Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Finances, electrical, and renovations

Let me tell you, it's been pretty cheap living in an RV, but I'm still assisting with bills back home, which is making this saving to find a place a lot harder, and take a lot longer than I hoped. I was hoping to have a few hundred saved up by now, and I have exactly zero dollars saved up.

I also need to continue with the upgrades to the RV, and the first and most important change is swapping out the 15amp plug on the outside of the RV for a 30amp. As it turns out, I'm fully wired for 30amp and for some reason, someone tossed a 15amp plug on the end of the cord. This makes for a really dangerous situation as I could potentially pull more power in the RV, and not trip my breakers, but instead, melt the plug and start a fire.

Thankfully, I've caught this soon enough but until I get paid tomorrow, I can't do anything about it. Aside from that, I also need to get on painting this RV. I'd really like to get it renovated, and ready for sale so that I can upgrade to a larger unit that I can bring my family into and stop paying so much money on rent and bills in Calgary with the mother in-law. If you recall an earlier post, in an effort to "help" us, my mother in-law let us move into her five bedroom house she lives in alone. But only if we paid several hundred dollars in rent per month and paid ALL of the utilities. There's no mortgage, hasn't been for 25 years, this is just gravy money for the mother in-law, and it doesn't matter what's happening, she wants the money, and now. She was bugging us for the rent money when we had unexpected expenses to go out to BC for my sisters death. You'd think a death would give us a little breathing room, but no.

We thought that once I moved to BC, that perhaps the costs would change. They did. She knocked $200 off the rent for my wife, but she still needs to pay all the bills. This means nearly all my money goes into living here and paying for there as my wife makes enough to pay everything off there, but then has maybe $100 for the month to live on for food, diapers, fuel, etc. I just don't get it. Parents are supposed to help their children succeed, not leach everything they possibly can and keep their children stuck.

Anyways, I digress. This is a hot topic for me...

Back to finances, and electrical.

Aside from changing the plug, and painting, one of the things I need to do is change out all the lights. Currently there are no LED lights inside the RV, and the fixtures are all very dated. I know enough about electricity and wiring to get the job done, but I still want to make sure that I understand as much as possible. In an RV, things are a little different so I am trying to learn the little things. I have a converter in the RV, and this will help me with the lights. I will be able to get everything working so that I can have nice lighting and it'll work off shore power and battery. Good news for me.

I was looking at information online, and I came across a really informative YouTube video, I thought I would share it so that at the very least, you can have a better understanding if you don't already.

Here it is.




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