The real story on fulltiming

[John Harrelson]

Living the full-time RV lifestyle sounds so wonderful... kinda like a beautiful dream... travel, adventure, freedom.... etc......

BUT... it comes with a price .... and I'm not talking about money....

I am talking about the price of .... "IN-CONVENIENCE" .... or maybe the correct word is "Conveniences" ......

No matter how much you travel, no matter where you go or what you do.... you are still tied to the conveniences of everyday life that everyone must have....

no matter if you live in a house, a truck camper, a motorhome, travel trailer.... etc.... you will have need of basic living essentials...

You must have a way of getting water for everyday use... drinking, cooking, showers, toilet... etc...

Water does not just magically appear in your RV... you must make a conscious decision to seek and find a source of clean water and remember to do it before your water tank runs dry...

You must have a way of getting rid of waste water and sewage....
it does not just go down a drain like it does in a house or apartment.. You must plan ahead and seek out a place to get rid of it...

And getting rid of it is much more involved than simply pushing the handle on the toilet or pulling the stopper out of the sink..

Propane fuel for keeping warm, cooking, heating water, etc... in an RV is not like having an un-ending supply of gas like you have in a house or apartment...

You will have to monitor the RV's propane tank and make sure to seek out and find a source to refill the propane tanks before it runs dry and leaves you cold and hungry, standing in a shower thats putting out cold water ....

The cost of vehicle fuel and generator fuel, flat tires, oil changes, camping/parking permits, etc.. is offset with the rent or house payments you no longer have to pay... so that's a moot point in the scope of things..

Things like insurance, food, etc ... will remain about the same in the equation... so they are also a moot point.

But then there is the medical needs....

Living in a "Fixed" location like a house.. the chances are you have a "Family Doctor" and a "Family Dentist" .. and you know exactly where the hospital is located.

Living in a fixed location like a house or apartment, if you need to see your doctor, you pick up the phone and call for an appointment....

But if you are three thousand miles away and need to see a doctor.... it's not that easy... most likely you will have to go to an emergency room or find a doctor in the yellow pages that will take a "First Time/One Time only" new patient on short notice... and we all know the odds of that happening..

You likely have a favorite drugstore or pharmacy where you get your prescriptions filled by simply "Calling in" the prescriptions..

Getting a refill mailed to you is a hassle, but can be done......
However.... getting a new prescription is almost impossible without seeing a local doctor where you happen to be at the time....

Where is your favorite grocery store ? Do you like your local newspaper and the Wednesday ads ?

What about your favorite Television station with the "Local News" about things, people and places you are familiar with ?

HAD ENOUGH ??? There is lots more of these "Inconveniences" that the "Full Time RVer" must face, accept and adjust too...

Please ... WAIT... before some of you jump on me about being "Negative" on the RV life... I love the full time RV life...I have been living it for most of my life and I'm 65 years old...

BUT... at the beginning of our adventure, each of us had to face and accept these hard cold facts of the full time RVing life style...

I just read a report that said there are about 300,000 full time RVers roaming around America.. add to that another 300,000 part-timer RVers.... and you have about 2% of America's total population of about 300,000,000 people living full time in an RV of some type.

I am posting this because I think it is the honest and proper thing for us "old Timers" to make sure that the new kids understand exactly what they are getting into before selling their home, pulling long established roots and jumping into the deep end of the pool, not knowing if they can swim or really want to swim everyday for the rest of their lives.

I know that a few of you are going to flame me for having the audacity to post such irreverent and blasphemy remarks about our RV life style...

But thats OK... go ahead.... because if this post makes even one person think twice about giving up everything they have known to jump into a situation they have only read or heard about... it's worth it..

God Bless,
John

[John Harrelson]

Living the full-time RV lifestyle sounds so wonderful... kinda like a beautiful dream... travel, adventure, freedom.... etc......

BUT... it comes with a price .... and I'm not talking about money....

I am talking about the price of .... "IN-CONVENIENCE" .... or maybe the correct word is "Conveniences" ......

No matter how much you travel, no matter where you go or what you do.... you are still tied to the conveniences of everyday life that everyone must have....

no matter if you live in a house, a truck camper, a motorhome, travel trailer.... etc.... you will have need of basic living essentials...

You must have a way of getting water for everyday use... drinking, cooking, showers, toilet... etc...

Water does not just magically appear in your RV... you must make a conscious decision to seek and find a source of clean water and remember to do it before your water tank runs dry...

You must have a way of getting rid of waste water and sewage....
it does not just go down a drain like it does in a house or apartment.. You must plan ahead and seek out a place to get rid of it...

