Take Your Retirement on the Road - Is RV Living for You?
There’s something fascinating about the RV lifestyle, especially after 40 years of punching a time clock. My
husband was in the Navy for 30 years and I was a Navy Corpsman for 10 years, plus I moved around with my husband after our marriage. After years of living this way, every 3-4 years we tend to look around and say, “Where are we going next?”
Retirement should be a time of adventure and RV living means freedom and the open road. What could be better a better fit for a creative retirement?
I loved the movie Under the Tuscan Sun where the heroine takes a trip to Tuscany, buys an old villa and makes a totally new life for herself. To me, RV life is like that. My husband wants to work for two more years but we decided, if we go RVing for one year of that time, we can live on a fraction of what we are living on now, still putting away savings even without his current income. My own income comes from writing projects on the Internet so I can take my job along with me.
I’ve talked before in this blog about setting goals and writing them down. Our RV retirement goal is that within the next 18 months, we will sell our house and downsize our possessions and travel for one year, with stops of a few weeks here and there to visit family. When we return, we will take the RV to our lake property and live in it until we get our retirement home built there. We had to search for over 3 years to find a piece of property with no restrictions on living temporarily in an RV but we finally found it this past summer.
Is the RV retirement lifestyle for you? Here are some of the resources we’ve used in planning. Many of these offer free newsletters from people already living in an RV, either full time or part time.
RVLifestyleExperts.com I’ve gotten to know Jaimie Hall Bruzenak through the terrific ezine she puts out and I’ve read several of her RV lifestyle books, including Support Your RV Lifestyle! An Insider’s Guide to Working on the Road. This book, by the way, offers great ideas for earning extra income you could also use working from home. Jaimie and Alice Zyetz have put together a website packed with information and resources on living and retiring in an RV.
Read Alice’s article “Why Retire to an RV?”
There are also great articles on their website on RV budgeting and ways to save money living in an RV.
RVDreams.com - Howard and Linda Payne have put together a website offering information on all aspects of RVing, including links to Workamper sites. Workamping involves lining up jobs you can do on the road to help pay your expenses, such as signing up to be a park host to get free space rent. RV-Dreams has sells a great RV cookbook, plus there are many recipes on the site. Linda also helps support their RV lifestyle through her beadwork projects.
RVers are a friendly bunch and RVDreams also has a helpful forum where you can get all your questions answered by those who are already living the RV life.
RVNet offers an ezine and dozens of articles by different authors on all aspects of RVing. Most author also has a blog or website on the subject of the RV lifestyle worth checking out as well. There are articles on fitness in an RV, RV cooking, trip planning, Green Rving, Workamping, RV maintenance and much much more.
RV Escape Club - This club also offers one of the best mail services for RVers. If you’re on the road for a year or more, you will probably need a mail service to hold and forward your mail to you - wherever you are. Here is a link to some of their free ebooks. If you decide to become a member, you also get a bi-monthly magazine.
RVLife.com - RV Life offers a magazine, articles and blogs on Rving, fishing, golfing and travel. This digital magazine is free and has lots of terrific travel articles.
If you’re on Facebook, you can also connect with, and ask questions of, many others interested in RV living.
RV Club Forums
RV discussion groups are a useful place to find out more information from those with experience and knowledge. These RV Club sites have forums and and you don’t have to be a member to see them.
Good Sam Club- If you join the Good Sam Club, you can get disounts on many park fees, as well as other benefits.
Escapees RV Club- Great magazine with memberhips and lots of info on their website and forum.
How to Create an RV Budget
Here are some resources to help you set up an RV budget and see just how much money it would take to retire to an RV. Even though you may sell your permanent home, extra vehicles and other things that cost you money, there are certain expenses associated with RVing, such as insurance, park fees, and perhaps your vehicle payment to think about.
RV Lifestyle Experts - Preparing your RV budget - includes a worksheet.
RV Dreams - Sample Budgets and Expenses
Changing Gears offers a Budget for the RV Lifestyle
If you have an RV blog or resource you’d like to share, please feel free to post it in the comment section.
If you have dreams of retiring to an RV to live full time or want to take to the road on shorter trips after retirement, check out these resources and subscribe to a few blogs from those who are living the RV lifestyle. It won’t be long before you’re convinced this is the only way to retire!
Stay tuned in. I’ll be adding more resources as I discover them.















