- Last year, we traveled 13,794 miles and visited 22 states. - And we're gonna tell
you what it cost us. (upbeat music) - For those of you that just found us, we are Phil & Stacy from
You, Me and The RV, of course. - And welcome, we're so glad you are here. - Yeah, absolutely. Welcome aboard. - Before we tell you all of our numbers, we have to remind you that RVing costs will vary from RVer to RVer - Yeah, we can't emphasize that enough. The way we RV will not be the way you RV. - When you're looking at costs from different YouTubers and bloggers, just kinda keep that in mind. There are a ton of things that will affect what your costs will be. I'm gonna go over a few of
them real quick for you. So the type of your RV,
the size of your RV, the size of your family, your RV living style
which can really vary, preferred type of camping, if you camp host or you don't camp host, the frequency of boondocking, what your income is, what your debt is, how long you stay in each location. And there are so many other things that can affect what your costs are. - Yeah. That's just
the tip of the iceberg. In your sticks and bricks, you don't live the same as your neighbor. It's exact same thing that applies to RVing. We got beat up last year when we disclosed how we traveled and what we spent on it. But we budgeted, as with
anything that we do, we budget for it and we
stay within our budget. - If you haven't seen
our first finance video, it is our first year on
the road and what we spent, and I will link that down below - Our RV goals were simple. We wanted to get out and see as much as this country had to offer. And we knew it was gonna
cost some money to do it. - Right, so we wanted adventures, we wanted to experience new things. Yes, we do look for free
parks and free things to do, but we also knew we would
spend a little money doing it. So when you start off
on your RVing adventure, your goals may be different than ours. So just keep that in mind. And we are going to graciously
share our amounts with you. <Phil laughs> [Phil] Yeah. So if it's not what you
would spend, that is okay, just don't beat us up in the comments. - Yeah, again, this just gives you an idea of some of the things that we did. So if you want to move every week and go see a national monument, stay in national parks and
visit and do a lot of things, your costs are gonna be a little higher. If you're gonna go and sit
out in the desert in Arizona and stargaze at night, your
costs will be a little lower. So keep that in mind. - Yep, all right. So you ready to get into the numbers? - Let's go. - Oh, do keep in mind that we are giving you
our category totals here. If you want a break down of our categories and what specifically we spend on items like maintenance and fun, if you go to the blog, it's
even got more detail for you. - Yeah, and the blog is
located at TodayIsSomeday.net. - Let's tell you a few of the things that will not be included
in our budgeting. - None RV specific type
stuff, like groceries, eating, what we eat, how we eat, everybody has to eat and everybody's style
is gonna be different. - So we also won't include
things like cell phone bills, our clothing allowance,
anything like that, any of the movie platforms, those if you have them fine,
if you don't, that's fine too, but those are not RVing specific. So we're only gonna talk
about RVing specific items in our budget breakdown. - Yeah, and we also won't be
discussing RV depreciation because everybody has
a different type of RV. - And different depreciations. - So we'll leave it at that. - All right, so let's move on in. To start off our budget, we're gonna start with activities. - Who doesn't like activities? - There's a ton of room for activities. - Look at all this floor space. You could do aerobics in here... - So many activities. - Name that movie. - All right, activities
include any admission fees, any tickets, anything like that to get us into any fun things
we've done on the road, and that total was $1,830.20. - So we like to have fun. - Yes we do. If you want a good
breakdown, go to the blog and they'll show you just
where we spent that money. - Yeah, and another big
ticket item is our fuel. Now keep in mind, we have a diesel RV. So fuel, it ebbs and flows in price, but we spent $2,753 in diesel and DEF. - Right, but over the course of last year, we've signed up for the TSD card- - RV fuel card. - Yep, it's a savings program, which saved us a ton of money. - Right, and by the time we got the card, we got back out on the road, we used the card seven times
before we got hit with COVID, and had to sit. So if you're interested in what this TSD, RV fuel program is, it is for diesel RVs or diesel trucks, sorry, gassers, they
don't have the program. The program started out with 18 wheelers. And they've been doing that for 40 years and they just included our RVers. So if you want more information
about the TSD program and how you can sign up and get the card, head on over to the blog as well. - And I'll put that link down below. All right, next up is our propane costs. And again, as a motor home,
we do have an onboard propane. And this cost is only for that not for our portable grill propane. So we spent $187.62. - Yeah, not too bad. And we use it mainly for cooking. And if we're boondocking,
then we use it for cooking, heat for the water and heat for the rig if it's cold outside. - Next up is our tolls. As some of you may know, we did tour the Northeast last year, - Awesome.
