Regardless of the stage of the buying process that you find yourself in, it can be helpful to know exactly how “much” motorhome you can afford. Small motorhomes are, on the whole, more affordable than bigger rigs, but there is still a huge price swing between a nimble little class B like the Roadtrek N6 Active and a fully-loaded luxury diesel pusher like the Thor Palazzo. The best way to narrow down your choices, or determine if you can really afford your dream rig, is to crunch some numbers in an RV loan calculator.

Using Our RV Loan Calculator

We have pre-populated our RV loan calculator with some values to get you started, but you’ll have to change them to see how much your monthly payments might be, and how much you might be able to spend on a new or used motorhome. In order to use our RV loan calculator, you should do the following:

1. Replace “vehicle price” with the price of the motorhome you’re looking at (or the highest price you want to spend.)
2. If you have anything for a down payment, enter that into the “down payment” field.
3. Replace the “trade in amount” with the estimated value of your trade in, and “owed on trade” with the amount you still owe on that RV. These can be left at zero if you have no trade in.
4. If you know the specific interest rate that you qualify for, replace our default with that.
5. If your state has a sales or excise tax on vehicles like motorhomes, enter that into the “sales tax rate” field.
6. Change the “term (months)” field if you want to amortize your loan over a different period.
7. Click “calculate” to see how your loan might amortize.

Note: our RV loan calculator is provided solely for informational purposes and to help you get a better idea of how much it might cost to buy the new or used motorhome that you’re looking at. 

RV Loan Calculator

Interpreting your RV Loan Calculator Resultsexpec

An RV loan calculator can help you budget for a new motorhome.

After you have entered your custom numbers into our calculator, you will see that it provides you with an estimated monthly payment in addition to a lot of other information. If you just want to know how “much” rv you can squeeze into your monthly budget, then that’s the only number that will matter to you. By adjusting the numbers in the calculator (like the down payment and the loan amount), you can see how the estimated monthly payment changes, and that will allow you to determine about how much you can afford to spend on an RV.

In addition to the estimated monthly loan payment, our calculator also shows how much interest and principal you might pay each year (or each month, if you click that tab) and the estimated pay-off date based on the starting date and loan term that you entered. You’ll also see a bar graph that represents the amortization of the loan over the term of the loan, which provides you with a visual representation of how much principal and interest you are paying each year (or month).

What You Can Afford to Spend on a Motorhome

Everyone budgets their money differently, but our calculator should be able to help you determine how much you can afford to spend on a motorhome in any case. One important factor is your debt to income ratio, which is essentially the ratio of how much money you make vs. your monthly expenses. Generally speaking, lenders look for debt to income ratios in the 40 to 50 percent range. Although there are always exceptions to every rule, you’ll have the best luck securing a good loan if you stick to that when budgeting for a monthly RV loan payment.