Number crunching while the rains passes, Cherasco
Zagan the motorhome is drying off, the thrumming of torrential rain on his roof finally fell silent around 4pm this afternoon, just in time to save us from cabin fever. The sosta here in Cherasco is in the far corner of a big car park – a big, very quiet car park (N44.64913 E7.85450). In the past 24 hours you could count the number of cars on your fingers – two of which only drove in for a play in the snow – so the only thing we’ve had to gaze out of the windows at, a favourite pastime of ours, is the melting snow. We tried to get the TV going last night, but the rain interfered with it too much, so Jay read books on the kindle while I updated our budget spreadsheets (yes plural).
Charlie isn’t a big fan of the rain
We had a long debate in Chamonix about money; are we spending too much, too little or just the right amount? The truth is as we don’t know what the future holds for us, all we can do is take an educated guess of how much we can afford to spend each day, week, month, year without stealing from our future selves. If you’re new to our blog you might not realise that our lifestyle isn’t funded by a lottery win or an inheritance from a long-lost relative, instead we spend our residual income, that is money we earn from our investments and the business I run back at home. Jay has written loads on the topic, so if you want to know more this would be a good place to start.
We watch what we spend to make sure we won’t be broke in six months, with our current gelato habit that could be a possibility, and the way we had things set up it was hard to see what we were spending on travelling as it was mixed in with fixed costs from back home (letting agent fees, insurance, etc), so I re-jigged our spreadsheets to split out the costs. With that done, Jay did a bit of number crunching to see how various levels of spending would affect the future projection of our money. All very boring to some, but to us it gives us peace of mind that we can carry on doing this for as long as we want.
Our daily spend target to cover all our day to day travel costs is £41, that’s just under £15k a year. We started our new spend tracking method back in August of last year, and after applying the £41 per day spend target we’re only £300 over budget in total – since August last year. That is amazing considering what we have been up to, and a very expensive January with van repairs and our friends’ wedding!
To celebrate our new found financial reassurance, when the rain finally stopped we headed off into the town for a walk around. Having already been here before it was a bit strange as I was looking to see what had changed (not a lot as most of the buildings are hundreds of years old), so I hardly took any photos as I’d taken loads when we were here over 3 years ago. It is a lovely little town though with a big entrance gate either end, loggia-lined streets, cafés and restaurants and a viewpoint across the valley of the river to Bra (yes that is the name of the town). Sadly most of the places were closed, it was only just after 4pm, so they could still be having dinner or observing the ‘closed on Monday’ tradition which we’ve found in Italy.
Charlie has a quick sniff of one of the local wine stores
This was the first place we experienced a milk machine in a car park, below is the video of how excited we got back in 2012 when we discovered it. Of course we couldn’t resist another play again on it today and I got the opportunity to replace my souvenir milk bottle which got broken when we were back in the UK.
This time though we were juggling while using the milk machine as we’d just treated ourselves to another tasty gelato (the double chin is caused by the camera angle, not the huge amount of tasty gelato I have been scoffing, honest!)
The forecast is for better weather for the next few days, so we’ll head off and explore some of the towns around here – hope you all have a great week too.
Ju x
Hi guys great to catch up with what you’ve been doing – real inspiration, just waiting for spring to get going again myself! I’ve got a small money saving tip if you like ebooks but don’t always want to buy them for your Kindle – I download books for free on to my tablet from my local library for up to 3 weeks, this works really well wherever I am. I’d say happy reading but I hope the rain’s stopped! Sue
I like the budget bit we have allowed a fair bit more as we are only planning to be away a year. But I do feel little disasters will chew into your budget. In our case a replacement phone. Do you have a contingency fund for this sort of thing?
For example how long will ‘Zagan’ last? 10 years with TLC do you budget for replacement?
Just curious, you don’t have to answer.
Glad to see you are in Italy, hopefully warmer weather will follow.
We have after a run of Campsites been staying on Aires. Some are wonderful and some are woeful. I think the books should give them ratings. Our next Motorhomer’s tips will be Aires, Campsites and freedom camping. Will be interested in your views Jay, liked your contribution to the ‘gas’ one.
keep well you two. Abrasso’s to you both.
David and Karen
Hey guys!
Ah, the budget question! I could go on about this one for a very, very long time! But I’ll spare you that and summarise:
I’m more than happy to talk about this stuff. I spent and continue to spend far too long thinking about it. We have a personal P&L account which Ju maintains daily, which feeds into a ‘peer into the future’ balance sheet, predicting (which is of course impossible) income, nett worth and costs over the next 50 years. Inflation’s in there as a variable, as are estimates around fund growth etc. Nothing is guaranteed, but the same applies if you have a job, mortgage and 4 bed villa. Finally, we have no kids, and we live in a tiny house, which means all of our capital is accessible – the old last cheque bouncing scenario will hopefully apply to us!
Oh yes, what you said above about sums up aires! We’re currently looking out over the vineyards to Barolo as the sun sinks to the west behind the Alps. The sosta we’re on is free, there are no formal rules, and the place is quite magical. I love aires. Since we move every day or two, if we hit a bad one, we either don’t stay, or just put up with it for a night. One downside of using books to find aires is the fact there are no reviews, as you’ve pointed out. The databases are pretty good at giving an idea whether a place is grim or wonderful – campingcar-infos.com, park4night.com etc.
Campsites suffer the same problem of course – some are woeful – but in this case you’re impacted twice since you have to pay for something you don’t like. My own preference is to stay off-campsite, unless legally obliged to do so (Croatia is a bit keen on making sure you use them, for example). Why? Again this could go on for a long time – we need to get together for that beer! But in summary: I enjoy my freedom too much. And I’m far too keen on spending efficiently. There is an argument that goes: ‘you should use campsites or you’re doing the campsites out of business’. This seems to be a uniquely British (or perhaps English even) perspective, few other countries appear to have it. Also, it is a weak argument. I don’t use hairdressers, toll roads, taxis, night clubs, tailors etc, so by the same token I’m ‘doing’ all of these people out of money, or none of them? We have a motorhome which needs only the basic facilities of a service point every 3 to 5 days. Paying for campsites feels like paying to get my nails done – unnecessary.
But it’s all horses for courses. We use a mixture of campsites, aires, France Passion-type things, staying at a hotel when taking a meal, mate’s drives, free camping, you name it. Whatever works for you, that’s what you should do. Using campsites full time is absolutely fine, if that’s what you feel comfortable with. Whatever gets folks out on the road seeing what’s out there, works for me.
Phew! Right, the sun’s gone, best get a blog post done. Looking forward to your next posts, loving the foodie ones – really inspiring us to get trying some more local grub. Take it easy, cheers, Jay
Just to dot an i and cross a t…. I’m assuming your £41.00 a day covers a daily amount for van insurance, travel insurance and other annual van/personal expenses? Without those what do you think your average daily spend comes to? I have started my own budget but find I could go on forever refining how the costs are split out!
Best,
Robina
It does those, it doesn’t cover depreciation of the van though. It would probably be only about £4 less per day as van insurance will be around £500, ADAC £100, travel insurance £300 and repairs/mot £800ish. So far the £41 has covered these so we haven’t spilt them out. Hope that helps. Ju x
Yes thanks. Helps get it in perspective!
Robina