Living in an RV can cost you more or less than living at home. If you are adding the expenses of a motorhome to the costs of owning a house, it will likely be more unless you’re getting a good rent on the house. If you have an older RV that didn’t cost much, as we do, that’s easier on the wallet than one you bought new. So whatever I say about our expenses will apply to some people but not to others. Sounds like life in general, doesn’t it?

Still, here are our costs with some comments, in case they help you. We left southern Colorado on November 20, 2014, and it was February 9, 2015, when I caught up with our financial data entry. It worked out that counting everything we’ve spent for the trip (but NOT counting anything for our house back in Colorado), it has cost us $36 a day. Here is a screenshot from my spreadsheet. The first column with numbers in it is the total we spent during that time and the second column is the per day amount.

These numbers would be skewed by the fact that we set out from home loaded with some items like our favorite brand of dog food, Taste of the Wild, which is turns out we can get easily on the road. We eat more expensively than many people, as I don’t eat many carbohydrates. (I explain why here.)

The NM State Parks annual pass was a one-time cost which on the spreadsheet is only spread among those days, where in fact we’ll be benefiting from it for several more months.

Gasoline is both good news and bad news. The good news is that it’s been very cheap for most of the time we’ve been gone. The bad news is that we get poor mileage in our rig and that most of our driving was before prices dropped.

Our only entertainment cost is Netflix. Luckily, we have good enough internet to use it. And hiking is free!