How much does it cost to travel in a motorhome full time
I'm sorry I can't give you a real answer because everyone's budget and lifestyle differs.
I read somewhere that you can take the cost of your accommodation for the night, in whatever country you are in and multiply it by three. This will give you a reasonable guide to how much per day to allow.
We track our expenditure daily, and to give you an idea of how much it costs us to live on the road full time, I'll update you each month with our finances.
Our goal of our all up costs is around $110NZD per day. This includes unplanned repairs and replacements, so our goal is to sit around $80 to $90 a day. See our monthly averages here.
Making the Decision When the decision to live on the open road was finally made, it seemed everything else fell into place. Originally we had arranged to have three months off work, and decided that we could rent our house out while we were away.
House Sitters We usually had house sitters, the wonderful John and Judy. We covered the cost of power. They used things like condiments out of the pantry and supplied their own food. We had one month of paid leave, and two months without pay. Having house sitters in wasn’t going to offset our expenses along the road this time, so we decided to rent out our home.
Renting our Home We were fortunate that a fabulous couple rented our home while they had their own house built. To accommodate our tenants, we moved out earlier than anticipated, but this also helped us save money before our three month road trip along the Southern Scenic Route. Not that our bank account instantly filled with money, but it gradually built up. We could better envision what a coffee and sandwich would buy- two lunches worth of groceries, or paying for a night at a campground is the equivalent of 25 kilometers worth of diesel.
Telecommunications In the past ten years or so, we have been away in our motorhome (or previous caravans) most weekends. So including work we were hardly ever at home. The only people who used our land line to call us were my Mum and those Sales and Survey People. So we got rid of our landline about five years ago and got cellphones with plans that fitted our lifestyle.
Goal and Focus Our focus was clear- live a simple life, mostly making our own meals. Our goal is to be happy and we continually monitor this at regular intervals.
Tracking Expenditure The New Zealand Motorhome Association (NZMCA) put out a request for volunteers to complete a budget of their ‘on the road expenses’ for three months. We applied to do that and the papers duly arrived. We put our rates and insurance on to Direct Debit.
Setting up our Finances We took accounting and legal advice, to make sure we set everything up correctly and had no glitches. I won’t go into the details, because the circumstances would be different for each individual.
Medical Expenses New Zealand has a good, but overloaded health system. We don’t have medical insurance, but if we need to go private, we have decided to pay out of our savings.
