Being full-time RV’ers, we get this question a lot: how much does it cost to live in an RV? What’s the full-time RV cost?
To answer the question you really have to go back and think about how you’re not just adding the expense of living in an RV to all your other expenses, but that you’re totally changing your lifestyle to live and travel in an RV.
In that sense, the cost of living in an RV can vary wildly depending on your spending habits and choices.
The beauty of living an in RV is you have much greater control over your expenses and you can choose to spend as little or as much as you want.
Luckily many full-timers have shared their expenses openly and show what it costs them to live like this.
Is Full Time RV Living Affordable?
Full time RV living is absolutely affordable.
Most likely, if you can afford your current living expenses and lifestyle, then you can afford living in an RV.
A really simple way of calculating your RV monthly budget is:
your current lifestyle cost – your home living expenses(rent/payments/taxes/HOA fees/utilities) + your RV-specific expenses(mandated insurance, fuel, maintenance, parking, and other expenses)
What’s the cheapest way of living in an RV?
The beauty of RVing is that there are a lot of variables that are totally in your control, and this will really influence how much or how little you spend. Living full time in an RV is as much roaming around as it is lifestyle design.
In certain ways, RV living full time will force you to become a minimalist since you have much less space to put things, so your shopping expenses will certainly go down.
Here are some other ways you can control your expenses (just a few of many)
- If you’re not up for driving too much, you can save on fuel(but potentially incur parking/RV camp costs)
- If you had a long commute and had multiple cars, you’ll save on fuel and car maintenance
- If you frequented coffee shops and ate out a lot, you can save on that by doing so less(sometimes by design, other times by necessity when you’re far away from a large city)
I think the total expenditures will ultimately boil down to why you want to RV full time, and the hobbies you want to maintain on the road.
Photography buffs will naturally have the expense of maintaining their cameras.
Bikers will have the expense of maintaining their bikes.
…and so on.
If you really want to become a boondocker, then you’ll certainly save a lot since the amount you’ll spend will only be the bare minimum.
If you’ve been researching rv budgets for very long, you have probably come across one or two tables full of expenses.
How do the numbers look to you?
When we first started researching it, I thought we’d have to keep track of every little expense, and that worried me a little.
I hate keeping track of my expenses.
But, you know what?
I realized I can make sure all the bills are paid. Then whatever amount we budget for spending is thrown into one lump sum, and I don’t have to detail those unless I want to.
Below I outline many of the main expenses you’ll come across while on the road. As you go through the list also keep in mind the cost of the rv itself.
We purchased a used RV outright, but many people take on a loan for their rig which increases the rv cost of ownership, and can increase the RV living costs.
In the beginning, you’ll travel faster and do more because you still have the 2 week vacation mentality.
Don’t worry.
Your mentality will change after 3-4 months. After that you?ll stop racing to your next destination, and realize that the journey is the destination and not the points of interest on the map. There will be some early months adjustments you?ll want to make.
You will also realize rv living full time can cost less, depending on how you downsize from your current living situation.
You can consider RV living to incur fixed expenses and variable expenses(much like living in a stick house!)
Cost of RV Living(What you’ll be spending on – necessities)
Product Name | Avg price per month | Necessity? |
|---|---|---|
Motorhome | $500 | Yes |
RV Insurance | $100 | Yes |
Healthcare | $400 | Yes |
Internet and TV | $150 | Yes |
Registration | $12 | Yes |
Mail Forwarding | $30 | No |
Campground | $500 | No |
Propane | $25 | Yes |
Maintenance | $100 | Yes |
Food | $600 | Yes |
Personal | Varies | Yes |
Fuel | Varies | Yes |
Toad Payment | $300 | No |
Entertainment | Varies | Yes |
Hobbies | Varies | No |
Total | $2717 | Variable expenses extra |
Total(only necessities) | $1887 | Variable expenses extra |
1. Your Motorhome
For some people, having the newest motorhome is a must so they incur the monthly payment to get a newer model. The range for a new one is huge, anywhere from $350-900/month.
If you don?t mind getting an older model, you can easily get a towable under $5,000 then you won?t have this cost. We’ve also covered how to buy a motorized RV for under $15,000.
Whether you buy a motorhome outright or choose to get one on installments will be determined by your current financial situation. If you have the cash lying around you may wish to spend it to buy a motorhome upfront and not have to deal with an additional overhead.
If you have a regular, recurring source of income like an investment portfolio or Social Security, then you may be able to take on the overhead since you’re not worried about the income diminishing at any point.
Like we mentioned in the start of the post, costs here will vary wildly depending on what you choose, but assuming you have bought a new RV and are making payments on it, let’s average it out to $500/month.
