Living out of a Bus Ed. 4 - How much does this Lifestyle cost?
I have decided I quite like this collection of “living out of a bus” and plan to keep releasing new edition each week or something like that :)
As promised, this week on “Living out of a bus”, we are going to cover the financial implications of Full-time Life on the Road.
I feel like the #nomad community paints a very breezy picture of living on the road (waking up to the ocean waves, nightly sunsets with beautiful backdrops, etc. - all the things Instagram highlights), but fails to talk about some of the challenges to set clear expectations of what comes with this lifestyle. Last week, I covered The Hard Things about Life on the road which I hope you found useful, and this week, we will break down the expenses.
Before we left, we created a pretty thorough budget, but a budget is only expected spending, not actual spending. So here, we are going to review what we have actually spent in our first 50 days on the road.
Disclaimers:
First, I think it’s important to address that there are many ways to live this lifestyle, some more expensive than others, specifically when it comes to accommodation & entertainment. For us, we wanted a camping experience that sometimes came with a picnic table and a shower and didn’t often involve Walmart parking lots…preferably never involved Walmart parking lots actually #srynotsry We have found some amazing FREE camping locations as well, but even if you are averaging $10 / night, that leaves you with a $300 / month accommodation cost. I still think that is quite reasonable as it’s about equivalent to my college rent, but is still an expense nonetheless. National Forest campgrounds have been our friend throughout this trip - they are usually pretty spacious and in convenient locations on our scenic drives. We have spent as low as $10 / night at one of these campgrounds and as much as $27 / night. I’m unsure how they determine the cost for these sites because nearly all have the same minimal amenities - a vaulted toilet, a picnic table, and a fire grate. We recently stayed at one that had HOT showers, dumpsters, potable water, AND a dump station which is almost unheard of in NF campgrounds - all for $19 / night.
Second thing to consider is if you will need internet / cell connection for working or other. We happen to have a part time schedule & need reliable connection ~3 times / week. If you have a mobile hotspot, that gives you some flexibility, but more often than not, National forests don’t have cell service, or it’s spotty at best. Now that we are in more of a desert area, we have had some luck with signal on BLM land and NF land. If you need wifi, expect to pay $35-60 / night. It’s very common for private campgrounds to charge 2-4x of what public campgrounds charge. And unfortunately, they are the only ones, aside from McDonalds, Starbucks, and BK, that offer wifi. In our 50 days on the road, we have stayed at private campgrounds due to needing a shower or wifi 11 days (22%).
Costs do change somewhat dramatically with the season. All of our travels thus far have fallen under “peak seasons”.
None of these expenses capture the actual bus build or up front costs. Ex. the cost of the Verizon jetpack to allow mobile hotspot is NOT included. Thus, this is not a completely comprehensive cost breakdown, but rather captures the day-to-day expenses we incur.
COST BREAKDOWN - The First 50 Days
(July 24th - Sept 12th)
With quite a lot of clarity, we have been tracking our expenses to track how much #buslife costs. We have broken expenses into categories, same as what we budgeted. 50 days of #lifeontheroad summarized below:
Avg expense / day: $75
Monthly expense: $2150
Budgeted / day: $68
Parkin’ (ACCOMMODATION) -
Our stay breakdown: ~50% national forests or national parks, 20% private campground, 30% other free places (rest stops, recreational BLM areas, parks, other) See disclaimers 1 and 2 above for further detail.
Avg exp / day: $13
Monthly expense: $390
Budgeted / day: $20
Keeping ‘er Fed (i.e. MILEAGE & FUEL) -
But first, let’s talk mileage Ruby is putting on. The front half of our trip is heavy in terms of mileage because getting from MN to MT alone is a long trek. We then expected our mileage to go down once we hit the west coast & our budget was an average of miles throughout all 4 months we plan to be on the road. However, with our re-route across Nevada and into UT due to the Cali wildfires, we ended up having a heavy month 2 of miles as well. An extra couple hundred dollars and 15 hours of driving is worth it to avoid choking on fumes and being evacuated from Rubes.
Avg miles / day: 94
Monthly total: 2,820
Budgeted / day: 50
Fuel costs have varied SO much in our experience. We have recently started using GasBuddy which has helped us ensure we are finding the best deals around us, but also not running out of gas (#20galtanksprobs). The highest price we have paid / gallon of diesel is $3.59 and the lowest price we have paid / gallon is $2.29! That is a $1.30 / gallon difference. In all states out west starting at Washington, we have seen gas prices vary by .70 or more within the same city. Which is why GasBuddy has been helpful!
Avg exp / day: $22.56
Monthly expense: $676.80
Budgeted monthly: $16.70
F-U-N ( i.e. ENTERTAINMENT) -
Let’s again define what goes into this category for us - take out food, wineries, coffee stops, transportation to sites, other tourist things (skydiving not included…because it would WREK the budget).
Avg exp / day: $13.92
Monthly exp: $418
Budgeted / day: $13.34
Take it back to the #basics (i.e. GENERAL) -
This category is more of the essentials - groceries, toiletries, etc. This category happens to be our most expense of them all. We try to make large grocery stops every 5 days or so as that is really all we can fit in our fridge (see our fridge here). We still eat a fair amount of produce, but have cut back on meat a bit as it can make the fridge smelly & really, I miss my farm-fresh source of meat I have back home. #spoiled
Avg exp / day: $23.72
Month exp: $712
Budgeted / day: $10
RUBY MAINTENANCE -
Although Ruby is still struggling on the uphills and hot days, we have not had any major expenses come up. We did have a headlight go out, so we replaced both of those. We also are refilling the coolant fairly often, so that is included. We are planning to get an oil change here coming up which is an anticipated future expense, but so far, so good in this category. Feeling very thankful about that as it is a risk with #skoolie travel, DIY style!
Avg exp / day: $1.80
Monthly exp: $54
Budgeted /day: $8.34
Differences between “budget” & “actual”…
For all categories where we exceeded out budget, I italisized them. As you can see, there are 2 categories where we beat our budget (Accommodation & Ruby Maintenance), 1 category where we were basically right on budget (Entertainment), and 2 we are over budget on (General & Fuel). This has led us to an average daily expense of $75 vs budgeted $68 which leads us to an additional ~$200 / month than planned.
Main bullets / learnings:
We are traveling many more miles than anticipated - see description under category about re-route - which has of course increased our fuel cost.
Gas prices are much more variable than I anticipated them being - we have paid anywhere from $2.29/gallon —> $3.59/gallon; Ruby has consistently performed at 9mpg.
We have a lot more options than we anticipated for cheaper camping - either free campsites or cheaper public campgrounds! See Tools for finding places to stay here.
We underestimated the cost of groceries - I mostly chalk that up to not having to pay for meat at home (thanks Papa Legatt!) and not eating out very often, so we are coking more (thanks COVID!).
Other notes?
We are also maintaining the cost of our mortgage, car payments, etc. while we are on the road. Since we have a timeline and an estimated return date, it was a lot more work for us to sell our house, move our things, and not have a place to come back to, than to just maintain our payments while on the road. If we stay on the road or go back out, we will likely be re-writing this model. :D The good part about this category is it’s very clear to us how much we will be spending / month as this is all set costs and things we are aware of.
Hope you enjoyed this week’s edition of Living Out of a Bus!! Join me next week (or somewhere in there) for another episode :)
Peace, love, and happy crunching!
yo’ girl Jen
