Published Article

I have stepped up my blogging to include a wider audience.  Once a week I receive an email on behalf of Passport America, a discount RV club we belong to, regarding recent articles that have been published from various sources about RV’ing.  They call it a News Blast.  I enjoy reading it as it does have a variety of articles about the RV industry, RV parks, RV equipment, etc.  In the last issue they mentioned that they were interested in finding people to submit articles about RV’ing to them for inclusion.  I inquired with them and was asked to submit an article.  I wrote a four part article about full time RV’ing and the first part came out yesterday. 

No pay for the article but it is fun and I hope informative.  Here is the link to the published article.

http://www.multibriefs.com/briefs/passport/

So you do not have to wait an entire month to read the entire article here is the whole thing.

Full Timing

Part 1 – The Decision

Are you considering full timing? What’s involved? What do you do? Questions, questions, questions. If you are like me and have a passion for RV’ing this lifestyle may be something to consider. My wife and I made the leap just over two years ago and I would like to offer the process we went through in making the lifestyle decision and what has happened. Your circumstances may not be the same and other factors may be involved but our process can at least give you things to consider and hopefully answer some of your questions.

First, the decision to full time. We had owned RV’s for over 20 years and enjoyed going away on weekends and taking a couple of long trips (2 weeks) each year. As our three girls became teenagers we sold our RV as we could not find the time to get out with it. When they began college, and I retired, we decided it was time to get back into RV’ing. We picked up where we had left off. Shortly after buying our travel trailer I read an article in an RV publication about full timing. Up until then I had never really thought of it. The article intrigued me so I gave it to my wife to read and then asked her if this is something she would be interested in and she said yes.

With this initial spark of interest I jumped into the research and planning mode to see how we could make this happen. How much would it cost? What do we do with our home? Our stuff? On and on the questions went. Those questions and answers are what I will address in the planning and implementation parts of this article. First I want to get back to this decision phase and not pass over it casually.

If you are going to do this with a partner (wife, significant other, friend, etc.) you need to have an honest discussion in coming to this decision. What is the impact of living in a small space with each other? Consideration has to be given about how much time together you will be spending, possibly not seeing your family and friends as often. These are important items and if not addressed upfront could lead to tension and anger later.

For us, a driving force was that our daughters were now out of college and on their own and living in 3 different states. The two of us were living in a four bedroom house in a cold weather city (suburb of Chicago). We thought that full timing would be a good way to explore the country and see places where we might like to settle down at a later date. We discussed the issues I mentioned above and were comfortable with our answers. We decided that we would try this for 2 years and reevaluate at that point.

Now the planning……

Part 2 – Planning

The first big decision for us was to keep or sell the house. For us keeping the house, other than for investment purposes, did not make sense as we knew we did not want to live in the area. Chicago is a beautiful city and our 18 years in the area were great, it is just that we were tired of the long stretch of cold weather and our family lived in other parts of the country. First decision made, we will sell the house.

Next was the financial issue. Can we afford to do this. By making the decision to sell the house this question was sort of answered. If we could afford our house payment then we should be able to handle full timing. I wanted to make sure so I put together a sample budget. I listed all the expenses that would not change with full timing and then estimated expenses for gas, RV park fees, food and incidentals. As we had a fairly ambitious travel plan I knew we would be driving a lot. I estimated 20,000 miles per year and calculated fuel costs based on miles per gallon and average cost of gas. For RV parks my experience has shown that an average of $35 per night was reasonable. As we had only used RV’s in the past for short trips I did not factor in the cost of propane and this can be a significant expense when full timing as you are using it to cook and heat your rig and the prices can vary wildly. We have minimized this expense somewhat by using electric space heaters and an electric countertop oven for cooking. Other budget items to consider, if you choose them, are satellite TV service, internet service (cellular aircard) and roadside assistance.

The budget issue resolved we moved to the next decision, what do we want to live in? My first impression was that this was easy, a motorhome. My thought process was that a motorhome was bigger and had the most storage and comforts for a full timer. We headed out to the RV show in Rosemont, IL to check out what was on the market. As we toured the show we really became interested in the fifth wheels. We were impressed with the floorplans and the large amount of storage available in these units. To us, the floorplans were more to our liking in defining the living area and kitchen area. The large basement storage compartment in the larger fifth wheels was a definite plus. Following the show we were now leaning towards a fifth wheel but were a little hesitant because our driving around car would now be a very large pickup. We talked at length about this issue and decided we would be OK with the large vehicle as we liked what the fifth wheels had to offer.

From the show we had interest in a couple of brands of fifth wheels but I wanted to see what else was available. Since this was going to be our home I wanted to make sure we saw everything that was available. I hit the internet over a couple of weeks. I found websites for all makers of fifth wheels, compared specifications and printed off floorplans for models that had what we were looking for. We settled on a midrange fifth wheel and decided ordering it would be best for us as we wanted many of the options that were available.

Home decision made I moved onto the tow vehicle. The weight of the trailer pretty much dictates what type of truck you need to look at. I felt having something that had a towing capacity larger than what we needed plus added stability would give us the most confidence we could handle any situation. We settled on a 1 ton crew cab pickup with dual rear wheels. It is a large truck and it can be difficult in major cities trying to find parking, but you do not even notice you are towing a 40 foot trailer.

