Keeping costs lower is key to extended travel
Our family has been fulltime living in our motorhome since 2019. We get asked all the time how we can afford to travel. The answer…easy! We travel on a budget. I know, right?! …..usually the best answers are the easiest! We budget our expenses much like when we lived in a brick & mortar home. We look at our monthly expenses against what we have coming in. This helps to determine how stationary we are for the month. We look at campgrounds, gas, & food, the $$$ for these items can change based on location. We also look at excursions we are interested in or restaurants we would like to try!….like Anthony Bourdain’s favorite pizza joint or Philly cheesesteak restaurant. Yum! There are memberships, clubs, websites, cards with points that can help you on your way as well. Here I will talk about what our family uses for budget traveling.
Campground memberships save us a ton of money!
One of the first memberships we got was the Thousand Trails Membership. Our friend Corey was the best at explaining the ends and outs of this membership to us in order to keep our travel on budget. If you’d like to discuss this membership further, he is definitely the person to talk to! Reach out to us and we can get you connected!
There are several “tier like” memberships that you can choose from to fit your family’s needs. We were blessed with a free membership with our motor home purchase. We bought our motor home from Lazy Days RV in Tampa, Florida. One of the gifts included in our purchase of an RV that year, was a free basic membership to Thousand Trails Campgrounds.
Thousand Trails is a company that has over 200 locations all over the United States. From campgrounds, to resort camping, cabin rentals, & tent glamping, this membership has it all. With a basic membership you pay a yearly fee for a specific region and that allows you to camp at one of their designated campgrounds for up to two weeks free! Talk about traveling on a budget! This is exactly what we did on our first trek up the East Coast to Maine. With a basic membership you get two weeks (14 days) for free and then you must be out of their company’s system for one week. This is the membership we had for the first 4 years.
In 2022 we upgraded our membership to the Elite Connections Membership. This allowed us to go to their campgrounds and stay for 3 weeks (21 days) and go park to park. Now there was no need to be out of their system for 1 week before checking into another Thousand Trails campground. For this we pay about $180/month as we financed the plan with them, and then we have about $90 a month that is paid on the annual dues. It is SOOO worth the money. In 2019 we went up to Maine and stayed at a Thousand Trails park near Bar Harbor, Maine. If we would have upgraded our membership then we wouldn’t have had to pay several hundred dollars for our time at that park.
Passport America is another membership that we have and use frequently, depending on where we are. Passport America gives us 50% off campground prices as long as the campground is apart of their system and we are not in a blackout time period. For the minimal price this membership cost, it is a no brainer! This ended up paying for itself in only a couple uses. This definitely kept our family on our travel budget.
Good Sam is next on the list. This one will give you 10% off the cost of stay as well as discounts at certain RV stores. When we are traveling in an area without Thousand Trails campgrounds this membership paid for itself quickly and we got discounts on some of our favorite items we camp with.
Harvest Host is a newer membership that offers great perks. Harvest Host has unique stays all over the USA. They have over 4,650 locations from farms, wineries, breweries & distilleries to museums and other attractions. Best of all, NO OVERNIGHT FEES. Couples and families alike can enjoy learning about all kinds of topics and get to taste the local sips & treats as well. Kids can broaden their learning by seeing firsthand how maple syrup is harvested, grapes are pressed, or feeding farm animals. There is always something special going on at a Harvest Host location.
If boondocking is on your list of ways to RV travel on a budget, check out this list of tips & needed items given to us by a friend The Haag Brigade. You’ll find the document in their bio.. Before 2023 boondocking was not even on our register. We’ve always gotten a good deal at a campground and boondocking wasn’t cost beneficial, as we did not have solar, it would’ve cost more $$$ to run the generator than pay for a campground. Now with a solar panel and new batteries we are loving it! As long as you are strategic with water consumption and tank needs you can boondock and thrive! Boondocking has allowed our family, while traveling through Canada into Alaska to travel on a budget, even when we had to pay upwards of $8/gallon for fuel in certain areas. (More to come on Rving to Alaska in a later post!) Bottom line with boondocking…you can get to more remote, secluded, quiet, & scenic areas….if that’s what you’re going for! We absolutely love it!
Cards, points, and discount apps add up!
Cards & points can get you there as well. We use an app called Get Upside. This gets you credits back when you fill up your truck or rig. It’s not much but adds up quickly to a nice sum when you’re traveling like we are.
A great way to put some extra cash in your pocket is with the right credit card. When used responsibly of course! Here are some great cards with points that you can use for cash back, camping & traveling purchases, gas discounts, airfare, hotels, & excursions, etc are:
- Capital One Venture
- Wells Fargo Autograph (this one gives 75,000 sign-up points!)
- Costco Citi/Rewards+
- American Express (we have used this a lot for airline miles over the years)
- Chase (Sapphire & Reserve) have some great benefits
- Good Sam Rewards Visa (this is a great card for RVers. You earn points on RV camping, gas stations, travel & more!
Hopefully some of this was helpful! If you have any questions send us a message on any of our platforms and we will get back to you as quickly as we can!
