Were you sure before you started fulltime?

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an RV or an interest in RVing!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

halfwright

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 27, 2013
Posts
1,212
You have all seen the threads about people windering if fulltiming was for them. It got me to thinking.

How many fulltimers knew years before they started that fulltiming was what they wanted to do?

Ny wife and I knew that  we wanted to fulltime long before we started, 20 years or so. If you have to think about it, is it really a lfestyle that you will be happy with? 
 
We haven't started yet, but are going full-time in October. We have been planning this for four years and were discussing it a year prior to that. We are both 46 and want to simplify and enjoy life now, not 20 years from now. The untimely death of my father and his mother -she was only 67!- made us rethink everything we wanted out of life and slaving away at jobs 50 hrs a week, never seeing each other or our kids and grandkids, and forking over for house payments on space we never used was a burden. Four years ago we moved into a tiny studio apartment just to see if we could adjust without so many "things" and being on top of each other and it has been suprisingly stress free. Yes our rig will be even smaller, but we have the freedom and our health and can drive away from snow. I can't imagine a better life.
 
I have been full timing now for three years and could not be happier...I retired at 55 and lived for several years in a mobile home and wintered in Florida and lived in a remote Lodge in Alaska working in the summers...I hated paying rent on my lot in Florida during my summers away and knew I wanted to either move aboard a boat or an RV...I lived on my sailboat for years when I was younger and traveled all over the Caribbean and East Coast, so a land based yacht seemed like something new and exciting...it took 2 years to unload all my stuff and about 6 months to find something I could afford and then the rest was history...

I am so glad I did this, it is amazing how little space and stuff you really need....

It is a change for many people, a big change, but I think downsizing is a wise thing to do first and then go for it...

Jim

 
Wigpro said:
I have been full timing now for three years and could not be happier...I retired at 55 and lived for several years in a mobile home and wintered in Florida and lived in a remote Lodge in Alaska working in the summers...I hated paying rent on my lot in Florida during my summers away and knew I wanted to either move aboard a boat or an RV...I lived on my sailboat for years when I was younger and traveled all over the Caribbean and East Coast, so a land based yacht seemed like something new and exciting...it took 2 years to unload all my stuff and about 6 months to find something I could afford and then the rest was history...

I am so glad I did this, it is amazing how little space and stuff you really need....

It is a change for many people, a big change, but I think downsizing is a wise thing to do first and then go for it...

Jim

Wow this sounds cool, boat living. Not for me although, I see you are a photographer? Im freelance at the moment and Im sorry to bother you but im 23 and want to fulltime in a class C. Is freelance gonna pull enough income for this? As you have experience im asking you. Sorry for the inconvenience.
 
We've been full timing it now for seven months. It was something we always wanted to do. If you constantly worry about it being the right choice, you'll probably never do it. We made the decision and just did it. Sold the house and most of our possessions. Purchased a motorhome and hit the road...all within about a two month period! We still work, we're self employed and can take our business where ever we want to go, so that's what we're doing. Working and enjoying life while we travel place to place.

Looking forward to returning home to see the kids and grandkids this summer to spend as much time with them as we can before heading out again to meet work obligations and continue on with our journey.

Considering the weather up north this year...we picked the right time to go RVing!
 
Our simple story is that we had never RV'd, spent one night in a friend's Winnebago in his yard, had a DP in six weeks, and were gone for good in eight...

We have been full timing for almost four years and have never missed a beat. Yep, we must have been sure!

I view full timing as a huge recreational traffic circle and folks come into it from many directions, after various lengths of decision making, spend various amounts of time in the circle, and then ultimately exit in some form or fashion. We're in the dizzy, circling phase and don't have any plans to exit any time soon!

Life is good!

Kim
 
GavinHardison said:
Wow this sounds cool, boat living. Not for me although, I see you are a photographer? Im freelance at the moment and Im sorry to bother you but im 23 and want to fulltime in a class C. Is freelance gonna pull enough income for this? As you have experience im asking you. Sorry for the inconvenience.

