Wordless Wednesday | Snowbirds

 

Wordless Wednesday is supposed to be about posting a photo(s) without any words. But, I'm a rule breaker, so here are a few words:
 
1 - Snowbird season is upon us. People are driving down south in their RVs looking to spend the winter in a warmer climate.

2 - It's getting harder to find a parking spot at Walmart these days.

3 - RVs come in all shapes and sizes, just like people.

4 - If you had to describe yourself as an RV/camper, what would you say? Are you more of a travel trailer kind of person? An Airstream? A luxury motohome? A converted van? Or something else?


What words does this picture(s) bring to your mind when you look at it? 
 
For more Wordless Wednesday fun, click here and here.

Thanks for stopping by our blog - we love it when people come visit! We're also on Facebook - pop by and say hi!

Get a FREE copy of Robbery at the Roller Derby by signing up for my newsletter HERE.

Or you can buy a copy for 99c/99p at your favorite retailer HERE. 

Also available in paperback and large print.

This prequel novella is set around twelve years before Murder at the Marina and tells the story of Mollie's roller derby days and how she and Scooter met. Find out more at ellenjacobsonauthor.com

Convincing Your Partner To Go Adventuring By Boat, RV Or Camel

For those of you who were wondering why there wasn't a blog post on Wednesday (like my mom), I had computer troubles. We've resurrected this laptop from the dead a couple of times already, but it still likes to taunt me with the Blue Screen of Death from time to time or, like earlier this week, freeze up and then pretend it doesn't know what I'm talking about when I go to look for my draft blog posts. It seems to be behaving itself today, so here's the blog post I had hoped to publish earlier this week.

****

From time to time I get emails or comments on our blog asking me how Scott convinced me to chuck it all in, get rid of most of our stuff, buy a sailboat, move onto a sailboat and go off adventuring without the security of a regular pay check coming in each month.

I imagine other people may be in the same situation. They have a dream to go off adventuring, but their partner isn’t too keen on the whole idea. It might go something like this:

"I really want to sell our house, buy an RV and travel around the States, but my wife worries about being so far away from the grand kids."

Or like this:

"Can you imagine anything better than buying a sailboat and sailing to the Pacific Islands?! I know my girlfriend is afraid of the water, but what’s the problem? She can take swimming classes. It would be a once in a lifetime adventure!"

 Or even like this, because riding camels is a pretty awesome way to travel:

"Crossing the Saharan desert by camel would be so awesome. I don’t know why my fiancé doesn’t get it. Why can’t he see that working 60 hours a work until we retire isn’t the way we should spend our lives? We need to live life now while we're young enough to enjoy it and have our health."

In an ideal world, both partners would share the same dream and no one would need convincing (like this couple). But, that’s not always the case.

Oftentimes, it’s the bloke who has the dream to go off adventuring by RV, sailboat or even camel and is trying to convince his partner to come with. But not always. I’ve seen posts on some of the sailing and cruising Facebook groups I’m a part of from women wishing they could find men who share their dreams of sailing off into the sunset on a grand adventure.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter who’s convincing whom. What really matters is how to convince your reluctant partner. Because, after all, life is short and you want to get on with your adventuring.

Here’s the secret. Are you ready?

Don’t. Don’t do it. 

Seriously, don’t even try to convince your partner to go adventuring. It could end up in disaster. You can inspire them. You can stir their imagination. You can arouse their interest. You can get them excited about the idea. But convincing them. Complete waste of time.

It might seem like semantics (and in a way I guess it is), but the idea of convincing someone to do something makes me think of reluctant cooperation, of being swayed to do something you don't really want to do or even brainwashed into thinking something is a good idea, when, in your heart, you know it isn't.

Even if you think you’ve convinced your partner to go off adventuring, they may secretly resent you and your stupid ideas and do something passive-aggressive in retaliation. Like putting walnuts in a batch of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Honestly, the worst possible thing you can do to someone.

“Here honey, look what I made you. Chocolate chip cookies hot out of the oven. Go on try one,” says your partner while smiling at you with innocent Bambi eyes. As you bite into one of the cookies eagerly, all of sudden you crunch down into a dreaded walnut and grimace.

