what do you need to know before you start your full-time rv journey
so we have been traveling now full-time for just over a year so we're going to give you guys a
couple of the things that we have found along the way on the road that may help you decide
well and i think things that people don't necessarily think about so first of all
this life is not all unicorns and unicorns and rainbows by any means when you see us on youtube
or you see other people on youtube most of us are showing you everything that we've done in the
highlights of what we've done we've had some bad moments and we've shared some of those with you
yeah the awning where you let the awning break what are you looking at our awning that's now
what is this perpendicular perpendicular to the ground instead of
parallel with the ground not a good day i thought you always bring your awning in you do
again i did it my my fault again you asked any of our kids or anybody that knows us
you are 150 anal about the awnings the awning the black tank well now don't you tell everybody what
happened on your first rookie mistake it wasn't my rookie mistake my husband no no no no no
water pump turned on and i had a big bag of dog food that wasn't from the canister and it
was sitting in here and while we traveled it fell off and landed on the foot petal
and filled the entire back black tank we've we've had some things all in all over the course of the
year it's been good it's been a good year but it's just like at home guys so if you
know in your sticks and bricks you have a plumbing problem you have a choice of probably five or six
maybe more than that plumbers in the area and you can call and you can get prices and you can
go with the cheapest the most expensive the guy in between however your decision-making process most
of the time when you're home you know a plumber you've grown up with a plumber you've grown up
electrician you've grown up with somebody that you are you know an hvac guy you can call somebody say
help me with this real quick when you're on the road and you're 3000 miles away from home
first of all that plumber that you had has no idea what an rv what an rv is well and the thing is
people have this unrealistic expectation because they're used to going out for a weekend
and everything's great you get there and the worst thing that could happen is you have a hard time
getting your campfire started but we don't need to do campfires anymore but when you're at home
you know that you know like you have a plumbing problem or your heater goes out or you know
maybe a tree hits the side of your house or you need a new roof or a patch or whatever
there's a huge group of people that you can call for those types of repairs in an rv number one
that group of people is way smaller so but they're here i mean the campground we're at right now has
hundreds of people and we can say we need help and somebody's going to help you right but to get
something fixed on an rv chances are either you're going to have to take it to the dealership which
if you're living in [ __ ] months that means you have to coordinate with a dealership for
it to be there the shortest amount of time it's possible which could mean a hotel stay in addition
to the cost of the repair oh and we're carrying dogs so first of all you've got to find a hotel
that's crazy or maybe you're lucky and it's something that you can call a mobile rv check
out and they can help you except they're a little more expensive just because they're mobile um
they're coming to you so you're gonna pay a little more than you would if you were at home um so it's
you know it's a more specialized market that these people are in the repair people for rvs now some
of you can you know may be handy we can fix a lot of things ourselves but then there's going
to be things that you just can't fix yourself um so just like in sticks and bricks you're going to
have things go wrong it's just not going to be as convenient to get them fixed when one other
thing you have to do shipping is hard because we move from place to place to place so you have to
try to figure out where are you going to be by the time that ship makes right so you just need this
little part we've researched it and we found it you see this little part and you're going to ship
it and then you get on there and it can't be there before you leave maybe you send it to the next
place and then it comes to the last it's shipping can be a total nightmare especially in these days
yay we're on vacation yeah that's point number two just because you're full time in your rv
does not mean you're on vacation sure if you're retired um or maybe you're able to take an
extended vacation you might be on vacation but there's a huge group of people just like us that
aren't retired yet and we're not on vacation i'm still working that brings up a whole nother set of
problems or things you should think about i guess before you hit the road yeah it's an issue it's a
thought if you're working on the road and or if you have kids that are doing school
online you must find a place that has some kind of internet right um and we're fortunate that
we have a hot spot and it's through at t and it works most of the time but there are times
that it does not work so you need to have a plan in place for those locations and chances are
you don't know until you get there that it's bad we've been to a place that didn't have
cell service right which was nice because we were on vacation then no work no self-service no
work but we're not on vacation now and a lot of your friends and family if you hit
the road full-time on our in the rv will assume that it's just that that you're on vacation so
it's going to be hard for them to grasp it first because they'll be calling and saying
what'd you do today what did you see every day i worked what are you doing now working um i was
asking what did you see today well i was sitting in my cubicle and okay we were in our cubicle
well so then it kind of sounds like we just work work work all the time and we don't but so part of
that part of this this little um topic i guess is that if you are still working like we are
and there's something you want to see in an area first of all you don't need to see
everything there is to see it you're not going to see it not on vacation
but if there's something specific you want to see you need to plan for that whether it means
you're going to need to take a day off from work or if your schedule is like ours and it's flexible
we might go do some sightseeing and playing today but then we'll come back and work this evening
