John Stephens
Well-known member
ant21b said:
As others have already said, costs of everything you try to put a price on will vary depending on your lifestyle. However, I think your above figures may need some tweaking. I believe your $50/day for RV parks may be a bit high, depending on what you're looking for. On our last trip, I stayed at one park that charged $46/day, one that charged $36/day and one that charged $32/day. All were very nice parks with plenty of amenities, but none were what you would call luxury RV resorts. When I plan out a trip, I estimate my nightly park charges to be in the $40's and that amount is watered down because I dry camp on my way to my destinations to save more money. I also think your estimate on gas costs is high unless you're going to be buying diesel. For this last trip, I budgeted $3.00/gal for gas but the actual average was $2.54, so we saved a lot of money compared to the estimate. Since you're beginning your trip in California, I'm sure that average will be incorrect, but I think you'll still average less than $3.00. The long and short of it is that with all expenses, we average between $100-$120 per day, the same as Arch mentioned. And we eat out a lot more than we should when we're visiting old haunts or new towns and want to try the different cuisine. We could cut that daily average down to less than $100 easily if we ate in more, and that is one of the reasons many people buy RV's - so they can pack their own food and cook their own meals to save money.
On the flip side, I think your average of $80/night for hotel rooms is quite low unless you're planning on staying in Motel 6's and fighting off the roaches and drug dealers. No offense meant to Motel 6; I'm making a blanket statement about all inexpensive motel and hotel chains. The average cost of a hotel room in 2017 was $155/night. I am sure it is higher this year. That's double what your estimate indicates, so you may want to rethink that one.
I got into an interesting discussion about this subject earlier this year with my best friend who believes the only good vacation is four or five star hotels and never having to cook his own meals. He challenged me on the costs of going both ways, so I did a cost comparison for the trip we took in June that lasted a little over three weeks. To make the same trip staying in hotels and eating out every meal but saving gas by using my car rather than my motor home with toad, I would have paid out over $6,000, but taking the coach cost us less than $3,000 and we still ate out almost every night.
Now, if you want to factor in cost of repairs, depreciation and purchase, then you're talking about a completely different subject. But if you want to compare only actual travel costs, I'll take my coach whenever I can, because as someone said previously, I know who slept in my bed the night before.
Here's another comparison I have recently had to make. My wife and I are going to travel a bit over 500 miles one way in two weeks to pick up a new puppy. We will take our two adult dogs with us. Do we take the coach or do we take the car? If we take the car, it will cost us about $80 in gas, $50 in meals, and it will have to be a day trip because it's too difficult to find a hotel that will take three dogs. That will require driving a total of 18 hours with stops, a full 1,025 mile round trip in one day, difficult for anyone to do and I'm a former OTR driver and don't want to do it. The flip side is taking the coach and making it a two day trip. The cost will be about $350 in gas and another $45 for a night in a campground if I can't find a Cracker Barrel parking lot, or an extra $265. To avoid the day trip, relax and enjoy the drive, not rush, and take time for the dogs and new puppy, I'll spend the extra money. For me, that's a no brainer, and I'm retired and on a fixed income.
