Making Full-Time Travel Affordable: Our Financial Strategy

Making Full-Time Travel Affordable: Our Financial Strategy

Ever wondered how we make full-time travel work without breaking the bank? 💸 In this bonus episode, we’re pulling back the curtain and answering one of the questions we get asked the most: “How will you afford to travel full-time?”

We’re sharing the details of our financial game plan, including how we keep costs low with our Thousand Trails membership. From package options to insider tips on maximizing stays, we break down exactly how this membership makes our travel lifestyle sustainable. 🚐🌎

If you’ve been dreaming of hitting the road long-term, or just want to stretch your travel budget further, this episode is packed with practical insights to help you plan smarter and travel farther.

Transcript

 Hey guys, this week we have something special for you. So our most asked question since we have been on the road is how are you financially doing this? Well, today we are going to have part one of that answer. Back in September, we did two bonus episodes on our Patreon and they are going to be released today and next week.

So today we're gonna go back a few months and Jeremy and I will be talking about making full time travel affordable. Our financial strategy, so stay tuned. It's coming up right now, and if you can't wait for part two where our income comes from, you can go ahead and hit our Patreon right now where it is available.

We hope you guys enjoy this little mini series.

 We are the Esri family and we're exploring America one destination at a time. On this month's bonus episode, we are going to be answering one of the questions that we have been asked at least a thousand times, and that is how are you even going to be able to afford to travel full time? Well, today we're gonna talk about half of that reason.

Let's chat. Welcome and thank you for joining us on this bonus episode, and we are going to dive deep into kind of how we are able to just keep the trip and the vacations, keep this adventure going at a super low cost. Yeah, I don't know if you can call it a vacation if you're traveling full time.

Remember, we can't call it a vacation, but you know, we can talk about how other people can use the same system that we're gonna be using as a vacation. Absolutely. And it's one of those things that, although we're not gonna call it a vacation, I mean, it's a vacation. We don't have a eight to five job. So, yeah.

And before we dive too deep into it, so this is only part of the reason of how we're gonna be able to full-time travel. Jeremy's job is the other half of that, which we will go in more extensively, you know, later once he is actually doing it full time. Right. Especially for our Patreons to get you some true blue numbers that are realistic, that are keeping you in the information hub.

And we're gonna break down not only this portion, my job, I think the meat of how we're able to travel is in what we're gonna be talking about today. Absolutely. It's actually the core thing that enabled us to realize, hey, we can actually do this. Oh yeah. Without this, nothing else happens. Yeah, and I'll, nothing else even matters.

I will be breaking down numbers all throughout this podcast, and then at the end. Even more numbers. So if, if numbers, numbers, numbers is what you're really looking for, then this is definitely the bonus episode for you. So how we are going to afford living or moving from spot to spot? Yeah. So first off, I know we've said this several times, but we're just gonna reiterate it.

We have no payments, we own everything. We have our fifth wheel, our truck, Justin's car. Everything is paid off and owned. We have no loans out there. And that is a big a, a big, um, it's a big hurdle to get over. Right? And if you can get over that hurdle, well, it's a big factor. It's a huge factor because you're allowed to kind of fluctuate if you need to, you know, your monthly payments, and if that's something that you don't have.

I know people that were paying more for car. Mm-hmm. Their, their one car payment than in their mortgage or their rent than in their mortgage. Yeah. Or their rent and Oh my goodness. I mean, people, people have to live like that, which, that's just the way that it is. I think in our entire marriage, we have only ever pulled out a loan on two vehicles.

Yes. Yes. We are. Really big, big advocates on paying cash for something if you can, if you can, if you can pay cash for it and pay it off. So that is a big factor in what we're gonna be talking about today. A big factor, because we do not have, you know, $800 RV payments, $800 truck payments, $300 car payments, and that adds up.

