What Traveling Full-Time For 3 Years Has Taught Me

Three years ago, we completely emptied our house, put it on the market, and drove to Colorado. We had been location independent for a couple of years at that point, and we had the travel itch. We were ready to explore, and little did we know that would be the start of our life traveling full-time.

It wasn’t easy. I remember going out to eat with my close friends right before we moved. It was, literally, moments after we packed everything into a car, that I went out to eat with friends to say goodbye before continuing the drive to Colorado. I cried about selling our house and leaving my friends and family.

We found a “homebase” in Fruita, Colorado, and we used that as our jumping off point as we explored Colorado and nearby Utah.

We knew absolutely no one in the Fruita, Colorado area (or anywhere near it). We just picked it after a recent trip and liked the location, the small town feel, and all of the mountain biking, rock climbing, and hiking that it had to offer.

Soon after we moved there, though, we started looking at RVs. Well, we looked at one RV, and we bought that one, haha!

Buying that RV led to traveling full-time, and we haven’t regret that choice one bit.

Last year, I published the April Fool’s blog post I’m Tired Of Living In A Motorhome!, and tonnnnnns of you fell for it. Even though we’ve been RVing for some time now, I still absolutely love RV life. There’s still a lot more to see, and I think it would be impossible to actually see all of the United States, even if we RVed for a decade.

Traveling full-time allows me to live my dream life, and I’m looking forward to doing this for many more years.

Living in an RV full-time is the experience of a lifetime, and we completely love it. I never thought I would be a full-time traveler, especially not an RVer, but I’m so glad I gave it a try. If any of you are thinking about doing the same, I highly recommend it!

We’ve met many great people, we’ve made awesome friends on the road, we are exploring so many amazing places, and we are doing all of this comfortably from our home. Plus, even our dogs are happy traveling this way!

Seriously, life couldn’t be any better.

If you’re interested in RVing, check out other RV-related content:

• The Ultimate Guide To Getting Started RVing
• Becoming an RV Family – How We Travel Full-Time With 4 Kids and 2 Dogs
• How To Make Money While RVing
• How Much Does It Cost To RV?
• Common RV Questions – Yes, I Even Talk About What We Do With #2

Below are some updates about our full-time travel life.

 

We don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.

The TOP question we get, now that we’ve been location independent and have been traveling full-time for so long, is “When will you be done? Are you going to do this forever?”

While we don’t have a date for when we will stop traveling, I’m sure that it will eventually happen sometime way into the future.

For now, though, we absolutely love traveling full-time, and we’re excited to see what the future brings.

As discussed in My Year In Travels – Where I Went in 2017 – Hiking, Biking, RVing, Sailing, and More, we are debating between heading up to Alaska for the summer or purchasing a sailboat. Or, we may do both.

We’re not sure what we are going to do in 2018 just yet. That’s the best part about traveling full-time – regardless of where we go and what we do, I know we will have a great time!

 

We have plenty of space.

When we first decided to move into an RV, me and my husband told each other that if us or the dogs ever felt too cramped, we could rent the occasional Airbnb to have a little bit more space. We figured we needed a backup plan because living in the RV after selling our 2000 square foot house would be a major downsize.

However, we’ve never needed to use that backup plan. The only times we’ve rented Airbnbs while we’ve been RVing have been quick trips or when we wanted to make it a little easier for a dog sitter to watch our dogs (instead of asking them to manage the RV and dump the tanks!).

There haven’t been any times where we felt like the RV was too small. It’s not hurting our relationship, our dogs are happy, and we are happy.

Honestly, sometimes we feel like our RV is too big!

And, we’re not missing any of our stuff either. When we sold our house and decided to give RV life a try, we donated and got rid of a TON of stuff. At first it was difficult to get rid of so much, but then it got easier and easier.

Now, 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, there’s a lot less waste, and this is allowing us to save money as well.

Read more at Downsizing Your Home? Here’s How I Went From A 2,000 Square Foot House To An RV.

 

Storage units are a waste of money (for us).