And getting rid of it is much more involved than simply pushing the handle on the toilet or pulling the stopper out of the sink..

Propane fuel for keeping warm, cooking, heating water, etc... in an RV is not like having an un-ending supply of gas like you have in a house or apartment...

You will have to monitor the RV's propane tank and make sure to seek out and find a source to refill the propane tanks before it runs dry and leaves you cold and hungry, standing in a shower thats putting out cold water ....

The cost of vehicle fuel and generator fuel, flat tires, oil changes, camping/parking permits, etc.. is offset with the rent or house payments you no longer have to pay... so that's a moot point in the scope of things..

Things like insurance, food, etc ... will remain about the same in the equation... so they are also a moot point.

But then there is the medical needs....

Living in a "Fixed" location like a house.. the chances are you have a "Family Doctor" and a "Family Dentist" .. and you know exactly where the hospital is located.

Living in a fixed location like a house or apartment, if you need to see your doctor, you pick up the phone and call for an appointment....

But if you are three thousand miles away and need to see a doctor.... it's not that easy... most likely you will have to go to an emergency room or find a doctor in the yellow pages that will take a "First Time/One Time only" new patient on short notice... and we all know the odds of that happening..

You likely have a favorite drugstore or pharmacy where you get your prescriptions filled by simply "Calling in" the prescriptions..

Getting a refill mailed to you is a hassle, but can be done......
However.... getting a new prescription is almost impossible without seeing a local doctor where you happen to be at the time....

Where is your favorite grocery store ? Do you like your local newspaper and the Wednesday ads ?

What about your favorite Television station with the "Local News" about things, people and places you are familiar with ?

HAD ENOUGH ??? There is lots more of these "Inconveniences" that the "Full Time RVer" must face, accept and adjust too...

Please ... WAIT... before some of you jump on me about being "Negative" on the RV life... I love the full time RV life...I have been living it for most of my life and I'm 65 years old...

BUT... at the beginning of our adventure, each of us had to face and accept these hard cold facts of the full time RVing life style...

I just read a report that said there are about 300,000 full time RVers roaming around America.. add to that another 300,000 part-timer RVers.... and you have about 2% of America's total population of about 300,000,000 people living full time in an RV of some type.

I am posting this because I think it is the honest and proper thing for us "old Timers" to make sure that the new kids understand exactly what they are getting into before selling their home, pulling long established roots and jumping into the deep end of the pool, not knowing if they can swim or really want to swim everyday for the rest of their lives.

I know that a few of you are going to flame me for having the audacity to post such irreverent and blasphemy remarks about our RV life style...

But thats OK... go ahead.... because if this post makes even one person think twice about giving up everything they have known to jump into a situation they have only read or heard about... it's worth it..

God Bless,
John

[Bill Davis]

Thanks, John, for putting your "two cents" in. Thats what we come here for, straight talk from someone who knows what he is talking about. As I am sure you do. Many of us have ask these questions, and considered the lifestyle. We all need to think about the practical side of our dreams.

[Steady Eddie]

John---
Thank you for the thoughtful post.

Many of the reasons you posted are exacty why we DON'T full-time. But the really big one is proper medical care. We have close friends whose
only big dream in life was a house/place at the
Beach. Sold everthing here and moved. Then the wife developed a medical condition that required that she be near a hospital with all the "right" stuff in it. And, she needed it quickly to survive. Even though they had a home,
with all the things they needed, they had to sell their common dream and move back to town to be near the Hospital. Your good health is THE
biggest blessing..

[Moder2]

John, traditionally you and I have had some pretty drastically different viewpoints on many topics, however, I think you have this spot on.

Sometimes we get trapped in the romanticism of the idea of being free and roaming around. It isn't all peaches and cream, but those of us who do make the decision to full-time, we hopefully do it because we have weighted the pro's and con's and are willing to accept the adventure. It is about the same for any path in life, there will always be pluses and minuses.

Derek and I thought we researched this before jumping into it, and always planned to do this when we got of retirement age. It happened early for us, and quite unexpectedly. We had a few things we had to adjust to. We are a bit abnormal in the fact that we are still working, and basically tied to Derek's employer.

This gives us some advantage that we are in an area for an extended period of time, usually 3 to 6 months. One of the unknowns we had was that is it is kinda hard to get out! All the good things of being in an area (Friends, Jobs, Grocery stores, Doctors, the Convenience) tend to trap us into renewing Derek's contact. I would say the job is the heaviest weight.