I mean, that's. If you add all that up together, that's about what we're gonna be spending a month. So it, it makes a big difference. But when I came to Jeremy last year and presented him all this and he was like, babe, do you know how expensive it is? Like how much it is per night to do this? Even if even on the cheapest places, which I'm gonna break down at the end, how much they cost, how much that would be per year.

And it's a lot. It's a significant amount. I did a lot of research. I started digging like, how do people actually do this? 'cause I know there's thousands of people out there that do this. And I came across a membership, a company, I don't even know what to call it, but I came across thousand trails, the organization's a thousand trails.

And whenever she brought this to me, I was thinking more traditional. I was thinking of, uh, campgrounds. Kind of public campgrounds, you know, the, uh, you're thinking more of along the Corps of engineer Corps engineers, state parks, or even what RV parks we're charging people just in our own area, not including everywhere else.

Yeah. We lived in an RV park for two years. Yes. So we know what those prices look like, and by taking those prices and what she's about to tell you and Thousand trails totally flipped my mind. Yeah. Yeah. So Thousand Trails is a, a vacation camping. Type, it's not a destination. 'cause they actually have like over a hundred places across the us.

There are 109 or 115 at this time. Thousand trails camp sites, I believe. And then there are, on top of that, there's a hundred of the encore parks that you can go to, which it's kind of part of the package, but it's also not part of the package. I'm not even gonna talk about the encore today, but over a hundred parks throughout America.

And the the most popular, I guess, package 'cause they have different packages, different options, depending on what your style of travel is and your budget and what you're looking for. The most popular one by far is the Camping Pass. The Camping Pass is for weekenders people who like to go out on the holidays or those who travel throughout the summer.

Right now they're actually having a special through September 19th. FYI. It's $250 cheaper than normal. It's $505 and that's your year pass. So what this $505 does for you, it gives you an option to stay in one of the regions. There are five different, okay, just FYI. This is about to be information overload.

If you're truly interested in this, you might wanna get out a pen and paper. There are five different regions in the thousand trails. They have broken up the US into five regions. You have the northwest, the southwest, the Midwest, the Northeast, and the Southeast. And if you just look at a thousand trails map, there's really not very many in the center of the US at all.

They're almost all along the coastal areas. And then up by like the Great Lakes is where most of them are. You won't find any in Wyoming or Montana, Utah, places like that. But you can pick one of those regions and each region has their own different amount of how many's in there. Pick one of those regions and you can go camping all year long.

Now there are stipulations to that with the camping pass. You can only book your reservations up to 60 days in advance. You know, with core of engineer, what I think you can book it a year in advance. Yeah. For the core and most state parks, you can book a year, a year in advance. So with the Camping Pass and the thousand Trails, it's only a 60 days in advance.

You can stay 14 days in the park and then you have to take seven days outside of the system. So it's 14 in, seven out, 14 in, seven out. You can go right back to the same park as long as you take your seven days out. Now this has no extra charges. Uh, you don't have to pay water, you don't have to pay electric.

There are no extra fees on top of this. So that's really nice. So for, you know, roughly five, six, $700, depending on what time you buy this pass a year, you can go camping. What, 14 days in? Seven days out? What is that? Like two thirds of the year for free. Two thirds? Well, not necessarily for free. If you break it down, it's roughly around the $60 mark.

More not for free. Per month. Per month. Right. But this is what's crazy about it. $60 even for 14 days. Mm-hmm. For $60 is unheard of Corps of engineer. That's like two or three nights. That's two nights. Yeah. And if you want to add the other regions, so there are five regions. You, you're five to $700, whatever, however much it costs when you purchase.

That gives you one region you can add on other regions for 125 per region. And still, that's a pretty significantly low cost to be able to travel and stay in these parks for two thirds of the year. Yeah. And by adding just one region opens up. More parks that you can spend your 14 days. But even just doing that, it's only $75 a month.