There is very little money in photography and with the advent of newer cheaper digital cameras that do a great job, it is even less profitable. I make my money taking pictures and doing design work for websites, RV Parks, Resorts etc...don't really get paid what I should for the photographs, but I survive....

When I graduated photography school way back in the 70's I figured I would make a fortune...well a couple years of weddings and baby pictures soon made me realize there wasn't much money in it...so went into Graphic Design and commercial printing for a 30 year career with photography as a serious hobby...when I retired, decided to play with digital and have found a way to capture my travels and make a couple bucks along the way...but I could never survive on the revenue!

Good Luck, but find something that goes along with your love of photography and will pay a living...

Jim
 
I started full timing before I realized I was a full timer. When the apartments I was living in closed down, I left Reno on a six month camping trip and it took ten years to end. I am glad I didn't have to think about it, I just did it.
 
And then there are some of us who really love traveling but like having a stick-and-brick to come home to every now and then.  Some of us just are not cut out for fulltiming.  You'll know it if you are, just like we knew we weren't.

ArdraF
 
Wigpro said:
There is very little money in photography and with the advent of newer cheaper digital cameras that do a great job, it is even less profitable. I make my money taking pictures and doing design work for websites, RV Parks, Resorts etc...don't really get paid what I should for the photographs, but I survive....

When I graduated photography school way back in the 70's I figured I would make a fortune...well a couple years of weddings and baby pictures soon made me realize there wasn't much money in it...so went into Graphic Design and commercial printing for a 30 year career with photography as a serious hobby...when I retired, decided to play with digital and have found a way to capture my travels and make a couple bucks along the way...but I could never survive on the revenue!

Good Luck, but find something that goes along with your love of photography and will pay a living...

Jim

Thank you for replying, though I must confess this is very devastating news for me. I love photography as much as I love a steady income. Graphic design I can do. I thought long and hard on buying a self serve car wash and allowing it to make my income while im on the road. After realizing thats a mere dream, here I am. At a stand still for my RV living dream. So unless I win a lottery I not sure how its going to work out. I appreciate the help you have given me and also the well.. warning.
 
I spend a lot of time at DPreviews site and I am constantly amazed at the quality of work being produced by amateurs. The stuff by professionals is off the scale. Wigpro is right, the competition is intense. However he is also wrong saying there is very little money in photography. It is a very good paying career. But you need to work at it for many years to get into a position to make good money. So there is very little money for the masses of amateurs that think they can go professional.

The best way to make money today in photography is to shot stock photos. But everyone I know of that does that has to hire someone to do the tagging and submitting.
 
We kinda fell into it had inherited a home that ended up being condemed, rented a house that the owner decided to sell out from under us we didn't want to ever have someone say get out  again so we have our home on wheels when we get tired of an area we leave on working while fulltiming if you are willing to be extremely frugal you can make it work we are artists we don't make enough to live on that alone so we workcamp and I work a tax season job every year to make enough to get through craft show season no matter what the economy happens to throw our way I look at it this way if it was meant to be it will let you know in no uncertain terms
 
Both Tony and I were born with rambling genes. I've always loved traveling. He's always loved driving. A year long trip around the US in a Volkswagen Vanagon when we were in our early twenties set us on the course to planning for long term fulltiming. After sixteen years of working, saving and living simply we set off again. We hit some bumps along the way but it's been great for twenty years.
 
We were sort of ?accidental? full timers.

We didn't intend to full time, just wanted to take a three to six month trip around the country visiting friends and family and then find some warmer, cheaper place to buy or build a house. At the time we had a 96 model year motor home with no slides.

We threw away stuff, gave stuff to places that could make use of it and distributed as much as possible to our kids.
We put all of the rest of our stuff in storage so we wouldn't have to go back to NH if the house sold quickly and it was still cold and yucky there.

The house did sell quickly (in a month) and we found after about a year that we were having so much fun traveling and having no ties to a stick house that we decided to keep on full timing. We traded the 96 motor home in on a new 2004 with a lot more CCC, storage space and two slides.

That was 12 years ago and we both love the life style. But health issues and sort of "having done it all" have intervened and we are now snowbirds with a home in CO.
It was a wonderful 11 years though.
 
Back
Top Bottom