“Oh my gosh, I completely forgot that you don’t like walnuts in your chocolate chip cookies! I’m so sorry. Guess I’ll have to eat them all myself. But, at least you have that sailboat that you always wanted. So, I guess it all kind of works out.”

I know that I joke around on our blog about how Scott brainwashed me into getting onboard with this whole cruising dream of his. But, like a lot of stuff on this blog, you really can’t take me too seriously. Except for bringing moas back from the dead. I’m completely serious about that.

So, here’s the dead honest truth. Scott didn’t brainwash me and he didn’t convince me. He just slowly seeded his ideas and his dreams and chipped away at my concerns and fears over time until one day I actually said, “Hey, why don’t we buy a boat.” Seriously, it was my idea to buy our first boat. I’m not sure who was more surprised, Scott or me.

I’ve probably told this story before, but for those of you who are new to the blog, here’s how it happened for us.

****

1 - Share your passion. Authentically.

Talk about why you want to go off adventuring. Not with the aim of selling your dream to your partner, but so that they can understand why you're passionate about it and why it's important to you. When you come from a place of authenticity, it's not about convincing your partner to do something, it's about helping them understand you better.

This is what Scott did. When he talked about sailing and cruising and tried to explain why he loved it so much, his eyes lit up and he just got so darn excited. Scott's a pretty stoic guy, so when he gets visibly excited about something, then you know that you should probably pay attention. So, I did. His passion started to be just a little bit contagious.

2 - Be honest about the downsides of the dream.

The last thing you want to do is suck somebody into your mad schemes under false pretenses. "You'll love sailing! You can read books and eat snacks while we're on the water. Then, we'll have tropical cocktails each night in beautiful anchorages. What could possibly go wrong?"

Well, I can tell you from personal experience that a lot can go wrong. If Scott had glossed over all of the downsides of sailing and cruising and I found out about them later after we had bought a boat, then I think things could haven gotten really ugly because I would have felt like I had been tricked somehow and that the dream I had bought into was really a sham.

Scott was really upfront about the good, the bad and the ugly sides of sailing and cruising. As a result, I felt a lot more prepared when we chartered for the first time (and things went horribly wrong) and later when we bought our first boat in New Zealand.

3 - Figure out their fears and concerns.

Scott knows me pretty well, after all, we've been married for a gazillion years, so he was pretty clued into what my fears and concerns might be, which are way too many to list here. One of the things he suggested I do to allay some of my fears was to read blogs by other folks who were just starting out cruising or who had been out there for a while. It helped. I realized that (a) other people worry about the same stuff that I do and (b) they made it work.

4 - Try before you buy.

We did two things that really made a difference for me. First, before taking the plunge and buying a boat, we did a couple of charters in New Zealand. That allowed me to get a tiny taste of what it might be like to cruise full-time. Fortunately, I liked it. Second, we bought a "starter" boat in New Zealand (this was my idea). It was a small, relatively inexpensive boat which we had for a couple of years, and cruised on full-time for a season.

For me, I think it would have been way too overwhelming to buy our "forever" boat first off the bat and it might have even turned me off of the whole thing. Instead, spending time on our "starter" boat got me excited thinking about how much better our next boat would be. By this time, I was fully hooked and it had become our dream.

5 - Go off adventuring! 

This one's kind of self-explanatory. Once it becomes a shared dream, then go off and live it!

****

That’s how it worked for us. But, the cold, hard truth is that your partner may never get onboard with your dream to go off adventuring. It happens. And you have to be prepared for that. You might have to chuck your dream in or, better yet, adapt your dream.

For example, some partners don’t want to do ocean passages. So, the keen sailor might get some buddies to do long passages and their partner might fly over to join once they’re safely across the ocean. Or, a couple might downsize to a smaller place near the grand kids and split their time between RVing and their home base. Or, instead of taking a few years off the corporate merry-go-round to ride camels across the Saharan desert, a couple might decide to go backpacking in South America for a couple of months for an extended holiday.

What about you? Do you have a dream you're trying to get your partner onboard with? What ideas do you have for turning your personal dream into a shared dream?

Thanks for stopping by our blog - we love it when people come visit! We're also on Facebook - pop by and say hi! 

