Some advice for a newbie RV'er
Hi, I am very new to the RV lifestyle. I want to purchase my first RV to travel with my wife and kid without breaking the bank and limited by 23 ft in-house parking. I am looking at a 2003 Coachmen...
Forum Discussion
What are your expectations about cost of ownership?
Maintenance on any C will be a couple hundred to something like a thousand dollars a year depending on use and storage conditions, except that is an average, every few years you get big ticket items like tires, transmission maintenance, brake maintenance and you may shell out two or three thousand to make up for all those years you had just an oil change. Like owning a house, you don't put a roof on every year, but when you do, it is a big item, and when you have to pay for it, you don't think about it being spread out over 10 to 20 years.
Insurance, licensing, storage costs don't usually go up with age, and the big hit on cost of ownership, depreciation, goes down every year.
How much it hits your pocket depends on how much of the work you can do yourself, because for most things RV, the labor is a lot more than the parts and the materials. In that respect, also a lot like maintaining a house.
You can get an idea of the average "repairs" cost by pricing a service agreement (what they call extended warranties sometimes). But these cover replacement or repair of big ticket items, no coverage of routine maintenance (like inspecting and re-sealing seams, cleaning flues, fluid changes, tires, etc) which you will pay your self, even with a service agreement.
Maintenance on any C will be a couple hundred to something like a thousand dollars a year depending on use and storage conditions, except that is an average, every few years you get big ticket items like tires, transmission maintenance, brake maintenance and you may shell out two or three thousand to make up for all those years you had just an oil change. Like owning a house, you don't put a roof on every year, but when you do, it is a big item, and when you have to pay for it, you don't think about it being spread out over 10 to 20 years.
Insurance, licensing, storage costs don't usually go up with age, and the big hit on cost of ownership, depreciation, goes down every year.
How much it hits your pocket depends on how much of the work you can do yourself, because for most things RV, the labor is a lot more than the parts and the materials. In that respect, also a lot like maintaining a house.
You can get an idea of the average "repairs" cost by pricing a service agreement (what they call extended warranties sometimes). But these cover replacement or repair of big ticket items, no coverage of routine maintenance (like inspecting and re-sealing seams, cleaning flues, fluid changes, tires, etc) which you will pay your self, even with a service agreement.