So it only adds like $15 a month, $75 a month to go camping in any of those locations in your regions. Like that is so nice. So nice. So that is your basic thousand Trails Camping Pass. It's actually the only one that I knew about when we first started. I didn't realize. Of the extra ones, and I presented this to Jeremy and we were like, okay, well if we did this and then we stayed in these other places the rest of the year, then we would spend roughly seven to $8,000 a year if we did the 14 days in seven days out.

Which is still, you know, less than what most people spend in their mortgages and rent per year, but definitely way more than what we wanted to spend. Yes, because the seven days out. We're so expensive. We're so expensive. Also, we really wanted to stay places longer than 14 days. Yeah. I did not want to have to hook up and move, hook up and move, and it just feels like we're moving all the time moving.

Right. Like we're not really experiencing everything that's going on in the, the area, the culture. We wanted to stay somewhere a little bit longer than 14 days. Yeah. So I knew I was moving in the right direction. This. What I presented to him, only knowing about that camping pass with thousand trails. It was a doable thing for us.

We saw it as doable and we were digging into it and we were getting ready. Well, as I was digging into it, I realized that you could upgrade that pass. Now there are three different upgrade options. I'm just gonna talk about ours. 'cause really the only differences is. How many extensions you get per year.

And the main difference is how many days in advance you can reserve. How many days in advance you can reserve was a huge thing for us because there are a ton of people that use this. Mm-hmm. And we already knew going in, especially going to South Padre in February this year, how many snowbirds there are.

Right. Like the southern states get booked up in the winter, so we. Decided to go with the journey pass, it's a little bit different. So instead of 14 days in, seven days out, we can stay in one park for 21 days and then we're able to go straight to the next thousand trails park so we can do 21 days park to park.

That makes a massive difference whenever you're talking about. Doing a, a yearly subscription, paying it off in monthly increments. Mm-hmm. And not having the extra amount of money. Whenever you have to spend, you have to spend seven days out. Right now, there's gonna be times where we're gonna be going from one to another.

We might have to spend one or two nights out just because of how far they are. But they have campgrounds, they have a few campground, a few areas that they have three or four within a. A good driving distance, but three or four in an area and you can just do a circle. Yeah, you could. And keep rolling and only pay that monthly fee.

Yeah. So it's actually less than $2,000 a year for us. I think our total is gonna be like 1896. We pay less than $160 a month. It's 1 58 a month, I believe. Plus some change. Yeah. Even if it was 2000, that's still only 1 65 a month. And here. I mean, obviously the price is the most amazing part because we're, we just went from $7,000 a year to $2,000 a year, and that enables us to stay longer in each spot, and that includes all five regions.

So that's not just for one region any longer, like the camping passes, that's every single one available in the lower 48. I wanna break this down just a little bit further because I, I think sometimes people have a hard grasp on this, right? We've tried explaining it to so many people, but so many people, and it's super simple.

It, it's a package we have, so it's not a package that we're talking about that may be out there for you. It's a package we have. Yeah, I, that we're paying for it. Yeah, I, we've been paying for it. I already have the next four months reserved and done. I didn't have to pay a dime extra out of our monthly $158.

There's no hidden fees or anything. Now we'll talk about a little bit more here in, you know, as far as some of the camping grounds that, you know, they might be a little older or you're paying for 50 amp versus 30 amp. Yeah. That kind of stuff. I think we did cover that in one of our podcasts as well, a little bit.

But one thing that I definitely want to kind of put out there, we're talking about even if it's $2,000 a a year. We're talking about 165 roughly dollars a month. That includes electricity and water and sewer, and oh, not all of them have sewer. Well, they're gonna have to have a place that you dump. Right.

They do. They all do have dumping and so it may not be full hookups, but they have a place for you to dump your tanks. Right. And they all offer shower facilities and restroom facilities. And that doesn't even include the amenities. Mm-hmm. Most of them have pools. Most of 'em are gonna have some type of playground for little ones to go with rec rooms.

A lot of 'em are gonna have hiking in their area. Mm-hmm. I mean, you get so much. They're not even paying us to do this. This is just something we want y'all to know about. Oh yeah. It's just because we've had so many people ask, how are you gonna be able to do it? And they don't understand and does it make sense to them?

