Budget review – nine months in a motorhome
This is a post written in July 2012. You can find more information from more recent tours in our motorhome tour costs section.
Before we set off on our tour we saved like mad and sold stuff we never used. We bought Dave (our motorhome) for just over £10,000, insured him for a year for £740 (if buying motorhome insurance shop around and don’t say you’re full-timing as we did, the premium is double what others we’ve met paid). A full service, a few preventative repairs and MOT cost around £800, so when we left the UK we had a nice pot of around €27,000.
We’d originally planned to travel for around 12 months and had no idea how far our money would stretch. On holidays in our previous motorhome (Harvey) we stopped on campsites 99% of the time, venturing onto a couple of France Passion sites during our last trip.
On our tour, as soon as we landed on French soil we stopped on Aires, some with a small charge, but we mostly chose where we went by the availability of a free aire. The first few weeks we bought tasty food in the French supermarkets and ate in Dave nearly all of the time, we also moved very slowly some days only driving for 15 – 20mins, which kept down the amount of fuel we used. Doing this got our average daily spend down to €36.
Then we had a moment of realisation, this could be our one shot at a big trip like this, sure it would last longer if we carried on as we were, but we weren’t meeting people and felt as if we were missing something. A bit like visiting loads of great places in a bubble where you can’t interact with what’s around you. So we made a conscious decision to spend a bit more eating out and doing stuff. At the same time we also started to wild/free camp in some places, which scared me stupid to start with, but helped keep the costs down and you get to wake up to some amazing views. By the time we’d gone down the French Atlantic coast and stopped in our first campsite next to the border with Spain our average daily spend had gone up slightly to €44 (however Dave had needed his main skylight replaced and a part in the fridge, so including those made it €57 a day).
In our first aire in Spain at San Sebastian we met Chris and Tina, we teamed up with them as we travelled along the northern Spanish coast, taking it in turns to eat in each others van and increasing our use of wild/free camping spots – with many of the campsites closed we had little choice. A tyre blowout on the A8 led to another repair bill, this time for €700, so our average daily spend shot up. But the real telling figure was our weekly spend, during our time with Chris and Tina it went down to around €200 as opposed to around €280, and we made a couple of life long friends.
We’ve now been going for around nine months and have reached the point where we have less in our savings pot than we have spent – so I guess we’re half way through our tour. We’re renting our house back home so that provides us with a bit of money each month and we’ve got a tiny bit of income from this site – if readers click on the adverts or click through to Amazon and buy stuff we get a few pence, and we’ve been selling our Motorhome Morocco book. It won’t be anywhere near enough to keep us on the road full time, but every little helps as a certain retailer says.
We mainly shop at Lidl and other discount supermarkets, we keep an eye on fuel prices and fill up where it’s cheap – sometimes just crossing a border can save you quite a bit. Charlie, our dog, helps us to save money as there are many places he can’t go, so we really think about if we want to go – we’re not really museum viewers anyway, so it’s often an easy decision. On the plus side, he does get us talking to more people as they approach us/him in the street to coo and stroke him.
In cheap countries we eat out more, in expensive countries we’ll take snacks with us (or buy some in a supermarket) and eat them on a beach or in a park. Portugal and Morocco were the cheapest for food. Morocco was the cheapest for diesel at around 56p a litre.
After nine months we’ve spent €14,551 but what on?
€2,956 Supermarket shopping
€2,452 Repairs to Dave (including a new clutch)
€2,176 Diesel – to cover 17,279km (10,737 miles)
€2,061 eating (and drinking) out
€1,541 campsites (105 nights)
€379 overnight stops – aires/free camping (173 nights)
€582 Travel – bus, taxi, ferry, Dave insurance for Morocco & Bosnia
€508 Tours – entrance fees etc
€488 Contact with home – phone, wifi, post
€484 Supplies – maps, loo chemicals, non food stuff
€396 Clothes – including laundry
€143 LPG – for cooking, heating, hot water & running fridge
€126 Tolls and vignettes
€82 Souvenirs (have taken around 16,000 photos though)
€75 Charlie jabs and treatments
€55 Parking – daytime only
€41 Other, random stuff that wouldn’t fit in any of the categories above!
