This deer was wondering around the campground at Waterton Lakes National Park not afraid of anything, cute eh? Now that I have your attention… a dry topic – month end numbers.
As the month of June comes to a close I would like to share some of the things I have been tracking. Since we left Phoenix on June 5th we have been on the road for 26 days, not a full month but it is easiest to track by the calendar month so I am just going with that.
States Visited: 5
Arizona
Utah
Nevada
Idaho
Montana
Types of Campgrounds:
National Forest: 3
National Park: 2
State Park: 1
Private: 2
BLM: 1
Average Campsite Cost: $22.46
Cheapest Campsite: $10 (BLM)
Most Expensive Campsite: $44 (Missoula KOA)
Miles Traveled: 1,669
When we were planning this new lifestyle we kept looking on the internet for expense reports from other people with this lifestyle to see if we could estimate what our own costs would be. There is not a lot of information out there. One big area that was lacking was health insurance costs. The laws and rules on health insurance are constantly changing so there was a lot of outdated information out there. Like pre-retirement age people saying they are only paying only a couple hundred dollars a month for individual health insurance because they are healthy. Yeah right, that does not exist in today’s environment but apparently it did before the Affordable Care Act. Health Insurance is a huge topic for another time. We decided to go with COBRA from our jobs for the remainder of 2016 and reevaluate for 2017.
As I get older I am more comfortable sharing financial information. It is everyone’s personal choice on what type of lifestyle they want to live and everything costs a certain amount, it is just a fact of life. We have tracked every dollar spent since we have been on the road, and this is what we have learned so far:
- We are still addicted to eating out
- If you need to cut down on your data usage for a month, go somewhere where there is no cell phone service
- If you need to cut down on your fuel cost, find a nice spot and stay there
- Health Insurance is our biggest expense, a huge fee for nothing. We don’t even use it.
Here is another pretty picture for you from the Canadian Badlands, more on that later.
exitthecube.com 