This one makes me laugh every time. We’ve heard dozens of different variations of this question. Some people try to be discreet about their curiosity while others almost demand to know.

“So, you’re independently wealthy?”
“Wow! You must have won the lottery!”
“How is it you’re able to do this?”
“Must be nice to have so much money you don’t need to work.”
“You guys sure retired young!”

These are all quotes, guys. I swear I’m not making any of them up.

Everyone wants to know how we’re making the full-time RV lifestyle work when we’re not retired. Even though there is a growing number of families turning to the RV lifestyle, we’re still pretty rare to find so we expect some questions.

There are actually several ways you can make the RV lifestyle work for you. We’re fortunate that Jerl works for an amazing company (waves to all of our Weather Trends family) who doesn’t mind that he works remotely. Working remotely over the internet allows us the opportunity to move around every one to two weeks. We always have to make sure there will be a strong Verizon cell signal at the RV park we’ll be at. It’s worked really well for us so far, but we always try to check the signal strength on the Verizon website before we commit to an RV park. I can only think of two times that we’ve had to change our plans because Jerl couldn’t work. Once was in Haines, Alaska where every time a cruise ship came into port all two thousand people on board would jump on their phones and the internet would come to a screeching halt. We ended up leaving a day early there. Another time was in Arizona when we were planning on staying in a place for two weeks while we explored the Grand Canyon. When we pulled in Jerl checked his signal strength and it was a big fat zero. So, the RV park was nice enough to let us leave the RV there while we took the car to try and find something that would work for us.

You don’t really have to be tech savvy to make working remotely work for you. I can’t give you any tips. Jerl does all of that for us. There are some great resources out there to help you figure out what will work the best for you. Technomadia is a great resource for all things techy and they usually do a pretty good job at responding to any and all questions.

So, you don’t work over the internet, you’re not independently wealthy, and you haven’t won the lottery. There are other ways to transition to living in an RV and traveling. I’m not an expert on all of the different ways out there. I really only know what works for us. We recently met another full-time family who started out by finding workamper jobs.  Nope, I didn’t misspell that. Workamper is a word that describes someone who takes jobs in exchange for a spot to park their RV and sometimes they make money too. There’s a website… Workamper News that you can visit to find jobs if this interests you. Some families own their own business. Some families work in construction or on pipelines. There are really tons of options if you’re willing to get creative and maybe step outside your comfort bubble.

“BE BRAVE. Without bravery, you will never know the world as richly as it longs to be known. Without bravery, your life will remain small – far smaller than you probably wanted your life to be.”  ~Elizabeth Gilbert~

Have a question for us? Leave a comment here on the blog or email us at js@ourrvtrip.com!

See y’all down the road!