The problem with selling the house is that I lose a big security blanket. As I said before, I bought this 20 yo manufactured home in horrible condition for $32,700 two years ago. It was a short sale. Me and my mother pooled our resources and paid cash for it. We had to put in another $50,000 to get it liveable.
But it was paid for!
Staying in this house would have meant I would never have to worry about rent or a mortgage for the rest of my life. Even if my income dwindled, I'd always have a place to live.
Now I'm giving this up. I have to, because I'm miserable here, but it comes with a price.
The price of freedom is the loss of security.
Well, a little loss of security. The RV we have is perfect for parking in one spot and just living there forever. And yes, this would most likely mean rent at an RV park, but this is usually fairly cheap. I like to think we have a bit of a back-up plan if I just can't handle moving the behemoth from place to place.
I also will not have an RV payment once the house is sold.
My mother and I will have no debt whatsoever. We are putting the proceeds of the house towards paying off the RV and will still have a tidy sum left over.
So...what do my financials look like once we're on the road? Ideally I'd like to spend less than what I do now, but with gasoline and camping costs that might be tough. I'm going to go through my budget, but first I'd like to discuss my income.
I am extremely fortunate to be able to live off of my writing. My main income is what Amazon.com pays me for Kindle sales of my ebooks. They deposit royalties into my bank account at the end of every month. The payment I receive is for royalties earned 60 days ago, hence, my payment for December comes in February. I always have a two month lead time for how much I will be getting paid.
(Incidentally, if you ask me for more information on how to make a living writing and selling ebooks I will refer you to my ebook on how I do it. I've been asked enough times that I just wrote it all down. I can't mentor everyone who asks me or I would never have time to write. Sorry!)
I also get a small amount each month from my Amazon Affiliate account, and a slightly larger amount each month from my Google Books / Google Play account. And then, once a quarter, I get a sizable quarterly royalty payment from Smashwords. Smashwords gets me on iTunes and Nook.
I use my Smashwords payments for my quarterly tax payment. It's pretty close to the amount I need to pay each quarter. This is why you don't see an amount saved for taxes in the budget. Smashwords conveniently takes care of that expense for me. (Yay, Smashwords!)
Here's what my current budget looks like:
| $3,500.00 | |
| IRA Contribution | -$458.00 |
| Health Savings Account | -$278.00 |
| Investments | -$250.00 |
| Savings | -$250.00 |
| Direct TV | -$88.36 |
| RV Payment | -$270.83 |
| Health Insurance | -$210.22 |
| SUV Insurance | -$77.40 |
| Other | -$250.00 |
| Verizon WiFi Hotspot | -$130.00 |
| Electric Bill | -$80.00 |
| Slack | -$50.00 |
| Editor & Cover Art | -$350.00 |
| Groceries | -$600.00 |
| SUV Gas | -$50.00 |
| $107.19 |
I never know what my income will be every month. $3,500 is probably close to average. Sometimes it's crazy high, like $4700. Other times I dip below $3,000. It depends if the ebook I put out that month was a success or not, or if I got lazy and didn't write anything for a month.
I have a high deductible health insurance plan so I can have a health savings account. It's an awesome tax deduction. It's not so awesome if I have to use my health insurance (which is fairly useless) but I'm hoping I can skate on this plan for the year.
RV insurance isn't listed because we pay that yearly. My Verizon plan is only 20 Gigabytes. It's the only reliable mobile plan for me. Gasoline is not that much because I work at home and my mom's retired. We don't drive much. Slack is my buffer so I don't get overdrawn. Other covers things like yearly subscriptions, prescriptions, clothes, gifts, and so forth.
I don't have a cell phone. We use my mother's cell as the 'house phone.'
Here's what I expect for a budget once we hit the road:
| $3,500.00 | |
| IRA Contribution | -$458.00 |
| Health Savings Account | -$278.00 |
| Investments | -$250.00 |
| Savings | -$250.00 |
| Direct TV | $0.00 |
| RV Payment | $0.00 |
| Health Insurance | -$210.22 |
| SUV Insurance | -$77.40 |
| Other | -$250.00 |
| Verizon WiFi Hotspot | -$130.00 |
| Electric Bill | $0.00 |
| Slack | -$50.00 |
| Editor & Cover Art | -$350.00 |
| Groceries | -$600.00 |
| SUV Gas | -$150.00 |
| Camping | -$250.00 |
| $196.38 |
I made the items that changed bold. We're going to try to go without Direct TV. The latest season of the Walking Dead ends right when we move out of the house, so we should be okay for a few months! I think TV makes us fat. If we end up using up the WiFi on downloading shows I will break down and get a cheapie satellite with an expensive Direct TV service for the RV. For now we're going to try to go without.
RV payment is gone. That's what the house sale is going to bless us with! Electric bill is gone. We have Solar panels on the RV. If we stay at a campground for a full month I know we'll have to pay for electricity. I don't have plans to do things that way for the near future. I'm still playing things by ear to see how life goes.
Gas goes up by $100. In prior months I budgeted much more for this, but gas prices have gone down. They're creeping back up. Hopefully it won't get too bad.
I'm budgeting $250 for camping. If we stick with Thousand Trails for the most part we should stay under budget. Our first month is going to be a lot more because I'm staying in town. After that I'm hoping we can keep to this. We're equipped to boondock. I'll boondock if I have to!
You know what I really want, tho?
I want to know that I can survive on a much lower budget. I want to work less and have less insecurity about dips in my income. So here is my 'worse case scenario' budget.
| $2,000.00 | |
| IRA Contribution | -$458.00 |
| Health Savings Account | -$278.00 |
| Savings | -$100.00 |
| Health Insurance | -$210.22 |
| SUV Insurance | -$77.40 |
| Other | -$50.00 |
| Verizon WiFi Hotspot | -$130.00 |
| Slack | -$50.00 |
| Editor & Photo Cover Art | -$50.00 |
| Groceries | -$400.00 |
| SUV Gas | -$100.00 |
| Camping | -$90.00 |
| $6.38 |
I would love to try a month of living on this budget and saving the excess. I just don't want to make my mother suffer in the process.
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