theboondork's RV blog

where does all the money go?

6/4/2018

A rose growing in my daughter's flower garden.

It looks like it's past time for my monthly financial report, which I've been putting off because I hate to look at it.

In May I bought pretty much all the camping gear I needed to be comfortable while taking my mini vacations away from the Arctic Fox, and it put a serious dent in my otherwise fairly frugal lifestyle. But I figure if it makes my life even more enjoyable, which is pretty hard to do, I'll just give it a try, and if it doesn't work out I'll have even more stuff to sell on eBay.

CAMPING--- O--- having a New Mexico annual Park pass, and staying at my daughter's house is responsible for that big zero.

TRUCK--- $76--- most of that is me fooling around with different snake oil concoctions in an effort to get my truck to pass Denver's emissions test next month.

FUEL--- $215--- I was traveling up from New Mexico to Denver.

TRAILER--- $193--- new tag for the trailer. Tag is the word government uses instead of what it really is, which is just another Tax.

GROCERY--- $185--- its low because I'm doing a lot of eating at my daughter's house, and very little grocery shopping.

EATOUT--- $16--- it's pretty apparent restaurants aren't getting rich on me.

UTILITIES--- $283--- my usual. Big phone bill, storage room and one tank of propane.

PERSONAL--- $1446--- here's where my financial situation goes down the tubes. That's a lot of money to spend and not even end up with a new motorcycle. But I was overcome with the thought of going places I can't go with the Arctic Fox and before I knew it Mucho Dinero had trickled through my normally sticky fingers. Far and away the most of that was spent on a fairly decent laptop to replace my outdated Sony laptop I carry in the truck. In fact all the other camping gear together didn't come anywhere near what I paid for the laptop, but I'm a computer addict and have admitted to it on numerous occasions.

HOBBYS--- O--- I didn't have any money left for hobbies after spending everything on my personal stuff.

MISCELLANEOUS---$9--- I need to cut back on all these miscellaneous expenses.

TOTAL EXPENSES FOR THE MONTH OF MAY--- $2423--- May was an expensive month, but hey, I had zero camping expenses and my groceries were almost half, so if I can just cut back on my miscellaneous costs next month won't be so bad.

theboondork

nameless flower growing in my daughter's garden. I'm sure it has a name I just don't know what it is.

6 Comments

Tim

6/4/2018 08:23:58 pm

Hi Tom,

Glad you got your posting situation figured out. Thanks for continuing to post your financials, it really helps in the planning process. Sounds like you're all set for your mini-vacations!

My guess is that flower is some kind of a peony, but I could be way off on that.

Have fun in the mountains,

Tim

Tom

6/4/2018 09:01:42 pm

Glad to hear from you again Tim, It had been a while.

I've never been one to have a budget or to keep up with what I spend so having to explain my financial things like I do every month is not really something I enjoy going over, but it makes me feel better if I know it might be helping someone a little.

Yeah I'm ready to take a mini vacation and it looks like the weekend of the 16th will be it. Even though I'm only going out to my property, two or three nights out there in a tent will tell me a lot about what I need to stay comfortable.

You're right about the flower it is a Peony, I asked my daughter about it and it seems she's got several different kinds of them. I don't know the name of many flowers, but I do know what I like so the name isn't all that important to me. But I do need to get better at it because people do write me and ask me questions about flowers.

Tom

6/5/2018 12:05:26 pm

With my background from another life, I should be able to identify plants much better than I can, but I've lost way too many brain cells along the way.

Time has been flying by the last several weeks. I'm negotiating on trucks still and waiting for an asking price on one now. I'm strongly considering taking a flight to another city and buying one from a bulk dealer. It would save $5,000-6,000, but require quite a bit of driving (but still worth it). The local one was a demo with about 6,000 miles; so, it really just depends if they can make the numbers worthwhile (considering that I'll probably put 1,500 miles on the out-of-state truck getting it back here, plus expenses). The other new ones here are just too high.

