On the 8th May 2019 it was our second anniversary of moving out of our family home and starting our travels in Bertie the motorhome.
Just like last year we are celebrating our anniversary by doing some sums. This follows hard on the heels of totting up our skiing expenditure. Anyone would think I like numbers. Fortunately I also like spreadsheets and a lot of the maths is done for me. All I have to do is make sure that we record our every financial transaction (yawn, but it’s part of the daily routine just like brushing our teeth), then whenever I want to see what our spending trends are like I just plug in a couple of dates and voila…the excitement of a pie chart.
You will see that our costs over the last 12 months have been pretty high – the result of our skiing trip – luckily I had a decent tax rebate and so our actual spend when you take into account our income is about the same as last year.
Summary
| Year | Outgoings | Income | Net Spend |
| 2017/18 | 23603.82 | 13168.74 | 10435.08 |
| 2018/19 | 27649.63 | 16799.83 | 10849.80 |
This year our spending breaks down as follows
| Category | 2017/18 | 2018/19 | Difference |
| Communication | 640.72 | 688.54 | 47.82 |
| Gifts | 1103.53 | 2022.83 | 919.30 |
| Leisure | 4249.58 | 7718.81 | 3469.23 |
| Living Costs | 8220.88 | 8569.50 | 348.62 |
| Motorhome | 3740.52 | 2883.11 | 857.41 |
| Other Bills | 1827.48 | 2237.24 | 409.76 |
| Travel Expenses | 3821.11 | 3529.60 | 291.51 |
| Total | 23603.82 | 27649.63 | 4045.81 |
We record our income separately, so these figures don’t include the income (and costs) of renting out our house. We also have a little bit of additional income; interest on cash savings, dividends on investments and that helpful tax rebate.
Living Costs
The day-to-day cost of living; groceries, sites, power and other essential costs that we would incur whether we were static or mobile. Yet again we overspent on our groceries, perhaps this is a habit we wont ever break but I’m pleased to report that Paul has maintained his smoke free status so that habit, at least, is a thing of the past.
Travel Costs
Bertie has covered 12609.9 miles (that’s 20293.67 kilometers) in the last twelve months. Our fuel economy has improved this year with an average of 24.9 MPG (10.6 KM/L), it’s a good job because diesel prices have been creeping upwards.
On the down side, this year we have been hit with a few speeding fines as a result of the sharing of data by the DVLA, all incurred where speed limits have dropped from 80 to 70kph and we haven’t been on the ball.
Leisure Costs
Our Leisure costs cover the things we do to pass the time and enjoy ourselves. Skiing has made up a lot of the spend in this category.
Overnight Locations
We have visited 7 countries this year and managed 144 free nights, overall it has cost us an average of £6.96 per night. We tend to plan our travel based on locations we want to visit rather than the availability of free parking so we’re pretty happy with those numbers.
As usual it is the UK where we spend the most on overnight locations, even though we have reduced the costs by using Temporary Holiday Sites and other lower cost options. 
We’re now moving on into our third year of travelling in our motorhome, but the coming year may look quite different. We don’t have the finances to continue to travel like this for ever and will need to start earning money again at some point.