on restaurants on toiletries it's gonna be tough to live on three thousand dollars a month so the point is it's not to freak out but the point is that you can take that fifteen hundred dollars a month and work on it like maybe eat out a little less uh maybe and maybe it's fine maybe you're fine with doing four to six thousand dollars a month on the road but i think the food one quote food one is really really telling because it is easy not just in a house but on the road in an rv it's super easy to start blowing money fast on restaurants especially that's what we realized pretty quickly and even talking to different people over the years is what you spend on your groceries in a house pretty much goes over to what you're spending in an rv i will say in the beginning we probably spent a little more on restaurants because we were excited when we vacationed vacation that vacation mode will get you so staying in the jelly stones you're eating out like crazy you know it's vacation mode and we wanted i mean because that's part of the fun of travel is getting to try the different foods in the different locations i think over the years we've learned we can still do that we just we can't eat at all of them so we would kind of pick maybe one one thing to do in an area and try that food out so i mean i think if you're wanting to do the 3k month lifestyle of national parks doing stuff every once in a while you're looking at that you know 750 might be kind of low but you know even like that you know somewhere in that 750 to 900 range let me put the knife down again that's not a good idea um but again you want to keep it under a thousand dollars for sure or you're the whole thing's just blowing i mean you're nowhere near 3 000 a month or even 3 500 a month you're in that 4 to 6 k range at that point which is fine it's just we're just you know we're being realistic on what can you do with what you live on so the second piece of the pie the other 25 is is lodging so campsites um campsites now this is kind of neat because in a house smells so good look at that because in a house it's actually flip-flop the the lodging in a house is like fixed it is what it is for the most part you know your mortgage is the same your insurance your taxes on the road lodging which is the next 25 is your most flexible expense literally i mean there's months where we spend 900 to a thousand dollars on launching and then there's months where we spend like less than 200 on lodging i mean that's a big difference swing and lodging so the good news is if let's say you spent the instead of eight or nine hundred dollars on food you know you spent like 1500 one month because you ate out a lot well you've got the flexibility with rv living you can stay somewhere cheaper or you know maybe a boondocker's welcome and then harvest hosts or maybe even big docking yeah boondocking i mean you know you take one of these cheaper options to make up for it and you can kind of balance this out then you get the next 20 the next 25 here i know there's guys you're out there attacking so that's not 25 nath and that's not an even cut i'm really trying and i'm putting this down the next 25 would be like transportation so that would include fuel that would include uh vehicle insurance your your um you know your rv your truck your class a and the tow and all that kind of stuff that would include repairs to an extent i think that's where the emergency fund comes in you have the emergency fund but i think it's still good to have some money going into repairs oh and just to backtrack as i said we're gonna share some of our exact numbers so in the lodging we spent four thousand nine hundred thirty six dollars for the year of 2019 which i think comes out per month like a little bit over 400 bucks the budget was to get it like 750 so we're actually below on that and we're probably a little worse when it comes and you can see why we're a little worse on the food but sacrifice our living that's right we'll boondock we'll live in the desert we don't care like we want our pie i mean that's and that's cool it's our it's rving it's up to you so our our you know our numbers actually came down some as far as the lodging and they're up some as far as the food uh the three priorities priorities man you gotta but the third the third section of 25 with the transportation the numbers on that for us uh fuel twenty nine hundred thirty nine dollars uh insurance a thousand eighty this for the whole year of 2019. so that's that's kind of on par you're getting there that's like i don't know 15 20 or something but then you get the repairs this is where your emergency fund comes in 12 420 in repairs in 2019 and that that was a hot that was our highest year in repairs i think we had in the six years but we had some other years that were five thousand four thousand six thousand so i think if you go into this thinking oh i'm gonna spend 500 in repairs even if it's new i mean you still might have to you know or a warranty i mean there's there's still stuff that goes wrong so you want that emergency fund just like backing up it's actually split up a little bit on this last one so we got connectivity which would be like cell phones i've got this at five percent i think for most people it's really small piece of the pie if you just got like two cell phones or something now if you have a hot spot we have two hot spots two cell phones i mean we were like married to having decent connectivity so our percentage would be a little more than that but i think a lot of you guys if you're hitting the road with two cell phones somewhere around five percent on that 3k picture uh and then you've got giving um that's a little bit bigger chunk this might be accurate kind of close it's pretty good giving for us 10 these are like the easy categories really because these are kind of fixed i mean you're sell bill fixed giving 10 percent for us fixed and then the last one it can really fluctuate that'd be like health insurance i'm going to say that can anywhere from 10 to 25 but the good news is people don't say good news with health insurance costs the good news is once you know those health insurance costs i mean they're kind of fixed i mean yeah they can vary a little bit from year