Okay, okay, I know they are not a waste for everyone, but they are probably a waste for 90% of the people who pay for them.

In July 2016, we cleared out our storage unit and finally got rid of it. We were paying $185 a month for a small storage unit, mainly for photo albums and childhood items.

The storage unit wasn’t bad, but there were some negatives:

• It seemed wasteful to spend $185 a month to store things that we don’t use.
• When we got the storage unit, I had to sign a paper that said we wouldn’t store photo albums in there. In fact, I found out that this was normal. This felt like I was jinxing myself, and I was afraid that something would happen to the hundreds of photos albums that my dad left for me after he passed away.
• The storage unit was in an odd location. We put everything from our last house into storage. However, that was in a town where we knew nobody, and we knew that we wouldn’t be going back too often.

So, we rented a moving truck and had everything moved to Wes’s parents attic. Don’t worry, they lucked out as well. We gave them all of the expensive, new furniture that we had stupidly bought right before we fell in love with RV life, haha.

It’s been awhile since we got rid of that storage unit, and we haven’t regretted it one bit. I still can’t believe we were paying $185 a month for the stuff that was in there, especially since we would have never really even opened the storage unit!

If we still had that storage unit and were still paying for it right now, that would have been over $5,000 in storage costs.

That is a ton of money that we would have been wasting!

 

I love being a digital nomad.

Being able to work while traveling full-time isn’t perfect, as it can be hard to separate work from life and actually take a day off. However, it’s great being able to run my business from wherever I am. I can be in the RV driving down the road, at a national park, on a sailboat, at an Airbnb, or wherever, and I am still able to successfully work.

One thing I have learned since being on the road in the RV is that my income and business have not been negatively impacted by our new lifestyle. In the beginning, I was a little nervous about what would happen. I was worried about things such as:

• What would I do for internet?
• What if everywhere we go has a bad signal? Or no signal?!
• What if I need to do something where I need to be “home?”

However, I now know that being a digital nomad is great! And, none of the things above actually matter because there’s a solution for everything.

I actually believe that traveling full-time has helped me with my business. It is a huge motivator, and it’s really refreshing, which is very different from the stagnant work environment I came from.

Note: Read more about how I earn a living on the road and How I Run A Business While Traveling 365 Days a Year.

 

I don’t need a lot of the things that I once thought I needed.

I kept a lot of things because I thought I needed them for the future. On a regular basis, I probably only used around 25% of the things I had in my house.

Actually, probably even less than that.

I know I’m not alone – many people keep items because they think they may need them in the future. You know the feeling – you buy something, don’t use it right away, and years later you find it but just can’t throw it away, in case there is some circumstance where you need that exact item.

If this is you, then you should put a timeline of no more than one year on the item. If you don’t use it in that timeframe, then there’s a big chance that you’ll never need it.

Chances are that you won’t miss it much.

When I think about how much stuff we gave away, I honestly can’t even remember half of the things. Now, I know that I never really needed the majority of those things in the first place.

Having more stuff doesn’t make you happier.

It’s really that simple. Things don’t make you a better person, they don’t make you more successful than others, or anything else.

I know this because I have less stuff than I have ever had, and I’m actually happier now than ever before.

You should only own something if you truly want it. Who cares about what everyone else has!

 

You meet some interesting people while RVing.

While traveling full-time in an RV, you definitely get to see the world from a different view. You meet a lot of interesting people, as when you’re RVing you tend to be around a lot of other travelers, as well as a lot of strangers who want to ask you about your full-time travel life.

We’ve met so many amazing people who are leading different lives, and it’s always fascinating to hear all of their interesting stories.

We’ve met famous photographers (such as for National Geographic!), professional rock climbers, round the world sailors, long-term backpackers, bikepackers, someone who has walked across the United States, hundreds of full-time RVers, other travelers, and more, and they all have such interesting stories. We’ve never met so many extremely interesting people until we started traveling full-time (sorry to everyone back home, haha!) and put ourselves out there.

Related: 12 Things You Need To Know About Traveling With A Dog

Are you interested in traveling full-time? Why or why not?