Full-time Planning

We have spent DAYS planning the upcoming months of travel. Full-time RVing takes a lot of planning....and reserving.  We envisioned driving until some town caught our eye, pulling into a wooded park and stopping until we moved again. We learned last summer it is wise to make reservations! Especially if you want to stay within a certain budget. We began with mapping our projected dates on the calendar....we highlighted stops in red. As I make reservations in these towns, they go green. Keep in mind we have to juggle events we want to attend and places we want to be with being in CA to get meds and keep medical appointments.  Boo - this is not the fun part of RVing; Yay - we are planning to be on the move again in April.

Before the calendar can go green - I have to check websites, aps, and make phone calls. I track this on a our route planner, moving confirmed reservations to the expense trackers, and campgrounds we don't stay at to the "alternate route sheet, so I don't have to duplicate research if we need to stay in the same area again.

In addition to this we've created a family financial Excel workbook. It started as me simply wanting an expense tracker to match the categories of our budget. It grew to 14 pages now.  A monthly expense tracker, an annual snapshot and a savings tracker. Our savings  is very fluid right now. We knew it would have to supplement our retirement income until our plans settled out - but we'd saved to be able to take a one year sabbatical.  We are trying to bank extras from various categories. I needed more info than a simple lump sum balance.

I think all this planning will be good - but it's not my natural bent.  I wanted something simple and this thing grew and grew.  We've both had to research HOW to make excel do what we wanted it to do....and we've had to learn anew how to communicate without frustration. ::wink::

Hours of planning - but our sites are reserved through May 20th and we have a clear picture of our financial situation.

The packet of info arrived from the Idaho State Park department. We are looking forward to that new adventure.

I will have more reservations to make in the upcoming week, but we're getting it all nailed down.