A day in the life of a full-timer...

Many of us still live in stick houses and drag our tired butts to jobs that have lost their glitter. We dream of fulltiming in our MHs or TTs. But on the edge of the dream, for some of us at least, is a concern that we might grow bored with the gypsy lifestyle or just have trouble finding ways to fill our days.

I'm sure many of us would be fascinated to know how you full-timers spend a typical day. Will you share?

I don't think there is a typical day.  Some days we go sightseeing, some we just stay home and read, some days I even work (like today).  My wife does volunteer work at the local libraries a day or two a week, and we both volunteer in the summer for various events at our yacht club.

Ned, your forgot to mention the days you go sailing like this

About the same as if we were retired and in the stick house, except that the scenery inn the front yard changes more often.  It's not the full-timing that makes the difference in your day - its the lack of a daily job to occupy time. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. Once you quit the daily grind, you turn to other things to fill your time. Some people have difficulty with that and others wonder how they ever found the time to work.

We are sort of both fulltime and stick house, living in the RV 7 months a year and in our Florida bungalow the rest of the time. I'm a computer & internet junkie, so I spend a lot of time on that, every morning to be sure. Nancy usually watches tv while I'm computing. We do odd chores around the coach/house, we go to stores for routine stuff, often have lunch at a restaurant, socialize with friends and neighbors occasionally (RVers are more friendly than the stick house neighbors), chat on the phone with family & friends, visit the local attractions and then maybe enjoy a campfire in the evening (real wood or sometimes our propane campfire). We have some portable hobbies - both of us read a lot, I carry a lot of tools and can do small repair and improvement projects while traveling, Nancy is a quilter and general "crafty person" who makes all sorts of stuff, and I'm trying to re-educate myself in the use of an electronic keyboard. 

The great thing about RVing full or part time is that you aren't stuck in one spot like you are in a stick house, i.e. the scenery changes from time to time and you can be where your friends and family are.

Tom, I'll be on that schooner tomorrow afternoon and evening.  It's the RC start boat for our Queen's Cup race.  Not under sail, of course

Just another quiet day.

Got up and visited the Winter Olympic Museum in Lake Placid this morning, drove 25 miles to the Port Kent, NY ferry terminal and are now sitting in the m/h crossing Lake Champlain.  8)

Cricketdaddy,

The first of May we moved into our new house after living in our 35' motorhome fulltime for close to a year, while the new house was being built.  After the old house had closed escrow and all the furniture put into storage, I was very surpirsed to find out how I felt.  I had been pushing my husband to go fulltime for several years.  There is an article I wrote, which is in the library, describing my feelings.    It's in the  "Fulltiming" section.  You can find it  here if you are interested in reading it.

And to be very upfront, we also got bored.  After several months of sighseeing and continually moving locations, we began to miss having a "home".  We put on extra weight due to lack of excercise; and to be honest we got tired of sightseeing.   At the very end of the timeframe, we began to call our life "living in minature".    During the holidays, I missed being able to set "grandma's" china for Christmas dinner.

I'm always a little concerned about people who just "dive" into fulltiming without "trying it out" first.  I know my personality very well, and it came as a big surprise to me at what I felt when we did it for a year.

Marsha~

Thank you for the "Wanderlust" story, Marsha,

  I have had fleeting thoughts of that, but never seriously. Your story is a "life lesson" for everyone contemplating a lifestyle change like that. (Also it is wonderfully written). Ever write a book?

  I am getting on in age, would like to try it for an indefinite time, but would always want to come back to the cabin, after selling the upscale home. Need some place to put my invaluable junk collected over the years.

Thanks again,

carson FL

Thanks very much to all of you who have responded so far. I'd like to see this thread continue for a long time. I hope you full-timers and part-time full-timers  ??? will make  many more entries to share your days with us.

In particular, Marsha, thank you for your wonderful essay. It should be required reading for anybody who thinks he/she wants to jettison a lifetime of responsibilities for a vacation that has no end. That concept sounds good but I've wondered if it doesn't really mean an end to vacations? If every day is Christmas, what makes a gift so special?