So we really want to break it down financially. And we have said from the very beginning, you know, we'll give you guys numbers. It's not a secret. We're not, it's not some big conspiracy. We want you guys to understand how we're doing this. One, maybe it'll just give our family some peace of mind, but two, you know, if it's something you're interested in, maybe just the camping pass or maybe just taking a little bit of time and doing something different, then this gives you some more information.

And that opens up so many options for us because it gives us all five regions. So if we wanted to push and do like a week in every park, I mean, we could definitely make it all the way around the lower 40 eights. Where the parks are located, but we're gonna take our time and we're gonna enjoy as many three week stays as we possibly can before we move on to the next destination.

And this is gonna be a first for us. This is the part that I'm really excited about because I've made a couple trips up north and during the summertime, like July and August, and it was absolutely beautiful weather. I know it gets hot up there and sometimes you might have, you know, heat waves come in.

Compared to central Texas in July and August, we're in its triple digits and then we only have to deal with like 85, 90 degree days. I think that's something that we're gonna be able to handle and I know that I'm super excited about it. I know that Misty is super excited about it, so we can get out and we can do some walks and hikes and all the other fun stuff that is gonna be in that area without having to like go into dehydration and uh, a heat stroke.

Yeah. I wanna go back into our, our membership. So with our membership specifically, we pay $158 a month. So that's roughly less than $1,900 a year. It includes all five regions, all a hundred plus locations that there are in the lower 48. It also gives us advanced reservations of 120 days, so we just doubled what the Camping pass one is.

Now we do have one of the lower memberships as far as like the all region packages, I guess they go up to 140 and then 160 or 180 days. I can't remember, but I feel like 120 days is fine. It's a four months. We did run into a bit of a pickle whenever I went to Reserve Florida. For January, you guys, it's already booked up through the end of February, so we had to make a few, um, plan changes when it comes to that, but still, that still enables us so much time in advance to, to make those changes and change those plans and adapt some things if we need to still, you know, several months in advance.

So that is really nice. We also have, with our membership two weeks a year of extensions. So we can only use one week at a time, but when we're booking somewhere and we wanna stay longer than three weeks, we have twice a year that we can extend that to four weeks. And we already have one of those planned for this upcoming year.

We have one planned and because we get two and they really don't. They really give you like a deadline. Like even if you're there and there's a spot available in that park, you can extend for another week. Yeah. If you have a week left in your extension. And so because we're a people that plan for emergencies or just those in case times, we definitely have one plan that will help with my jobs specifically, but we also have one just on the back burner if we need it.

Right. 'cause I definitely don't want us to get us into a pickle where we've already used it first of the, of the year. Mm-hmm. And then something happens and we need an extension and we can't get it right. So we are gonna save that extension for an emergency. Um, you know, we don't particularly wanna stay a whole month in most places anyway, that.

That's a little longer than we wanna stay. I don't know. I've seen a few of these, these I know. Thousand trails and I'm like, oh, that is beautiful. But, but then we're not seeing more like two weeks is a little too short, but I feel like four weeks is a little too long. I think three weeks is a really great time.

I mean, if we move every three weeks, that 17 stops. So that 17 places that, that we can go visit, oh, we will be moving more frequently than that. So that is how we're gonna be able to do it. You guys, $158 a month is all we will be spending. And I know some relatives out there that this is gonna blow their minds because I know how much they spend when they travel and they go to RV parks and stuff and they're not, oh yeah.

They're gonna be mad. They didn't know about this sooner. I'm mad. I didn't know about it sooner. Well, like, like Misty said, the middle region. South Dakota. North Dakota, Kansas. Yeah. You know a lot of places we wanna go. Yeah. Really slim. Like Zero Slim. But I think there's like one in Kentucky or one in Kansas if you kind of wanna stay on the coast area.

