This week in our RV Financials series we continue talking about budgeting for full-time RVing in our effort to answer how much does full-time RVing cost. We focus this week on budgeting for diesel or gasoline.

If you’ve watched the other videos in this series you know we did not do a good job of budgeting for diesel/gasoline costs when we transitioned from stationary Airstream living to full-time traveling. So we learned from our mistakes and this time are budgeting differently. First, you need to know what vehicle you will be driving and what its mpg is both towing and not. For instance, our truck gets 16-18 mpg without towing but can be as low as 10-12 while towing the Airstream. This also depends on terrain, with mountainous trips needing more fuel than driving in flat areas.

The next step is understanding how much traveling/driving you will be doing. If you plan on staying around one state that’s one thing but going from AZ to WA and back, like us, is another. Estimate your mileage and divide that by your towing mpg for an idea of how many gallons you will need. Are you planning on taking a lot of day trips? Then you will need to estimate those miles as well.

Once you have an idea of miles/gallons you need to think about cost.
Here in AZ, we have some of the cheapest fuel costs in the country, however, we know that WA has some of the highest so we need to account for higher fuel prices as well. Finally, estimate more than you need. We tend to add another 10-20% on top of what we think so we know we’ll have enough for what we are planning.

We are budgeting $350 a month for diesel/fuel costs when we hit the road again this year and travel full-time in our Airstream. What about you? How much do you budget for fuel costs?

Our other Financial Videos:
Budgeting for Camping Costs
Traveling Spending
Stationary Spending
DIfferences in Spending
How We Track our Spending
Emergency Fund

Recommended Ways to Track Spending:
Personal Capital (affiliate)
Mint

Welcome to our Friday Financials Series. In this series, we plan to talk about all things RV Financials including the real-life numbers we spend while traveling and living in our Airstream. If you have ANY money questions for us please let us know for future videos!