Average cost: $500 per month (or $0 if you have bought your RV outright)
2. Motorhome RV Insurance
Motorhome or RV insurance is usually a combination homeowners and vehicle and can range from $50-150/month. Aside from insurance, you’ll want to get roadside assistance. With many major insurance providers, you can add this to your coverage. Check out our reviews on different roadside plans here.
Average cost: $100 per month
3. Healthcare
Having a high deductible health insurance premiums works for many and can run from $150-250/month per person.
Average cost: $400 per month for two people
4. Internet/Cell Service/TV – General communications
Getting things like internet on the road is a big deal to a lot of RV?ers, and they are willing to pay to make sure they can surf the web or watch their favorite show.
I think that internet and communications is a high priority expense much like gas or food.
Today’s life is connected 24/7/365, and even if you choose not to use the internet every single day, it’s certainly a facility that you want to have easy access to whenever you want, and forgoing this expense is not a good idea.
There are loads of ways you can stay in touch – but an internet connection is critical since it enables all other forms of communication.
The best bet is to use a cellular service like Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile. Verizon has the best nationwide coverage, but their data plans can be expensive and slightly restrictive on data transfer.
Of course, you don’t always need to have WiFi on. You can choose to use it only when you need to in order to save your data usage, and whenever possible and fast enough, use free WiFi(many RV parks offer free WiFi).
Usually $70-230/month.
Average cost: $150 per month
5. Registration costs
The yearly cost to register your RV and car if you tow one. Registration costs are unfortunately one of those costs that you just can’t eliminate altogether, but the cost is not that high per month.
Average cost: $35-115/year per vehicle, works out to $10ish per month
6. Mail Service
There are several mail forwarding services just for RV?ers. You may wonder if you can live without a mail forwarding service, but living in the USA, you will absolutely need a mailing address.
While most private businesses will let you opt for paperless communication, government agencies still rely on mail.
One way you can get around this is to request a family friend to let you use their address. That way, you can save on the cost of a mail forwarding service.
Average cost: $25-50 per month
7. RV Campground Fees
This can vary depending on how you’re traveling. Are you boondock camping a lot or are you staying in an RV Park every night? $0-1000. On average it?s about $300 to 500/month to stay at an RV Site.
If you are looking for frugal rv living, then you’ll want to search out free rv parks, frugal rv camping, and cheap rv parks. To help with offset the cost of living in a rv park, you can use the Free Campsites website.
You can also stay the night in a Walmart or similar parking lot. Another option is to look for BLM land and go ahead and park there for the night.
The best kind of BLM land to look for is land that is near to a town with a sizeable population, at least 2000 or so. With a big enough population, you know that there will be good cellular coverage and most important facilities and amenities are easily available.
Average cost: $500 per month if you’re staying at a campground, free if you boondock or stay in parking lots
8. Propane Fees
For many, this can be an average of $15-50/month, depending on your setup. If you are constantly stopping in RV parks or places you have access to electricity, you can save on propane costs. Your main propane cost will be running the refrigerator, and if you travel around colder areas, heating.
You can save on propane by using electricity wherever available for both your refrigerator and using an electric space heater during the winter.
Another way to cut back on propane costs is to try and use as much solar power as possible. Of course, this will incur a larger setup cost of getting solar power into your RV – which may end up being quite steep.
Average cost: $15-20 per month
9. RV Maintenance
This is your home, and it?s on wheels so things will likely happen. During our first 3 weeks on the road, our starter went out inside Big Bend National Park and we had to be towed 50 miles to the nearest town.
Luckily we had insurance. After a weekend stay and $500 repair bill, we were back on the road. Most people sock away $50-150/month to handle these kinds of incidences.
Aside from sudden expenses, there are some regular maintenance expenses as well:
- Oil changes
- Cleaning
- Tires
- Brakes
- Engine maintenance
These are expenses that are recurring every so often.
Maintenance is probably the hardest thing about living in an RV, since you’ll be alone(as in you and whoever you are living with) and there may be a situation where help is not immediately available. In such a case, you’ll need to know how to do necessary repairs on the fly.
Not to mention that your set of wheels is also your home, and the things that can go bad in a home can also go bad in your RV.
You may need new caulking (check it out here!), your waste tank broke (see here), you run out of black tank cleaner (learn more here), or maybe it’s too cold and you need to buy an electric heater (visit here!)
These things don’t really count as an extra cost of living in an RV since you would incur these expenses at some point in a stick home anyway, but you need to be aware that they will probably come up.