The Year In Review - 2015 (Pt 1) | Scampering Across The States

It's that time of year. A time to reflect on the year past and a time to look forward to what surprises the Universe has in store for us in the coming year.  

2015 was a big year for us. 

I tried to find a better word to describe the past year other than big - like colossal, massive, tremendous or monstrous - but sometimes simple words and phrases work best. It was big. Simple as that. We had big adventures traveling across the States, we made big purchases (both our sailboat and stuff for her), we had big fun sailing our new boat and we created big memories.

{Now that I've typed big eight times, I'm growing tired of the word. Plus, the more I say it in my head the more it doesn't make any sense. Have you ever had that happen to you? I'm sure there must be some sort of name for that phenomena.}   

We started off the year scampering in Texas.

The latter part of 2014 was hard for us when we lost Scott's father. So, the beginning of 2015 was a perfect antidote - lots of time together making our way from Texas to Florida in Scamper, our tiny house on wheels. Adventure and travel - the great way for us to start the year. 

If you haven't met Scamper before, here's what she looks like. Simply adorable! With approximately 65 sq ft of room, she's definitely cozy, but she has everything you could possibly need including a kitchen and bathroom. And Scamper was a huge improvement over the tent we had been sleeping in when we kicked off our cross-country roadtrip from Portland, Oregon back in October 2014. (You can find more pictures of Scamper, inside and out, here.)
 

We were hangover-free on New Year's Day. Hard to believe, but true.

We rang in the New Year in southeastern Texas, near Kemah on the Galveston Bay. Well, to be honest, we really didn't ring in the New Year as much as sleep through it. We're those early to bed and early to rise kind of people and generally find New Year's Eve to be a bit of an overrated holiday. Yes, we're those boring middle-aged people who prefer sleep to loud parties, followed by hangovers the next morning. You can read about our time in the Kemah-Galveston area here and here.

We looked at a few sailboats while we were in Kemah, but we just didn't find the one while we were there. The one deserving of the name Tickety Boo. So, it was time to push on towards Louisiana. {Extra points if you know what kind of boat this is.} 

We can't stop talking about the shrimp in Louisiana.

Do you ever have meals that you keep reliving over and over and over again? Honestly, we probably talk a little too much about the shrimp we got at Dean's in Grand Isle, fresh off the boat that morning.  

"Do you remember that amazing shrimp we got when we were at Grand Isle State Park?" "Yes! You made the best spicy shrimp pasta with it." "Even better, it was only $4 a pound!" 

Then we start drooling and daydreaming about finding shrimp that delicious and at that incredibly low price point again someday. You can read more about it here.

We made a detour to New Orleans in search of beignets.

Have you ever had a beignet? I love them. You would too. Fried dough sprinkled with heaps of powdered sugar. What could be better? There was no way we were going to leave Louisiana without scoring some beignets in the Big Easy. In an effort to save money, we stayed in a really dodgy RV park and took the bus into the city each day. Which was smart, because then we had more money for beignets. You can read more about our adventures in New Orleans here and here. 

Florida, here we come!

After gaining at least five pounds each eating beignets in New Orleans, we made our way to the Florida panhandle via Mississippi. Our plan was to drive down the Gulf Coast of Florida and then up around the East Coast in search of a sailboat and warmer weather. While finding warmer weather was a bit elusive in January and February, we did get a chance to see some of amazing diversity that the Sunshine State has to offer. 

I asked Scott what his favorite memory of our time on the Gulf Coast was and he said spending time with my wife. Isn't that sweet?

We actually have a hard time picking out what we enjoyed the most. We know what we enjoyed the least, camping in Walmart parking lots, although we did enjoy the fact that it was free and it was easy to pop in for groceries). In order to keep to our budget, we tried to find free (or close to free) camping sites when we could during our travels in Florida, but they're pretty hard to come by. However, we managed to find a few - like a parking lot in Panama City, Hagen's Cove at the Big Bend Wildlife Refuge and the Babcock Preserve. (If you're interested in how much our per night campground costs were, check out this post.)

We saw armadillos, creepy vultures and UFOs!

