Full-Time RV Nomad Finds Big Hidden Expense Traveling the East Coast EZPayNY Cashless Tolls by Mail

last year I got hit by some huge unexpected expenses while I was traveling in my RV between the Midwest and the East Coast you think you have everything handled you think you know what all your expenses are and you just have to go along your route well that might not be the case so if you plan to travel anywhere in the US especially that area this is a must-watch video so what happened to me doesn't happen to you [Music] happy Sunday everybody it's Robin with creativity RV I hope you're all doing well out there I have been planning to tell you about a whole bunch of fines and expenses that I incurred last year that I was not expecting but they kept rolling in and rolling in and rolling in along with a bunch of bills and fines and so today I'm going to tell you about that so you can avoid it but first a quick programming note there won't be a video this coming Sunday because it's Mother's Day happy Mother's day but the week after that is a must-watch video now you might have seen a few weeks ago I did an interview with a reader of my book work from home while you roam The Ultimate Guide to jobs that can be done from anywhere who wrote me to tell me that she makes $3,000 a month consistently and has for I don't know I think a year and a half doing side hustles well in the video she didn't want her face shown because she shows her face while she's doing the jobs and she didn't want the employers to see her and because of that a bunch of jack wagon said she was an avatar and I created her with AI so two weeks from today watch because I'm going to be doing my first ever live YouTube video where I'm going to talk to this woman and she's going to answer all of your questions so whether you were one of the people that thought she wasn't real or somebody that needs to make a little extra money to get on the road or stay on the road please do subscribe hit the bell for notifications and in two weeks I'll have that video out now let me tell you about these bills that I got and all the fines that I got if you travel through a lot of States now there are tolls everywhere but it's not like what it was when I first hit the road seven years ago now it'll be seven years in June when I first hit the road I would go through toll plazas but they looked like this you know where you could go into a lane and wait in line and hope that you had the right amount of money CU you never knew how much it was going to be when you travel multi-state but there was a person in a booth that you could pay that is almost totally gone now in the places where I'm traveling now you're going to see a bunch of stations that look like this these are cashless toll systems and they are in all kinds of States so last year you might remember that I traveled from Colorado to Kansas Illinois Indiana missou Missouri to Pennsylvania for the Hershey RV Show and then up through New York into Canada through Canada back out down through Michigan back to Colorado that entire trip was from August until October and I passed all of these cashless toll BS and I'll tell you especially in Pennsylvania and New York they are everywhere they're in the tunnels they're on the bridges they're on almost every exit they're on the off-ramps they're on the on-ramps and here's how they work they just snap your picture they read your license plate and hopefully they send you a bill but you can't always know that the Bill's going to get to you in time that the system is reading your license plate correctly and your wait check out this bill that a friend of mine was nice enough to share that she got last fall I have obviously redacted her name and her address but you can see here that she went through one toll and her bill was over $100 now if she had signed up for easy pass she could have saved a lot of money but that wasn't the reason that this toll was so large that cashless toll booth system read her class A with a toad a tow car behind it as a semi and I went and looked at the rates and I don't even know how they would charge a semi this but you never know because you can look at the rate sheets for the east coast and every different jurisdiction has a different toll there's the Pennsylvania Turnpike system and and and the the tunnels and the highways and everything is different so you can't really know well I'm from Colorado so we have something that looks really similar called Express toll and I know when I go through tolls here and in some other states about a month later I get a bill and it's usually like $5 well I'm lucky because I have a mail service called Mom thanks mom so she gets my mail for me and tells me when I have a bill and I don't get a lot of bills through the mail anymore but I started to get these bills and you know sometimes they were $3 $8 and you know what's really frustrating is I would get off the highway because I wasn't sure I was going the right direction and I knew I was incurring a toll just to pull off and look at my map or get gas and I would incur another toll getting back on so I was waiting you know for a few bills the problem is I was in multiple