The big reason we do this is to be flexible, and have the ability to "go where the money is at" which has turned out to be a good thing, but also an education in that a lot of employers don't understand what an RV is, let alone that we can relocate our entire life with little to no notice. For some that leap outside of the traditional box is hard to swallow, for others, they love the fact that we can be there, or here, or wherever.

In trade for the Convenience, we gain Freedom, and flexibility we desire. we thought we would also do better money wise, but I can't say that is as true as I thought at the start. We can be more fugal, and since I don't have a career type job any longer, we do do with less income, and less expense overall. There is however always something to spend extra money on, be it a new camper, a better/nicer park, entertainment... Basically you trade a lot of expenses just for others. One of my friends here in Saint Louis was complaining about having to put a roof on his house... $20,000 that will last him at least 25 years, probably much more I reminded him I was about to shell out almost $4,000 on a set of tires that will hopefully last me 5 or 6 years. You can be frugal, just as you can be renting or owning a house.

Freedom or Convenience? Your choice. I am just happy I have the right to make this choice.


John

[John Harrelson]

You have brought up some excellent points John...
thats basically what I was trying to do with my original post...

I just want future full timers to think and re-think before jumping in the pool... not keep them out.

there are so many, many questions that need answers before making a major life changing move..

You have brought up a very important item...

what if one member of the family is not yet retired ... is full timing possible ?

How can they work around the "anchor" thats tying them to a permanent place ?

What about future income ? .... just how much money will I need to sustain the full time life ?

A good example is those tires you needed... Wow!! $4000.00 is a lot of money...

will I be able to work while on the road ? ... How much personal stuff can I safely carry in my RV ?

ETC...ETC... these are only a very small number of the questions that a person contemplating the fulltime life needs to ask and get quality answers..

I am hoping that those thinking about getting into full timing will read these posts and start asking more questions...

and that folks like you will take the time to answer these questions in simple every day language that can be understood..

I have read a lot of your posts and you have a natural talent of "Simplifying" things so that a newbee can understand what he is reading..

We all have seen those posts that are so complicated with minute details that a new person who knows nothing about the subject to begin with, will go away even more confused by all the technical jargon..

The fact that you and I sometimes have different views on a subject is good for the new person because it allows them to see both sides of the discussion and make their own mind up as to which is best for them,...

Heck... if we always agreed, we wouldn't have anything talk about would we ...

thanks again,
John

[rjf7g]

I appreciate this thread. I am not a fulltimer but have dreamt of being one since I was in single digits and stepped in to a perfect Airstream. This thread presents another side of the coin...Dr. William Glasser suggests we have five needs - fun, freedom, belonging, power, and survival - and that everything we do we do to meet a perceived need. It's interesting to think about fulltiming from the perspective of needs.

[Moder2]

John,

Thanks for the nice compliment, and yes, you are 100% correct, I don't think there would be much of a point to the forum if we all had the same viewpoint.

Simplification... Interesting you said that. If i were to say there was one major driving force into pushing us into this direction I would say it would be the term to Simplify.

Ironically, that isn't necessarily the case, as I think you have illustrated.

Derek and I prior to full-timing had pretty hectic lives. Both of us had a 45 min each way commute, both had decent jobs, Derek being a computer programmer and my trade was in transportation. I was lucky enough to find that dream job at 29 years old, and loved the work, however, I didn't love the hours, or stress. It was typical I was working between 70 and 80 hours a week, with many more when the weather turned bad, or we had problems. Derek mostly worked a typical cooperate lifestyle, but still his job has an equal amount of stress. We loved to camp/RV, and where gone every weekend. So, that leaves a 1926 brick bungalow crying for our attention, of which we had little to give. Along with that, came 3000 Sq Ft of STUFF, which we never used. So, the choice for freedom included getting rid of this stuff, and simplifying our lives. It was a hard choice to make, but we decided it was best to try now, while we are young enough to recover if something were to tragically go wrong, and while we both still had our good health.

We gained many things, but the biggest gain was realizing we didn't need that life, didn't need that stress, and that we would be OK no matter what life through at us, in whatever situation we were in. We are younger full-timer's than most, and we do still work. Derek and I have kinda switched roles a bit, and he has become the major "breadwinner" and I mostly take care of the household affairs. I do find work where we land, but it is non Stress, and usually on my terms. The bottom line is we have gained what we needed, the time in our relationship to be together, and got rid of the things that were killing both of us.

That doesn't mean there wasn't big sacrifices. I gave up a job I had loved, and sometimes struggle with the identity of not having a whole lot of purpose as defined by "normal" society. This arrangement works best for us, and fits both of our skill-sets perfect. Beware that a lot of work goes into planning, maintenance, housekeeping, logistics.