We also camped at some wonderful county, state and national parks and forests including the Gulf Islands National Seashore (where we had wonderful walks on the beach), Pine Log State Forest, Manatee Springs State Park (where I saw my first real live armadillo, plus a lot of creepy vultures), Ochlocknoee River State Park (where we got drenched in torrential flash floods), Shell Mound County Campground (where we had a UFO sighting), Myakka State Park (where I got overly excited about the strong WiFi signal) and Collier-Seminole State Park (where we stalked fellow Scampers and went canoeing). We also spent a couple of nights at the very quirky Linger Lodge where road kill is on offer at the restaurant (we settled for just beer).

In mid-February, we got a lead on a sailboat that looked promising.  

After months of daily checking of sailboat listings and not really finding anything suitable, we found a boat for sale that looked like it might tick most of our boxes (you can see our boat wish list posts on this page). Next up on The Year in Review, we'll tell you about our adventures making our way down around the tip of Florida and up the East Coast of in search of Tickety Boo and the twists and turns that followed.

Thanks for stopping by our blog - we love it when people come visit! We're also on Facebook - pop by and say hi!

The Risks Of A Nomadic Lifestyle | Health Insurance Quandaries

Source: Graphics Fairy

Yes, it's that time of year again. Time to think about health insurance for 2016 {groan}. Time to weigh up the risks of going without health insurance in 2016 {gasp}. Time to pour a very large glass of red wine {sigh}.

Of course, not everybody has to think about these things. My pals in New Zealand can turn their attention to reliving the All Blacks glorious victory. The Canadians among us can think happy thoughts about Tim Horton's. And the rest of you can ponder whether eggnog or pumpkin spice is better when it comes to your holiday latte. (By the way, the correct answer is eggnog.)

But, if you're American, of pre-Medicare age and don't have health insurance through a job, Medicare, Medicaid or another source, then it's that time of year again for you too. (Go on. I'll wait while you look for that corkscrew.) Yes, it's time to think about getting health insurance through the ACA (Affordable Care Act) marketplace.

Navigating the ACA marketplace is complicated enough to think about (go ahead and pour yourself another glass of wine), but imagine if you're a nomadic type. You know, the type of person who travels around by boat, RV or camel. Who might roam around the country or even leave the States for months on end during 2016. Then it becomes really complicated. Then you're going to need the entire bottle of wine, not to mention an extremely large bar of dark chocolate.

Scott and I struggled with this last year. Should we get health insurance? Should we say the heck with it, pay the penalty and roll the dice? Should we start buying wine by the case?

One of us was leaning towards not getting health insurance. One of us is more of a risk-taker than the other. I'll give you a clue who that might be. Scott is the one who came up with the idea of buying a sailboat, moving onto it and sailing across bodies of water where you can no longer see land. I'm the more sensible one of the two. I think about things like making sure we have emergency rations in our ditch bag, just in case.

In the end, after much discussion, we opted to get health insurance during 2015. My rationale was two-fold:

1 - We're getting older and have a higher chance of health problems arising.
2 - If one of us did develop a serious health problem while we were in the States and weren't in a position to leave the States for treatment, it would pretty much bankrupt us. 

So, basically, I won the argument through scaremongering. Ellen - 1, Scott - Nil.

Now, we're having the same discussion again this year and we have to factor in our plans for adventuring in 2016. We know that we want to sail to the Bahamas and then down to the Caribbean this season. We had hoped that we would be leaving with the rest of the migratory herd of boats making their way down south during December, but it's looking like it won't happen for us until early in 2016. That means that we'll be spending the beginning of the year in the States.

When hurricane season rears her ugly head in June, we're not sure what we're going to do. Will we hang out with the boat somewhere safe in the Caribbean? Will we sail her back to the States and make our way up the East Coast to Canada? Will we leave the boat at Indiantown Marina in southern Florida and take our travel trailer Scamper out for some adventuring on land? Who knows. That's the beauty of a nomadic life. You're not required to make too many plans.

Except when it comes to health insurance and weighing up your risks {sigh}. Then you have to start planning. If we knew for sure that we weren't coming back to the States during 2016, we could enroll for health insurance for the first part of the year and then cancel it once we set sail. Unfortunately, it's a bit trickier to sign up for health insurance part way through the year, unless you have some sort of life changing event such as having a baby, getting married, losing health insurance from your employer or moving to a new state.