States and they're all run by the same Authority look at this map this is the New York easy pay system it includes all of these states but not all states and so the system was really slow Gathering up I guess my charges and mailing them to me but they just kept coming and coming and coming and so I would go into the different websites and I would pay the $3 the $8 and then I would search by my license plate number and it would say I didn't have any more tolls well two weeks later mom would say I have another bill and I would look at it and I'd be like well I just paid that is that the one I just paid and I kept going into their website and pretty soon I got the big orange envelopes with the fines now the fines can be so Hefty you guys so these are not bills that you want to miss if you have a good Mailing Service where they scan open look at your mail like America's mailbox or the escapes program The Good Sam mail service one of those then you might be okay okay but if you're one of those people like a bunch of people that I know that don't really have a good mailing address or maybe they use a UPS store in every quarter they go and gather in their mail you could really get some Hefty finds personally I spent I think over $350 just on little $8 charges $3 charges I mean these are the ones that I saved and then I took screenshots of a bunch of other ones I did not know it was going to be this many I got the nasty grams with the $50 late fees I don't know two or three times which could have gotten even bigger so finally I called the New York Toll Authority and asked a manager there what the best way was to avoid these fines so today I'm going to tell you what it is now if you're going through any of the other states all of them have you know disperate individual toll systems now except for this group on the East Coast okay so I'm going to give you a solution for them but I'll tell you I've gotten tolls from so many other States including let's see Canada here's two I got from Canada so they have a totally different system and so of course these came way later in fact I left the East Coast I left New York I think in late September and it is now may I got my last bill last month I got my last bill for these tolls 6 months later so if you're going to be traveling through any of those States this is something you really want to know so here's the solution if you're traveling through any of those States you want to go to Easy Pass New York and you'll see here you click a button where you can pay in advance now you have to put in your license plate and your dates of travel and a payment method and then you can prepay so you don't have to get anything in the mail and you don't have to get a transponder to travel around that the system can read and then send you a bill now I've talked to a whole bunch of Nomads that have gotten absolutely thrashed by these cashless toll systems because they don't read the weight correctly the axles correctly or they don't get the bill or when they do get the bill they swear it was their first bill and there are late charges so look out for it because these cashless tolls are like the troll that lived under the bridge I swear they're everywhere out there and you don't expect them and they're kind of hidden and every time I drove through one I was just hoping it would be okay unlike my friend and I mean it could have been a lot worse but um I paid a lot of fines so if I were going to do it again if I travel to the east coast and I'm talking Kentucky Florida I think Pennsylvania New York Maine all those States you can see the list again here prepay save yourself the hassle don't incur this super costly expense like I did I loved traveling through that part of the country I can't believe I had done it before and I plan to go back and do it again but this time I'm going to prepay and I'm just going to give them some like madeup extended dates of travel in my license plate because we just never know where we're going to go or how long we're going to be there but what I do know is that I do not want to get a $50 fine every time I miss a $3 toll charge have you guys experienced this if you have please tell me in the comments below and if you have another solution let me know remember next week no video for mother's day I hope you all have a wonderful day and celebrate with the people that you love but be sure to come back the week after that for my live interview with TJ who's going to tell us how she makes money in her spare time every single month until then everybody out there have happy travels and be free

Channel: Creativity RV

Views: 148,033

Keywords: RV Life, How to RV, Boondocking, Van Life, RV, RV Travel, Nomad, rv living, how to rv full time, digital nomad, solo female rv, rving, rv hacks, tiffin rv, campervan, full time travel, camping, national forest camping, boondocking, why rv, dispersed camping, free camping, FIFTH WHEEL, DIGITAL NOMAD, RV WOMEN, GRAND DESIGN RV, RVING FULL TIME, AIRSTREAM, HOW TO RV, RV COST, FREE CAMPING, HARVEST HOSTS, BATTLE BORN, CAMPSCANNER, CAMPERSCARD, PATREON, SOLO TRAVEL, ezpay

Id: sMxn0lS6EcA

Length: 10min 18sec (618 seconds)

Published: Sun May 05 2024