until midnight like last night midnight or maybe instead of staying a week you want to stay
two weeks so you have a weekend or two to check some things out um you know you just there's a
lot of planning that goes in so it's not like at home where you plan to go to work and home today
and then you're going to do something tonight this weekend so a lot more planning that goes into that
when you're on the road and if you need to travel on the weekends you have to plan that accordingly
two days to get from point a to point b if you're clocking in you know you're working remotely but
you still have to clock in for certain during certain hours of the day then that means either
you're going to travel at night which people do it i'm not a fan because i feel like you're stuck
on the side of the road in the dark with an rv that's not it's doable but it's not optimal so
i would like to travel during the day so if we had to have a strict monday through
friday work schedule we would have to plan to move on weekends and we would have to plan
the stretch that we're going to move from one spot to the next to be achievable
over the weekend number three it's all about being fancy somebody that travels with me
not the dog has to be fancy i don't have to be fancy but i do like gadgets and i like we all
like gadgets i like things that will help make my life easier so it gets tricky for me sometimes
because in the rv there's all kinds of things in the rv industry to make life easier and i'll
see something and think that's really cool that's really neat and then i get it and then i think
i don't really need this because it's really cool it's a really cool like wine bottle opener
that's you know only like this big and that's great except we don't really drink much wine so
the old cheap one i have that doesn't take up a whole lot more room is fine so i don't think it's
all about the gadgets and fancy fancy if they've watched our last video where you collect your junk
as we go down the road and we go here and go there and you go to your antique stores and
treasures and it's treasures especially if it's things that i collect and then i make things
out of them that save us from buying them but that's that's a whole another that's where we're
talking about getting too much stuff no but i just think people get drawn into you watch your
neighbor use a product and you think wow that's cool we could really use one of those but you
need to really think about could you really use one of those it might be a neat gadget but it
might not be something that you necessarily would use in your day-to-day and the problem is first of
all in an rv don't have a ton of space so we all look for things that make it easier to get things
done but at the same time if you start collecting gadgets and things that you don't necessarily need
they take up space and space is at a premium so no need having things that you don't need that
are going to take up space or create extra weight in your rig so number four is weight
not our weight but kind of our weight so it's all about how much stuff you carry
in your camper some of these campers you can't put so much weight in there so when
you start adding water you know each gallon of water weighs eight pounds so we have a i think
94 almost 100 gallons so we're carrying 800 gallons of extra weight when you're carrying
water and you don't always carry water in your tanks but you need to be conscious of the fact
if you do ever carry water in your tanks you need to be conscious of how much weight you've got and
stuff other than that like just stuff a lot of people couple main things you put your water in
your tanks which is eight pounds per gallon and then you stock that refrigerator completely up
so you're talking pots and pans and all the stuff that fills your cabinets it always something so
you got to keep an eye on your weight make sure you're not overweight because i think we can only
carry three thousand four thousand pounds total i hope you know that number because i count on you
for that i have no idea what we can carry we're not overweight yet we've checked it a couple times
we're not overweight as of yet so bottom line is keep an eye on what you're putting in there if you
don't need it in there don't put it in there i'll take it and and you'll quickly learn the things
you need and the things that you don't see look my weight just got smaller you wouldn't know what to
do without me which brings us to number five you are in a minimum or a maximum of 450 square feet
if you don't love the ones that you're in with it's not going to be any fun so whether that's
just two of you whether it's two of you and pets whether it's two of you and kids
or if you're lucky enough or you're just by yourself you don't have to worry about it
love the ones you're with and you have to love them you have to love them you have to like them
because it's tough 400 square feet from 2500 square feet right at home if he's
getting on my nerves i can just go in the other room because i have 2 400 square feet
now if he's getting on my nerves the other way around it's not far enough and let's be
real guys the walls on the camper is like you know this thick so this thick but they feel
like this thickness i know that our neighbors are thinking we're yelling at each other every single
day because somebody has a dog that's pretty deaf i have a 15 year old westie for those of you that
don't know and he has pretty much lost his hearing he can only hear really loud sharp like if you
clap your hands really loud or if you scream his name so i tell our neighbor i tell our neighbors
all the time if you hear us yelling we're not yelling at each other yet until you hear that
get a door slam then you might hear us yelling door slam doesn't have the same um it's not the
same effect not the same you know it feels so good when you slam that door and you hear that wham
so you can yelling and carrying on and a camper because your neighbors can hear you and you might
disrupt your neighbors so one thing that it has done though it will get you closer
to each other that's for sure you either learn you either have to learn to communicate within
one another very well and speak your piece when it happens instead of letting it fester
or you might as well just go home because you're in limited space and you're gonna have to learn to
get along so if communication is not your thing or you don't truly love the one you're with maybe you
shouldn't do full-time rving we're gonna talk a little bit more about that in the next video