Average cost: hard to say, best to budget $100 per month
10. Food
This is a huge variant for many. We enjoy cooking in the RV when we can and we love trying new restaurants in different towns. On average, we have $400/month for groceries and $250/month for eating out.
Related: Best Microwave convection ovens for RVs
Related: Best Portable Grill for RV
Of course, this will vary for you depending on your lifestyle choices. You may wish to not eat outside and save on that expenditure, or you may have a taste for more expensive home cooking and end up spending a little more even though you don’t eat outside.
Average cost: $600 per month
11. Personal
Again this is more to your personal needs, but haircuts, clothing, grooming can all be lumped in here. It can vary widely depending on your personal needs.
If you really want to embrace the wild lifestyle, you can get away with very sporadic haircuts and making do with very little clothing, but this is hugely a matter of personal preference.
Average cost: varies greatly
12. Laundry
We use laundry facilities in cities and typically our laundry bill runs about $40-60/month. You can either go to a laundromat, or some RV parks do have washing machines and dryers available.
Average cost: $50/month
13. Fuel costs
If you want to travel a lot then this fee can be your largest expense.
With the average price for a gallon at $2.30 (in 2021) and the average mile/gallon is 8-12, this likely will contribute to you slowing down and taking a more leisurely approach to the new full time living.
At the end of the day, it depends on how much you want to travel.
In the early days of your RV lifestyle, you may wish to drive a lot and explore, but as you begin settling into the lifestyle, you’ll probably end up slowing down and driving less.
Of course, driving less means you’ll probably end up at a campsite, so one less expense will probably mean another higher expense.
Average: varies greatly
14. Toad Payment
If you plan on towing a vehicle, you might have a payment on that so figure the range of $200-600/month depending on what you have.
This expense is totally optional, since you’re not necessarily going to tow a vehicle.
Average: $300 per month
15. Entertainment
Entertainment is an important thing no matter whether you live in a stick house or an RV – it’s a need of human nature. However, where and how you get your entertainment fix is certainly variable and limited only by your own mentality and ingenuity.
There are plenty of ways to find free forms of entertainment, such as free museums, parks, and the like, though there are certain museums and parks that will charge.
You may wish to catch a movie, go for a night on the town – if you are near one – or just head over for a cup of coffee or a beverage, and these things will cost money.
However, as I added in maintenance, they may not really apply to specifically RV costs since you would end up incurring entertainment costs anywhere.
How much you spend of course is up to you.
Average: varies greatly
16. Hobbies
I could have paired this with entertainment, but hobbies are a more regular expenditure than entertainment so I have kept this as a separate section.
Some people love photography, other people love mountain biking, and the list goes on – and the beautiful thing about living in an RV is that the mobility you get is incredibly enabling for outdoor hobbies.
Average: varies greatly
How your expenses may change over time
When you first set out on your full time RV living adventure you’ll need to invest a larger chunk of money into initial set up costs(aside from the RV purchase itself).
This will be things like buying furniture, appliances, accessories, and all those good things that you’ll need to, well, survive and live comfortably.
Another thing you may go through(quite like most people taking the full time plunge do) is that in your first few months, you’ll be on “vacation mode” and will be whirlwinding from place to place.
As you get more and more used to the RV lifestyle, you’ll start to take things a little slower, and as you slow down, your fuel and other expenses will get less and less.
Will RV living always cost less than house living?
This is a tough question.
Certainly, if you choose to live a frugal(but smart) lifestyle and limit your movement, you can save a significant amount of money from what you would have spent living in a stick house.
But you can also be a fan of glamping and choose to go the luxury route, splurging here and there and you may end up spending more than you would have normally – but in this case, that was really the point, wasn’t it 🙂
Finally, as far as how much you actually spend, you can only see that once you take the dive and start living in an RV. The most that I or any other RV blogger can do to help is give you an estimate or show you a spreadsheet, but your numbers will almost certainly be different.
Like I said in the beginning of the post, you’ll have to keep track of expenses and budget, but that’s a good habit to have anyway.
How to make money on the road
Many jobs are now transitioning to work-from-home, so you can certainly continue your current job if you’ve been transferred to a home-based position. Now you’ll just up transitioning to work camping.
There are also tons of odd jobs you can do wherever you stop, but those are never guaranteed and better as an extra source of income rather than what you depend on.
Of course, if you’re into glamping and luxury RV travel, you can certainly put your home up for rent and then tour the country on the road!
We’ve compiled a very comprehensive list of ways to make money living in an RV that you can see here.
