Fulltime RVer....next step is to let go of job!

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free2enjoy

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Dec 12, 2017
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Location
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Hello new friends!    :)

I'm a new student of cheaprvliving and to Bob Wells, THANK YOU for your YouTube "university" and other resources on living as a nomad!  And THANK YOU to the nomad community for sharing all their wisdom through Bob and other outlets!  

A little about me (and I look forward to getting to know all of you)....

My name is Andrew, I'm 52, an airline pilot and entrepreneur, and currently living in my 5th wheel at a local campground and before that my motorhome.  I've been living in RV's alone for nearly 3 years and love the RV lifestyle.  I live near Miami, Florida.

Like many, I'm fed up with paying taxes on top of taxes, insurance on top of insurance, and all the ways a brick and mortar home is a money and time pit.  Every time another $1000+ repair expense appears, it's like a punch to the gut.  Modern life is so complex that who has the ability to really live?  

While obviously I do a lot of travelling in my job, I don't get to do a lot of exploring as the layovers aren't that long.  And from the panoramic view of the cockpit, I fly over territory that is beautiful to look at but I crave to live in it.

My favorite places to layover are the mountainous regions in central America and Colombia in part because the climate is so perfect!  The daytime temps are perfect and at night, it cools off for amazing sleeping!  My dream is to live in such a place but there's no chance of me moving to one of those countries.  In the USA, obviously we have the mountains but mostly at too high a latitude for year round comfort.   

But to be able to be a nomad means to be able to truly have the best of the best of how I really want in live.   I will be able to have the mountain vistas, serenity and activities, likely avoiding the extremes of weather and not having to pay much while being able to move from place to place.

I've always been an entrepreneur at heart, trying a variety of businesses but not having found one that I wanted to stick with until the last one I started almost four years ago.  Early on, I recognized that it was easily mobile but hadn't grown enough to replace my flying career plus I've been in the process of exiting my marriage while the kids have been finishing school and securing their career positions as paramedics.  So I'm in the process of deconstructing a lifestyle that was never me.  I thought I wanted a house and all the stuff and in the end it buried me mostly in my time and finances not to mention sharing the life with someone that I wasn't actually a match for.

But when I chose to leave and live fulltime in my motorhome, I accomplished two things.  First, I truly saw that my business is easily mobile and I also found out that living alone is a POTENT catalyst for personal growth, especially when the TV and music are off.  For the first time in my life, I truly lived alone just me and my "thoughts", and I faced every one of them, realizing an intense "stillness" within me now.  And the TV and music are still off and will be 99% of the time forever.  Now, I can't stand the distraction.  

After about a year in the motorhome, I came across a beautiful 5th wheel for sale by a coworker in the same campground for a great price and upgraded to that.  It's got a king bed, washer dryer stack, 60" residential shower, etc....   The floorplan is amazing and I thought I would be living in it for at least 5 years.   I never bought a truck to pull it with because I had no plans to travel, just use it as my home.  South Florida is terribly expensive and here I am living like a King for $1100/month which includes my rent, loan, insurance, and electricity.  The airport is merely a 30 minute drive outside of rush hour.

My girlfriend is 20 minutes east of me and an avid tent camper for several years with her sons during Boy Scout camps.  As life is about change, I didn't think I would move in with her until her kids were gone for college, but the oldest just left for the Navy and the youngest and I get along too easily for me not to move in.  So I'm leaving teh 5th wheel later this month and going back to a house temporarily until....

....she and I hit the road fulltime as nomads when her youngest finishes high school in about 3.5 years!

Our plan is to buy a Ford Transit medium roof cargo van to contain the business and the frontrunner for living space right now is a Lance travel trailer, 19-23'.  And off we go, destination is "freedom" and we arrive there the moment we hit the road, leaving my job behind.  

We both want a lifestyle of relationships, not of things.  And along the way, we will be looking for a piece of land to buy for a homebase for old age and then plan something warm and modest to build on it.  

My 5th wheel could be a temporary home base to leave parked fulltime in a campground out west somewhere.  But these are early ideas.

In the meantime we are having fun learning from all the wonderful people on YouTube about how to thrive on the road.  What I love about Bob's channel is that it often represents the extreme of this lifestyle, vandwelling in the most minimalistic way.  Since I've been living in a luxury 5th wheel with a job income, etc...., I'm familiar with this spectrum of fulltime RV life.  As much as I love the community that is my campground, I don't want a lifestyle of living in what I call an RV marina, where rigs come to dock.  And I'm in a great park, in a rural area outside of the metroplex.  So the 5th wheel is not my first choice for being a nomad, but a van isn't either.  But much can be learned from everyone living in every possible way and I'm collecting insights and ideas at an incredible pace....again thanks to all of you!

Besides the 5th wheel, we recently bought a 2005 T@B trailer to use for fun and as a rental.  It serves multiple roles..... as a lifeboat in an emergency like a hurricane evacuation or civil unrest, a fun way to camp, and also as a rental.  My girlfriend melts over these campers and so I saw it as an opportunity for her to become an entrepreneur and express her creative side in dressing it up and marketing it.  I'm busy adding solar to it for boondocking which then I will take those lessons learned and apply it to my 5th wheel and later to whatever travel trailer we end up with.  

And we are going to be renting the 5th wheel to through Outdoorsy over the next four years too.  So both campers will serve as a source of income, a source of entrepreneur experience and more while we plan our nomad life, again commencing when her son finishes high school.

So to wrap it up, what I'm seeing is that I'm entering a chapter of my life that will bring together all that I love to do into one place....learn, mentor, travel, create, share, innovate, and more!  

Thanks for reading and I would love to hear from all of you!

Andrew
 
Welcome to the CRVL forums free2enjoy! Sounds like you're ready to go! Keep us updated.

To help you learn the ins and outs of these forums, this "Tips & Tricks" post lists some helpful information to get you started. We look forward to hearing more from you.
 
Welcome to the CRVL Forums...

Feel your dilemma, that job thing is my last anchor to the concrete jungle.

Good luck on the continuing adventure!
 
Thanks for the welcome!

The biggest anchor is my gf's son being in high school. He's a brilliant kid in a Charter school for Bio-Tech, a rare outstanding school in Florida. So we will use the next few years to plan, prepare and move forward with what we can until we are free to hit the road fulltime.

We plan on taking some practice trips using her T@B to get a feel for things. Since I've been living in a campground for nearly 3 years, I'm really familiar with that offering so we would be looking for something closer to boondocking, however, likely the longest trips will be in the summer at low elevations and I struggle to sleep without air conditioning. Her camper has air but for boondocking that won't happen unless we run the 2200watt inverter generator.

Anyhow, I love the sincerity, authenticity and intelligence of the people attracted to this kind of living.
 
Welcome free2enjoy. I'm new too. I am looking forward towards longtime veterans status and terabytes of pics of where I've been! :)
 
Recently in the news was an American Airlines pilot running a flight school AND a callgirl business on the side.

Ah, capitalism at its best!

Anyway, welcome, and I'll be listening on 123.45!
 
tx2sturgis said:
Recently in the news was an American Airlines pilot running a flight school AND a callgirl business on the side.

Ah, capitalism at its best!

Anyway, welcome, and I'll be listening on 123.45!

That was a United pilot!!   :cool:
 
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