In addition to not knowing what our plans are, we also don't know what plans the universe has in store for us. What if we need to come back to the States to take care of family matters? Would we want to risk being in the States without any insurance hoping that nothing catastrophic befell us and led us down the merry path of bankruptcy? Well, one of us might want to risk it. One of us might not.

Right now, we don't have a clue what we're going to do. We have until December 15th to sign up for a new plan. But it just isn't figuring out if we want to sign up for a health insurance plan, it's also deciding what that plan that would be.

Okay, this is where you're going to need a truckload of chocolate and a vat of wine. I'm not even going to try to explain how the ACA marketplace works. But Nina from Wheeling It has put together a great overview. It's well worth a read if you're in the same pickle that we are.

If you're curious about what our choices are, here's the scoop. To be honest, it will probably only be of interest if you're:

1 - Looking at getting health insurance in Oregon on the ACA marketplace.

2 - You won Powerball last week and you don't have to worry about these things anymore, but you want to make sure that you stay in tune with how the little people live.

3 - You want to commiserate with us and then rush out to the post office to send us more chocolate and wine.

HEALTH INSURANCE OPTIONS

Because Oregon was the last state we lived in before we moved overseas to Scotland and then New Zealand, that's our default state. It's the one we use when it comes to elections and it's the one we used when it came time to look at health insurance last year.

How much do you want to pay and what kind of service do you want?

We had to make two big choices when it came to health insurance for 2015 - what our favorite metal was and what kind of letters we preferred.

For some reason, they decided it would be helpful to imagine yourself in a jewelry store when thinking about what plan to get. Platinum, gold, silver and bronze are used to describe the level of costs that you have to pay and your premium. We opted for a bronze plan which means we pay a greater share of our health costs than someone with a platinum plan would. The upside is that we have lower premiums.

Premiums, by the way, are based on things like marital status (I've got a document that says we're married, but it's in Danish, so who really knows), number of dependents (we don't have any), age (let's just call it middle-aged and leave it at that) and where you live (when we say a sailboat, the IRS gets confused).

The other big choice we had was a PPO vs an EPO plan. Confused by the letters? Aren't we all. {Pause for more wine and chocolate. What?! We're out of chocolate. Top up my wine glass pronto.} An EPO (or Exclusive Provider Plan) would have only provided services to us if we used in-network providers. That means, that if something happened while we were traveling around the States, we would have been out of luck, except for emergency treatment.

A PPO plan (or Preferred Provider Plan) means that we could use both in-network and out-of-network providers throughout the country, although we would have to pay extra for the latter. As we knew we would be traveling around the States during the year, we opted for a PPO plan.

There were a few choices when it came to a Bronze PPO. We opted to go with a Standard Bronze PPO plan offered by Lifewise based on premium cost, the size of the deductible and the extent of their network nationwide. Our monthly premium was $502, which comes out to a whopping $6,024 a year. We had a hefty $10,000 deductible (you have to spend this much before health insurance starts to pay out for most stuff) and a $12,700 out-of-pocket maximum.

Was it worth it?

The short answer is no. The longer answer is that we were fortunate that neither of us had a serious illness which required us to really test out our insurance. Knock on wood - we still aren't through with 2015 yet.

I have had to go to the doctor in Florida to get a routine prescription for thyroxine. It's required lab tests and appointments with the doctor. Because we're still under the $10,000 deductible, I've had to pay for everything out of pocket. On the plus side, because the doctor and lab are in network, the costs are less than what they would be if I didn't have health insurance. But are they worth the $6,024 we've paid in insurance premiums. Nope, it would have been cheaper to have gone without insurance, paid the government penalty for being uninsured and just paid for the doctor and lab fees ourselves (around $600).

But, that's what health insurance is - a gamble.

Having said all that, keep in mind that our health insurance costs were without any tax credits. While we share how much we spend, we don't share details on how much we make. We do earn a little bit of money (otherwise we wouldn't be eligible to get health insurance on the ACA marketplace) and we may be eligible for some tax credits, but we won't know until we do our tax return this year.

So what are the choices for 2016?

