So you wanna hit the road and leave all that’s familiar behind so you can see the world?! We do, too!!! As I’m sure you can imagine, our biggest hindrance to full-time traveling goals is…well…life!
When you consider how much it costs to work and live a normal life, though, full-time traveling goals seem much more mathematically feasible when you cut those things out of the budget.
Of course, the more you camp (even as a weekend warrior like us right now), the more you realize that it’s not so hard to do! The things we’ve heard from full-time travelers is that it just takes some radical, against-the-grain thinking to achieve radical against-the-grain results.
HOW TO REACH YOUR FULL-TIME TRAVING GOALS:
GET OUT OF DEBT
Whether you’re hoping to live out of an RV, or van, or any other kind of camper, the first step is this: SIMPLIFY!
Simplify your money – GET OUT OF DEBT! Living on less than what you make is a HUGE part of being a full-time traveler. It’s also counter-intuitive for most people in modern society. Keeping up with the Joneses is not a game you can play if you have full-time traveling goals! We took a class called Financial Peace University by Dave Ramsey. His lessons teach INVALUABLE lessons on how to become debt free as quickly as possible.
SIMPLIFY YOUR LIFE
Cut back on EVERYTHING to save money. Simplify your stuff, sell it, throw it away, do what it takes to HAVE LESS STUFF. Move into a smaller place for less rent or a smaller house payment.
Have a garage sale. Get rid of extra clothes, decorations, and just general STUFF! The fewer things you have to pay for upkeep, the more money you can save! SAVE MONEY like your life depended on it…because it will!
Remember, you can only take so many things with you when you travel in an RV anyway! May as well get rid of it now!
(On this note, we’ve been considering selling our house and using the equity to pay cash for a tiny fixer-upper to have as a home base for when we’re not traveling. It would also pay for us to have a larger camper and truck to haul it with.)
DEFINE GOALS
Once you’re on track to be out of debt and have your stuff simplified, you need to decide what exactly your full-time traveling goals look like for you.
Will you only travel for a few months or a whole year, or do you want to sustain that way of life indefinitely? If you only want to take a year or so off, decide how much of that time will be used actually traveling, and how much of it you will be stationary.
Try to come up with a good solid number of how much money you will need. Most RV parks will usually give a decent discount
for additional days you intend to stay. If you stay a week vs. one night, the rate gets better. If you stay a month instead of a week, the rate will be even better yet.
Do you need to create passive or mobile income, or can you negotiate a mobile working situation with your current employer as suggested in The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss.
Of course, I’d recommend you start a blog and working it to create financial freedom! 🙂 Don’t forget to check out my resources for beginning bloggers. (Both mine and Glynn’s income is location-based, so creating mobile income through the blog is ESSENTIAL for us.)
PREPARE
Buy your rig. Is your budget more of a pop-up camper budget, or will you travel in luxury in a huge class A motorhome? Choosing your rig largely depends on how you’ll use it, but it also depends on how much money you have to spend.
When writing down you full-time traveling goals, choose wisely, but don’t sweat it too much. You can always sell it later and either upgrade or downgrade to something that fits your lifestyle better if you don’t like it.
Remember to do your best to keep debt at bay. The fewer payments you have to manage once on the road, the easier your life
will be doing it.
BEGIN THE JOURNEY
Hit the road! This will most likely be the scariest step of all. We watch a lot of YouTubers who all seem to say this. They are all nervous and excited when their journey starts.
One of our favorite YouTubers is Keep Your Daydream. Here is their first 6-month trip. They’re a cute family that is a couple years ahead of us in their progress! 🙂
Whether your full-time traveling goals are to see the world from your RV for the rest of your life, or just to take a short 6-month stint off of work to take a break, it will take lots of planning and preparation. Be sure to do your research and prep before you go!
Don’t forget to follow us on our journey, and ask us anything, anytime in the comments!
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