As you'd be aware now, 2023 was our year of travelling.

My first finance post is going to be about the vehicle!

2 adults, 3 children who love to snack.

1 ford ranger - averaging 16/100 (I think!)

Towing a Savannah X camper trailer

Vic to the tip, 20,000kms.

6 month time frame

From the day we choose our travel date to when we left, we spent over $70k just preparing for the trip, this included $30k on the camper trailer, insurances, getting ahead on home bills and the painful part as a wife, stocking out the ute... A brand new custom designed canopy which included a water tank, dog box, spare wheel holder, jerry can holder and whatever else Luke snuck in. ARB Bullbar, winch, rock sliders, lifts, tyres and anything else my husband had been dreaming of because he could now easily convince me that we needed it. PS * We only used the winch ONCE at cape york lol but the rock sliders worked a treat.

So pretending that we didn't just spend $70k before we left, let's look into what we spent once we left home.

Fuel prices varied from $1.60 (Mackay) to $3.40(cape York), but averaged around $2.40.

I used a fuel spy app and you can't trust them apps, so many times I said to Luke 'theres a fuel station not far down the road and its .5-.10c cheaper' than it wasn't even a real station.... cue angry dad lol.

I was also very onto fuel discounts. RACV, fly buys, rewards card, downloaded every fuel app and would search for the cheapest.

Also note - my finance tracking was very sloppy so these aren't exactly accurate and if anything, cheaper than what we really spent because I got lazy lol.

FUEL EXPENSE. 20,000kms

$6,200 (but I promise there was more because sometimes we paid with gift cards or cash!).

Our biggest fuel up was at Cape York, $350 to fill the tank and 20ltr jerry can.

It also wasn't rare for us to spend $600-$800 on fuel in a week, Cape York was $780 in fuel.

Also - don't do what we did and absolutely fill up again at Bramwell station!! We made it to Bamaga fuel station with 18kms spare....

The biggest expense we did was OTHER

This included every trip to

BCF, Super cheap, Bunnings, Kmart, Shopping centres, Anaconda, surf shops to name a few but also maintenance for the car. $1,400 in a new spring leaf? Because the guy in TJM Shepparton told us when we originally upgraded that we didn't need anything stronger. Turns out he sucked at his job because we had a gangster lean once the canopy was on, the Shepparton crew also failed to lube up something so we spent the first 3-4 months with a squeak !!

But anyways, with all the clothes, car things, upgrades, maintenance, cooking things we spent an additional and $9,000..... Whoops. Probably could have gone lighter on this one but also, no regrets!

Anyways, that's all for this first blog - if you have any questions send them through on social media and ill address them in my next blog!!