Wondering about the full-time RV living cost for a family like ours? It’s one of the questions we get asked ALL the time, and after more than six years of full-time RV life, we can confidently give you the most annoying answer possible:
It depends. 😂
We’re the RoadRabers, a family of five who have been traveling and living in our RV full time since January 2020. Over the years, we’ve had months where we’ve barely moved and months where we’ve crossed multiple states. We’ve stayed in expensive RV resorts, used campground memberships, dealt with unexpected repairs and had months where everything seemed to happen at once.
All of those things affect what full-time RV living actually costs.
That’s why we decided to start sharing our real monthly expenses.
Before We Talk Numbers…
There isn’t one number that will tell you how much you need to live in an RV full time.
A couple traveling slowly in a paid-off RV is going to have a completely different budget than a family of five with an RV payment, multiple vehicles, kids and a tendency to actually leave the campground and do things.
How much you spend can depend on:
- How often you travel
- How far you move
- What kind of RV you own
- Whether you have an RV payment
- What you tow with
- Campground and membership costs
- Fuel prices
- How often you eat out
- The size of your family
- Repairs and maintenance
- What you actually like doing while you travel
And then there’s regular life.
Groceries don’t disappear because your house has wheels. Neither do phone bills, clothes, school expenses, medical costs, birthdays or all the random stuff that somehow ends up on the credit card.
That’s why looking at someone’s campground and fuel costs doesn’t necessarily tell you what it costs them to live this lifestyle.
For some context, we’re a family of five traveling in a fifth wheel that we tow with a Ram 3500 dually.
Once we’re parked, our Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe is our everyday vehicle.
We generally prefer slower travel days and use campground memberships, including Thousand Trails, to help keep our campground expenses down.
We also work, homeschool and run our business from the road, which means some of our expenses may look very different from someone who is retired or traveling recreationally.
Basically, don’t look at our numbers and assume yours will be the same.
They’re just ours.
This is an important distinction when you’re looking through our monthly expense reports.
For a long time, we shared our RV-related monthly expenses (labeled partial).
Those include things like:
- RV payment
- Campgrounds
- Vehicle payment
- Insurance
- Internet
- Fuel
- Propane
- Laundry
- Tolls
- Storage
- RV repairs and maintenance
Those posts are meant to answer:
“What does the RV/travel part of this lifestyle cost us?”
They are NOT our family’s complete monthly spending.
In mid-2026, we decided to start pulling back the curtain even further and share everything.
Our complete monthly expense reports can also include groceries, restaurants, medical expenses, school, clothes, household purchases, entertainment, business expenses and whatever other random stuff life throws at us that month.
Those answer a different question:
“What did your family actually spend this month while living full time in an RV?”
January 2026
Use this short paragraph to write a supporting description of your list item. Remember to let your readers know why this list item is essential.
February 2026
Partial $2,126
Our RV and travel-related expenses for the month, including campground costs, payments, fuel, insurance, internet, repairs and more.
March 2026
Full $9,424
A more expensive RV month thanks in part to an extra principal payment on our RV and staying outside our campground membership.
April 2026
Partial $2,029
A low-travel month where we only moved from Orlando to Tampa and our plug-in hybrid Jeep helped keep our gas costs down.
May 2026
Partial $3,342
We moved a whopping 4.3 miles, but replacing tires on both the Jeep and trailer made this month considerably more expensive.
June 2026
Partial $2,525
Another month of low campground and fuel costs, plus repairs after our RV shower glass exploded.
July 2026
Full $9,342
This is where we started sharing the bigger picture: every category we tracked for our family of five, including RV expenses, groceries, eating out, school, medical costs, business expenses and more.
So, Is Living in an RV Full Time Cheaper?
MAYBE
We know that’s another wonderfully unhelpful answer, but cheaper than what?
A mortgage in one part of the country? Renting in another? Staying in hotels while traveling? Owning a paid-off house?
RV life can absolutely be done on a smaller budget, but living in an RV doesn’t automatically make life cheap.”
You can spend $0 on campgrounds and thousands on repairs. You can barely move one month and burn hundreds of dollars in diesel the next. You can have a perfectly normal month until your tires need replacing, something breaks or you need to fly across the country unexpectedly.
That’s why we think looking at expenses over time is much more useful than looking at one month’s total.
What Should You Budget for Full-Time RV Living?
If you’re trying to figure out whether you can afford to RV full time, don’t start with our total and assume that’s what you need.
Start with the way you plan to travel.
What will your RV payment be? How often will you move? What does your vehicle get for fuel mileage? Will you boondock, use campground memberships or stay primarily in private RV parks? Are you traveling solo, as a couple or with kids?
Then add the part that’s easy to forget:
Your regular life.
Food. Phones. Healthcare. Clothes. Pets. School. Entertainment. Subscriptions. Debt. Hobbies. Emergencies. All the stuff you’re paying for now doesn’t magically disappear when you move into an RV.
Our monthly breakdowns aren’t meant to tell you what your budget should be.
They’re here to give you real-world numbers from one family actually doing it.
Build Your Own Full-Time RV Budget
Knowing what we spend is helpful, but your version of RV life probably won’t look exactly like ours.
That’s why we’re putting together a Full-Time RV Budget Planner to help you work through what your life on the road could actually cost.
It’ll walk you through the expenses that are easy to remember, like your RV payment, campgrounds and fuel, along with the ones people tend to forget: maintenance, memberships, mail, laundry, internet, annual expenses, emergencies and regular everyday life.
You’ll be able to plug in your own numbers and get a much better picture of what you should actually plan for before hitting the road.
RoadRabers Family
James and Kelly Raber
Sometimes you just want to sit down with someone who’s actually done it.
If you’re planning for full-time RV life, already on the road, or somewhere in between, you can book a 30-minute one-on-one call with us and bring whatever questions you’ve got.
We can talk through your budget, RV choices, campground memberships, internet, mail, roadschooling, traveling with kids, working from the road or whatever else you’re trying to figure out.
We’ve been living and traveling full time as a family of five since 2020, and we’ve learned plenty of things the expensive way.
Follow Our Full-Time RV Expense Series
We’ll continue updating this page as we share new monthly expense reports, including what we spent, what changed and the weird expenses that inevitably show up.
If you’re researching the cost of full-time RV living, bookmark this page and check back as we add more months.
And if you want to follow the rest of the adventure, you can find us @RoadRabers on social media, where we share the good, the bad and the “why the hell is that broken now?” parts of full-time RV life.
