The Finances of Living On The Road (with two parents and one toddler) – Part 1

When we started seriously considering life on the road, one of the first things we did was make a budget. We knew we wanted to live in Short Term Rentals (primarily Airbnbs) for one to two months per city. We set out to drive to our first locations, but of course we had to know if we could afford it.

Making budgets is second nature to me, but I won’t pretend that everyone out there is quite so nerdy.

I thought I’d outline the budget we started with and how it compares to our regular budget. We’ve already learned a lot in this area so part 2 will cover how this held up on the road. Budgets are all fun and games until your car breaks down in Tahoe and you realize food has gone up by 30%, but I’ll save that part for later 🤣

INCOME ON THE ROAD (COMPARED TO BEFOREHAND)

Kyle’s Income

When we made our plans, we knew we both wanted to work. Kyle has worked for himself for a long time, but he was primarily a music producer (a job that is very location specific due to the gear). He had decided to take some time off and focus on his podcast business, which had been growing steadily. He can do that work from anywhere and started investing more time in it leading up to the road

Net change = $0 – if anything, Kyle has only gained clients and it has helped give us buffer!

Kristin’s Income

I left a full time job I had been at for 9 years that carried our health insurance and benefits – a scary leap that I will share more on later. I started my own business and was lucky enough to take on several clients rather quickly.

I replaced my hourly rate with some buffer, but it is worth noting that I went from 40 hours a week down to more like 25-30. So I did take an overall pay cut.

Thankfully we are in a spot where that was fine for us in order to give us the time on the road. I’d like that cash back, but Kyle’s additional clients made up for it. So without getting into what I make, I’ll say:

Net change = $0

This left us starting with roughly the same amount to work with that we had before – so we set out to see if we could live on the road for the same budget we had at home.

BUDGET ITEMS

Housing

This was obviously the biggest one. We owned a home in Nashville, so we started by adding up our mortgage, utilities, insurances, internet, etc. and that put us at just shy of $3,000/month. We rounded up cause we figured we also got rid of all the ‘extra’ costs of home-ownership, like water heaters breaking 🤪

Goal for the road was to find Airbnb’s we could live in that put us at $3,000/month (including taxes and fees), which we did for the first few months!

Net change = $0

Monthly budget savings on the road

Here are the things we also saved by living on the road:

$700/Month: Childcare (we used to spend $1,100/month on childcare 😳, but we kept $400/month in the budget to find help in each city if possible)

$325/Month: We had a system set up where we were saving about this much each month toward a few line items we no longer had, like saving up for new furniture, trips (our whole life is a trip haha), etc.

$200/Month: I’m not sure if this is embarrassing or normal, but we reduced our Amazon/’other’ budget based on not needing things for our house, etc.

=$1225/Month – this is how much we figured we’d save per month to give us some buffer

Monthly additional expenses on the road

But don’t think we just saved a bunch of money, we knew we’d have expenses. This is how our budget increased:

$200/Month: Car repair increases – we wanted to set aside money knowing our only transportation would need work along the way. And boy, were we right!

$217/Month: Storage for our things in Nashville

$500/Month: Additional money we budgeted to spend on activities and/or food each month. Our goal was to spend most of this on activities, but food has been a big factor (I’ll talk more about food at some point – keeping to our previous budget is tough when we have to try and let our food dwindle down each month before moving)

$300/Month: Average per month in travel costs. This is higher sometimes and lower others, depending on if we need to fly between cities, do a night in a hotel on the road, etc.

=$1217/Month

A net change of $0

 This budget put us at an essential net change of $0 for living on the road when all was said and done. Now, we set out knowing this was a bit of an experiment and that we had a lot to learn. We also had a great emergency fund set aside as well as a little buffer in our regular budget because we just didn’t know what we were getting into.