It’s been over a year since me, my husband, and our two dogs started living the RV life full-time.
People keep asking us when we will stop traveling, grow up, and buy a house again.
Well, not anytime soon!
While I know that traveling full-time and RV life isn’t for everyone, I also know that I don’t want to live in a “normal” home anytime soon.
Now, don’t get me wrong, living in a house can be great. And, when I owned one, I loved it at the time. However, I just love RV life much, much more.
And, I don’t think I’m alone.
According to the Recreation Vehicle Industry Association, in 2016 RV sales reached their highest total since 1977. More than 9,000,000 households own an RV, which is also the highest level ever recorded. And, buyers between the ages of 35 and 54 are the largest segment of RV owners, so there are a lot of other young RVers who are pursuing this lifestyle as well.
Just a few years ago, I never thought I’d live in an RV. It was never a dream of mine or anything like that.
However, one step into an RV and I knew it was for me. Living in our RV full-time has been the best thing ever, and we truly love it.
Since me, my husband and our two dogs began RV life about a year and a half ago, we’ve traveled thousands of miles in our RV, with even more miles put on our Jeep (which we recently turned into an overland vehicle).
We’ve already traveled to many awesome places in our RV, such as:
The Pacific Northwest – Mount Rainier National Park, Olympic National Park, Kalaloch and Ruby Beach, Hoh National Rainforest, La Push Beach, and many other beautiful places.
Utah (many times) – Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park, Moab, and many other places.
Colorado (many times) – Rocky Mountain National Park, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Colorado National Monument, Dinosaur National Monument, and many other places.
“Home” in Missouri.
Mississippi.
Arizona – Saguaro National Park, Tucson, Sedona, and many other places.
California – This was a part of the Pacific Northwest trip, but we continued on and hopped along beaches all the way to Los Angeles.
Wyoming – Yellowstone National Park and Grand Tetons National Park.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
And much, much more.
We have many plans for this year, which include exploring the west coast some more, possibly hitting up Alaska (if we have time), making it up to Canada, and more. RV life can change quickly, so our plans may change as well. But, that’s the beauty of RV life – you are flexible with where you go!
If you’re interested in RV life, check out these other blog posts on Making Sense of Cents:
Here are 11 reasons to choose RV life:
You can live by the beach, mountains, desert, and anywhere else.
Living in an RV means that you can live wherever you want to live. The United States has so many beautiful places to see and live, and because it would be hard to just pick one place, RV life allows us to live in as many as we want.
And, it’s more than just going on a vacation, which is nice too, but I love being able to bring my entire home with me. This way I’m not forgetting anything, and because my home is always with me, I still get to live comfortably.
If you want to spend your summer in the mountains and your winter near the beach, you can do that. If you want to do the opposite the following year, you can do that too.
If you want to have your front window open up to a beautiful national park, you can even do that.
By living in an RV, you can choose to live wherever you want.
You can spend more time outside.
One of the best things about RV life is that you can park your home wherever you want to. We love being able to do things outdoors, and we usually pick places that make that even easier. So, we like to park next to hiking trails, bike trails, rock climbing routes, and more.
This is great because we can usually just walk or ride our bikes to wherever we want to go, which allows us to spend a ton of time enjoying the beautiful outdoors.
One of my favorite spots we stayed in 2016 was at Pine Cove Campground (pictured below). This was pretty much just a parking lot, but it had great views and it was right on the water. It also provided several hiking trails, mountain biking trails, paddle boarding, and more. Plus, Breckenridge was just a bike ride away with all of it’s yummy food and delicious beers. It’s a great all-around spot and it was just $20 a night.
It’s amazingly beautiful living in an RV.
You simply cannot beat the views we’ve seen out the window of our RV.
And, there have been many of them.
We’ve seen beautiful national parks right outside our window, amazing mountain ranges, desert landscapes, lake views, wild animals, and more.
Our dogs love RV life.
Okay, so I can’t be exactly 100% sure about this since my dogs can’t talk to me, but they seem pretty happy whenever they are able to explore new places (like the picture above), sniff new things, go on long hikes, and so on.
