 |
|
 |
| Home | Contact Us | About | Site map |
| Note: Google AdSense has made this website possible. More information...
|
| RV ownership thoughts and cost analysis |
My pre-purchase research, on RV ownership expectations, led me to believe that having a motorhome would NOT be a savings, but would be a alternate way to travel. But now, after having used my motorhome for 2 full show seasons, I have to disagree with this. There is a huge savings in time, and in money spent on food, at horse shows. I would agree with the above generalization if I only used my motorhome to travel for vacations, but my primary use is for a horse show home away from home. Walking through a typical horse show day will shed some light on the immeasurable savings you reap by having a place to stay on the show grounds. Often on show day one rides before the show begins. If the show starts at 7am and your hotel is 20 minutes away, you have to get up at 3:45 am to shower to leave by 4:45am to get to the barn by 5:05 to get saddled and be riding by 5:30. Later that morning, you've just finished your pre-show ride and now you want coffee...hmmm, if there is a cook shack on the grounds it might not be open. Off to Starbucks you go with a huge list of orders for everyone, and how much is a Starbucks coffee? $3 to $5! and while you are at it you need a muffin as well. So, some time later you have finished your first class and you are whupped and want a nap...you drive back to the hotel, and try to relax, looking at the clock every 15 minutes, worried you might actually fall asleep and be late for your next class that evening. As a result I pretty much NEVER went back to the hotel. Finally, at the end of the evening, starving again, but its past 10pm and the only places left open are fast food places...yuck! You stop by one on your way back to the hotel, and eat your burger in your room. Now how fun is that? NOT! The amount of hours saved per day total is about 4 hours if you combine sleep and travel time(how much is your time worth? lets say $40/hour, or $160/day. You could also say that an average savings for food and gas is $15 to $25 per day.) UPDATE - 10/06 another savings is when the unthinkable happens! what if the hotels are all booked? An RV is fully self contained and even if there are no hookups on the grounds, boondocking works very well! Cost Analysis - Now for the numbers - 3/07 Expenses
Hotel costs saved thus far = $5,400(avg $100/night) Time saved at horse shows not traveling to/from hotel and to/from restaurants...priceless! Money saved eating RV prepared food versus going out for every meal...priceless! Hauling fees saved thus far = $1000 (this is approximate, I haven't been good at tracking hauls) Running the numbers(tallying, hotel, food and gas saved), with an average usage of 27 nights per year. The financial return is 6.3 years. Now if I take the intangible numbers I speculated on above, that is pretty much double the savings, giving a return in 3.15 years. Also, of interest, I paid 1/2 cash and financed the remainder of the balance on a 5 year loan with 7% interest. All maintenance and upgrades are paid for in cash(I pay off my credit card every month). Other thoughtsRV ownership is certainly not for everyone. I spend a ton of time keeping it clean, stocked and all systems operational. Luckily I had plenty of extra kitchen, bath and bedroom supplies and did not need to spend much outfitting major items. Each time the RV needs to be maintained I have to get my husband to follow me to the shop, then he gets to take me there to pick it up. I think I am now done with all of the upgrades and tweaks to make it like I want it. I purposefully bought a very plain model with intentions to add the bells and whistles I wanted. Other observations, boy is it a pain to keep clean! I am so, so glad that I got linoleum and not carpet. When I first started looking, I already had linoleum in mind since most living quarters trailers use linoleum for easy cleaning. Well, most motorhomes were all carpet or even partial carpet so my search was long and hard to find one without it. One more drawback of staying on the show grounds is lack of internet access. When I have the internet I can make up some of my work hours. UDPATE 3/07: I now have broadband for vending at horse shows. Having the laptop with internet access is a core part of my web business so it was easy to justify. |
So what about the cost of a new RV? June 2007With the purchase of a brand new RV, my attempts to justify RV ownership as cost effective will be much more difficult. To help make my point, I have done some web research and I present this article from the RVIA website: Vacation costs. Note that its analysis is for a family of 4. I am a family of one, taking my horse to horse shows. On some occasions my husband and I go places in it. This is an entirely different set of criteria than the article, but it will set the stage for my own number crunching. I will gather more statistics as I did with ownership of my used RV and will report back. New factors to help offset the costs is that now I can haul 2 horses to shows, thus split my gas bill. The costs to stay in the rig remain the same. The monthly payment is higher of course. I will need to factor in how much my husband and I use it for our own travel now that we have a rig that he likes and will drive. A tow bar has been added to our Jeep which opens up another set of opportunities for us for both personal and business travel. And a final side benefit of the new rig is that I have been using it as a vending mobile, and at that job, it does very well! The old RV didn't quite have the room to pack all my wares in.  the new Vend-Mobile! Right now the above potential uses of the RV haven't been realized, logged, calculated and spit out into a final analysis, I expect to do some number crunching this fall after it gets winterized and covered. An interesting thought in itself because I think I want to head to a horse show and vend at it this December. Perhaps I won't get a chance to fully winterize it...who knows. I do know that I am having a ball using it for all these things, it just remains to be seen if all this use will add up to a cost effective purchase or if I bought a money pit:D Quick update We took the RV with Jeep in tow on a 12 day trip through Utah. We averaged 8.5mpg towing and spent a total of $138 on campground fees. We had a great time and really loved the freedom that a tow vehicle afforded us. We could go to town, sightsee and even did some 4x4 trails to really enhance our trip. We also got to stuff the Jeep full of larger items, like our camp chairs, cooler and bottled water/juice, so our "home" could stay uncluttered the whole time.Ok not so quick update but still without the final numbers First off who can winterize such a useful rig as this! I used it clear into December for a vending event. Then just when we thought we could winterize it, our friend from Idaho stayed in it every weekend through the rest of December. At this point winterizing was a silly idea since the first horse shows are in Feb. So, for 2007 total nights of use were about 50. Upgrades made to the battery in January will allow even more boondocking usage. So far in 2008 it has already been used for one show and one vending event. $0 for camping fees thanks to double batteries make RV travel very affordable with the high gas prices. |
RV gifts corner:
Buy Now!
See this design on all products
What is Firefox?