What is Full-Time RVing?

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Sometimes, I say things like “I’m a full-timer” fully expecting that people know what that means. But more often than not (and this is especially true when I talk to people in their twenties), no one knows what full-time RVing is. And I can say with certainty that the general public definitely has no idea that there are people out there who full-time RV before retirement and grandkids and gray hair and social security.

So what is full-time RVing? (And why is it the coolest thing I should be doing with my life right now?)

Full-time RVing or being a “full-timer” simply means I sleep all of my nights in my RV. It’s my house, my only home, and that’s all I’ve got.

So how do you get your mail?

This is literally the first question most people ask when I explain full-timing. Which, by the way, super boring question. I live on wheels and you want to know about mail. Smh.

If you really want to learn about mail, you can read this in-depth post about domicile, mail forwarding, and why Amazon Prime is the BOMB for RVers. 

Okay back to more interesting topics.

Let me explain a little more about what full-time RVing looks like.

When you’re a full-timer, you can:

• Live anywhere you want (In our experience, this has included beachfront of the Pacific Ocean, riverfront, lakefront, mountainside, on a volcano, on farms, in national forests, heck, we even took our rig to New York City–which I don’t recommend)
• Work from anywhere
• Not be tied down to mortgages, bills, and the monotony of staying one place
• Meet new people
• Spend more time in nature
• Save a ton of money
• Basically do anything you want all the time

All this could be summed up very succinctly: Full-timing is the BEST.

Who full-time RVs? (Can RV be a verb?)

In the past two years, I’ve met adults as young as 21 and as old as their 70s traveling full-time across the country. I’ve seen families with infants and teenagers and more kids than I could ever imagine living with in an RV all piled into a trailer traveling together.

Why Should I Full-Time RV?

One word: freedom.

In the past few decades, the world has changed in a million different ways. But the most overwhelming way is this: we have choices like society has never had before.

Your grocery store doesn’t offer great avocados? There are probably five others equidistant from your house. You don’t like Shell gas stations? You have a hundred other options. Nothing good on TV? Don’t worry, there are only millions of tv shows and movies you can watch on cable or satellite or the Internet. You don’t want to work from an office? You can work from home or a co-working space or Starbucks or a bar with wifi or an RV on the coast (yeah, I’ve done all of these).

We have more options every day than we know what to do with. Living in an RV and traveling full time is just one of them.

And yet, everyone is living in a home with four walls and indoor plumbing. Across the board, most people I know live in what we RVers call a “sticks and bricks” home. Which is great if you’re worried about tornadoes or if you want a stable, predictable future, but it’s not great if you want to get out and see the world and learn and grow and be a better person (all of these are side effects of full-time travel).

So you can be like everyone else and sit around complaining about the government and taxes and the probability that The Walking Dead comes true and we have zombies taking over the world.

Or, you can try full timing.

I know what you’re probably thinking now. What about work? How would I finance full-time travel?

Money is the biggest hurdle people face when it comes to leaping into the full-time travel lifestyle. When we started, we had zero ideas on how we would make money on the road. We figured it would be better to just start traveling and learn as we go. Which in retrospect seems a little wild and reckless, but it’s better than sitting around dreaming about someday. 

Surprisingly, for my husband and I, full timing opened a lot of doors for our business. Since moving into an RV, we’ve visited all 50 states, but we’ve also filmed a documentary, been on live national and international television, filmed a tv show, written books, published a course, filmed a bunch of gigs across the country, and we spend most of our days kayaking, because why not?

After working 12 hours in front of a screen editing a wedding yesterday, today seemed like a good day to be on the water. #entrepreneur #workfromhome #friday #rvlife #rving #winnebagolife #travel #kayak #lake #austin #atx #texas #sunshine #spring #camping #campgroundviews

A photo posted by Alyssa Padgett (@alyssapadge) on Apr 15, 2016 at 12:38pm PDT

This is the beauty of living in an RV. Your work and play and travel and life are all jumbled together, self-contained in your RV, able to go anywhere. You’re always heading somewhere, always looking forward to a new place to visit and explore. It’s a different way of doing life. It’s a way to travel, to learn more about America, to learn more about yourself, to get away from “normal” life, to try something new, to push yourself out of your comfort zone and probably leave you stranded on an interstate in the middle of the desert at least once in your lifetime.

That’s what full-time RVing is.