Your cart is currently empty!
6 Months of Van Life Expenses – How much we actually spent
We love financial transparency, and when asked how much something costs, we like getting a real number, not just some pie-in-the-sky range. After sharing our monthly Great Loop expense reports and total van build cost, we decided to share our exact monthly cost of living in a van. Of course, the initial cost of the campervan is an investment, but once you’ve passed that hurdle, van life can be as expensive or inexpensive as you want.
Since expenses tend to vary from month to month, this expense report is meant to give you the detailed cost of living in a van per month and over time will give you the bigger picture of van life expenses. These expenses are current to 2025 prices. We hope you find these van life expense reports valuable so you can plan and begin your own van life journey.
Note: We use affiliate links which provide us a little kickback each time you use one of our links and make a purchase, without any additional cost to you. We do not recommend products that we don’t already love or have heard great things about, so you can trust we’re only suggesting great products to you.
Van Life Cost Breakdown
First, let’s break down what van life expenses include. We go into full detail about general van life costs in this blog post, so we’ll just quickly review them here:
- Fuel
- Paid Campsites
- Groceries
- Restaurants
- Housekeeping
- Van Projects/Maintenance
- RV Insurance
- Attractions/Tours
- Souvineers
- Healthcare
- Gym Membership
- Internet/Phone Bill
- Personal
- Other
Our actual Van Life Expenses, broken down by month
We compiled all of our actual expenses (Spotify, health insurance, fuel, Uber rides, and etc.) in these expense reports. We hope that seeing what expenses van life includes, but also seeing that there might be items that you would or would not spend money on, is a great personal insight into budgeting for your version of van life.
Before we dive into our total six months of van life expenses, it’s important to understand where and how far we traveled. Someone who’s traveling on the west coast from California to Washington in one year is going to have different expenses than someone driving from Florida to Alaska (🙋♀️🙋♂️🐶). Here are some of the places we visited and some behind-the-scenes photos:
January 2025 Van Life Expenses
- New Year’s Eve – Visited with Friends for a week in North Georgia
- Split an Airbnb with friends in Fort Walton Beach, Florida
- Attended the Florida RV Road Show and the BattleBorn booth
- Explored Everglades National Park, our 2nd US National Park
- Explored Punta Gorda and attended the AGLCA Looper Palooza
January 2025 Total: $3,318.62
February 2025 Van Life Expenses
- Spent a lot of time at our parents’ house, making the final preparations for the van.
- Explored Jacksonville and some of the nearby parks
- Officially left Florida to visit family in Atlanta, Georgia
- Explored Congaree National Park, our 3rd US National Park
February 2025 Total: $4,019.64
March 2025 Van Life Expenses
- Drove to Texas to visit friends and explore the Texas Hill Country (San Antonio, Fredericksburg, and Austin)
- Explored Big Bend National Park, our 4th US National Park
- Enjoyed two weeks working on BLM land in New Mexico outside of Carlsbad
March 2025 Total: $3,939.18
April 2025 Van Life Expenses
- Explored Guadalupe Mountains National Park, our 5th US National Park
- Explored Carlsbad Caverns National Park, our 6th US National Park
- Met up with friends and enjoyed the beautiful Organ Mountains National Monument on BLM land
- Explored White Sands National Park, our 7th US National Park
- Met up with more van life friends and enjoyed exploring southern Utah together.
- Explored Zion National Park, our 8th US National Park
- Explored Bryce Canyon National Park, our 9th US National Park
April 2025 Total: $2,951.56
May 2025 Van Life Expenses
- Explored Capitol Reef National Park, our 10th US National Park
- Explored Arches National Park, our 11th US National Park
- Explored Canyonlands National Park, our 12th US National Park
- Started traveling north to Salt Lake City, where we spent an obscene amount at REI to prepare for some fun adventures in Alaska this summer.
May 2025 Total: $5,388.94
June 2025 Van Life Expenses
- Entered Canada and spent a week working in Alberta overlooking the Canadian Rockies
- Started our Canadian Rockies road trip, where we explored the Icefields Parkway and added many areas to come back to explore further.
