Living On Less Than $30,000 In San Diego

My Goal

I typically make pretty stretched goals when it comes to my finances. So I wanted to see could my wife, I, and our two Great Danes live a fabulous fulfilling life on less than $30,000 a year.

It’s June as I type this post up and so far I have no clue what we have spent in the last 6 months. Mind you this is with us buying nonessential items. Like buying my smartwatch, our bicycle rack, mattress, new RV chairs just to name a few items. But there will always be these items that come up that we want to upgrade or replace. Ultimately I think this is a good snapshot of what our expenses will continue to be. I love using Personal Capital for expense tracking. By signing up with my link you get a $20 Amazon gift card.

This year when we made the move to full-time RV living I wanted to see if we could live a fun, fulfilling, and intentional life on less than $30,000 a year.

The Life

Remember this is us also living half of our time on Coronado Island on a private beach and the other half on the harbor in downtown San Diego. It’s not like we are staying in a Trailer Park lol. Could we reduce this cost and find a cheaper park to live in? Yes, we could but the goal is fun, fulfilling, intentional life not one where we try to live as cheaply as possible. Take a look at how much living the RV life costs us!

The Math

I want to go over a quick snapshot of expenses. This is just basic estimates on what we spend every month. For a full snapshot check out my Monthly Net Worth Update.

• RV payment – $204
• Truck Payment – $89
• Phone – $35
• RV Park – $900
• Insurance – $90
• Food – $250
• NetFlix – $10
• Gas – $100
• Propane – $15
• Misc – $100

So how much did we spend over the last 6 months?

via GIPHY

Our Secret Sauce

So just how do two people and two big dogs live in a city that consistently gets labeled “HCOL” for less than $30,000 a year while living on a private beach in a multimillion-dollar community? That is much easier and simpler than I thought it would be. In fact, it’s so easy that I honestly think we still splurge on things that we want and don’t need somewhat often. Plus, great sex is free.

I have learned and live a life where less equals more. Where more stuff equals less fulfillment.

Our Values

We both don’t get much fulfillment from designer clothes, expensive cars, fancy watches, jewelry, expensive technology, going out to eat, and lastly from a big house with a bunch of stuff in it just to fill up rooms we would barley use daily. I really sit back and think about what I just said. Think about what brings fulfillment into your life. I can tell you my wife and I agree on what brings us fulfillment and is exactly why we can live so cheaply in an “HCOL” city like San Diego.

We do agree that freedom, flexibility, experiences, time together, nature, our Great Danes, reading, family, friends, learning, helping others and creating brings us a lot of fulfillment in our lives. It would just so happen all of this can be done for pretty cheap in some cases for free.

Unconventional Thinking

Thinking outside of the box gives you an edge over everyone else because you are simply a problem solver. You are looking for voids in this world, approaching things in innovative ways, and finding variables to it through your creativity. Thinking outside of the box starts with you and your creativity. By doing this we have reduced our living expenses in such a way we don’t sacrifice anything in life. Another unconventional wealth hack we use is CC Hacking, we get paid to use CC’s.

As you can see it’s a little under $30,000 a year. But like I mentioned we tend to buy other unique things every so often. Yet most people can’t fathom living in this city for two people and two dogs on so little and still be happy. It’s because consumerism and thirst for others validation are grained deep into our culture. I’m thankful I broke away those chains and my wife beats them down like an MMA fighter competing in the octagon.

via GIPHY

Change

So I think we live a quality of life that most people could achieve but probably won’t. We will be able to live in any country we want or any place in the world without having to worry about money or health care issues. Our choices and understanding who we are and how little we care about impressing others is a big factor. We live in an RV and most people think that must be terrible. Yet we enjoy it for now and love our locations.

In fact, we live a much better life than most seeing my wife is independently wealthy enough to never have to work for the rest of her life and I will be at that point in less than five years.

The Next 6 Months

Now the big factor is can we keep these expenses on par for the next 6 months? I think not only that but I think we will be a bit lower. We had some unusual big expenses in the last 6 months and we have stayed at the more expensive RV park full-time for the last few months. Yet time will tell how our expenses turn out.

Follow the journey to see how it turns out.
______________________________________________________________________________