What Full-Time RV Life Actually Costs (The Categories Nobody Warns You About)

Short answer: We spent about $6,950 a month living full time in our RV in 2025, about $83,600 for the year, including a $1,500 truck payment. Health insurance is not in that number.

Before we went full time we watched every RV budget video we could find and came away with nothing useful. Everyone's numbers were different. Everyone's travel style was different. And most of them quietly left out the categories that actually hurt.

We tracked every dollar for our first six months on the road, January through June, and put the breakdown in the expenses video. We kept tracking after that, so below are our real monthly averages for all of 2025. After the numbers comes the part that generalizes: which categories matter, which ones surprise people, and which ones you can actually do something about.

What we actually spent in 2025

These are monthly averages across the full year of 2025, straight from our budget. That is two of us living and working full time in a fifth wheel, towing with an F-350.

That works out to about $83,600 for the year. Health insurance is not included anywhere in this table, so if you need to buy your own, add it on top. Flights and resort stays are in, under travel. Each line is rounded to the dollar.

Why our total won't be yours

Ours covers a specific way of living, and yours will differ on every axis that matters.

In our first six months we started in Michigan, ran south to Florida for the winter, and worked our way back north. That is over 3,000 miles of towing the Brinkley. About three of the six months we were stationary. We mixed paid campgrounds with a good stretch of boondocking.

The thing that shapes our budget most is that both of us work full time from the rig. That cuts both ways. We need reliable internet everywhere, which is a real line item. And we cannot chase the cheapest spots, because a site that wrecks a workday costs more than it saves.

Faster travel, no remote work, no truck payment, or more boondocking and your numbers move a lot. So treat our total as one couple's year, and pay more attention to which lines are big and why.

The biggest line is the truck payment, not the campground

When people ask what RV life costs, they almost always mean campground fees. For us, campgrounds came second. The biggest line was the truck: a $1,440 payment plus about $60 extra we put toward it, so $1,500 every month.

That number does not care what we do. Diesel and campgrounds depend a lot on how much we move. In the months when we take a monthly rate at a campground and stay put, we are barely driving, so both of those lines drop at once. The truck payment gets paid every month no matter what.

Diesel was much further down the list than you might expect: $302 a month averaged over the year, ninth place. A one-ton diesel pulling 17,700 pounds does not get good mileage, and a travel day is expensive. Spread across a year with long stays in between, though, it came to about half of what we spent at restaurants.

If you are planning to finance a truck or an RV for this, that payment is the line to think hardest about before you start, because it is the one you cannot shrink by driving less.

The rest of the RV categories

Campgrounds averaged $1,065 a month, our second biggest line. Monthly rates and free nights on public land are the two biggest levers here by a wide margin. A monthly rate is often less than a week at the nightly price.

Insurance came to $801 a month, covering truck, RV and auto policies. Health insurance is separate and not in our numbers at all.

Internet is its own line for us, and we pay for redundancy on purpose because our income depends on it. Starlink alone averaged $128 a month. How that setup works is in our Starlink post.

Propane, tanks and small maintenance. A first year of ownership generates a steady trickle of these. Not dramatic individually, constant in aggregate. Propane itself was only $35 a month.

The stuff that breaks. Not really predictable, definitely not zero. Our first year has included a mouse problem, a water leak, and a macerator that decided to quit mid-dump. Our RV upgrades and home improvements line averaged $512 a month across 2025.

The small lines add up too: medical $243, toiletries and household $88, RV subscriptions like RV LIFE $31, registration $28, and laundry $23.

The two categories that blindsided us

Groceries cost more on the road than in a house. Ours averaged $826 a month. This surprised us and it surprises most people. You shop at whatever store is near rather than the one that is cheap. You rarely catch a sale. And a small RV fridge means more frequent, smaller trips, which is exactly the shopping pattern that costs the most per item.

Eating out and entertainment. Here is the honest one. We were in Florida for months. Theme parks exist. We went. Restaurants happened more than they should have. Over the full year, restaurants averaged $598 a month and entertainment $381, and travel (flights and resorts) added another $403.

We are not sorry about most of it. This is supposed to be a life, not an endurance test. But seeing those lines in black and white was a moment, and they are the categories most budget videos quietly omit because they make the total look bad. Ours are in there.

What we would change, and ways to save

Eat out less. Restaurants were $598 a month, almost twice what we spent on diesel. That is the easiest line for us to cut.

Move less often and stay longer. Monthly campground rates and fewer travel days bring the campground line and the diesel line down together.

More boondocking, now that our solar setup can genuinely carry us for a stretch. That was not true in our first months and it is true now.

The grocery line improves with planning. The theme park line improves with willpower we may or may not have.

Beyond what we have tried ourselves, the usual general advice applies to most people: compare insurance quotes now and then, look hard at any loan before you sign it since the payment follows you whether you move or not, and cancel the subscriptions you stopped using.

If you are budgeting for this

Take our breakdown as one data point from one working couple with one particular travel style, not a target. Build your own from your own plan: how far you intend to move, how much you can boondock, whether you need internet to earn, whether you will have a truck payment, and whether you are the kind of people who will walk past a theme park.

The one thing we would tell anyone planning this: sort your costs into the ones you can steer and the ones you cannot. A truck payment and insurance show up every month whether you move or not. Campgrounds, diesel and eating out mostly come down to how often you move and how often you cook, and those are the lines you can actually do something about.

For how our first six months broke down, the video has all of it, embarrassing lines included. And if you want the things that do not make the videos, the newsletter goes out weekly.