Now that we have returned to Minnesota and done the laundry, we have had a chance to total up our expenses in various catagories. We have not included every penny we spent, simply because we would have had some on these expenses even if we had stayed at home (eating, for example).
Our shipping costs: $4754. This does not include the expense of driving Rover to Baltimore from Minnesota.
Our gasoline: $1918.73 for 2348 miles or 82 cents/mile. Gasoline in Europe started out at nearly $9/gal and ended up closer to $7/gal, thanks to the Euro/dollar exchange rate changing in our favor. We figured we were getting about 9 mpg.
Our insurance for 90 days: $1431.
Upgrades/additions to Rover - step-down transformer and the upgraded inverter/charger: $2600 (a one-time cost).
Campgrounds for 54 nights: $1138, or an average of $30 per night. We expect them to be higher next summer during the high season.
Indoor storage, Oct 08 - April 09: $695.
We spent money on food, entertainment (tours, museums) laundry and internet access, no doubt more than we would have spent at home, but at the same time these were in place of, not in addition to, these expenses at home.
Other necessary expenses included getting the motorhome to the East Coast port, airfare to and from Europe, and other transportation costs in Europe. About a third of our $700 transportation costs in Europe were expenses getting from Amsterdam to Brugge and the expensive taxis to the Zeebrugge port. Next spring we will spend €30 on a taxi to get from the Amsterdam airport to Rover’s storage location.
We also spent $500 on gasoline (among other expenses) getting Rover to Baltimore. This trip also included visiting our children and new granddaughter in Vermont and DC. Had we driven directly to Baltimore and flown directly home, we would have spent much less.
How does this compare to renting an RV for 8 weeks? We had an estimate from a rental company that estimated a minimum of $9000. Had we stayed in hotels, we estimate we could have spent between $6,000 and $10,000. And then we would have an additional expense for transportation (rental car or trains).
In sum, even though everything cost at least half again as much as we had hoped, we still believe this really is the way to see Europe at a reasonable cost. And we have a lot more to see.
One other note: Now that the election is over we will tell you that we wore our Obama buttons everywhere. We received consistently positive reactions. Only once did a man say he hoped McCain would be elected because it was what we (that is, Americans) deserved. We did not take that to be a vote for McCain. We never encountered anything that we would have interpreted to be anti-American.