Full Time RV Living – Not For Everyone

Do you have an RV?  Are you considering getting rid of most of your worldly possessions, scaling down, and simplifying life by moving into the RV and living in it year-round?  Are you considering full time RV living?

Maybe you don’t own an RV, but you are curious about the lifestyle and think it might be a great idea based on your current situation and knowledge.  Or, maybe you clicked on this website’s link because you may have already begun to live in an RV for an extended period of time, and you are looking for more ideas.

Thanks for stopping By!

Full Time RV Living – Get to Enjoy More Campfires

Sir Winston Churchill, Along For the Ride!

Pam and I have been enjoying full time RV living since 2008.  We have come across many folks, as co-workers in RV parks, as well as other RV travelers in our many visited locations.  We have found that a few stick with full time RV living on a long-term basis, and others don’t last because they failed to prepare for what life on the road was going to be like.

It’s great when you go out RVing for a few weeks on vacation, get away from the job and stresses of daily life, and have a great time in great places in an RV.  It’s time spent with loved ones, and it brings many happy memories for years to come.  But, is it different taking a vacation compared to the lifestyle of full time RV living?

If you are independently wealthy and have no money worries, life on the road is easy.  But, if you are not, there can be significant costs to the lifestyle depending on your chosen RV and how much traveling is involved.  Entering into the full time RV lifestyle bringing debt and no prospect of a respectable income is not recommended.

However, if you sell off any real estate you own, have a nest egg or savings plan, and can buy your home on wheels with no recurring debt, the full time RV lifestyle may work out for you!

I always have to ask people, can you and your spouse/partner live in two to four hundred square feet without driving each other crazy?  I know people who can barely live in the same house without quiet time away from each other each day.  What would happen in an RV?

Can You Afford it?

Life on the road can be affordable if you are not driving mega miles each year.  You can work camp to supplement the cost of parking your RV so you have your water, sewer, and electric needs met.  These become the basis of a comfortable full time RV living lifestyle.

Other than the normal vehicle costs, fuel for travel, and normal living costs, RV park fees become the biggest line item in the budget.  So, if you can find a work camping job that covers your site and pays additional income for full time hours, life on the road may pay for itself!  Then, you can travel where you want, and as Steve Anderson of Workamper News says: “have great jobs in great places all while enjoying the RV lifestyle!”

Again, I caution people to be realistic in their plans and to think about what life on the road will be like.  Imagine 200 – 400 square feet, 24/7, with your spouse or partner, and no place to hide if things go south.  You know what I mean!

We all have times when we don’t agree.  It’s not all like Forest Gump and “We get along like peas and carrots!”  We have worked with folks that Pam and I wonder how they do it!  They are always fighting.  Maybe that’s their way of communicating?  LOL!

Can You Live Without All the Stuff You Have?

Can you live without all the stuff you have accumulated over the years?  Are you going to sell it or pay for a storage unit and keep some of those things you can’t part with?

Here’s one example of scaling down!  Pam and I took all our photos and scanned them.  We have them archived electronically.  We have one of those electronic picture frames.  We look at our photos now more than we ever used to.  We were able to get rid of the originals and not have to store them somewhere.

Starting out, we also took all our DVDs from those bulky plastic boxes and stored them in a case designed for CDs.  We now had no problem taking our whole collection along!  Now, with smart TVs, it’s even easier because everything is streamed with our Starlink satellite service.

What About Family?

Can you leave family members behind and not see them as often?  Do you come from a large family, and you all are close, and they expect you to be around for every family gathering instead of gallivanting around the country in a box on wheels?

Hey, these are important issues to consider!  We have seen situations in our travels where people have to return home because the RV lifestyle was not what they thought it would be.  They just get too homesick!  These are just some of the things that have to be considered when entertaining the idea of hitting the road for full time RV living!

Our Experience!

Now, Pam and I started looking at RVs back in the mid-eighties, even before they started putting slide-outs in them.  It was a business goal of ours to buy one once we could afford it.  I structured business ideas around being able to travel in one while working on the road.  We just knew that this was the lifestyle for us.

We are nomadic.  We have small families, and we are not very close.  We love each other, but we just have different interests.  We enjoy each other’s company when we visit, but we have not been a huge part of each other’s lives.  So for us, we have no attachments: just the two of us, our fur-kids, and our extended family of RV full-timers like us!

So, when the opportunity presented itself, we sold the 3,800 square-foot house in the beautiful Colorado Rockies, moved to Florida to be closer to aging parents, and started the full time RV living lifestyle.

We began work camping to pay for our RV site and hung around a Florida panhandle RV park while getting prepared to be fully mobile and able to pick up and hit the road when we were ready.  We picked up ideas from others enjoying the full time RV lifestyle for a while.

What About Taxes?

We ventured west for a while before returning to Florida to consider another business venture.  We discovered that being a full time RVer is wonderful, but when it comes to taxes, there are no breaks!  We lost all our major deductions by being debt-free.  So, the only way around that was to run a legitimate business out of the RV.  We’ll get to more of that in upcoming posts!

How About You?  Will You Join Us?

We want you to go into full time RV life fully aware of what will come.  You need to be thinking of everything: how will life, as you know it, change once you are in an RV?  How will bills be paid?  What about banking around the country?  How will you get your mail?  How will people find you?

Technology has made all this much easier!  There are ways to make all this happen.  We will also share some ways for you to do these things too.

So, for now, dream on!  Get going!  Do your research.  Visit the RVing forums and see what others are saying about the full time RV living lifestyle.

We hope to hear your story someday!  We hope that something we shared here at yourfulltimervliving.com was valuable and was able to get you to where you wanted to be!

Blessings,
Howard and Pam

Please feel free to leave comments so I can answer any questions you may have!