Camp-inn Cost Per Night

Tour 931

Tour 931

Ranger
I think few of us ever gets our money's worth of camping/traveling out of our teardrops. My Little Guy only cost me $4,500 and I stayed in it about 450 nights (I never kept track) which makes the daily cost around $10.

So far my Camp-Inn has cost me around $4,000 a night. For me to get down to $10 I would need to live in it the rest of my life.

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What is your cost per night?
 
As long as we’re doing math... I’ll sharpen my pencil a bit.

For example:
Buy some config of trailer at $22,000
Use 3 years for summer + camping, say, 15 nights/yr = 45 nights (that’s a lot of camping for some, not much for others)
Sell camper for $18,500.
Cost/night = $78
Instead of selling, keep it 3 more years, it depreciates a bit more ($16,500?), but you retire at year 3, and start camping 30 nights/year = $41/night over 6 years, retired at year 3.

Now you’ve retired and you keep using it more, and, it’s not going to depreciate as rapidly after 5 yrs or so...

The cost and depreciation are guesswork, but you get the idea...
 
Bear, it might just take the rest of my life to beat $2.84 but I'm going to try. If I lived in it everyday I would be in my late eighties when I hit $2.83.

Seth, great to read your numbers and the real reason I started the post was to encourage people to use their trailers.
 
Seth, good point about the resale value. If I take that into account, I am down to around $14 to $20 per night.
 
My feeling is that most people don’t buy their trailer as an investment... but sometimes we do need to consider these sorts of costs over time.

For me, it’s not an easy decision to put this kind of money into camping. Sharpening the pencil and running some numbers is just one piece of figuring out value. Something tangible in a decision filled with intangibles. What’s the value of a night in the woods? I’m with mariusz, it’s priceless, it meets an important need, yet, there are other needs too!
 
I am just playing the numbers game. I agree that the experiences have been priceless and plan to keep my trailer for some time to come and use it as often as I can.
 
My neighbor bought a big camping trailer. It is big and has everything but is only built to RV standards. Yes it looks cheap and I bet he paid north of $100,000 for it. The husband, wife and the two junior high kids go camping for two weeks each summer. Right now it is being used as storage.

I camped for seven months in my old teardrop one year and usually spent about four months every year in it. I want to get back to that in my Camp-Inn.
 
I can't put numbers on happiness. Just my first adventure going picking up Gypsy Wind 1200 miles from my home solo and taking several days driving the back roads home was worth every cent to me. Who can put a price on a whole new world of endless possibilities? I did buy used and at a great price but if I were to order new I wouldn't change a thing. I spent 30 nights (23 solo) the first 11 months in my cozy Camp-Inn! Aiming for months on the road soon.
 
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Thanks guys! This is fun.

If there is a baseline decision that the reader would want some kind of RV, it seems to me that the ancillary costs of differing RV choices is significant.

- I don't need a truck to tow my Campinn.
- I don't need a storage unit to store my Campinn. It goes right in my garage.
- The quality is high and thus the maintenance costs are low.
- The incremental increase in cost of fuel is relatively small. I talked to someone with a Class A and he said that for him, gas is $1.00 per mile.

Even if I spend $400 on a big tent as an auxillary camping tool, it will last for 5 years, probably. That is about 3 months of storage fees....
 
I will have lots-o-time to travel soon and when I crunched the numbers (for a long time) leading up to a purchase I calculated for the price of the trailer I could enjoy about 5 trips to Denmark, Sweden or Iceland. Several trips to Italy, Greece or Spain etc. While I plan to do those trips I wanted filler for when I am home in USA. Something with more staying power that provided more travel experience for the buck!

I own and use lots of tents including for backpacking and larger tents and tarps for every need. But I was looking something different that would maximize use of my bicycles and kayaks and boosted comfort and shelter on the road especially in bad weather. If cost per night is a priority Its impossible to beat a tent unless you are willing to sleep under a rock. I still enjoy my tents when appropriate.

I want to see the USA and Canada and be on the road for long periods of time. The way I calculated my return on investment was to compare the costs of hotels and motels with the cost of camping in my teardrop. I enjoy camping far more than the hotel and motel experience. I sleep better in the trailer and I love fresh air and the sounds of nature. By my standards a teardrop and a motel/hotel are a fair comparison..

The hotels I am willing to stay in usually start at $100 a night. To break even with my trailer cost I have to spend 170 nights in the trailer (I am at 70 nights now and that is about to soar in retirement). After 170 nights I am below hotel/motel costs and I am getting the experience I desire.

Residual value of the trailer when I decide to sell it will offset some of the purchase cost.

RV depreciation is extreme but I think well maintained teardrops hold their value a little better than other RVs due to the simplicity. A car or truck has a predictable depreciation. At age 10 they do not have much value. Depreciation is usually worse for RVs. The more complicated the worse the depreciation (in my opinion).

Cost of ownership is low for a simple teardrop (especially when compared to a larger RV).

The trailer does save additional expenses including food prep vs dining out (for me). I do dine out and love leaving camp for a nice restaurant. Enjoying some fine dining and then returning to camp for a full moon and music supplied by frogs and crickets.

The financials are working as I predicted for me (so far).


=Cosmo
 
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I like your way of thinking Cosmo. I calculate the cost of our CI by how much money it saves Sue and I when we travel vs. staying in hotels and dinning out. After 238 nights on the road over the last 6 years we have saved a sizeable chunk of change. So what do we do with all that savings you ask.....Camp more! :):rolleyes:

Jim
 
Not one TD owner does this sort of analysis when deciding whether to buy a TD, so I'm not sure why anyone would start a thread focusing on it. Perhaps a full-timer would do that sort of analysis, but I'm guessing even they don't do this.

So.....

-Al
 
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