Want to live the full-time RVing Dream? On Instagram, we documented the steps we followed to make it a reality.
As we embark on our full-time RV adventure, I wanted to share our journey of getting to where we are today. We hit the road in just a few weeks after months of careful planning and preparation, and we couldn’t be more excited! This has been the most challenging thing we’ve ever done, but we’re thankful we’re so close to the finish line.
RV living has seen a huge growth in popularity over the past few years, and I’m so grateful for that because there are so many amazing resources out there for people like us looking to live this unconventional lifestyle. Have you thought about living in an RV full time? Then read on to learn how we were able to make it happen!
So, how did we get here?
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1) Make a Full-Time Decision
Living in Arizona, my husband was able to do the one thing he loved to do most — race dirt bikes. We’d go to a race at least once a month, traveling in our popup camper and staying at some pretty amazing places. From Lake Powell to Lake Havasu, we got to travel all over the beautiful Southwest and totally fell in love with camping and traveling.
One day, we thought to ourselves, “What if we traveled full-time?” Could we do it? How would we do it? Do other people do that?
And that’s how it began. We were bitten by the travel bug and longed for a life of true freedom and adventure. We were tired of “working for the man,” sitting in traffic, worrying about money and bills, and never having enough vacation time to do what we truly enjoyed. We didn’t want to live only for the weekends anymore. I started researching the viability of the full-time lifestyle and, low and behold, I found several RV travelers living the dream! A lot of people lived in their RV and absolutely loved it. Once I had the validation that other people were living life on their own terms in their own tiny home on wheels, I knew we could do it, too. We were determined.
2) Get into the Full-Time Mindset
I knew this was how I wanted us to live our lives, so it was time to convince Laith. This was a scary thing to do: We had good jobs and enjoyed our work, but we always longed for something more. However, he agreed almost immediately. It made sense, because we had talked about doing something like this for so long, and the time finally came where we could see this becoming a reality. We watched YouTube videos about other people just like us doing this crazy RV thing and we couldn’t get enough! It became all I thought about at work and all I talked about with my friends. It gave me something exciting to look forward to — a life of freedom and the open road!
3) Set Full-time Goals
We figured out a plan to get us on the road within a year, and we took it one step at a time to make it happen. We set a date for when we would hit the road. We evaluated our timeline, set monthly goals of what would happen when, and picked a goal date. This really put us into action, knowing we had X many days left to make this goal a reality.
Although we set goal dates, we gave ourselves room for some flexibility. For example, we knew we wanted to be in Oregon for the Boatnik boat races in May, but we weren’t sure we’d be able to hit the that soon, so we set July as our goal date. Turns out, we hit the road on May 16th! Our timeline shifted as we crossed things off of our master to-do list faster than anticipated. Our list even evolved with us, too. First, we were going to finance an RV, so one item on the list was to save for a down payment. Then Laith discovered some pretty amazing RVs we could buy in cash, and that was a game changer that moved our timeline up.
4) Set up Full-time Financing
Now for the elephant in the room: How were we going to make money on the road? That was the number-one anxiety-inducing thing for us. Would we have enough money to eat and feed our dogs? We had no savings, no nest egg, no big assets. This was the main hurdle to overcome in living this new lifestyle. But once we had that figured out, the rest came pretty quickly!
Most of the time, money (and fear!) is the main culprit holding people back from living in their RV full time. Unless you have a pretty sick trust fund, a year’s worth of savings already in the bank, or a remote job you can do from anywhere, the options seem pretty slim. But there are millions of ways people can make money on the road! Like they say, where there’s a will there’s a way, and I’ve seen so many different full-time RVers make their living in a lot of unique and unconventional ways.
Thankfully, I am lucky to have been designing websites since I first got my hands on a computer as a kid. It was only natural to ramp up my freelance design business to fund our new lifestyle.
5) Make Full-time Career Transitions
Laith quit his job first to help us take care of the house, make dinner, do laundry, but most importantly, research our future new life nonstop. He learned everything he could about living on the road, where to camp, what to buy, what to pack. This really helped free up my time so I could work on growing the business, and a few months later, I was booked out far enough in advance with clients. As soon as I replaced my corporate income with my design business income, I resigned from my employer and we were officially free to manage our time how we wanted to.
6) Make the Full-Time Vehicle Switch
Next thing on the list: sell my Jeep, which gave us the funds to purchase our new home on wheels. We were obsessed with the Toyota Dolphin and knew that’s the one we wanted, so Laith was constantly on Craigslist looking for one to buy. The first one we looked at we bought! They are pretty rare to find these days, and we knew that if we didn’t buy it someone else would. The whole drive to look at the RV we both just had a feeling that this was THE ONE. And we were right! It was, and I love her so much. We named her Susie Q on the drive home together.
We bought our RV in January, and since then we’ve been fixing it up and making it our own. We’ve painted the entire interior, purchased a custom memory gel bed and all-new bedding, added decorations, and we purchased blinds and new LED lights. We’ve cleared out our house to just the items we will be taking with us, which is a huge task all within itself! I’m sure we’ll be sharing the process of downsizing and purging all of our stuff with you soon.
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Yay! Decorations are up!! It feels so much more homey in there now!! 🚐😬🙌🏻💕
7) Don’t Give Up on Full-time Dreams
Are you thinking about living in an RV full time? The main thing you want to focus on is letting go of fear and drowning out any negativity. Let go of your limiting beliefs. Seek and find others who live the life you dream of, and look for the clues they leave behind. You can do anything you set your mind to if you’re determined and live the life of your dreams!
We’d love if you followed along on our journey as we venture out into the world on our Instagram @findingouroasis. There’s going to be ups and downs, but our main mission is to stay positive and live every day to the absolute fullest while being a positive light for others!
