Much like I did during our around the world trip, I plan to capture our spending details for our Great American Road Trip. Instead of tracking by country like I did before, I’ll track by month with similar categories:
– Lodging: spending on nightly camping/resort fees
– Restaurants: spending on “going out to eat”
– Food/Goods: spending on grocery store food, goods and supplies
– Gas: I think I’m most afraid of this category!
– Regular Bills: Monthly bills
Let’s start with October. It wasn’t pretty. Actually… it was reallll ugly! I’ll do a quick assessment of our overall spending and then remove the “not normal” items that will hopefully disappear from future reports.
Total October Spending: $8,629.38
Just brutal. If we keep up spending at that pace, we’ll have to come home tomorrow… or actually last week. The biggest unexpected expenses came from our rough week in Kentucky when our car broke down ($3,842.30 for repair & rental car) and Lucy required minor surgery ($308.09). Additionally, we had some higher than expected housing costs as we worked to get our house leased.
Now, let’s get to the actual camping expenditures. I’ll try to keep this format similar throughout the upcoming months and match the format I used when we traveled the world.
Total days in the camper: 24
Total days out of camper: 7, stayed with family
Total (normal) costs: $4,374
Cost per day: $141.1
States Visited: Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine
Total Miles: 2,853
Summary
We expected the first month of travel to be the most difficult as we figured out living in a small camper with two people and a large dog. Although it might sound like a dream to quit your job and travel the country with no set schedule, it’s actually quite stressful. When you add in some early complexities like our car breaking down and Lucy getting sick, it made it even more stressful!
We hoped to be fully out on the road as October started, but hope means nothing for reality. We got started late as we worked through the sale vs lease of our house, but then we had a major one week delay with the 4Runner breakdown. We got it fixed and headed out about a week late into the beginning of October and drove a lot to make up lost time. We spent only a day or two in each state as we raced to get up to the northeast to catch the fall foliage, but then we slowed down when we got there.
Spending Details
The Good
The positive side of our car breaking down in Kentucky was that we were already staying with family! Luckily, they didn’t charge us nightly even though our camper “storage” was against their HOA rules, so our campsite fees were much lower at $18.7 per day than what we’ll usually encounter. The average camp site per night that we actually paid was more around $30-$35 per day.
I expected our gas expense to be much higher as well, but the one idle week in Kentucky along with slowing down in the northeast helped bring the average down to $17.9 per day. Also, it helps big time that gas is half the price of its peak a few years ago. Food expenses were okay, but goods were on the high side as we bought a lot of supplies for the camper.
The Bad
Our first month expenses were hopefully the highest we’ll encounter because of a lot of “one-time” expenses. This included simple things like a “Mr. Buddy” propane heater which keeps us warm at night, kitchen utensils and car supplies. It was hard to know everything we’d need until we actually hit the road.
We also had a lot of extra bills from our house, which shot our “regular bills” total much higher than we expect in the future. We did get our house leased towards the end of October, so our regular house utility bills will disappear soon. Next month our regular bills will only be cell phone, insurance and health care which will help… but health care will probably go up so maybe not!
The Ugly
You’re probably tired of hearing about it, but the ugly was definitely the 4Runner. If you’ve been around for a while, you know I think new cars and payments will stop most people from ever becoming rich, but a reliable car is also a necessity! We went into our trip with 190k+ miles already in the 4Runner and previous issues with the transfer case, but it’s also a Toyota. Toyota’s can get 300k miles… I keep telling myself.
So a week in the transfer case went out, and it’s not a cheap fix. We’re at least 2k miles into the new transfer case and the 4Runner seems healthy again, so hopefully the repair bill was an investment that will pay off.
In conclusion, our $141.1 per day is too high for our trip to remain sustainable, but hopefully it was mostly driven up by one time expenses. We hope to get our spending down to $100/day as we get this new life figured out. We’ve had some incredible experiences so far and we’re doing a good job of staying cost-conscious without letting total frugality ruin the trip.
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