In the almost five years that we have been married we quickly figured out that we both love to travel. We have taken multiple cruises and countless road trips since we have been together. In June we started trying to plan our big vacation for 2013... Should we plan another cruise or maybe take another crazy two week road trip to New England or Canada from our home in Texas? Do we want to take a trip with our dogs or leave them at a pet hotel? Maybe we should rent an RV?
I can remember the moment that changed everything. I quite casually said to my husband "Why don't we just buy an RV, live on the road, and go see America?"
Ever since then we have spent most of our time trying to figure out how we are going to make this happen.
What are we going to do about money? We are fortunate that when we married the company that my husband works for allowed him to move to the town where I lived and work remotely, currently about 350 miles from his home office. We figure if he can do his job from here, he can do it from anywhere. My situation is a bit different. I have worked in a clerical position at a hospital for over 22 years. While I have managed to get myself to an okay living wage with my years of service, I never obtained a set of skills that would easily translate to a mobile life. I am still not sure exactly what I am going to do other than be our designated dog walker and house cleaner. I am hoping that I can pick up some workamping gigs along the way and still bring in some money.
Class A or 5th Wheel? We still haven't figured that out but are leaning more towards the 5th wheel at this point simply because of the extra space. We have 3 beagles and 3 cats that are very much our family and there is no way any of them are going to be left behind. With a 5th wheel we think that everyone will still have the space that they need to spread out; plus the dogs can still have room to chase each other from one end of the house to the other!
What about our house? We are going to list our house in the spring/ summer of 2013. There are a few improvements we will make in the spring (landscaping, new liner for the pool, paint, etc.) and we are hoping to be on the market no later than June of next year.
What about our stuff? I have already started sorting through some of my things and thinning them out a bit with Goodwill donations. We will keep a basic house in storage for about a year, just in case this thing doesn't work out. Everything else will either have to be given to charity or sold on e-bay or craigslist. I'm already seeing that this is going to be a very challenging issue because we have so much stuff, but we want this badly enough that we will make it happen.
Do we know what we are doing? Well.... no actually. We've bought many books on the subject and have been following several blogs where others are making this dream happen. Many of them give some really good insight into what this is going to entail. I don't think that there is any way we can fully prepare for what we are about to do. We are planning on traveling to Houston, TX in early February to attend a large RV show to help us decide exactly what kind of rig we want, but other than that this adventure is most likely going to be a learning experience along the way.
When? Where? How? We are going to need to get out of our current living situation before we can do anything. Once we have a solid offer on the house we will begin a search for our new home and hopefully we will know exactly what we want at that point. In the spring we will go ahead and rent a storage unit and start to thin out and sell off our belongings so when we are near closing we should be able to make the transition easily. After the RV show we will know whether we need to trade in both of our current vehicles for a big truck or just sell our Honda Pilot and purchase a tow dolly for or VW New Beetle. We have looked at local parks and have picked a place that we would be good for staying in town for a few weeks after we get the rig, just to get the kinks worked out. After that, who knows where we will go.. We have a wedding to attend in Austin, TX next fall, but other than that we are planning to go wherever our hearts take us.
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