I suggest you give retirement a year or two before committing to the added cost of moving a RV around. Your situation is not the same as those full-timing, they've abandoned the costs of maintaining a fixed home; for those of use who do not, that cost stays even when you are not using the home.
I am assuming you already have a RV and know the fixed costs for that, whether you use it or not, and this is already in your budget. Traveling will add costs on the order of $0.50 - $0.80 per mile travel, and additional rents of $200 to $2000 a month, depending on where you go, where you stay, whether or not you stay long enough to get monthly rates, and how good you are at finding and using free or low-cost locations.
We got our RV about 18 months after retirement. In the first year, we worked out what it cost to keep our home, what it cost to live day to day, and how much surplus income we had for luxuries like travel. That first year, we managed to travel extensively, being away more than six months (in short stretches) including international travel to visit family and friends, conventional car-motel-stay with relatives road trips, and our first cruise.
My wife continued to work when we were at home, but that was not very many days work, and she treated those earnings as her "mad money" for travel and to spend on our kids and grandkids. It about covered Bingo on cruises, as she worked less and less further into retirement.
Second year, we used part of what had been the first year's travel budget to get the RV, part of it to start making road trips in the RV, with a little left to visit our overseas daughter just once. The added cost meant no cruises that year. In the first six months of owning the RV, about 90 days of using it, half of that moving around, half of it staying places 3-5 days at a time. That gave us a handle on the cost of RVing for us, we could use that information for planning the next year.
Third year of retirement, we used the RV about 60 days, managed two cruises and one international trip by air, the combined RV/travel budget stayed the same, the RV cost of ownership cutting fairly deeply into what we previously had enjoyed using for travel.
Fourth year of retirement, my wife got sick. We managed some travel, a mix of RVing, cruising, and our first escorted international tour. Cost of health care, money and time, cut into the RVing budget. Almost half of our travel days became travel for health care. But the situation also got my wife into a mode "I've some savings of my own and I have only a year or two left, so we are going to use that to do what I want to do while I'm still alive." That's how the picture changes, and at our age it can change quickly. But planning needs to be for what you know, not what might be.
I can't really give you useful numbers, different people have different lifestyle preferences, different costs. The cost of my lifestyle might scare you, and other people might find it incredibly low because my income wouldn't cover their condo fees, let alone their housing costs. I have friends with wine bills larger than my income.
To sum it up, I say take it step by step. Find out what it costs you to live, find out what it costs you to RV, then figure out how much RVing you can afford to do. And don't forget about RV ownership costs. I'm in a RV club, and we've had new owners join who've had to quit after a year or so because ownership costs didn't leave them enough money to use the RV, and if you can't afford to use it, why own it?
Tom Test
Itasca Spirit 29B
