Can I be really honest with you about something? Almost every budget estimate floating around online for Australian caravanning is either based on American RV costs, years out of date, or so vague it's basically useless. A range of $50 to $300 a day doesn't actually help anyone plan anything. The thing is, your number is your number. It depends on how far you drive, where you sleep, what you eat, and whether you're the kind of person who will genuinely cook every meal in the van or whether you'll cave and grab a pie and a coffee every second day (no judgment — I know which camp I've been in). What surprises most people is that it's not the big decisions that blow the budget. It's the small daily ones that quietly compound. A $30 a day difference in travel style adds up to nearly $11,000 over a year on the road. For what it's worth, we work on roughly $750 a week and we're very much on the low end — slow travel, lots of free camping, cooking almost everything ourselves. Most families we've helped underestimate their real number by 20 to 30 percent, usually because the fixed costs back home get forgotten completely. What style of traveller do you think you are — budget, mid-range, or full comfort — and does your savings goal actually reflect that? Grab the interactive cheat sheet here: https://margieandtim.com.au/how-much-does-it-really-cost-to-travel-australia/ Get the budget calculator herehttps://margieandtim.thrivecart.com/budget-calculator/ (this link will take you to more information). If you purchase the calculator from this link, it is in Australian dollars - it is the same as the calculator in the classroom, but that is in $US

Can I bust a myth real quick? There is no magic daily number for travelling Australia. Every number you find online is someone else's trip, someone else's van, someone else's habits. It is not yours. And planning your savings around it is one of the most common reasons families either run out of money on the road or never leave in the first place. So here's the actual framework. Three things drive the bulk of your daily spend. Fuel, accommodation, and food. Everything else sits on top. Once you understand those three levers, you can start pulling them — travel slower to cut fuel, mix free camps with mid-week park stays to cut accommodation, be honest about your eating habits instead of pretending you'll suddenly become a meal-prep machine. Then you add the stuff people forget. The back-home bills that keep running while you're gone. The ambulance cover that's probably only valid in your home state. The Starlink. The van loan. The subscriptions quietly billing to your card. We averaged $700 a week across 11 months on the road as a family. Some weeks were double that. Some weeks we barely spent anything. But we knew our average. We'd built the buffer. And we had an emergency fund sitting completely separate — untouched unless something went genuinely sideways. That's the system. And I've turned it into a free cheat sheet that's now in the classroom — grab it and use it as your reference while you build your budget. If you want to go deeper and actually run your own numbers, that's what the Budget Planner is for ($7us once off, or free with premium membership). Drop a comment below — what cost category caught you most off guard when you actually started planning? Grab the cheat sheet: https://margieandtim.com.au/big-lap-budget-cheatsheet/ Have a great day Margie Watch the video here:

A quick story, yesterday we were leaving for a weekend getaway - about a 3 hour drive. No caravan yet, stay tuned for that one! (should be picking it up in June!) anyway, Tim, myself and kids drove a few minutes to the fuel station to top up, when Tim tells me to 'check this out...' As he's filling up the car, he spots a nail in the tyre, and we figured best to turn around and swap the tyres. We were only 5 mins from the house, it was raining, getting dark and not what we wanted to do on the side of the road. So, back home. Kids questioning everything, we keep them in the car while Tim and I swap the spare out. Only 20 mins later, we get going and safely arrive at our destination. We've booked the tyre to have a patch job done early next week (yes, fingers crossed til then...) And it occurred to me, how many people know how to change a tyre? It's actually not a common skill to possess. When you're in the middle of nowhere, it's a skill that can come in really handy. Do you know how to change a tyre? Then next question: have you changed a tyre on your own car or van? If there's more than one adult, can both of you do this? If not, we'll do a Zoom workshop in the coming weeks - let us know if you'd be interested. BTW, out of interest, did your caravan come with a jack? Our first few vans didn't, and the standard car jack isn't tall enough. If you're not sure, maybe check this out :) When we get our new van, we'll let you know if we get one included - I'm actually not sure either way, and didn't ask either. Check out Tim's maintenance DIY guide in the classroom if you haven't already. If there's anything in particular you'd like Tim to cover regarding maintenance, let us know and we'll prioritise it. Happy travels Margie