Today our average daily spend is €52.86 including repairs, or €43.86 without.
Hopefully all of this will give you an idea of costs if planning your own tour, and for us – here’s to another nine months!
Thanks a million for the report. Very illuminating for us as we intend to do the same next year or the year after. I think I’d be happier with a younger van than what you’re driving, about 3 yo max. I saw a link to your post in MH-List so jumped at the chance to read it. Marvellous. What yuear is Dave and what are his vital statistics? Have you posted all this info elsewhere already? I’ll go and have a look. Once again, thanks.
Hi Nick, you’re welcome, good to hear from you. We’d also have used a newer van, but circumstances conspired against us. We love Dave though, despite the odd fault! He’s a Hymer B544, LHD, Fiat Ducato chassis, 5 gear, 1993, turbo diesel engine, 3.1 tonne max mass, single LPG tank (about 30 litres), 100 litre fresh and grey waters tanks, partially winterised, off white paint job, single 95Ah leisure battery, 100Wp solar panel mounted flat, 300W inverter, and an absorption fridge full of wine. The drop down bed sold it for us, keeping length to 5.5m so we can fit in lots of car parking spots. This stuff is all buried where in the Information Zone on our site, no worries retyping it, giving me a break from our Learn German book! Cheers, Jay
Hi Julie
I am now in my 4th year full timing but it’s just me & a dog so food costs are less than yours, never eat out as i prefer & trust what I’m cooking! At the mo we r in Scotland for approx 4 months (2 to go) then devon Cornwall till Xmas time with family again then France Spain Portugal for 4 months, uk winters tooo cold, been my routine every year.
Have kept a cost record each year & I get by with a touch over 5k per year, every year, btw I don’t cut back on decent food, but don’t drink hardly or smoke, so that’s food, diesel, LPG gas, laundrettes, the odd pay car park , as few sites in uk as poss, aires & ferry costs, the odd touristy attraction. The only thing not in the 5k is van insurance & repairs & any personal things I treat myself or others!.
The only downside is I am doing over 12k miles per year so Bessie has now done over 52k so will lose out on trade in.
Btw U must do a Germany & Poland tour if u can well worth a visit.
Regards Ian
Here’s a link to most of last years trips. http://www.everytrail.com/profile.php?user_id=240958
Ian
Thanks Ian
I’ll have a good nosey when we get some wifi, and have a look at your site – if only we could go for four years!
Friends of ours (Europebycamper.com) managed a year on £10k, I was impressed with that, but £5k sounds amazing.
Dave had already done 167,000 kilometres when we got him and being 19 years old I suspect he won’t depreciate much more. It does mean that we have higher repair costs, but it’s worth it.
Julie
Here’s last years breakdown – year 3
Diesel. £2783.80. Miles= 12711
Food. £1963.64
Auto gas. £268.30
Camp sites aires etc. £347.64
Car parks. £37.33
Laundry. £62.05
Other. £141.01. Museums etc, jet wash van, bridge tolls
Total £5583.77. = £107.38. Per week
Year 2 total £102.85 week
Year 1 total £101.63 week
I have not inc van services tax etc as that could be anything but year 3 was the most almost £1k. Cambelt replace, new tyres, had my alloy wheels refurbished.
So u really need to cut back on the eating out £5k!! & Wild camp more!
Charlie would prefer that
Oh & fit a sog that will save on the chemicals!
Cheers Ian, fascinating. Our eating out is an expensive luxury we know. Our self justification is we’re out for the experience, and eating locally cooked grub is a part of it. We generally do free camp, but some countries are easier than others; the Adriatic coast of Croatia was a clear no no, Bosnia was possible but not easy, Morocco looked to have halted free camping. All depends on how brave you are/the effort you put in. Our feeling is our costs are OK for us as, hopefully, we’ll have another good few years work left in us. If we finally go full time on retirement/semi retirement, then we would push the costs lower, great to see how low you’ve got them. Jay
Hi Ian
We’ve got a regular commenter on our site who’s in the process of building his own van before setting off for life on the road.
I suspect he’d love to hear about your experiences as he’ll be on a tighter budget than us. Would it be okay to give him your email address, or if you want to contact him directly his website is free-at-last.co.uk.
Cheers
Julie