- Oh we had a great time. - It's a must if you haven't gone there. - Great time, but there are a lot of tolls up there. So for the year we spent $318.35 on tolls. - That's right, keep those quarters and actually keep those twenties handy. But some tolls were a few
dollars to a LOT of dollars. Let's just put it that way. - Some were shocking. - Yeah, just make sure
you have some cash on hand going through the North East. - All right, next up is
transportation and parking. And when I say transportation, I mean like the metro
or any commuter trains or anything like that. [Phil] - Pay to park. Yeah, so our total for both
of those together is $226.37. - Not bad. - All right, next up. You wanna take that one?
- Yeah. So our rally fees, we
attended the Escapee's Hangout which we absolutely had a blast with. And if you're interested
in that Escapee's Hangout, Stacy will link the
video down below as well. - Yeah, it was the best time. We actually did an amazing
race throughout New Hampshire. It was the most fun ever. So if you're wondering if we won the race, you'll have to watch the video. - That's right, no spoiler alerts here. - Now we did actually
attend a second rally and that was the RVillage rally. And that was an epic, epic rally. But we spoke at that rally... [Phil] - they comped our site. And that rally is amazing too. So you gotta go to that one. - And that was actually
our first speaking gig. So if you weren't there, you missed out. - Yeah, it was a lot of fun. So next up is our internet, and this one's a little complicated. - Yeah, so there's some
lessons learned in this one. So we'll tell you that
we paid for our plan. It was $700 for the year,
we paid that upfront. And it worked for about a year and a half and then something happened and the company went out of
business and so did our service. So luckily we've been
sitting at a pretty nice park that has decent WiFi. And I'm in the research phase right now to find another setup for us. - Yeah, so keep your eye out. We're gonna share that with
you once we get up and going, but we did pay $700 at
the beginning of our year for our internet, and it ended up, we only
got six months out of it. So we averaged $116 a month for what we actually got
out of that internet plan. All right, next up is our RV insurance. So before I tell you what we paid, remember there're a lot of variables with your insurance just
like with car insurance. So are you full-time or part-time? What's your driving record? What is your zip code? What's your credit look like? All of those will affect-
- Type of RV, yeah. - All of those are gonna
affect...how old is your RV?. It'll all affect what your bottom line is. So I can tell you we did
go through Progressive, Phil shopped around, and he has each year
we've been on the road and we paid $2121 for our
insurance for the year, and we paid upfront to get
a little bit of a discount. - Yeah, so when you're
searching different RV forums and you're asking that
million dollar question, "What does everybody pay for RV insurance?", it's a little misleading because you'll see
numbers from 500 to 5,000. And I've literally seen those. And again, it's all of those
variables that Stacy mentioned. So you really just have to shop around. - Yeah, and not every insurance company will provide insurance for RVs and insurance for full-time RVers. So you do have to shop around. - Right. - All right, next up
is our RV maintenance. - Yeah, the maintenance was low this year. Just because we do a lot
of maintenance ourselves, so we did go to Red Bay and
our maintenance was $1,123. Not too bad. That included the generator
oil being changed out and some odds and ends that we had Tiffan fix
while we were there. - Yeah, and again, for
full details on that, head over to our blog post. All right, next up is RV upgrades. These are some things we did ourselves. And the total for that is 3,763 bucks. - So that was mainly our solar upgrade. And that was a DIY- - With the help of friends. - With the help of friends, we saved a lot of money
by doing it ourselves. So the cost is low, and you'll see the video
and you'll see how we did it, and you'll see where we saved some money. But again, we budgeted and
we came in under budget. So we're quite pleased with that upgrade. - Yeah. All right, next up are our memberships. We have quite a few RV
specific membership. Now our total for all of