- Visited Chetwynd, BC for their annual Chainsaw Competition
- Pivoted our original plans of driving up to Alaska and took the Stewart-Cassiar Highway instead of the Alaska Highway due to wildfires.
- Met up with friends and enjoyed a Midnight Sun Baseball Game in Fairbanks to celebrate the Summer Solstice.
- Spent several days working on BLM land just outside of Denali National Park.
June 2025 Total: $3,322.49
Van Life Night Locations
One of the best ways to save money in van life is to skip the campgrounds and opt for free camping instead. We use the iOverlander app to find free camping wherever possible, while also balancing our need for comfort and safety. We categorize each night location so we can analyze the data.
| Night Location | January | February | March | April | May | June | 6 Month Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Campground (paid) | 6 | 2 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 16 |
| Harvest Host (paid) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| BLM/National Forrest (free) | 0 | 0 | 15 | 30 | 25 | 15 | 85 |
| Stealth Camping (free) | 2 | 5 | 3 | 0 | 6 | 11 | 27 |
| Walmart/Cracker Barrel/Truck Stop (free) | 6 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 13 |
| Family/Friends (free) | 11 | 19 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 33 |
| Other/Misc | 6 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 |
| Total | 31 | 28 | 31 | 30 | 31 | 30 | 97 |
Six-Month Cost of Living in a Van
In the past six months of living full-time in our van and traveling from Florida to Alaska, we’ve spent a total of $22,940.43. Here are our expenses broken down by category:
| Category | Six Month Total | Monthly Average |
|---|---|---|
| Campgrounds | $343.35 | $57.23 |
| Fuel | $3,009.38 | $501.56 |
| Groceries | $5,422.61 | $903.77 |
| Housekeeping | $265.86 | $44.31 |
| Restaurants | $1,056.18 | $176.03 |
| Attraction/Tour | $1,741.24 | $290.21 |
| Insurance | $0.00* | $0.00 |
| Van Projects/Maintenance | $2,122.48 | $353.75 |
| Transportation | $358.16 | $59.69 |
| Healthcare | $3,649.47 | $608.25 |
| Phone and Internet | $1,595.94 | $256.99 |
| Souvineers | $276.24 | $46.04 |
| Personal | $1,527.07 | $254.51 |
| Other | $1,572.65 | $262.11 |
| TOTAL | $22,940.63 | $3,823.44 |
*Note: We paid for our van insurance in December, which was $1,100 for the year; we’ll add that on our one-year breakdown article.
Our Top 3 Van Life Expenses
Our costs are for two people and one dog, and all expenses are in USD. From the chart above, you can see our greatest expense was groceries, followed by healthcare, and then fuel (driving from Florida to Alaska isn’t a short distance).
A few abnormalities in these expenses include Jen purchasing a year’s worth of contacts, which was categorized under healthcare. Our May transportation expense was for an upcoming trip to Katmai National Park, where we used our credit card points and paid $259.82 for flights to this remote National Park. We also paid for our Katmai camping reservation (4 days/3 nights) in May, which contributed to the high expense.
We also incurred a surprising amount of van maintenance, which was our fourth-largest expense. Before we left Florida, we noticed our two front tires were wearing down unevenly. Due to the weight of the build, it caused our van to shift weight. It meant we needed new front tires and a realignment. Our secondary alternator belt broke, and we had it reinstalled by the Mercedes dealer. We initially installed it and felt the cost was worth it to have a mechanic fix it since our installation didn’t work.
The first step to any budget is to know where your money is going. Try our favorite budgeting tool, Rocket Money!
Conclusion
We hope this post provided you with some insightful information on the cost of living in a van per month. Of course, everyone’s budget is different. We’d love to hear if this was useful or if a monthly breakdown would be beneficial. If there is something you would like us to include in our next Van Life Expense Report that we missed this month, let us know in the comments below!
The ups, downs, and everything in between, we share it all. If you like what you see, there are lots of ways to show your support and say thanks! The easiest way to support our work is by commenting on this post, liking and sharing our content on Facebook, and pinning our content on Pinterest. It’s a small way to say thank you that goes a long way!
by
Tags:
Leave a Reply