When it is contract time, and we look for a new job, it no longer comes down to "is the job right for me and does it meet my salary requirements?" Many other questions must be answered, and normally before Derek even says yes to an interview. How do I get paid? Where is the job? How long will we be there? Will we be onsite, offsite? Is there a park nearby? If not, is there a place we can park? What does it cost? Electricity/Water/Sewer? Internet? Am I expected or required to travel? Work from Home? Commute to and from the park? There have been more offers we have turned down than taken because of these questions. One of our goals is to get west, and we had a job lined up in a town in CA, but the location was bad, and the pay didn't support the site rent. We didn't want to, but we ended up going east that time instead of following our dreams.

rjf, I studied Glasser in a class in college. He has some interesting theories, and I do agree with most of it, but I certainly agree with the idea that whatever the idea is we have we have the ability to put it in the perspective we want to, and that sometimes we all need to take a step back and think about what is really going on in our head. Is that a perceived need? or a real need?

John

[RVrs R US]

Tania and I retired in 1997 after loosing 5 family members in 5 months, sold our house, gave the "stuff" away to the kids, bought a Fifth Wheel/Truck combination (without ever having RV'd before in our lives) and headed south in the winter of 2000 only knowing we wanted to keep our minds and bodies active by having a retirement goal.

As that goal, we chose to learn as much about middle America as we could during our healthy retirement years.

Many of the things mentioned by John and John went through our minds as well but we knew that we had enough faith in each other and the savvy and fortitude to get through anything that was thrown our way.

This is not a lifestyle for the week of heart or for those who have a strong dependence on fixed local services or the need to have friends and family nearby. To us, the single biggest drawback is not seeing our old friends and family on a regular basis.

You have to constantly plan ahead - and in many cases, have backup plans to your plans. National banks, insurance companies who understand what you are doing, the Internet and the call phone have made our lives easier than those before us.

But, it's the daily challenges and the ability to find out what you're really made of - as a team and individually - that gives us that wonderful feeling of accomplishment when we give each other that final hug before falling asleep.

And the new friends we've made along with the exciting places we've seen have confirmed that our decision was the right one. So much so in fact that we've extended our plans for an additional 10 years on the road beginning this fall (God willing).

Thank you John Harrelson and John L. for starting this thread and for your very thoughtful comments and responses.

Tania and Dave George

[DavidMc]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">I just read a report that said there are about 300,000 full time RVers roaming around America.. add to that another 300,000 part-timer RVers.... and you have about 2% of America's total population of about 300,000,000 people living full time in an RV of some type. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

? Two Percent ?

Perhaps it would be:
Two-Tenths of a Percent of total population living for some period of time in an RV of some type.

PS: I am part of whatever-percent Full-Time.

[Superslif]

John H.'s thoughts on the "real" pro's & con's of actually full timing are in my opinion very eye opening and dead on. I just finished reading a book about RV'ing retirement options. I'm maybe 7-10 years away from retiring. I have given the thought of full timing, but at the moment I just couldn't pull mayself away from all the "stuff" I would have to get rid of and change. We do spend about 50-60 nights a year camping. I'm lucky enough to work for an employer where I get 6 weeks of vacation. If I were to retire now, I would just take month long trips and not have to give up my brick and morter house. I do know within the next 5 years I would like to move to more out laying area (country). I hate the city traffic and all the hustle and bustle......

[Barbaraok]

If your 'stuff' is central to who you are, you wouldn't make a good fulltimer and you are right to just look at part-timing it.

Barb

[amy5708]

We are planning on going fulltime for while; have already sold the house and we are renting for the next year while we save a little more money.

We have discussed this up one side and down the other, and have decided to do this now, while we are younger (I'm 39), as opposed to retired fully, for the reasons you discussed.

Our earnings potential is higher now, but we are involved in developing businesses we can run from the road.

I am a nurse, and plan on working full time (3 days/ week) as a travel nurse to subsidize our adventures.

My parents think we are nuts to leave our very well paying jobs for this adventure. Our response is that if we wait until "retirement" we may not be well enough or even alive.

Anyway, we do have our retirement savings very well funded, and we live off a lot less than we make, so I think we'll be ok.

[Barbaraok]

We have friends who are doing exactly what you suggest. Make sure you have your health insurance covered and then go for it. Our friends spend the summers in New England and winter in Arizona. And fall and spring is when they do full-timing things. Wish we had had this option when we were young.

Barb