I got home from work awhile ago and am now sitting in my 105-year-old stick house with four painters grinding away at the outside walls and my nerves with sanders. My grandson is bugging us because he's bored, I've got yardwork that needs doing and the motorhome is whispering to me.

More stories, please!

Glad you enjoyed it Carson,  I think there are so many factors in deciding to go fulltime; and I've only touched on one of them.
Like you, we figued a "little cabin in the woods" would work out well, and it has.  This seems to be the best of both worlds for us.

BTW, I haven't written professionally; but I do have a book rattling around in my head.  I just have to get brave enough to write the darn thing.

Marsha~

Thanks, Marsha

    Maybe a "how to write a book by non-pros" may be a good topic. (The one that makes a lot of money)

I would love to write an auto-biography, but I don't think anyone would buy it.

I have been wrong before.

carson

Cricketdaddy,

I think you live in LA, right?  If so, I can hear that motorhome calling to you up here in Kernville, which is east of Bakersfield up in the southern sierras.... ;D  Under your circumstances, I think I would want to take off too.

One of the other questions I ask myself when I read of people thinking about going fulltime, is whether, in their long range plans they have thought of going back into a stick house when handling the coach gets to be too much; ie illness or just the mere fact it is "too much".  Do they have financial plans to purchase another stick house?  Even though we are in a housing slump, it almost always comes back and the prices go up over time.  What happens if fulltimers don't plan?  Where do they go?  

Also what happens if one of you gets ill and needs special medical equipment for an extended period of time especially equipment that doesn't fit into an RV.

Motorhomes are a depreciating entity and I would guess that most of us will not get back what we paid for it, so if you are a fulltimer, do you plan for replacement costs for a new coach?

Like you and Christmas, it's kinda like when I had horses.  I loved to train them for myself; but when I gave lessons and trained horses for oher people, it became a job.  It wasn't near as much fun.   ;D

Just food for thought.
Marsha~

Marsha,

Yes, we live in Glendora -- northeastern L.A. County, one block from Route 66. I work downtown on Wilshire Blvd on "The Miracle Mile."

Carolann and I have been thinking along the lines of taking really good care of our antique house and waiting a few years until it gets some of its value back. I'm 56, she's 50. Then we will sell it, buy a small condo, cabin or even one of those "manufactured homes" in a senior community. From there we can see the country in the motorhome but always be able to return to a place where we can spend a little time two rooms apart.  ;D  I say that in jest because we learned when I was unemployed for nine months that we do quite well together 24/7 on limited funds. That's a very important thing to know and I suspect it's something else some married people haven't considered as they approach retirement and/or fulltiming.

And, Carson -- you should write that autobiography. Maybe nobody will buy it but I'll bet you have kids or other relatives that would treasure it when you're gone. I've been working on mine in a travelogue I started twelve years ago. I just write a bit whenever I'm on the road and make sure I include a lot of thoughts, philosophies and personal history and reflections that my sons and grandsons might find fascinating or at least worth reading. I never really knew my grandparents or even my parents that well. We assume kinship and never bother to ask questions.

Dave in L.A.

Sam & I have fulltimed for 10 years since I retired.  We did keep our property in MT since it was all paid for and we like the location.  After ten years we have both decided we wanted a stick house to come back to.  Most of our things for the house came from the different countries where we live and visited.  Sam was ready to get her toys out again.   We had the house rented for many years but still had places on the property to park when we were here. While fulltiming we had comfort in knowing that we always had a place to come back to.

We enjoyed traveling and attending the RV Forum and other rallies and still plan to travel and attend rallies but will now have the house to come back to.

Retirement is highly recommended but there are some things you loose when you retire, Now more paid vacation, paid sick leave, paid holidays, and you even loose your weekends since every day is a non - working day one tends to loose track of what day is what.  But it is a great life.

Dave, thanks for the encouragement on the autobiography. I was just kidding a bit on the money aspect; with my years remaining I don't need much more.

    At the expense of sounding like a victim, I'll just state that I have virtually no family left. My remaining daughter is now grown up with two beautiful children. She is from my previous marriage some 25 years ago and contact is sparse and they even lives in different country. (The nasty 70's came along and terminated what I would call my idyllic marriage).

