Money & Planning
The real numbers behind full-time RV life, retirement transition planning, and the tradeoffs that make the lifestyle sustainable.
Measuring the Real Costs of Life’s Next Chapter
Full-time RV life is not just a travel decision. It is a financial planning problem with moving parts: campground fees, fuel, insurance, healthcare before Medicare, domicile, groceries, restaurants, repairs, upgrades, memberships, taxes, and the cost of downsizing.
We’ll use this page to organize our planning assumptions, monthly cost reports, lessons learned, and the tools we use to make better decisions. The goal is not to prove that full-time RV life is cheap. The goal is to understand what it really costs and what tradeoffs are worth making.
What we’ll track
Monthly cost reports:
Actual spending by category once we begin full-time travel, with notes on what changed and why.
Campground and stay costs:
Nightly, weekly, and monthly stay costs, plus the tradeoff between price, location, amenities, safety, and Internet.
Healthcare before Medicare:
Planning for insurance, telehealth, cash-pay care, prescriptions, and realistic healthcare costs before Medicare.
Domicile, mail, registration, and insurance:
The practical details of South Dakota domicile, mail forwarding, vehicle registration, voting, banking, and insurance.
Downsizing and transition costs:
What it costs to sell, store, donate, repair, upgrade, and simplify before moving into the fifth wheel.
Credit cards, points, and referrals:
How we use cards and referrals responsibly for campground fees, fuel, groceries, restaurants, and travel without turning the channel into a sales pitch.
Critical Logistics: Health Insurance & Domicile
Health Insurance Before Medicare
Health insurance is one of the biggest planning constraints before Medicare. We’re looking at ACA options, telehealth, prescription needs, emergency coverage, out-of-network realities, and what we should budget for premiums and care while living a mobile lifestyle.
Domicile & Legal Residency
We’re using South Dakota as our intended domicile and documenting the practical details: mail forwarding, vehicle registration, voting, banking, insurance, taxes, and the paperwork required to keep life working while traveling.
Assumptions vs. actuals
Before we have full-time travel data, we’ll separate planning assumptions from actual spending. As we start traveling, we’ll update the numbers, explain what changed, and call out where our expectations were right, wrong, or incomplete.
Coming soon
These will become deeper guides as we publish videos, collect real numbers, and replace assumptions with actual experience.
First Full-Time RV Budget
Coming Soon
Monthly Cost Reports
Coming Soon
Healthcare Before Medicare
Coming Soon
South Dakota Domicile Plan
Coming Soon
Campground Cost Tracker
Coming Soon
Credit Cards & Referrals We Actually Use
Coming Soon