Other than that, a lot of my time is being taken up getting ready. I'm figuring out a few things for my new life, such as trying to figure out what to take and what goes. Oh, and I've also started to hone my Wordpress skills again and realize that it's the platform I feel the most comfortable with - I'm surprised how quickly it came back to me.

I still check you blog everyday and looking forward to your adventures in the tent! If nothing else, it will be something new and different; it never occurred to me that you can go camping while living in an RV.

I don't know if you've been following RVSue, but there is a lot of drama over there right now. I thought about making my first post today, but I just don't care for wading into drama like that.

When I get this truck situation sorted out, I'll let you know. I thought the RV was going to be the difficult thing to buy, but the truck has been far worse. They really want to gouge buyers up here.

6/5/2018 01:53:55 pm

I always dreaded buying a new truck. It seemed like the whole new vehicle buying system was set up to make the buyers life as miserable as possible in the hopes that you will just give up and pay whatever they want. But once the truck buying is out of the way most of the rest of the stuff will be fun and exciting.

Sometimes I think it would be better when transitioning into full time to get rid of everything and just buy what you need when you need it, and that goes double for clothes. I'll bet I've thrown away over half the clothes I brought with me at the start of my new life, and bought a few others that were more useful in my new lifestyle. I think the key here is, your clothes need to be somewhere between casual and homeless bum.

I've learned that living in an RV is not camping, it's living in a small home on wheels. Camping by its very definition means some amount of suffering is involved, hopefully as little as possible. You can RV at camping locations but if there's no suffering involved it's not camping. So yes you most definitely can go camping while living in an RV.

Thanks for reminding me about RVSue, I haven't read her blog since she moved into the house thinking it wouldn't be interesting to me anymore. But since you mentioned drama I'll have to take a look see and find out if Sue, her sister, and the dogs are all fighting and biting one another.

I will be very interested to see how the truck situation works out I might be facing that one day myself. As for traveling to a different area to buy a truck remember the only difference between a boring everyday life and a vacation is your location and your perception, you can easily make a trip to buy a truck into a mini vacation. It's all in the mind.

Tom

6/5/2018 03:09:28 pm

She just deleted the posts that was causing all the drama. Basically, she was worried about her privacy and was contemplating quitting the blog. Lots of comments were written, then she said she was going to remove the post and then "poof" it was gone. Hope you got to see it. The comments section were entertaining.

The internet seems to have changed the truck buying experience, if one is willing to use it and willing to travel. I've been having the dealers bid against each other and haven't wasted time going to the dealerships; they keep trying to make that personal connection so they can work the salesman pitch on me, but I'm not playing their games, at least not at this point. It also helps that I have a little time to play with.

The demo truck isn't going to work out. I'm shocked how much they expect me to pay for basically a used truck. If I bought a truck and then tried to sell it to them after 6,000 miles, they would probably offer me 3/4's of what I paid, if I'm lucky. Oh well, looks like a road trip is coming up.

I plan to get rid of every stitch of my work clothes and quite a bit of other clothing. I don't think that or the furniture will be hard. It's mainly all the remaining hobby stuff I still have to whittle down that will be tough.

I agree about the RV versus tent camping. My Class C was nicer than my house.

6/5/2018 03:45:30 pm

Well too bad, looks like I missed it. I have so little drama in my life I have to experience somebody else's to see what its like.

I'm glad the truck buying experience has gotten better, my experience was it couldn't get any worse. It's good the Internet can be used to make dealers compete against each other. That will at least bring some fairness to the deal.

I agree about the hobby stuff. If you didn't like the stuff you wouldn't have so much of it, and therefore it's far harder to part with it. I would speculate that half the stuff in my storage room is in some way related to my hobbies. And in general hobby stuff has value that makes it worth taking the time to sell it, and that's kind of what I'm facing now. Taking the time and effort to start selling off my remaining firearms, and then at least start trying to make a dent in the storage room stuff.

Tom

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where does all the money go?

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