Oh yeah. This is amazing. Or around the Great Lakes. Or The Great Lakes. Yes. Yeah, there's a lot up in that area. And. They will eventually they'll spread out. Yeah, I believe so. It's inevitable it will happen. I know people that we'll even go to the 2000, paying 2000 for a trip. One single trip. Yeah. For like a month long trip in the summer.

Sometimes it's not even a month long, depending on where you wanna stay. Mm-hmm. Kind of all the big activities that you want to do. You can either spend 2000 and go all year round or go make one big trip and then your vacation budget is gone. Yeah. Now. Does this mean we will only be staying in thousand trails?

I wish. While we were traveling. No. Why would you say that? No, because there are places we wanna go where there are no thousands. Yes. But then we don't have to spend that extra money. Oh my goodness. You are impossible. It's already so incredibly cheap. No, there are several places we wanna go with.

Absolutely. There are no thousand trials. Nope. Also, you know, some of the places in between, the regions in between each thousand trail is a quite a drive. It is. And we won't be able to get there in a day. And so being able to stop somewhere else, you know, we'll utilize core of engineer parks quite a bit while we're traveling.

And mostly we'll use them as stopovers in between parks because there's just so much. Mileage in between the thousand trails and you know, I have US plan to spend a couple days at Niagara Falls. Well, there's not a thousand Trails anywhere near Niagara Falls. No, there was a KOA, but it was like $215 a night to park your rv.

So no thank you. And we've kind of covered KOA in another one, which is another really good program, but it is way more expensive, right? So yes, there will be several times that we are not in the thousand trail system. Whenever that happens, of course everyone's gonna know. It'll be on our YouTube and we'll be putting it on Patreon and we'll do a review of it.

Right. We'll, we'll talk about the price of what if we're there for longer than like 10 hours for sleeping. Yeah. If we get there and it's still a lot outside, we'll do a review on it real quick. Right. So to put in perspective how cheap this is. I mean you, less than $2,000 a year we're gonna be able to stay in RV parks.

To put this in perspective, if you were to stay. In a monthly park. Now this is the average for around here, which is fairly cheap. Which is pretty cheap. Even for Texas, it's pretty cheap. Yeah. So our average around here is about $500 a month plus electric. Yeah. That doesn't even cover your electricity. And electric in the summertime at these places can run 200 plus dollars.

Ask me how I know. So. That's, you know, 6,000 plus a year, that's 6,000 for your rent plus your electric to stay in a park. Again, the ones around here are on the cheap side. I know. I have seen full-time families in California and they pay 12 to $1,400 a month plus electric. Mm-hmm. To stay in an RV park.

Just for a hookup. Just for a spot to put their trailer. Yeah. Even on metropolitan areas. Are almost doubled from what we are. So there are a lot of people who they full-time travel and they will just move month to month. They will stay one month in a park and move because it's only a couple hundred dollars.

$6,000. I mean, it's still relatively inexpensive. As you know, living expenses go. If you're just paying $500 a month in Rent plus electric, that's still pretty cheap. Yeah. You're only still spending what, seven, $800? Right. So it's not that, not that bad. Which is another area that we looked into. And then if you're doing normal RV parks, like.

State parks, Corps of engineer, private parks that you can only stay up to 14 days in like the normal vacation, camping type parks. Most of them you can't stay more than 14 days, and the cheapest of the cheap are at least 30 to $35 a night. If you're paying 30 to $35 a night, you're spending well over 12,000 a year.

Yes. You don't have to pay electric or water. You're spending over 12,000, 12 to 14,000 a year in just your fees now. So if we were to look at this, and I know a lot of people are, if you're looking at it like, oh, they're full-time traveling. How most people do when it comes to staying in with your RV camping.

Then yes, that would be very, very expensive. That's $10,000 more a year than what we're actually going to be spending. And I know that number once again, sounds absolutely crazy, but those are kinda like the national averages. Like's what? You're gonna be lows. Oh yeah, I'm sorry. Those are the lows.

