Full Time RVing Costs: Motorhome Edition – March 2016

March was quite an eventful month for us. We celebrated Joe’s birthday, Leo’s adoption birthday and hit several milestones including reaching 1,000 subscribers on our YouTube channel and 6 months on the road. I’m happy to report that even with all the celebrating we were able to keep our expenses down and mange to stay under $90/day.

To view all reports, RV Living Costs: Full Time in a Motorhome for One Year.

Full Time RVing Costs: Motorhome Edition – March 2016:

Total Expenses: $2,703
Cost Per Day: $87.18
Total Miles Driven: 1,820
Generator Hours: 43.5
Jeep MPG: 17
RV MPG: 6.5
Nights At RV Parks: 14
Nights Spent Dry Camping: 17
Meals Eaten Out: 14

Expenses:

Our total expenses were less this month compared to last month ($2,703 vs $2,835). Fixed costs remained the same.

Here are a few notes about our expenses this month compared to previous months:

Food costs (groceries, eating out, coffee and alcohol) decreased compared to February. We were able to bring it down from $741 last month to $680. Even though we ate more meals out compared to last month, we were able keep the food costs down.

Cell phone costs went down by $47 because we received a credit for the poor AT&T service in Southern Florida. We did take advantage of a special offer to upgrade to a 20G plan for an additional $20 a month.

Misc expenses increased by $109 compared to last month. We did quite a bit of laundry, added $25 worth of postage to our Escapees mail forwarding service and spent $25 on parking in different cities and places we visited.

No RV park expenses in March. The 14 nights we spent at RV parks were hosted by Encore Resorts and Thousand Trails.

March gas costs increased because we drove more, gas prices increased (summer blend) and we ran the generator for 43 hours compared to 9 hours last month.
Miles on the RV: 979 – avg mpg 6.5
Miles on the Jeep: 841 – avg mpg 17

Below is the breakdown of fixed and variable costs.

Lessons Learned:

Some things we learned this month that we’d like to pass along.

If we know we need to run the generator all night, try to find a campground with electric hookup. It was over 100 degrees one day and hot and humid all night. We were dry camping and ran the generator for 19 hours straight to keep the coach cool with the AC. In retrospect, we would have been better off going to a campground for electric hookup as opposed to running the generator. The cost of the fuel used to run the generator would have cost about the same as a state or county campground and we wouldn’t have had to listen to the generator all night.

Take advantage of sales at Publix. Publix is a supermarket chain started in Lakeland, FL and as soon as we got into the state, several people told us to check out their sandwiches and hot foods. We were a bit skeptical at first but once we discovered their buffalo ranch chicken tender sandwich we were hooked. Their fried chicken is also pretty good especially when it comes right out of the fryer. A different sandwich and hot food item goes on sale each cycle and with whole sandwiches starting at $4.99, it’s a good way to grab a well priced meal on the go. When the chicken tender sub is on sale for $6.99, we end up sharing one because it’s gigantic. Check out the video of our first Publix Sandwich.

Daytona Beach Cracker Barrel does not allow overnight parking. This is the first Cracker Barrel we’ve visited that does not allow overnight RV parking. Considering the location is walking distance to the Daytona International Speedway, we can understand why.

To view all reports, RV Living Costs: Full Time in a Motorhome for One Year.