What Others Say About the Cost of RV Living
We’ve also rounded up the information from other full time RV’ers to show you how they calculate their full time expenses:
This is really helpful info for someone considering RVing for long term. We’ve been full-timing for about 8 years now, which means we left behind all the costs of owing a home (which is a lot more than living RV park to RV park). We don’t boondock a lot, and still manage expenses that fall into the range you mention. Our monthly expenses depend on how much we’re actually driving, where we’re staying (which varies depending on how popular the area is), and how much we’re eating at restaurants. We did find it very helpful to keep track of our expenses and while I still keep at it (I actually enjoy it), we’ve found them to be pretty consistent over the years (the exception was the drive up to and around AK in 2013 when gas prices were particularly high).
Here’s what add to your advice about expenses: think about where you want to travel and what you like to do. Someone who loves traveling to follow a favorite sports team or racing team could spend more money than someone who travels to out-of-the way spots and hikes for free. Someone who needs consistent wifi or pays for satellite services will have higher monthly expenses than those of us who use what’s available for free. When we traveled with our fifth wheel, we had our own washer and dryer onboard; now we use laundry facilities (at a lower expense than you mention… hmm….). All of these things can make a difference. IMHO, the best thing to do is create the best budget you can, keep track for awhile, and modify as you go.
My husband (already retired) and I (close to retirement) are very interested in this life style. We had considered leaving the country for Panama (not ruled out yet) but it would seem RV living would be just as cost effective and even more fun (travel to the south in the winter and the mid-west/east coast in the summer. We are lucky, we would be able to purchase a very nice new RV for cash so that would eliminate that monthly payment. Our combined SS checks would more than cover all additional costs (in fact we could just continue to save & invest) without putting a dent in our savings or having to cash out stocks/bonds. Might be the best way to go for us.
IMHO- buying a ‘new’ RV may not be the best way to get started. New RVs take a huge depreciation and even new RVs sometimes need to be shopped for repairs. A used RV usually has all the bugs worked out and it is easier to ‘make it your own’ because it is used.
Also consider- you may not like the RV lifestyle. Although being stuck in a box is worse for me, I love my RV. If you do not care for RV living, a used RV will recover most (if not all) of your investment.
Finally, a used RV can be updated to suit your needs. My wife and I both have bad backs and are on disability. I bought a Sleep Number bed and we are both comfortable in a ’98 Fleetwood. A 6 gallon hot water tank doesn’t allow us to relax under a hot shower. So I installed an On-Demand hot water heater and we can take as longer a shower as we want. I also installed Wi-Fi because all the CGs offer it (usually free). So my old RV (with 58K miles on it) was cheap to buy and I upgraded it to a rolling condo. Have a great adventure!
Hey ladies, thanks for sharing!
I’ve been considering living in a house trailer. It makes sense that finding a trailer park would be important! The costs of living in a trailer could change depending on what kind of trailer park I find.
That’s good to know that you could stay in an RV park for about $400 a month. I feel like that would be a lot cheaper than rent. Plus you could take your RV anywhere you want to and still have all your stuff with you, so that sounds pretty good.
It’s so interesting that you can have everything you need to live in an RV. Maybe I should see if I can buy one! It seems like it’s not too much of a cost in the long tun.
Even though this is a bit older article, it still all holds true today. Great info about How your expenses may change over time and really like that you added mail service. This is something that many people I have talked to overlook.
I liked that you said that one thing to consider when you are planning to splurge and attain an RV is to make sure that you receive routine maintenance and repair in order to keep it in good condition. I have been thinking about getting an RV but I have been worried about damages. I will be sure to have routine maintenance done in order to ensure proper functionality.
My spouse and I find ourselves quite entranced by RV living. We’re glad that your article mentions that it’s important to take into account what additional hobbies will affect the pricing for living in an RV. For now, the two of us will look into what camper would be the most beneficial for our lifestyles.
Thanks for explaining the cost of living in an RV. My cousin is tight on money. I’ll suggest he look into buying an RV and living in it long-term.
It’s good to know that you should expect to get regular oil changes when you live in an RV. My wife and I are considering moving into our RV. I’ll be sure to store some money away for possible oil changes in the future.
We are getting ready to become snow birds we plan on traveling during winters and come back for work spring and summers, we already live in our rv and are trying to figure out what to do about towing a vehicle.my husband has to have his motorcycle so we are trying to decide on a little truck to put the bike in or a trailer big enough for my grade Cherokee and the bike than again if we should just take the motorcycle.
My wife and I have decided to try out living in an RV for a while now that all of our kids are moved out. It makes sense that we would want to get the proper fuel system for it! It’s good to know that propane doesn’t cost too much every month. I’ll be sure to get a space heater to save even more money on it.