  I am the last of the 'Mohicans' here in the USA of my family line; my European kin have not been heard from for 50 years. But I am now happily married and feel very much at ease with myself and my situation. I pride myself with being an optimist because I believe that "negative people make positive people sick".

    If anything, I would like to somehow relate to younger folks what it takes to rise from nothing to a comfortable ripe age, without help from anyone and without higher education credentials. It can be done. All it takes is respect for the law, honesty and unceasing hard work.

    So much for the ramble, you get the idea.

Thanks for listening.

carson FL

Ron -- Thanks for your story. I had it in my mind that you were always out there tied to a highway somewhere. The fact that you have roots in Montana gives me a fine sense of you that comes across in your writing anyway. My people are from Wyoming and I could live in either of those states for the rest of my days.

Ned, Jeff -- I meant to say earlier, it sounds like every day is a holiday for you guys and that's just exactly what I really want to hear!

And Carson, write that autobiography anyway. You may not have much contact with your daughter and grandkids right now but even without knowing the particulars I would bet everything I own that someday they will want to know you better and you may not be there to fill in the blanks. Besides, you can't imagine how therapeutic it is, writing about your life and putting your thoughts and feelings down on paper. (Figuratively. Use a computer but back the darned stuff up!) You really learn who you are.

Don't mean to get overly sentimental or sullen. You all are inspiring me to exactly the life my Carolann and I want together. And if something happens to one of us I believe the other will go on and have it, anyway.

When I retired, I had a vision of being gone away from home for as much as half of the year at a time -- maybe more. (I would actually like to go full timing, but I knew THAT wasn't going to happen!)  Karen's idea was more along the lines of being gone somewhere less than half of each year -- broken up into shorter periods of time.  We're compromising on it and I'll get the last words in.  (Ron knows what those words are, I think.) We certainly will be hitting the road for some long part time RVing with no plans for giving up our home place.

Ron and Sam have a nice stick house and town to come back to. Gets a little too cold for us. in the winter, though -- the area, not the house.

Thanks Mike.  Sam & I plan to stay here in MT over the winter this year.  However given that we have not been in the cold country since 91 we might just beforced to head South if it gets too rough on our ole bods.

Ron said:

Sam & I plan to stay here in MT over the winter this year.  However given that we have not been in the cold country since 91 we might just beforced to head South if it gets too rough on our ole bods.

Click to expand...

Ron:

After 13 years (if I'm counting correctly) of Arizona winters, Tom and I stayed in Oregon last winter.  It was really nice to experience all four seasons once again.  Last year's  snow was just enough to be pretty and not enough to get in the way.  That said, I wouldn't trade our Arizona winters for anything.  What fun, what friends (including you and Sam, for sure)  and what an adventure we had.  I'm glad we had the opportunity to experience that lifestyle and I'm happy to be where we are now, too.

I've often thought those who were "bored" by retirement just didn't have enough imagination to embrace a simpler life.    Time to read, time to listen to music, time to enjoy a schedule-free life, time to travel and explore, time to write, time to snooze, time to .... well ... you get the drift.  Tom retired in 1986.  Tom tends to want to be busier than I do.  So, he IS busier than I am.  He does more projects; I volunteer four hours per week, he often puts in more; I read, he putters ... to each his/her own and it all works out.  The gift in retirement is the CHOICE:  a luxury we didn't always have while we worked, raised children, "raised" elderly parents, etc. 

Specifically to the RVing lifestyle: 

We traveled this country from coast to coast at least three times with many other trips in between of shorter duration.  Our "normal" routines didn't change because we were on the road.  We just got to see incredible sights, experience the wonders of this country, and make new friends.  BUT ... at the end of the day, we pulled into a campsight, lowered the shades and were home.  Home, with our clothes in the closet, our food in the fridge, our books on the shelves, our hobby tools in the bays ....   And the next day we moved "home" to a new location.   

Margi

Ron said:

Thanks Mike.  Sam & I plan to stay here in MT over the winter this year.  However given that we have not been in the cold country since 91 we might just beforced to head South if it gets too rough on our ole bods.

Click to expand...

Ron

Now you will have to take lessons on a new way to winterize your coach