Our current provider, Lifewise, has altered or replaced all of the plans it offered in 2015 (with the exception of one Gold plan) and they will not offer any PPO plans in 2016. The plan that Lifewise offers that's closest to what we had during 2015 is their Standard Bronze Exclusive Provider 5000. Here's the scoop:

• Monthly premium - $659
• Deductible - $10,000
• Out-of-pocket maximum - $12,700

The deductible and out-of-pocket maximum are the same as our previous plan. But, for those of you who like math, the premium is an INCREASE of 31% from 2015. Yes, 31% and that's for an EPO plan, not a PPO plan. Goodness, it's time to switch to hard liquor.

That's the big news in Oregon - premiums have skyrocketed with an average weighted increase of 24%. (See here for more details.) I think you can guess how things are headed. We will not be buying Lifewise's Bronze EPO plan.

I checked out other PPO plans on the marketplace. The cheapest one on offer is a Bronze plan from Oregon's Health Co-op. Here's how it looks. 

• Monthly premium - $626
• Deductible - $10,000
• Out-of-pocket maximum - $12,700

This one is looking better than the Lifewise plan. The monthly premium is lower than Lifewise, it's a PPO plan and the deductible and out-of-pocket maximum are on par. But the thought of paying $626 a month for health insurance is just way to mind-numbing to contemplate. Especially, as we won't be in the States for part of the year.

The cheapest plan on offer is a Bronze EPO plan from Providence Health:

• Monthly Premium - $582
• Deductible - $13,600
• Out-of-pocket maximum - $13,700

The deductible and out-of-pocket maximum are higher, but the premium is only 16% higher than our current plan. What?! Did I just say only 16% higher? See, how spending too much time on this befuddles the mind. Suddenly, you start to think a 16% increase is reasonable. Or, perhaps I've had too much red wine?

So, what are you going to do?

Well, I will be buying a Powerball ticket. Possibly two. Other than that, I don't have a clue. Procrastination is one of my favorite pastimes, so ask me on December 15th what we're going to do. We'll decide then.

What about you? Are you looking to get health insurance on the ACA marketplace? More importantly, do you have any dark chocolate and red wine you can spare?

Thanks for stopping by our blog - we love it when people come visit! We're also on Facebook - pop by and say hi!

Going For A Walk: New Orleans {Or Dodgy RV Parks Mean More Beignets}

I was looking back at our blog the other day and realized that there are a number of adventures we had during our USA road trip that I haven't told you about yet. Like the time we stayed at a dodgy RV park in New Orleans. The great thing about dodgy RV parks in  New Orleans is that they're cheap (for New Orleans, that is) and that means you have more money to spend on beignets. The bad thing about dodgy RV parks is that they're, well, dodgy.

Although I blogged about the lack of public toilets in New Orleans back in January (and if you're of a certain age, you'll agree that knowing where the public toilets are is an important consideration!), I haven't taken you on a walk through the Big Easy. So have a little wander with us from the comfort of your couch and I'll show you what we got up to. If you have some beignet mix, you might want to fry up some to munch on while we go on our little walk. Don't forget the powdered sugar.

Here's where our little walk starts - at the Pelican RV Park. This was the view from our window. Do you like the barbed wire? While not pretty to look at, it was oddly reassuring. Because if you're staying in this part of town and leaving your camper unattended while you explore New Orleans, it's comforting to know that there is a barbed wire fence around the place and a locked gate.

Sure we could have stayed at a posh RV park, like the French Quarter RV Resort, but why pay close to $100 a night when you can get a bargain rate of only $27 a night? To be fair to the Pelican RV Park, while it wasn't pretty, the manager was extremely helpful and responsive and told us that they're in the process of changing the place over from a mobile home park to a proper RV park. So maybe things are looking spiffier now. 

Once you leave the barbed wire compound, you head up two blocks to the bus stop. (You can get a one day Jazzy Pass for $3.) The Pelican RV Park is five miles away from the French Quarter, which was a bit too far for us to walk, considering all the walking we would be doing in the city. Plus I hadn't had any breakfast yet, as I was saving myself for beignets, so the energy levels weren't really up there for a long walk.

Beignets. Yum. Have you ever had them? Fried dough with heaps of powdered sugar on them. This is the place to go - Cafe du Monde. Scott had never tried them before. I'm guessing they aren't a big seller in North Dakota. He was balking at spending $2.42 on a plate of tiny doughnuts, but, after one bite, he was a convert. Powdered sugar and deep fried dough will do that to a fellow. He had no qualms about shelling out more money for a second helping.

