- Hey everyone! - Hey, how's it going!
- Hello from "Kentuckyana"? - "Kentuckyana".
We're in the Southern part of Indiana right now, right along the Kentucky border.
And the Northern border of Indiana with Michigan is Michiana.
So we're in Kentuckyana.
We're in Kentuckyana. We just finishe the Bourbon Trail down in Kentucky.
Joe's having some bourbon as we speak.
We are camped at our friend's place in Georgetown Indiana.
They have a wonderful farm here where they raise hogs…
…and we had a chance to taste some of the most delicious pork chops I had in a really long time.
It's just been great here.
Before we jump into today's topic, I'm going to let Joe recap the first two episodes.
For those of you who are new, if you get a chance I recommend watching this series from the beginning.
Leo here is going to help me recap the first two episodes.
In Episode One, we talked about living life on your own terms.
For us, that meant getting out of Corporate America,
working for ourselves, and hitting the road to see the rest of America.
In Episode Two, we talked about financial freedom.
What that means, how to get there, and why it's important to live life on your own terms.
This episode is all about planning and taking calculated risks.
When we talk about planning…
Enjoying your Kentucky hug?
Nice and warm down the middle.
Wraps its arms around you.
Planning really consists of three main parts.
Doing research, building a road map and setting goals for yourself.
Research for us meant figuring out what kind of RV we wanted to get, how we wanted to travel,
and where we wanted to go during our travel.
Figuring out the RV was one of the biggest parts of our research.
There are so many options and we had to decide on…
…whether we wanted a class A, a class B, a C, a tow-behind.
There are so many options. And when we figured that out, we had to decide on a tow car.
There are many options for tow cars as well. So once that all fell into place,
then we had to figure out how we wanted to travel.
Did we want to go just to state parks, national parks,
or do we want to go into big metropolitan cities.
Budgeting also fits into planning because you need to know…
…how much it's going to cost you roughly to live the life that you want on a monthly and yearly basis.
Because we were going to quit our corporate jobs, we weren't going to have insurance…
…and estimate roughly what type of insurance we were going to get and how much that would cost us.
Estimating fuel prices, campgrounds, all of that really play into planning and budgeting.
A good example as to why this became so important is…
…if we went with a big diesel pusher 42-foot long, and we were actually looking at these initially,
those would've cost a lot more than our 30-foot gas RV.
We decided on the 30-foot gas RV…
…because we knew we wanted to go to a lot of state and national parks which have size limits.
We also didn't want to be burdened with such a large RV.
This played into our long-term plan which was:
If we got a large diesel pusher, something like that,
we could be paying upwards of $1000 a month for the RV payment.
Currently, we're paying $600 a month for this.
That really affected our monthly budget, because we planned to do this for a year.
When we planned to do this for a year, we had to figure out what that budget was…
…and how much we needed to put away in savings on top of our emergency fund in order to survive.
Every one of those decisions played into that.
Research is so important, because there are so many details that go into it.
Figuring out gas, estimating what that's going to cost, how many miles you plan to travel,
what's insurance going to look like if you have two vehicles.
It's not just the RV insurance, but also the car insurance.
And then getting all the gear to get on the road, such as the tow bar, a bumper for our Jeep…
Having all the information you could possibly need to understand…
…the new lifestyle that you want to lead…
…will help you set up for success when you do take that leap of faith when you get on the road…
…or whatever it is that you want to do.
To be very clear about this, it doesn't have to happen overnight.
It probably took us a good… almost a year to figure this stuff out.
When we started out, the first thing we really worked on was what our budget might look like.
We hadn't bought an RV yet. We hadn't even decided what kind of RV we wanted.
We put something together so that we had a goal in mind as to how much we needed to save.
From that, we could figure out a timeline, which we'll get into next.
Your plan will evolve over the amount of time. You'll make changes to it. You can adapt…
…and continue to change, but you need to be cognizant that when you first start planning,
you're putting down a foundation for what's going to come later.
Another great thing about the research phase of planning is…
…as you start your research, you begin to realize that…
…you're not the only one who's looking to live that type of life.
There are so many people who live full-time on the road…
…and work for themselves.
It's a really great community.
As you start doing research for the type of life that you want to lead,
I'm sure you'll start to fin other people who do it.
Reach out to them, because everyone we reached out to has been so supportive.
They're more than happy to help you and answer questions…
…to help you take that step to live the life that you want.
We actually found a couple, the Snowmads.
We met them in person. They camped in our driveway well before we had the house for sale…
…and really helped us out with a lot of things.
When we started this, we literally thought we were going to be the first two people in our thirties…
…to quit our jobs and live on the road in an RV.
I remember sitting down and researching all this stuff…
…and just blog after blog of people who are doing this.
It's very helpful because there are a lot of resources out there for whatever you want to do.
For us it was so helpful. It really made us feel like…
…the jump off the cliff that we were about to take wasn't as bad as we thought it was going to be.
And it makes it real, because you realize that other people are able to do it.
It's not unattainable.
Since we've been on the road, we've been lucky enough…
…to meet Jason and Nikki of Gone With the Wynns,
Sheri and Chris of Technomadia,
we've met up with Kristin and Jason of the Snowmads…
- Ben of His & Hers Alaska. - Ben, His & Hers Alaska.