our memberships is $248. A couple of them I can tell you, I can't imagine RVing without. And the first one is Boondockers Welcome, next up is Harvest Hosts and finally, the only trip planner, I
will use is RV Trip Wizard. So we are affiliates with all of those, but that's not why we love them, we're using them all long
before we came affiliates. I will put links below. So in case you guys wanna check those out, we do have discount codes for Harvest Hosts and Boondockers Welcome and you can save if
you join with our code. - Right, and the Harvest Hosts is not just breweries and wineries, we've got a lot of comments that says, "Well, I don't like alcohol. I don't drink alcohol." That's great. You don't have to purchase their products, you don't even have to stay at a winery, there's museums, there's golf
courses for those golf nuts. So there's more to it than just going to a brewery and a winery. And I can tell you, they are some of the most
peaceful night's sleep you'll get, they beat Walmart parking lot any day. - Yep, absolutely. And we'll have more on that
with our campground breakdown. Also the memberships also
included our Escapee domicile and Mail Forwarding service. So that's why it was as high as it was. And speaking of Mail Forwarding, of course we have our mail
forwarded from Livingston which is where Escapees is
to wherever we happen to be. And just for postage for
that, we spent 143 bucks. - Yeah, and we might've been able to save a little bit of money if I hadn't sent our
Amazon purchases there instead of where we were actually sitting. So I had to pay for shipping
twice for some of those. - For toilet paper. A
case of toilet paper. - Yeah, some of those. Yeah, so be careful of where
you're sending your mail. <Stacy giggles> - All right, let's get
into our camping breakdown. So we're gonna break down where we stayed each
night over the past year and what it cost us. - Yep. - All right, so first
up we did three freebie, total freebie overnights. And that includes Casinos and Walmarts. - Yeah, not the quietest
places you want to overnight but they were free. - Yep, next up. - The next one is probably
our most, well, not probably. It IS our most expensive- - Nightly expense. - Nightly, yeah, most expensive stay was at Disney's Fort Wilderness. Now I can say it was our priciest
but the most enjoyable. We really had a good time there. And that was a 450 bucks to
stay there for four nights. - Yeah, so that's 112 bucks a night. - Yeah, so that's just to see the Mouse. So, I mean, if you haven't been, it is worth it to go at least one time. - That was our second time
since being on the road. - First time was a family reunion. So we kind of hung out with family. We didn't go into the park, but we did stay at Fort Wilderness. But Disney does it right. Fort Wilderness is an
extremely clean, spacious park. You're gonna love it. There's a lot to do. Check that video down below. - Yep.
- If she's not linking it, she will now. - It's all linked in the blog. - Okay.
- So every video. Okay, next step we did
go to the Tampa RV show. We stayed on property at the show because we were working there,
but we also had full hookups. We didn't stay in the parking lot. And that was a total of 240 bucks, which was 40 bucks a night. - Yeah, not bad. We were working and we had to pay, so it was a win-win for us. - Yep. - Next, we did eight days
of volunteering at a park which we were able to stay at for free. And eventually, we ended
up with full hookups during our time there. - We say free, but we
worked our booties off, but it was amazing. We worked with A Year To Volunteer. If you haven't seen what they're doing, you have to check them out. Their goal is to volunteer for
365 days all across the US. We were fortunate enough
to meet Phil and Shar on their first project which
is at the Florida Caverns and of course that will
be linked in the blog, but it was such a worthy cause, we really enjoyed meeting everyone there and working, really working. We worked really hard for the free sites, but it was really worth it to help that state park open back up. - Yeah, and it was something, it just made us feel good
to volunteer and give back. And yeah, when we say
free, our site was free. - We worked for it. - We busted our humps while we were there. Really, really a worthwhile
experience for us. - And we can't wait to do it again. - Absolutely.