While you're scarfing down beignets, you can hear the folks playing jazz outside. It will make your toes start tapping. Even if you try to stop them, they'll start tapping on their own. Between the sugar overload and the music, you'll be feeling fine.

Then it was time to walk those beignets off! We could have shelled out for a horse drawn carriage, but I'm allergic to horses and Scott's allergic to spending money unnecessarily. So we set off on foot.

 It was a pretty drizzly day. But it kind of made the waterfront look romantic.

After having a peek at the waterfront, we wandered aimlessly around the city. Sometimes, you just need to put away your map and see where your feet take you.

There's music everywhere you go.

Scott likes taking pictures of old ghost signs.

At some point the sun came out and we moseyed around watching the street performers.

New Orleans is definitely a party town. I wonder how much alcohol is consumed each day?

Like every good tourist to New Orleans, we made our way to the historic cemetery. Like eating beignets and listening to jazz, it's kind of expected that you check out the old tombs. Just preferably not at night. Apparently, roaming around the cemetery after dark is even dodgier than the RV park we stayed at.

And of course, no visit to New Orleans would be complete without Ethiopian food. We took the streetcar out to the Garden district in search of doro wat. There were two Ethiopian restaurants to choose from. I chose poorly. So sad when you get yourself all giddy and excited at the thought of Ethiopian, only to wish you had had beignets instead.

Have you ever been to New Orleans? Did you have beignets and Ethiopian food?

{We explored New Orleans, stayed at a dodgy RV park and ate way too many beignets on 10-12 January 2015.}  

Thanks for stopping by our blog - we love it when people come visit! We're also on Facebook - we'd love for you to pop by and say hi! 

Linked up with Albom Adventures,  Reflections Enroute, The CrowdedPlanet, Contented Traveller, Safari254, Families Go! & Malaysian Meanders at Weekend Travel Inspiration.

Linked up with Budget Traveler's Sandbox for Travel Photo Thursday.

Linked up with Brit & Southerner,  Southern Gypsy, Casual Travels, Justin Plus Lauren & Outbound Adventurer at Weekend Wanderlust. 

Cost Of RVing In Our 13' Scamp Travel Trailer

I'm always curious how much it costs other people to live and travel full-time in their RVs (yes, call me nosey), so I thought it only fair that I share our costs from living and traveling around the States in our 13' Scamp travel trailer. We also did something similar when we lived and cruised on our sailboat in New Zealand - you can check those numbers out here.

It probably goes without saying that everyone's costs will be different. Some people spend heaps more then we do, while others have really sussed out how to do this super frugally. I imagine we're probably somewhere in the middle. 

Before we get to the numbers, here are a few things to keep in mind:

1 - December is a shorter month.

The time frame covered is from mid-December (when we picked up our new Scamp in Minnesota) until the end of April.

2 - Not everything is captured.

This is a really important point. Certain things aren't reported in our numbers, but we still have to spend money on them. When you're looking at people's RVing costs, you're not always comparing apples to apples. People slice and dice their data different ways and consider some things RVing costs that other people don't. 

So what have we excluded? Anything related to booze and chocolate. I don't want people getting all judgy about how much chocolate cake I eat.  Trust me - I ate a lot of the stuff. And we do like to have a cold beer on a hot summer day or a gin and tonic while watching the sun go down, but I think I'll just keep those numbers to ourselves.

I've also left off our costs related to our new boat. It's just too depressing to add those up (boats are the ultimate money pits) and they aren't related to our RV lifestyle. 

Finally, I've also excluded what we spend on health insurance. Since 2001 we've lived overseas in Scotland and New Zealand and would get travel insurance when we came back to visit family. But once we decided that we would be spending more time in the States and, in fact, would be here for most of 2015, that travel insurance route wasn't going to work for us anymore. Option 1 was to go uninsured and pay the penalty under the Affordable Care Act. Option 2 was to get insurance. Neither one was ideal. We hemmed and hawed and eventually decided to get insurance under the Affordable Care Act. If we were younger, I might have been less risk adverse and gone without coverage, but we're of that age where one of us could have a major health issue. I was also keen to protect our assets should we have a catastrophic health issue. Going bankrupt doesn't really appeal. So we bit the bullet and got insurance. It is disheartening to see how much of our monthly income goes out the door to insurance premiums, especially as we're both healthy and don't need any medical care.

