Saving for Caravan/Campervan/Camper Trailer Challenge

For the last couple of years now DH and I have been discussing that in the future we would like to get either a caravan, camper trailer or even a van that we can convert into a campervan. The reason why we hired one when we went to Tasmania back in May is because we wanted to try what it would be like sleeping in one. We want to travel around Australia (or at least part of it), this will probably happen in 5-years’ time and maybe hopefully even sooner than that. And we believed this one of the best way to see this beautiful country of ours.

AIM: $15K in 3 years (at least a starting point)

By/From:
- Gifts – any gifts we receive that’s useful to us (I will decide on individual basis)
- Savings from Grocery – we will stick to our $300 p/m budget if we spend less than this amount the leftover money will go to this saving challenge.
- Savings from Entertainment Money – same goes with this, we will have $150p/m budget (Netflix is included in this amount).
- Any Cash Rewards that we might get (eg. Credit card rewards)
- NSD’s – ($3 per NSD) – I actually still take note of our NSDs in my spreadsheets, so I would like to bring this back just like when I used to save up for my Sunny day savings few years back.
- Savings from buying something we NEED cheaper. Good incentive to make sure we are getting the best value for our money.
- Extra Income – if it happens I would like to put part of it in this saving challenge (Any of our current or future investment income, eg. Dividend money is not included in this)
- Tax refund – If any, I would like some of it to go here also.
- Trading Income – I very rarely do trading these days, the last time was over a year ago. I just haven’t been motivated enough to do all that work, I just been investing long-term, so much less work. But I think I might start doing it again but with very small amount of money and if I make some I will put a percent of the profit into this challenge. DH also pledges to contribute some money into this saving challenge if he makes some money from his trading. He does a bit more trading when he has time, he likes it, he likes following the market. I have just over $1,700 in my CFD trading account. DH probably got around that same amount in his account, whenever he gets his account above $2K he takes some out as reserves and when it goes below $1.5K he put some back in. It really is just “play” money.

I’m going to keep this money separate so I’m thinking of opening a new bank account or maybe a sub-account from our current savings account if it is available I haven’t checked yet.

Normally I would have started this challenge in the beginning of next year but I’m really eager so I’m going to start next month. I just read a book that also motivated me to start now, why wait? We will try to keep our spending plan to as close to this year for next year.
DH is about to finish the tax return for the last financial year; I’m hoping we will get some more money this time. Last time we had to pay a bit for DH.

So, here we go. I’m excited about this!