- So we actually did two projects with them and we loved every minute of it. So we'll be back with A Year To Volunteer. - One of our favorite places to stay is the Army Corps of Engineer parks. And we absolutely love staying
there and you'd know that, because we spoke about
it at the RVillage rally, absolutely love it. We stayed there for a total of 13 nights, which came out to about
a $15 nightly average. - If you have, the
National Park Senior Pass or the National Park Access Pass, you get 50% off these campgrounds. So if you wanna know more about specifics for these campgrounds, I'll
leave that blog post below. And I go into great detail on how to find them and
how to get your discount. - Yeah, and spoiler alert. It's not just for military people, anybody can stay there. - We got to quit telling people that, cause they're gonna start filling up. - That's right. - All right, next up, we stayed for 15 nights on
Florida's Water Management Land which, heads up it is
free, free, free camping, and it was amazing, we loved it. - Yeah, and it's a little
hidden gem down there. We didn't know about it until we were actually in
Florida, that it existed. So it was a nice find. - We also spent 22 nights
with Boondockers Welcome. So we spent that with all different hosts because we get Boondockers
Welcome comped for us, we're affiliates and we put
out a lot of videos about them, so they gave us this year for free. We actually averaged about
$1.36 per night for those days. And the only reason it was that is because we paid $10
for a host in Indiana who gave us electric, and one in Florida, we
gave another host 20 bucks for his electric. - Yeah, he actually moved
his rig out of his sight so we could pull our rig
in there and plugin. And Barry, thank you. - Yeah, we appreciate you. All right, next up is driveway surfing with all of our amazing friends. So again, that was free. Well free for us, we may
not be so free for them because we were there, but it was free. - We might've used some
water and electricity. - Used their shower, whatev's. - Ate their food, but it was all fun. - All right, next up is Harvest Hosts. So again, another one
of our favorite place. We spent 29 nights at Harvest Hosts. And again, this was also
comped for us for the year. But as we were coming back from Florida, we added on the golf courses,
which we didn't have. And that cost us 26 bucks. So that averaged out to 90 cents a night. - Not bad, I can live on that. - Yeah, and we love everything
about Harvest Hosts. So, oh, they're amazing. You gotta check those out. We also did a month of camp hosting. So in North Carolina, while we were there, we tried our hand at it
again for the second time. - But there were no bathrooms involved. - And we stayed 32
nights in North Carolina at our camp host spot. So technically it was free,
but we again worked for that. - That's right, we had to work. We were on a schedule. - Yeah.
- That was rough- - With the alarm clocks and everything. - Full time, RVers don't
normally have a schedule or alarm clock. - So not sure if we're
gonna camp host again, we'll take that as it comes. I never say never. - Yeah, TBD. We obviously stayed on some military bases and military campgrounds, and we stayed a total of 44 nights for a grand total of $26 a
night is what it averaged. - Yeah. - So contrary to popular belief, we don't stay for free on a military base. - Right. - We have stayed at some military bases where it was $50 a night to stay. - Yeah, Fort Belvoir
was our most expensive. - Yeah, so military bases are not free and not everybody can get on them. So we do like them, 44 nights
shows that we were there. - Quite a bit. So our total for the military parks, our military campgrounds was 1,173 bucks. - Yeah, not bad. - All right, next up is state parks. We stayed 44 nights at state parks. And this is state parks,
county parks, city parks, national parks all lumped into one. And that was 1,238 bucks. - Not bad. And then lastly, private campgrounds. We stayed 107 nights
in private campgrounds for a grand total of 2,487 bucks. And COVID has a hand in some of that. - Yeah, yeah, for about two months of it. - Yeah. - So we don't normally
choose private campgrounds, we usually like the COE's and
the state parks better. But I can tell you the last
two months of our year, we're at a private campground, but it was only $477 for the month. So actually cost-wise
it wasn't too shabby. - No, it wasn't. But again, it just had a
sitting the whole time. - Yeah, yeah. All right, so our total camping costs for the year is $5,813.29. - Yeah, for a grand total
of $16 on average nightly. - That's right. I think that's pretty good. - Not bad. When we set out two years ago, our nightly budget or daily budget was set and we are well under that. - Well, we set it at 40 bucks a night because we had no clue what we could do, and people laughed at us and said, "You're never gonna camp for
