Spending Money

Road trip planning, budgeting and saving money while traveling in an RV

MotoSat: Keeping it local in Salt Lake City

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F2 Cable Pinched in Satellite internet Dish Hinge Requires Re-Wrap The day before we were set to arrive at Vickers Ranch to settle in for our summer workamping jobs, our Datastorm F2 satellite internet dish stopped working. It refused to lock onto our satellite (91W).

We’ve experienced intermittent trouble and lengthy searches before getting online in the past. But this time it wouldn’t lock on at all. The dish went up, stopped at every bird in the sky attempting to identify the signal, only to continue searching. After calling MotoSat for help – and sending them a few photos of what we assumed was the problem – they determined that an “in house” repair was required to fix the issue.

MotoSat Datastorm F2 Cable DamageWith our online lifestyle, there was no way we could make it a week – let alone through the summer – without a serious hack job, and a way to find our satellite. So, we took a 900 mile round-trip detour to Salt Lake City for a factory repair at their headquarters.

The only other option was to remove the entire dish mount ourselves, get it off our roof somehow, and find a freight company to get it from Creede, CO to Salt Lake City for the repair. Not to mention re-installation. It was quicker and cheaper to just drive it there. And the trip turned out to be fun. Or at least interesting.

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June Road Trip Expenses and The Economy: What, Me Worry?

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Giant Puppet in Truth or Conesquences FiestaJune numbers are in, and it was a cheap month thanks to our summer workamping gig. Check out our RV Road Trip Budget Expense Report for June 2008 You’ll see in the “Fuel” line item, that we went over budget. But those costs were actually from May, when we had to go to Salt Lake City to get our Motosat dish worked on.

We haven’t spent one single dime on fuel since we got to Lake City. We arrived with a half tank, and we’re trying to see how long we can make it last before we have to drive 55 miles one way, to Gunnison, the nearest town where we can do some real stocking up. Diesel fuel here is $5.01/gallon.

I’ve Got More Faith in My Mattress than The Stock Market

Meanwhile, we listen to NPR’s economy report every day, and just cringe. And today, when I reconciled our retirement funds statements, I wanted to cry. What little money we do have tied up in mutual funds has been whallopped. At this rate, we’re going to be working to support ourselves till the day we drop dead. Jim thinks I should stop looking at our statements for a while.

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Show Me the Money: Hard Numbers from a Year on the Road

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Jim with Trucker Cap Leaving Eureka CAOne year ago this week, we drove away from Humboldt County in a daze. We couldn’t believe that we had really pulled our sabbatical off, and year on the road seemed like an eternity. Little did we know that it would fly by seemingly as quick as a two week vacation. We have so much to say about our epic journey. But for now, let’s start with the hard numbers.

Thanks to the meticulous Quickbooks expense tracking I’ve done over the last several years, and Carol White’s Live Your Road Trip Dream book budgeting templates, I was able to put together a budget that works for us. In short: we came in under budget, and the money we’ve saved will enable us to continue to live this lifestyle for at least the next year if we choose to.

If you’d like to see the technical details, a PDF with summarized numbers is here. But if spreadsheets make you snooze, then here’s a quick summary of my numbers for the year, and some ways we saved money:

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Confessions of a WalMart Shopper

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Piersons Big Hammer Eureka Humboldt CALet’s get one thing straight. I’m well aware of the damage that WalMart inflicts on local economies. Jim and I come from a town whose citizens actually kept WalMart from setting up shop along our waterfront. What a great moment it was, when Eurekans came together to stand up for their small businesses.

Because we didn’t have big box stores in Eureka, I shopped at my neighbors’ businesses. Sure, prices were a little higher than at big city chain stores, but knowing that more of my dollar stayed in the community was worth the extra pennies. At the time, Jim and I had a good income stream coming in, and although I made plenty of frugal choices, we could easily afford to shop local.

But once we hit the road, we came out of our Humboldt County cocoon. In most small towns around America, big box stores like WalMart are the only shopping choice. From Yuba City California to Fort Stockton Texas, most cities have allowed chains to come in and kill off many of their independent businesses.

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Live Work Dream Expense Report: March 2008

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The end of March marked the end of the first quarter of 2008. Back in the old days of running the business, I used to measure all of our accomplishments and setbacks by the end of the quarter. It was a time to celebrate or drown our sorrows. But this time, for the first time in years I’d totally forgotten that the quarter had ended. …

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Work on your own rig and save money!

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Jim Repacking the Trailer Wheel BearingsThere is one good thing about visiting Los Angeles.

Aside from seeing La Familia, that is. OK two things … Oh, and the food. I guess that makes three things.

Anyway, access to the right tools makes working on your rig easy. And that can help you save a lot of money.

And believe me, El Jefe has all the right tools … and the shop, and the brain, which I picked to learn how to to pack the wheel bearings on our fifth wheel trailer.

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Live Work Dream Expenses February 2008

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Our First $100 FillupWell, our Workamping savings are a thing of the past, and February gave us a current reality check of what our expenses look like when we just play tourist and go out looking for all of the cool music, food and entertainment we want to experience.

Our biggest expense last month: fuel. We went over our budgeted amount for the first time ever. This is mostly because we went 1600 miles out of our way (round trip) for a quick trip back to California to visit my family. More on our L.A. experience later.

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