Our startup costs for full timing

SkiMore wrote:

Agreed, what you paid for your RV is your business. The rough cost of your rig isn't a big mystery. You have a model XYZ and the price can be looked up. You may have gotten a great deal or a crummy one, but if someone is interested in what your rig is worth they can find out pretty easily.

I guess I was saying that if you plan on trading in your RV in 5 years and think the upgrade will cost $30K dollars you could add a line to the expenses titled something like "RV upgrade fund" of $6K/year ($30K / 5 ). It may be better than waiting until year 5 and have your expenses jump up by $30K for that year. It doesn't matter much if you don't do it in exactly 5 years or don't spend the target amount.

People need to factor in cost of RV, RV replacement, depreciation or something similar if they are trying to figure out their cost to fulltime.

On second thought I suppose that you could live the way you do in a $15K RV or a $500K RV. The fuel and maintenance costs would be different, but everything else would be the same. Maybe the cost of the RV shouldn't be in the public spreadsheet.

Good post and excellent points. When I posted about our startup costs someone commented that they noted I hadn't included the cost of the rig itself. I didn't include that information because I doubted that what I spent for a rig would be particularly helpful. Right here where we are right now there are FEMA trailers and high end motorhomes and everything in between so the rig costs are all over the place.

I really like your thinking about paying yourself by putting money aside for a replacement rig. We're doing something like that, knowing that the day will come when we'll have to replace our rig.

Anyway, thanks for the conversation. I appreciate your clear thinking on financing the fulltime lifestyle.