November Travel and Expenses

In November, we made our way back home, trading miles and experiences for family and projects. We had only 705 travel day miles, 4 states, staying in only 3 of them, and spent most of the month at our home base. Here’s where we spent our time and money this month!

We started the month at Twin Lakes Thousand Trails in North Carolina, we got some down time to rest, and were able to connect with Sonya’s Air Force friends and enjoy dinner and catching up on the families and life.

From there, we headed down to Savannah Lakes Resort in South Carolina to catch up with some SeRV friends and participate in a local event at a food pantry. We also splurged on a golf cart for a day to let Luna get a day to be a passenger instead of just barking at them. We also enjoyed a dessert walking tour in Savannah that we absolutely loved. You can find out more in our blog Our First Dessert Walking Tour if you missed it last month!

After South Carolina, we drove through Georgia and back to Florida (we’d been gone 140 days!) and headed to a favorite camping spot in Ocala, Salt Springs Recreation Area. We love this one as much for the campground, as for the natural area of the spring, hiking trails, and being close to Silver Springs.

From Salt Springs, we headed back to home base to see family we hadn’t seen for five months, and start tackling our long list of projects–routine maintenance, repairs and upgrades we’ve had on our wishlist and been saving up for.

While at home, we spent time with family and friends and visited some of our favorite local spots, even seeing Santa at a holiday event.

We also checked off several of our projects and repairs, and enjoyed Thanksgiving with friends. We also took care of some appointments that we had been putting off or looking forward to (I truly missed my chiropractor while we were gone!) Strangely, we seemed to be busier at home than we were on the road.

I’m updating the categories on my spreadsheet since I originally had a lot of categories combined that didn’t make sense to keep that way, so that will look better when the 2025 sheet starts. It’s been a learning experiment this year tracking for sharing purposes since I don’t like the software I was using.

So, how much did we spend?

Camping cost us $352, and for fuel and DEF we only spent $323, sure was nice to see that number low this month.

Expenses like our RV loan ($939), Technology ($437), insurance-vehicle & life ($358) were the same since these are pretty fixed amounts.

Groceries and dining out were $1,040. We splurged a lot on dining out to visit a lot of our favorite spots in our home town, plus we had to replenish the freezer at the local meat market.

Our entertainment & parking fees this month were $201 which included our dessert walking tour, the golf cart rental at the resort and entry to Silver Springs to go paddle boarding.

For health expenses, we spent $396 for healthcare coverage, the chiropractor, pediatrician and specialist visits.

Luna was due for her annual check up, rabies renewal and her flea and heart meds, as well as her monthly prescription food and a grooming, so $502 for her this month was a big one, but she is healthy and pretty.
We spent $797 on hair cuts and replenishing our warn out/outgrown wardrobe, and investing in better quality items so they’d last longer and hold up to the outdoor lifestyle we live now.

Propane was light this month since we left colder areas, so only $43 this month. While we have electric hook ups when we aren’t boondocking, propane heating just warms the RV better, so we still use it and supplement with electric heating.

Repairs & upgrades were a total of $3,382. We did some upgrades/replacements for the rig like permanent AC filters, pantry lights, a shower curtain, a washer/dryer combo to replace the portable washer we’d been using, a larger capacity lithium ion battery for our solar. We also took care of some fixes with replacement blinds and a replacement air vent in the bathroom, and our outside lights since ours were not staying charged, and fixing our trash drawer. There was a lot of routine maintenance also done like the transmission fluid and tire rotation on the truck, greasing moving parts, attaching parts that shouldn’t be moving, and repairing our broken garage hinge (finally). We’ll get into more of those replacements and upgrades in more detailed blog posts and page videos!

This month, we had charitable donations of $51 for Operation: Christmas Child and postage for Treats for Troops candy bags to get sent out, as well as lots of donations of items to local charities as we decluttered the camper.

We had no dump fees $0 since we had hook ups this month, but did spend $23 on laundry this month to wash bulky blankets and routine laundry before getting home. Definitely excited to get the combo washer and dryer installed–doing the math, that will be paid for from a year of laundromat expenses!

Total spending for November was $8,844. I think I posted a few things in multiple categories in the spreadsheet by accident, so it is off, I know. But we are excited about a lot of those upgrades, checking off a lot of our annual medical visits and getting those overdue repairs done.

There are still more projects to take care of in December, and annual visits in January, but definitely lower than this month. My favorite part is that we saved up for these, so all those expenses have been CASH payments! We have been debt free, except for our RV loan for over a year now, and that has been so amazing.

Next month I’ll have Decembers break down, as well as a breakdown for the entire 2024 year, as well as a printable/downloadable expense tracker for 2025, so be sure you are subscribed to the blog or following along so you see those, if you are a numbers person like I am!