.My fourth year of full timing has started as of October 23 and looking back on the previous three years, it's been a great time. I know living in an RV full time is not for everyone, but for those that do love to travel, enjoy new experiences, or are just bored sitting around the house watching the news every night. Living in an RV with a minimum of possessions and being able to hitch up and go anytime you feel like it, whether you want a new view,  a change of weather, or the freedom to live wherever you would like, be it mountains, desert, or the seashore, it's all available if you live in an RV.

I gathered together my spreadsheets from last year, and here is a list of my expenses with absolutely none of the accuracy that you would expect from even the world's worst bookkeeper. My method of keeping up with my expenses are lackadaisical, my mathematical abilities are elementary, my dedication to this endeavor is severely lacking, and my laziness is legendary. Therefore you should keep my lack of qualifications in mind when applying my expense information to anything you may want to do.

CAMPING – $1227 – that sure sounds like a lot considering how much I boondock. But I paid for camping 43 days last season and my season is from October 23, to October 23 the following year. So that works out to roughly $28 a day for paid camping. camping In RV parks is far cheaper than that by the week or the month, but I usually don't stay long enough to take advantage of those reduced prices.

TRUCK – $2366 – For the first four or five months of the season I counted fuel as a truck expense along with insurance and repairs and things such as that. But then I changed and made a FUEL column which lowered the future truck expense drastically.

GROCERY'S – $2893 – no wonder I weigh so much! if I used that money to buy a gym membership instead of food I would be far healthier

EAT OUT – $167 – this was the bad flu season last winter and I had no desire to sit around restaurants with people coughing on me.

TRAILER – $2724 – a big part of that was a new inverter for the Arctic Fox. And then there was the new wireless cameras, don't get me started on the new wireless cameras.

FUEL – $1011 – like I mentioned before the fuel expense is rolled into the truck expense earlier on so this number doesn't mean much.

MISCELLANEOUS – $462 – I have no idea what any of that was for.

PERSONAL – $4448 – a lot of this is when I went on a binge of buying camping gear for my minivacations, hey I'm old and I want to be comfortable.

HOBBY'S – $10,874 – most of that was a new motorcycle.

UTILITIES – $3663 – I can't believe that a storage room, a phone bill, and propane, adds up to that much every year. But far and away the most of that is my unlimited Verizon phone service.
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TOTAL EXPENSES – $29,835 – there again a big chunk of this was the little 2018 Beta 250, a decent quality inverter for the trailer and an incredible amount of camping gear for my minivacations.

If you say it slowly that sounds like a lot of money to spend for one guy living alone in a trailer, but bear in mind I don't really have a budget I just live in a way that I find comfortable.

But I've learned enough now after three years of full timing, that if times get tough I can easily cut one third of that expense and hardly feel it, and probably half of it if I really needed to tighten my belt. Not that my belt can get any tighter at my current weight and stage of muscular development.

Oh yeah, here's another couple of figures that might be interesting to someone. This last season I put about 8,500 miles on the truck, and about 5,900 miles on the Arctic Fox. And oddly enough that's way fewer miles than I used to put on them before I became a "Traveling man" .

                                   theboondork

I picked a great time and place to try and get some outdoor things done. It rained all afternoon yesterday, it rained all night, and its rained all day today. But at least it's supposed to be sunny tomorrow. But under the circumstances I may have to re-up for another day because I'm not sure if I can do the shopping I need and the work I need to do in one day, keep in mind I'm lazy and unmotivated.

With the weather like this it's one of those rare times when I'm glad that I'm plugged into shore power, especially for the measly price of four dollars a day. Now of course my batteries could easily deal with a couple of days of rain and cloudy weather so the main thing I'm getting out of this is the ability to run my little electric heater all day and all night which feels really great with the mid-40s high for the day and mid 30s at night. And a substantial savings instead of heating with propane which helps defray the four dollars a day cost of the electricity. I also save on propane when I'm plugged in by getting out my little one burner electric hotplate and cooking on that instead of the propane stove.

With the snowy cloudy weather I had to deal with in my last couple of weeks in Denver it gave me a chance to see what my new lithium iron batteries can do. So it appears that with absolutely zero charging of the batteries I can live my normal life with no concern for how much electricity I use for about three days, and can double that with some conservation.

Which means that if I pay attention to the weather forecast and can see five or six days of total overcast weather coming my batteries should be fine as long as I only turn on my laptop when I'm using it, heat up my coffee water on the stove instead of the microwave, and not use my desktop computer at all. And that's some valuable information for a person like me that lives on sunshine.

I can't believe I totally forgot about my third anniversary of being a full timer which happened yesterday. I had planned on having a small celebration to commemorate the occasion and making a blog post about my expenses for the year, well so much for that.

I think this is an excellent example of how time is flying by for me. So I'll probably do something tomorrow to mark the occasion that changed my life, and put my expenses on the blog either tomorrow or the next day depending on how long it takes me to get all the information together.



                               theboondork

I made it to Storrie Lake state Park in New Mexico by lunchtime and only found two other RVs in the campground. Since it's still pretty chilly at night here, usually in the low 40s, I decided to pay for an electric hookup so I can run my little electric heater at night. It's only four dollars a night to camp with electricity since I have the New Mexico annual Park pass so I gave the Iron Ranger eight dollars and settled in for two nights.

Also the next two days are supposed to be cloudy and rainy and without the electric hookup I would have to pay attention to my solar panels keeping the batteries charged up. But for four bucks a night I can use all the electricity I want.

My rearview cameras are acting weird as usual. The camera that looks at the road behind me quit working completely and all I had was a  black screen the whole way to Las Vegas New Mexico. Whereas the other camera that looks straight down at my motorcycle worked great the whole time, and I only seen it blink off once for a brief moment.

I don't know why any of that is happening and the only thing that makes any sense to me in this situation is those two cameras don't like each other. And since they absolutely refuse to get along with one another for more than a few minutes at a time, this leads me to the obvious conclusion that one's a male and the others a female.

                                      theboondork