to year but it's not like the lodging that's just like up and down or even the food i think those three expenses that make up that last 25 are pretty fixed and i know there's probably some small categories and stuff i'm leaving out the big thing is to say this is the 3k a month lifestyle you can have some fun you can go some places you can do some things that you can't do all the things there are some sacrifices that we have to make but for the most part it's it's actually us living our life comfortably so um i would say that that's been definitely a sweet spot for us in the rv living so that's 3k if you backtrack a little bit the two cat again i did the 3k because i think 80 percent of you guys that's going to apply to you the most if you wanted to live on 2k rv living i think you can still do it we know people it is possible we know people have done it but as far as the sacrifices you make to do it for us we have to give up too much pie uh i can't keep one when it comes to living the 2k a month lifestyle some of the resources you can use is buying memberships to thousand trails or boondockers welcome harvest host camping driveway surfing doing a lot of those uh volunteer type situations where you can stay somewhere and use their resources but you offer your time or probably not going to move as much doing the memberships but that's a lot of times how you can save more money is by not moving so much so fast the longer you stay in an area the cheaper it's gonna be for the most part um so we've met a lot of people over the years that use these tactics and they have an amazing time making wonderful family memories and they really enjoy that experience they enjoy you know the volunteering or work camping it's also a great way where you can trade off your your time and energy for having somewhere to stay and now there's some upfront expenses to make this cheaper for instance they may boondock a whole lot and yeah it's 2k a month but you do have some upfront expenses maybe with solar and batteries that kind of thing thousand trails you get to stay quote for free but you have some upfront expense with that with the membership costs repairs on 2k as well i think they probably do more repairs themselves to save money on that too so if you're super handy it's not a big deal to you what the groceries are you don't care about doing fancy tourist trap type stuff that costs more you're great with just going on a hike things like that you know if a lot of that fits into your lifestyle this money can come down again the food is so revealing because if you already eat out a lot you already buy the name brand things in your house and all of a sudden you're like well we're gonna go live in an rv which already has all these changes going on and we're gonna change the way we eat out and we're gonna change the way we do groceries that's a lot of change so there's 3k in the middle there's 2k we backtrack two and then 4k so the 4k lifestyle and you could call this a 5k 6k 4k plus 4k plus there you go there we go um and we've came close to 4k some years and then some yet years we've actually been closer to the 2500k 2500 cats a lot of money the 2500 uh range but 4k so you you get the option to stay maybe at more jelly stones or do fort wilderness more or nicer resorts you know you get the nice pool you get the hot tub you get the amenities that maybe you wouldn't get at some of these other places as far as the campsites themselves if you really just you don't want to be pulling your rv through mud you don't want to be spinning forever trying to get the thing level you want level sights maybe even pave size as much maybe something that has you know a patio area or you know you get more of those options to have that lifestyle um and maybe you don't have to be as picky again it's coming down to a lot of the lodging stuff you don't have to be as picky about where you stay you just you stay where you want to stay and that's a relief to you at that you know at that price range as far as excursion same deal you probably get to do more excursions you get to eat out more often i guess repairs too like you may not maybe like i just hate repairs you can hire out repairs more so i think as you get in that range you get more of those things but then the lifestyle just costs more so can you rv full time on 2k a month absolutely it can be done there will be a lot more sacrifice um or maybe there won't be if that's what that's what you're used to in your home it won't be as big of a transition but if you live on way more than that trying to get down to that 2k may be a struggle so i think it's just being realistic with your lifestyle now and how that incorporates into the rv lifestyle in rv living there are sacrifices no matter what range you're in but i think the more you're willing to to give some things up the cheaper you can do this lifestyle yeah i think you've been dying to do it i've been dying i'll take some whipped cream and just i think the cool thing we've talked about downsizing you can practice downsizing now i think you can practice a lot of this stuff now especially again the most tilling category of food you can go and start practicing that you can go ahead and maybe set up some of the lodging and figuring out hey how do we like to do our lodging where do we like to stay all these can be done 2k 3k 4k i think it's largely a lot of it's just a mirror of your current lifestyle you already live in your house i just i totally i've almost taken out um the food category here that sums it up got something so thank you guys for watching we'll see you next video see you guys [Music] you

Channel: Less Junk, More Journey

Views: 161,149

Rating: 4.9039483 out of 5

Keywords: rv expenses, full time rving cost, full time rv, cost of rving, full time rv living cost, full time rv life, rv life cost, rv, rv living, rving, hensley and jj, how to rv, camping, camper, full time rving, rv life, rving with kids, travel vlog, 5th wheel, fifth wheel, less junk more journey, less junk more travel, best rv youtube channel, rv living with kids, rv expenses and budget, camping cost, Less junk more journey rv

Id: tMik5Qz-v8I

Length: 19min 59sec (1199 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 08 2020