Reflecting on the Year 2024

Looking back on all that 2024 held reminds me of why we were so exhausted! I’m only kind of kidding, but it was definitely a busy year! Let’s recap December, then the entire year, and what we are looking at for 2025.

DECEMBER REVIEW
December was a busy month for us, spent all within our home state of Florida. We took a couple of weeks to get a bit of a reset before the holidays to one of our favorite Thousand Trails Encore Parks in Vero Beach (read about that here) and we knocked out some more projects. So we only covered about 330 travel miles (we came home for a day for a SeRV event and some family stuff).

We had the usual expenses of the RV loan ($939), technology/subscriptions ($432), Insurances ($433), but no camping expenses this month, other than towards utilities at home base ($75). Flexible expenses were food/dining out ($1330), fuel/def ($333), pet expenses ($179), propane ($25), medical copays ($150). We had some repairs on the shower and trash drawer, and installing our combo washer/dryer, which we love ($136), and we purchased BOM stickers and clothing ($79), as well as a laundromat run for bedding ($5). We did a lot of free outings like the beach and hikes, but also got some range time in ($30), and BJ and I celebrated our anniversary with a date day to a movie, lunch, dessert and pedicures ($100). We, of course, had Christmas gifts and decor, holiday meals, and donations for the monthly SeRV challenge ($1,267), bringing our December grand total to $5,350.

2024 REVIEW
Which brings us to the end of year review. This year, held a lot of changes for us. BJ started a new job as a mobile solar contractor to give us a mobile income and I left my teaching job after 17 years in education to focus on my health, which also gave us more flexibility for family time around BJ’s job. Luther continued in unschooling and taking online courses and is set to finish 8th grade in mid-Spring 2025, then on to high school!

My (Sonya’s) Dream Board for 2024 was quite ambitious, with 25 goals for personal, financial, health and travel, and we met 23 of those. My efforts to learn to crochet were abandoned and we did not become camp hosts. We did manage to complete all of our travel goals, and then some! We drove through 30 states (6 new in RV life) and stayed at least one night in 24 of those, which added 9 new states to our RV travel map. That puts our state counts at: Sonya 50, BJ 47, and Luther 43, and 16 states left to RV in. Yes, they are on our 2025 goal list! Our total travel day miles for the year was 14,749.

Some of our favorite experiences were seeing the Northern Lights (even with the miss of our crazy 24 hours in the truck chasing them down in May!), getting to see snow, geysers, mountains and glaciers, being surrounded by bison, seeing the Pacific Ocean, and reuniting with friends and family we had missed. There we so many neat stops, but I can’t forget to mention the Spam Museum and Great Wolf Lodge Indoor Water Park, an anomaly for us Floridians to swim indoors. BJ has kept up with his daily runs and we raced in the Air Force Marathon (BJ the half, me the 10k), and his spontaneous 50k Ultra when we stopped in Sturgis for a few days–I think he’s still recovering from the elevation change! There are so many more to mention, but if you’ve been following along, you’ve seen them posted on Facebook.

As for camping spots, we stayed in 15 Harvest Hosts/Boondockers Welcome, 14 Thousand Trail/Encore parks, 9 state/national parks, 9 independent campgrounds, 5 friend’s/family’s yards, 4 Cracker Barrels, 3 jobs, 2 fam camps (military bases), 1 ACE (Army Corps of Engineers) and 1 AMC movie theater. We spent $10,245 on camping, including memberships and paying off our Thousand Trails loan, which is good for a couple more years. I didn’t include purchases made at the hosts or businesses in camping unless we paid for hookups since we chose places to purchase meals from. For the year, we averaged $28 a night!

We had hook ups for a good portion of the year, but since we stayed in cooler locations, we spent $395 on propane for the year. Our dump fees were wrapped into the maintenance category this year, so am unsure how much we spent in total, but would guess less than $100 for the year. I’ve got that fixed for next year. We averaged $1100 a month for groceries, eating out and basic household items. We also averaged about $700 a month on fuel and DEF.

For maintenance and upgrades, we spent $7037 for the year, or $586 for a monthly average. We did some pretty big one time upgrades like solar, new batteries, new mattress and bedding, an AC soft start, and upgrading to a combo washer/dryer, and a Starlink kit. We did some modifications on our entertainment cabinet, closet handles, and trash bin cabinet. As well as repairs due to wear and tear like replacing/upgrading the bathroom air vent, fixing the spare tire bracket, generator parts (yay higher elevations!), fixing plugs and leaky faucets, a Starlink replacement wire (it feeds between slides while we figure out a permanent solution), as well as oil and transmission fluid changes on the truck, 4 new truck tires, and 2 new RV tires. And somewhere in there are the supplies for fixing loose parts and greasing moving parts along the way. As the RV gets older, there will continue to be things to fix, but BJ does a great job of keeping up with routine maintenance and staying ahead of issues.

Luckily, we had no major medical or vet expenses, a relief after 2023 with losing Molly, our 15YO doxie, and Luna’s bladder stone issues, so it was just food, treats, supplies, grooming and annual vet checks. We did swap from employer health care to marketplace healthcare later in the year, and cash payment for things no longer covered, so 2025 will have those as a separate line item, along with our life insurance policies. Truck ($211) and RV ($117) insurance stayed about the same for the year, so fingers crossed it is next year, too! All in all, our monthly averages were pretty close, but I’ll be tweaking some categories and budget levels as we venture into the new year.

We are still learning to slow down and stay places longer, especially since we are traveling more than a couple months out of the year now. That will continue to be a learning curve for 2025, especially as we aim to make our way around the country again to check off the remaining states, and return to people and places we have loved visiting. We hope to just make a big loop around the country, but install jobs and health will be the determining factors on those.

We have some other big ideas, but will share them as they become realities, so be sure you are following along, either by subscribing to the blog or on social media, we are best at updating Facebook since that is the platform most of our family are on, but we are working to keep TikTok, Instagram and LinkedIn updated, as well. We will share our adventures and daily life with 2 weekly blog posts, and will be constantly updating the website with more tools like the FREE Printables and the Interactive Travel Map on the bottom of the home page.

Let us know your travel wish lists and goals so we can support you, and maybe we will see you out there!