Living Well While full-time RVing

Full-time RVing may look attractive whether it’s a budget decision or a retirement choice. Is it easy to live full-time in an RV? I intend this blog to be a good place to start the discussion.

RVing offers exciting alternatives if you don’t want a regular life and a regular job. Full-time RVing and tight budgets can be a contradiction, but since the first motorhome appeared in the 1910s, people have looked past the contradictions to find an inexpensive way to live. It’s a wild change of scenery, that’s for certain.

Here is a list of things to consider:

1. What’s the cost? The budget necessities
2. How to finance it: Finding sources of income
3. Optimize the rig: The structure and plumbing of an RV

Does Full-Time RVing Provide Full-time Shelter?

RVs are considered temporary shelters by officials who seek to license them. Theoretically, you could take any vehicle, add plumbing, electricity, and heating and meet all the requirements of an RV for licensing purposes, that is, putting a license plate on it that says it’s an RV. If problems exist, like the roof leaks, the scope of the problem and the solution are your responsibility.

Structurally, motorhomes feel every bump on the road, and the parts pull apart. If you put your motorhome on a foundation at a trailer park, the city inspectors would probably condemn it because of the light framing. So, is it a great place to live?

Obviously, it’s fantastic to have a change of scenery every month. Just the fact that you’ll be seeing a new country all the time might make discomforts bearable. That includes light framing. After all, it must be lightweight by its very nature because it’s a portable house.

Full-Time RVing: Where to Park It?

One of the biggest logistical challenges in full-time RVing is the place to park it. The choices range from expensive campgrounds in extravagant vacation destinations to spartan boondocking in crude, rustic wilderness areas.

The actual cost of living in a motorhome, adding campground fees, may be possible for as little as $1200 per month. You can try boondocking if you want to blow off the $500 to $750 for a monthly campground fee. Unfortunately, without a campground rental, you will be genuinely homeless, which is a pretty prickly pickle to be in regardless of where you are. 

Campground choices present several advantages.

1. Plumbing and electricity area available at hookups, making life easier. A high quality of life is possible with the campground choice.
2. Campgrounds often offer a reasonable monthly rental fee compared to the overnight stopover fee.
3. The stability allows full-time RVers with smaller vehicles in tow to mirror the home and available car during a month’s stay. The rig can stay put while you tool around in an economical car.
4. There are often amenities at campgrounds like grocery stores, WIFI, recreation, and public services that make them desirable. You can commiserate with your neighbors. Perhaps you’ll discover what observers have described as a loose, rolling community of full-time RVers.

Choice of RV

This raises an oft-debated question: Do you want a motorhome or a trailer pulled by a pickup truck? A motorhome will guzzle gas, but you may only move it once a month. That means most of your transportation is done by a towed, economical automobile. On the other hand, pulling a trailer with a ¾ ton truck allows you to unhook the trailer and use the truck as transportation.

Tip: An RV park offers significant deterrence to stealing trailers: Security cameras, security guards, the presence of neighbors, and management.

Tip: Trailers are often licensed as simply open or closed trailers, so it’s easy to swap plates on a stolen trailer in some areas of the country. Do you want to suffer that? A stolen RV on the other hand is a stolen vehicle.

Go for the Monthly Rate

A maximized life in motorhome can be found when you park it in a fixed place for monthly rent. 

1. Monthly rent is much cheaper than daily stop-over fees.
2. You can save money on food because you’re eating from a grocery store, not an expensive restaurant. Eating in restaurants can add up to hundreds of dollars more than fixing your own food.
3. Unhooking from the media outlets can be a blessing. That’s what full-time RVers report anyway. Suppose you’ve traveled to a beautiful destination. Every morning, you watch a dynamic scene full of natural scenery. Why waste your time on television or internet programming?  

How Tricky is the Cashflow?

Next, RVs are for mobile living, not inner-city living, or living in places where jobs are abundant. You can escape from everyday life—escape, that is, from the workplace or your business place. Finding the cash flow to finance this way of life might seem tricky. 

Here are some pointers about funding this lifestyle:

1. Social security, pensions, and 401K payments that are electronically deposited in your bank account will solve problems with paper checks. Paper checks as payment present complications if sent through slow mail to an abandoned address. 
2. To generate cash flow, offer your services as you travel. List in Craigslist in the community you are in Just hang up your shingle wherever you are. Experience in generating business on sites like Craiglist are probably important. 
3. To make money, pursue gig income. Online income from tasks you do on the computer could help fund your way of life. You won’t have to leave the motorhome, assuming you have a good internet connection. Check if the campground you stay in offers a wifi connection.
4. Monetize a blog. Perhaps your adventures can be put into a published blog. If you have social media savvy, you may be able to monetize a blog and generate income that way.

TIP: Social security is a great way to fund full-time RVing. By the time you’re in your sixties, consider applying for social security. Crunch the numbers and discover your monthly income with your retirement funds.

Free Rent?

There are several ways to boondock or park your RV and sleep that cost basically nothing. The most obvious one is a mall or store parking lot. While historically this has been true, many malls and stores restrict overnight camping in their parking lots, and for good reasons. People trash the lots, or treat the parking lot as a campground, even while just staying overnight.

People who have parked in store parking lots, have made the following suggestions: 

1. Ask permission. Go inside and ask a store manager if you can camp overnight. They might tell you to go park by the truck drivers who often park their sleepers at the back of the parking lot. 
2. Don’t go outside. It’s not a campground. Be inconspicuous. Don’t even leave the RV. As a rule, arrive late and leave early. And leave no footprint whatsoever. 
3. Don’t stay in the same parking lot more than once. This might be difficult for people who discover a neighborhood they like. They may abuse the privilege. 
4. Don’t ever dump anything. Some sources tell nightmare stories about people dumping their grey water tanks and even their black water tanks. Tsk tsk.

One experienced full-time RVer advises campers to never stay overnight on private property, like a store parking lot. You could be tagged for trespassing or worse. So, the suggestion here is to always park in a public street. The cops might run you off, but they don’t have grounds to charge you with trespass.

The Bureau of Land Management and Parks

Some Nat’l Parks offer limited free camping, and if you do your homework, you can find places to stay for free. These are bare-bone camping sites. You may miss the amenities, or you may not. For instance, the sites often have no hookups, so self-sufficiency is a real virtue here. Consider wiring your unit with solar panels or buying a generator to produce your power. These sites have proved very tempting to the right kind of RVers.  

In fact, being energy independent cuts your cost. The investment is often nominal. 

Is It Truly Less Expensive?

While many people will tell you it’s less expensive to live in an RV, the truth is a little messy. For example, if you go to Florida and stay in a campground that charges $1200 a month, you may not save much more money than living in a home.

In an RV, you might monitor all of your costs. It becomes so tempting to eat at restaurants, splurge on tourist traps, or buy pricey equipment – all of which cost money. Don’t spend more money living on the road than you would spend living in a dwelling. If you watch your spending, you could save hundreds of dollars. 

This blog was published in 2021, and has been slightly edited.

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