The last major decision in the planning process was “where do we live”? What I mean by this is we needed a driver’s license, car registration, receive mail, etc. We needed an address! My research showed that full timers mainly use South Dakota, Texas or Florida for their address. The main reasons for these three states are that they have no state income tax, easy residency requirements and no annual vehicle inspection requirement. Closer research led me to South Dakota as they have a 3% excise tax on the purchase of new vehicles and no sales tax on the purchase. There residency rule to obtain a driver’s license is that you must spend one night in the state, show a receipt from an RV park or motel and sign an affidavit that your considering South Dakota as your residence when you stop full timing. They are really full timer friendly. Our actual “address” was obtained via a mail forwarding service in Madison, South Dakota. There are many such businesses to choose from throughout the state.

One additional item I will mention is to make sure your medical insurance covers you as you travel around. For us we had a national plan from a major carrier that covered us no matter what state we were in.

Planning done, now we move onto implementation……

Part 3 – Implementation

We have our house on the market, our fifth wheel ordered and our truck purchased. Now we have to put it all together and begin our “Life on the Road”.

As previously mentioned we settled on South Dakota as our state of residence. I contracted with a mail forwarding service in Madison, South Dakota to obtain our address. When I bought the truck they used this address so the truck was registered in the state. We made the drive to Madison to obtain our license, which was a very easy process.

Now for the elephant in the room, our stuff (we actually did not own an elephant, but we had STUFF). Our decision was to go minimalist. So much of our furniture we had for many years and, if we settle down later, we would want new stuff. We set aside the items we did want to keep and those that we would be taking with us in the fifth wheel and then started the process of disposing of the remainder. Fortunately one of our daughters was moving into her own apartment so she took some of the items. Another relative took a good portion, leaving the rest to be disposed of through a garage sale, charity donations and trash. This process took a couple of months but we did it. We placed our saved items in storage at a friend’s house.

Our fifth wheel arrived about 3 months before our house sold. This allowed us to do some work on the RV and get it ready for full timing. Mainly this had to do with organizing how we were going to store items and setting up the TV’s for satellite service. A week before our scheduled move out date I brought the RV to our house and parked it in the driveway. This allowed us to begin moving items into the RV and see if everything would fit. For the most part we did OK but still had to downsize a little more to make it all work.

On move out day we were ready to go. Our first stop was the local truck stop to get the trailer weighed. I had read that one of the biggest problems full timers have is they overload their trailers because they are carrying so much stuff. Fortunately for us, our minimalist approach had worked, we were a thousand pounds under capacity, which was good because we had no fluids in any of the tanks.

Part 4 – How it has worked

We hit the road in January of 2011 and have just passed the two year mark. As previously mentioned we had decided on full timing for two years then reevaluate. Let’s recap what we have done in the past two years before I get to the reevaluation phase. We have traveled approximately 40,000 miles, been to 24 states and 2 Canadian provinces. The longest we have stayed in one place is 6 weeks. We have traveled clear across the United States, west to east, and are now in the middle of an east coast trip south to north. We have enjoyed this lifestyle and have so much more to see that our reevaluation was easy, yes, we would continue, indefinitely. At the present we have a general travel plan that covers the next two years and involves the great RV experience of traveling to Alaska.

I will let you in on some of the things we have found with the lifestyle and what has worked for us. First is we have settled into a habit of not driving more than a couple of hundred miles between stops. This allows for no refueling with the fifth wheel attached and driving time of 4 to 5 hours. For the most part we generally stay at a stop for at least a week. This allows for discounted park fees and for us to complete our errands (laundry and grocery shopping).

As previously mentioned I had not really thought about propane usage when full timing but it quickly became an issue. When we left in January of 2011 it was very cold in the Midwest and it took us some time before we got to warmer weather. As a result we were using a 30 lb. tank of propane every 2 to 3 days to heat the trailer. At some places it could cost close to $30 dollars to fill a tank, so the expense became significant. We invested in a couple of electric space heaters and used this to supplement the internal propane heater. This, coupled with our use of a countertop electric oven, has resulted in more manageable propane costs.

Our medical insurance worked great and refilling prescriptions is a snap as our pharmacy allows you to manage them online and they have stores in just about every city.

Internet coverage can be difficult at times as RV parks will advertise they have Wi-Fi but in so many cases we find the coverage is spotty to the sites and some will charge for the service. We have smartphones and a tablet with data plans so we always have access to the internet.

As previously mentioned we went with satellite TV service as many parks do not have cable and we wanted to be able to use a DVR. Originally I used a portable dish but realized this was too much work to set up and take down with our travel schedule so we had a motorized automatic dish mounted on the roof of the fifth wheel. This has been one of the best investments as it just requires a push of a button. It has found the signal in sites I did not think it would be able to.

Our mail service has worked great. We give them an address to forward our mail to, which is our daughter, and she then advises us if we have anything important. Generally if it is important she can scan the document in and email it to us. In rare cases we have her send it to the park we are at. Most parks are receptive to letting you receive mail at the park.

Roadside assistance is a must, in my opinion, as it can be difficult to try and change a tire on a 16,000 pound fifth wheel on the side of the road.

For trip planning we use various RV park directories that are available plus online review sites. A good tool I found is Google maps satellite feature to check out a park from above to see if it is near train tracks, airports or noisy businesses.

I hope this has been helpful and you choose to become a full timer. It is an adventure you do not want to miss!