Especially for our area. Now we do know that there are full-time travel families and they do. Oh yeah, vacation like that. They, they vacation like that, it's full blown. And they're a million dollar class a's in their little car they pull behind and you know, that's how they do it. And props to them if they can afford it.

And that's what they wanna do. We cannot afford it. And it is absolutely not what we want to do because we wanna be able to stay a bit longer. And each place, and you know, we've talked about in the past about thousand trails. We want to have that community aspect and the amenities aspect. Corps of Engineer just does not offer they beautiful parks.

Don't get me wrong, beautiful parks well kept, very well. You know, staff is friendly and great, but they do not offer, like the community that the thousand trails or the KOA offers. KOA does not have the same type of memberships that thousand trails offer. So thousand trails was like a no-brainer for us.

Now, one extra thing that does get added on, depending on how old the park is. Is if it has a 30 amp or a 50 amp, sometimes on a rare occasion you have to pay for a 50 amp hookup. Right? They'll charge you. That's a little extra. Charge you three to $5 per night, I believe. Um, I actually asked, so whenever I was reading all of the stuff about a thousand trails before we purchased it, I saw that about they, you can be charged three to $5 a night to do a 50 amp instead of the 30 at some of the parks.

If you had over four people, you were charged $5 a night per person extra. So I went onto 8,000 Trails Facebook group, uh, people who do this, the same thing that we're gonna be doing. And I asked realistically, how many times have you guys been charged for these extras? And 99% of the people came back and said, never.

Apparently there's only two parks in the thousand trail system that actually do stuff like that. Then the ones that actually do are more of your encore parks, which we're not gonna be staying in. Right. And they're kind of, it's kind of like an added feature to thousand trails. It doesn't have the same perks, but you get a discount for it.

It's a, I dunno, a lot of people love 'em. You can't stay 21 days in them. If you have a thousand trail system, you can only reserve 90 days in advance and you're only getting 50% off. Yeah. It's parks that are. I guess would say like a sister. Yeah. Affiliated, but not fully in the system. Right. They're not actual thousand trail parks.

You're just getting a discount because you have a thousand trail membership. Yeah. So a lot of those you'll be charged extra for 50 amps or extra for, oh, you know, too many pets or too many people or something like that. So I hope. That clarifies things a little bit of financially, how this makes sense for us, because we have no big bills now.

We have plenty of little bills and they add up, you know, gas and groceries. All this traveling gas is gonna be our main bill. Yes. Actually, I think our main bill is insurance because we have insurance. That is true for all of our vehicles. You know, full coverage for everything. The rv, Jeremy's job insurance is unladen insurance.

We have to have, yeah, we spend, uh, you know, around six or $700 a month just in insurance. So that is our biggest bill. And then the next biggest bill is gas, and then of course groceries. But other than that, it's just, it's small bills. And like I said, I'm not, I don't think I'm gonna break down all of our bills for you guys, but it's just, you know, cell phones, internet.

Subscriptions. Subscriptions. I think that's it. I think that's all of our bills, our ties and offering and, and that's it. That's, that's the end of the day. So truly, how do we make this work? How do we make this feasible? We brought everything that we possibly could, as low as we possibly could go. Right?

Right. And so that also, it relieves the stress off of us. As far as trying to make income at a certain level, especially a high level, and always having to like really push and work that because we want to experience it. And so by keeping it low, all the extra money that we get is all spent on getting more information going and doing things, and being able to bring that back to you guys and to all of our other members and be like, Hey, this is out there.

This is how this goes. And we're able to do that because all of our bills are low. Yeah, I do things like this, like break it down for you guys. Like, Hey, this is how we're doing it. This is how it's possible. You can decide if it's something that's interesting for you, if you wanna look into it, or maybe it just gives you a little bit of clarification.

So don't forget this month we will have two bonus episodes. Um, I'm, I think I'm gonna keep you guys in suspense of what our next bonus episode is for this month. So make sure that you stay tuned.