3 - Our RV is brand new.

While we've had some minor issues with our new Scamp travel trailer, we're still covered under warranty. Folks with older RVs will have higher repair and maintenance costs then ours, which is zero. 

The Numbers

So, now on to the nitty-gritty. Overall, we spent $8,687.02 over the course of 20 weeks. That works out to an average of $434.35 per week. We spent the biggest percentage of our budget on costs related to our Pathfinder tow vehicle - mostly for gas ($2,750.06). We spent the least amount on personal and household items ($269.32). I guess that give you an idea of our priorities.

Here is breakdown of how we categorized our spend and other tidbits that might be of interest. There is a table at the end of the post which summarizes our spend against each category by month.

GROCERIES | Overall Spend = $2,010.32

It always astounds me how much we spend on what we put into our bodies. Occasionally, I try to take a more frugal approach to grocery shopping, but it never really works out.

PERSONAL HOUSEHOLD | Overall Spend = $269.32

This includes all those household goods (like paper towels, toilet paper, cleaning products, ziploc bags etc) and personal items that make you smell nice and look pretty (like shampoo, soap etc). 

CELL PHONE & DATA | Overall Spend = $390

We're currently on the $60 AT&T Go Phone plan. Unlimited minutes and texts and 4GB of data a month (increased in April from 2.5GB). I'm a bit of a data hog, so we end up buying extra data packages (1GB for $10) each month and we've also purchased international calling minutes. I'm so jealous of all of those folks who have unlimited data plans. Too bad they don't offer them anymore - at least not that I've found.

RV | Overall Spend = $1,981.62

We break our RV spend down into several categories - campgrounds ($1,388.31), repairs/maintenance ($0), equipment/gizmos ($129.35), insurance/registration ($178.00), LPG ($52.20) and miscellaneous ($35.20). 

Our campground costs make up the biggest percentage of this category. We were surprised to find how much we were spending to basically rent a piece of land to park on for the night. Here's a snapshot by month:

• December (partial month) - Total = $198.56, Per Night = $15.27
• January - Total = $571.06, Per Night = $18.42
• February - Total = $631.33, Per Night = $22.55
• March - Total = $424.54, Per Night = $13.69
• April - Total = $0, Per Night = $0 {Note: we stayed at a place near our boat for free while we did repairs etc.}

We spent a bit on equipment and gizmos as our RV was new and we needed to get kitted out. Things like chocks, hitch locks, water hose, water regulator, outdoor mat etc. In fact, we bought chocks and an outdoor mat twice as I left our original ones at Babcock-Webb Wildlife Management Area in Florida (hope whoever found them enjoys them).

Our annual insurance for our Scamp is $134 a year. You'll see this as one payment in April, as well as a pro-rated payment in December.  

ENTERTAINMENT | Overall Spend = $1,028.88

This is where we capture every penny, nickel and dime we spend on eating out, having drinks out, going to the movies, getting coffees, buying books and magazines etc. We really blew the budget in January ($350.14), but, hey, we were in New Orleans and we had a great time. We spent more than I would have liked in April ($212.69), but we were so exhausted and busy from working on the boat, that we ended up having other people make food for us more often than normal.

VEHICLE | Overall Spend = $2,750.06

We spent a fortune on gas. Which isn't surprising given the fact that we picked up our Scamp in Minnesota, drove down to Texas and then along the seaboard to Florida. 

The other big expenditure was for our annual insurance for our Pathfinder. It went up to an astonishing $909 our annual policy. And that's just for third party liability. I'll be doing some calling around looking for better rates, you can bet on that.

We also spent money on public transport in New Orleans, parking, toll roads and a new battery for our Pathfinder.

OTHER | Overall Spend = $256.82

This is a catch all category for things that don't fit neatly elsewhere. Like clothes, laundry, postage, photo-copies etc.

So there you go - our costs for full-timing in our Scamp travel trailer. Was it more or less than you imagined? 

Thanks for stopping by our blog - we love it when people come visit! We're also on Facebook - pop by and say hi!