Hey yall! One thing we had to figure out quick when starting (and maintaining) RV life was how to budget. I’ve tried purchasing yearly budget books before or creating Excel spreadsheets, but I would always forget about the book thus wasting the pre-dated pages, and sometimes I would prefer to physically write out my budget vs the digital spreadsheet. In this post, I’m going to break down the super simple budget sheet I created and also share the blank budget tracker for you to download! This budget tracker is simple, dateless, and broad so you can definitely make it meet your needs.
Tracker Breakdown
The first page of the tracker focuses on your monthly budget goals, broken down into six categories: income, rent/notes, food, bills, gas, and miscellaneous.
The income column helps me see how much I have to spend (or save!) that month.
Rent/notes I use for campground rent if staying long term or nightly campground fees. The notes part is for active loans/notes we pay monthly such as the truck, camper, etc.
Food budget I break into two categories: eating out and groceries. Usually, these amounts vary depending on how much we travel in that month. Our food budgets also vary depending on where we camp – if we camp in Thousand Trails for extended periods (like we did this summer down the PNW), then our eating out budget goes up since our rent/campground fee costs go significantly down.
The bills column is for any other monthly recurring payments like Starlink, Tmobile, insurance, etc.
Gas is for our diesel budget. This one also fluctuates a lot depending on if we are stationary in Utah (working from home), stationary bouncing between Thousand Trails (exploring area still), or going a long distance in a short time (making multiple overnight stops per week).
And the misc column is for anything extra! One month we may be planning to attend a concert and buy merch, or perhaps we will be near family/friends and want to budget for one-time experiences.
The next few pages of the tracker are broken down by week with a spot for each day’s expenses. This is where I would track daily expenses (ex. on Monday, $7 coffee, $30 eating out, truck note due…).
The last page is where you can total up your actual monthly spending to see where you compare to the budget set at the beginning of the month. In the notes section, I like to indicate if I was over/under budget and why.
So that’s the gist of the tracker! Please feel free to download 🙂 Happy budgeting!
anxietyinacamper 