Our dogs are much more active now than they ever were before and seem pretty happy to me.
You can follow the weather.
Since we can park our home wherever we want, we can follow the weather. We like to stay in temperatures that are just perfect – somewhere around 70 degrees year round.
Following the weather is something that we truly love.
After all, who wants to be too cold or too hot?
Thankfully, the RV life lets us just leave whenever the temperature is something that we don’t fully enjoy.
We really only have clothes for one season, so we avoid places that are cold. I pretty much wear dresses, sandals, shorts, and/or tank tops year round, which is really nice and comfortable.
Downsizing is liberating.
Living in an RV means that you’ll have to downsize. While some people dread this, getting rid of nearly all of your stuff is extremely liberating.
When we sold our house and moved into an RV, we donated and got rid of a lot of our belongings. At first it was difficult to get rid of so much, but it became easier as time went on.
These days, all we have is what we have with us. We have a small amount of everything, and we like it best this way.
We are much more mindful of what we buy, we waste hardly anything, and this is allowing us to save money as well.
Plus, when you’re RVing, you no longer have a need to buy as much stuff because the outdoors take up all of your time. Before we would waste time going to the mall, Target, and other stores- but we hardly ever do that now. Instead, we spend a lot of our time exploring new places.
No more yard work or other house work with RV living.
One of the best things about not having a normal home is that we save a lot of time when it comes to routine things that come with a normal house.
This includes dealing with monthly bills, such as electricity, water, sewer, trash, etc. Now we just pay one fee whenever we go somewhere.
We also don’t have as much maintenance and repairs to do. While RVs aren’t perfect, there’s less that goes into an RV than a house, which means that we don’t have to do things like rake leaves, mow the grass, and so on.
Food tastes better when living in an RV.
Me and Wes always talk about this, but it’s true – meals in an RV always taste better. I think it has to do with always having great views (as mentioned above) and just being happier with life in general.
RV living means you can move if you don’t like your neighbors.
I think pretty much everyone has lived next to a neighbor that they didn’t like. The great thing about RV life is that if you have a crazy neighbor or someone who you don’t get along with, then you can just move your home!
And trust me, we have done this a few times in order to get away from some not-so-friendly and/or crazy RVers.
You can work and travel at the same time.
Yes, you can do both.
We’ve met many amazing people while RVing. Some are retired, but others are like us and also trying different things in order to make their traveling dreams a reality. I know that thinking about making money while traveling can be a scary thing for many people, but it has really allowed us to live our dream life.
This factor is something that holds many potential full-time travelers back, but it shouldn’t! Don’t let making money on the road hold you back from living your dream, because even though it may seem big, it’s something that can usually be worked around.
Related articles on how to make money while traveling:
To be able to live in an RV full-time, I run an online business which consists mainly of this blog- Making Sense of Cents. It is a lot of fun being able to work and travel at the same time.
At first, I thought it would be difficult. I thought internet would be hard to find, that I would be too distracted, and so on.
I’ve come to find that I’m more motivated than ever when it comes to working, and having a great view out my window each day definitely helps as well.
If I want to take a break from work and go on a hike, I can do that. If I want to go on a mountain bike ride in the morning before I start answering emails, I can do that.
The list goes on and on!
Living in an RV makes traveling and working (and living) much more enjoyable because I can bring my home everywhere I go. I don’t have to worry about forgetting something, bringing a suitcase, or anything – I just have it all with me.
Also, I’ve had a lot of you ask what I’m using for internet. I am using a Verizon MiFi Jetpack. I also have AT&T for our cell phones so that we are always covered. This may sound crazy, but every RVer we’ve met has the same set up.
Note: Read more about how I earn a living on the road.
You’ll want to travel full-time for as long as you can.
RV life is a lot of fun, and due to that I know that I want to do this for as long as I can. Our next adventure will be to sail full-time, probably even some backpacking and long cycling trips too.
I’m so glad that I gave RV life a shot in 2015, because my life is so much better due to it.
Are you interested in RV life or traveling full-time? Why or why not?
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