less than 40 bucks a night, you're crazy." And then other people said, "40 bucks, that's ridiculous. I never paid more than an average of 15 or whatever." So we were lost, but as you can see, we
came in well under that. - Sometimes we hit it, sometimes
we're a little over it, - But it all averages out. - Right, right, absolutely. - Now, if some of you are thinking you could have saved so much
money with Thousand Trails and you're nightly cost
would have been less, well, we opted out Thousand
Trails for a ton of reasons. So if you haven't seen our video as why Thousand Trails
does not work for us, of course I will link that below
and you can check that out. - Yeah, it's not to say
that Thousand Trails may not work for you and your lifestyle. We have friends that have Thousand Trails and they swear by it, they love it. It works for them, that's great. - And finally, I just
wanna remind everybody thinking that they can go out and boondock and live for absolutely free, remember that's not necessarily the case, there are hidden costs
involved, even with boondocking, things like dumping fee,
filling your fresh water tanks, washing laundry. - Replenishing your propane. - And your fuel. What are you using to run your generator, to recharge your batteries? All those costs add up. Now they're not huge costs. It can be cheaper, but when
we stayed out at Quartzsite, it was actually cheaper for us to stay at a few of our COEs
than it was for us to boondock. So you do have to weigh the pros and cons and what works best for you
and what you like to do. - Right.
- So hopefully this is gonna help you as you are planning to go full time, as you're budgeting to go full time, be sure and shop around on
YouTube and on other websites and see what people are spending, see their budget breakdown, find out where you wanna
be within that breakdown. And you can live on whatever budget you want to live on, on the road. This is the budget that works for us. I hope you find the
budget that works for you. - Yeah, absolutely. There's a budget out there for everyone. - Yeah, before we go,
we have to let you know what's going on with our
Homes For Our Troops charity. - Yeah, it just keeps getting better. - So after we closed out the charity, we didn't quite make it to $5,000. - We were just a little shy. - So we got an email from two Air Force
retired Master Sergeants, I hope I said that right? - Chief Master Sergeants. - I knew I was wrong. Two E-9s from the Air
Force that are retired and one of their wives. And they decided, since the
Navy could not pull it out- - Couldn't finish the job. - We couldn't finish the
job and take it to 5,000, they were gonna take
our donations to 5,000. - Yeah, so they donated 300 bucks, which took it just over 5000 and they wanted to challenge anybody else in the other branches to keep it going. - That's right. And so I sent it out in our newsletter on Saturday last week, and some Navy folks stepped up and we've had another $500 donated all from Navy, retired
Navy, to our donation. So if you would like to take the challenge and see what other services we can push forward in this donation, I'll leave the link down below for you to donate directly
to Homes For Our Troops. It's not coming to us. Just donate, and then send me an email and let me know what branch you're donating for, and I will add that to our tally and we'll see which force
can donate the most. - Yeah, we'd love to keep it going. So if you're feeling it, you've got a few extra
bucks to spare, join in. - Yeah, I actually got a call today from Homes For Our Troops about our charity and the
donation that we already donated. They are so excited about it. They wanna say thank you to everyone who bought the shirts and donated. They were just totally,
totally overwhelmed. So thanks to everyone
who's already donated, whether it's the tip jar or
the T-shirt or on your own, we appreciate each and every one of you. And I know the veterans
that are receiving help from Homes For Our Troops also thank you. - Yeah, and I'll give
you a virtual fist bump because that was just
totally awesome, we loved it. - All right. If you haven't subscribed yet, please hit that subscribe button. - And give us a thumbs up and hit the notification bell over there. And yes, I'm using my surgically
repaired right shoulder to point cause I'm getting better. - And we will put links to
everywhere that you can find us. You can mainly find us
these days on RVillage. So if you're not a part of
RVillage and our group, please join us over there
or head over to our website for a ton more information
on travel and RVing. - Yeah, we look forward
to seeing you there. - All right, thanks for watching. And hopefully one day we'll
see you back on the road. (upbeat music)