It's incredible the community that's out there and how much support there is.
Everyone is so nice and helpful.
Do your research and reach out to people.
We're all there to help each other out and be there for one another…
…because the toughest thing about living on the road is you start to feel very alone.
Even though I have Kait, you left your friends, you left everything you know…
…and once you find this community, it's fantastic.
That's one of the wonderful things about the whole research and planning phase.
Once you do all the research, then you really have to build a road map for yourself…
…of all the things that need to get accomplished in order to live this life.
Going from owning a home, having two corporate jobs to life on the road,
there were a lot of things that had to fall into place.
We had to figure out when to list the house, how much time we would give ourselves to sell it,
if it took longer to sell or if it sold quickly, what were we going to do…
…with that timeframe, when we had to buy our RV…
Since we knew we were going to finance the RV,
we wanted to make sure we purchased it before we quit our corporate jobs…
…so that we could get proper financing.
Figuring out when we would leave our jobs, whether that's before or after we sold the house.
There are so many things that have to fall into place.
Laying out a road map for yourself will help you…
…not only get a better picture of where you are along the way,
but also manage some of the craziness that goes on.
Because there is just so much happening and it tends to get pretty stressful.
If you don't have it well laid-out with a good goal in mind,
you could get pretty discouraged along the way.
Our road map kept changing…
…because I was going through some things at work, our company was getting bought out,
so our road map actually got pushed out because there was some financial benefit for me to stay.
We had to adapt to that.
As we were pushing out our launch date, we were looking at other things as well.
We still had to buy the RV, but we didn't want to buy it too soon…
…and have the RV for six months, be paying on that while we still have a house…
…and only have half of our warranty once we hit the road full-time.
It also really helps where…
…when we start getting the house ready for sale, we can look at that road map and say:
"It's May and we need to start getting things prepped…"
"…start talking to our realtor, stat planting flowers in the yard," whatever we wanted to do…
…just so we can have the house sold by the time we leave in September.
Otherwise, we're going to have to keep pushing that date out even further.
Yeah, and so many things relied on other things.
The other piece of planning is having goals.
Ultimately, your goal is that launch date of when you take the leap of faith…
…to go and live the life that you want, whatever that may be.
For us, that was getting on the road in the motor-home.
We had a launch date that we set for ourselves…
…and that moved a little bit depending on how things shifted.
Having a goal in mind will help you keep working towards that.
And set little goals for yourself as well along the way…
…so that you can check off those achievements.
Getting the RV purchased by a certain date, or selling your house by a certain date,
notifying your jobs, and having enough money in the bank by a certain date.
The other thing setting a goal does is it makes the whole thing very real.
You have an end date in mind. The end date may change,
but it's essentially on your calendar and you're moving towards it.
The big difference that made for us was, when we started planning this over five years ago,
we weren't exactly sure when we'd be leaving, we just knew in five years.
But as we start getting closer,
I remember our living room couches were starting to get torn up with the dogs jumping on them,
we looked at each other and said: "we just need to make these last until this point."
"There's no reason for us to buy anything new."
It really changes your perspective on things.
The other thing it does is it makes you invest in this idea of yours.
You'll start telling people that "next year I'm going to do this".
When you start telling a lot of people that it makes you take ownership of it…
…and push it forward because your friends and family will start asking about it.
"Hey, when are you leaving? What's going on? Let's make sure we hang out before you leave."
It helps motivate you to keep going.
The other piece is taking a calculated risk.
What does that mean?
For us, that means that you're jumping of the cliff but you have a parachute.
Our parachute was first of all our savings.
We planned to do this for a year, plus we had an emergency fund.
The second parachute was really our parents.
They told us that if everything went South, we could come and stay with them.
They both have room for us, they'd love to have us.
It really made us feel that if we truly failed and everything went bad,
we still had a place to stay.
Not everyone has that support system.
You should really figure out what that calculated risk is that you're going to have to take…
…and then start working through your backup plans.
How are you going to support yourself? How are you going to make it out if everything goes wrong?
Once you do that, making that leap off the cliff is going to be a whole lot easier.
The other piece for us was figuring out…
…income options outside of our web site and our YouTube channel.
We know that Amazon has workamping at the end of the year packing holiday gifts…
…is a pretty good deal, or workamping at a campground,
there are a lot of remote jobs that we can apply for.
We pretty much looked at all the options and had multiple backup plans…
…which made us feel a lot more comfortable taking this leap of faith.
And again it goes back to researching and finding that community…
…because there are a lot of people out there who work full-time on the road.
When we started talking to those people,
they started trying to figure out what jobs we could have if we needed them.
They have a lot of contacts, remote work positions and have told us…
"there's a job here if you guys want it".
The homework assignment from this episode is to start planning.
Do your research, build a road map and start setting goals for yourself.
and start creating backup plans for yourself.
Next week, we'll talk about execution, starting to live the life that you want…
…and making adjustments along the way.
Thank you for watching this episode. Hope you guys are getting something from this series.
We'd love to hear all your comments about what you think.
We'll see you next week. Bye guys!