Why Full Time RV Life Is Not For You: Harsh Realities (Stuff No One Talks About) 🚐⚠️

in this video we're going to talk about the five big reasons why full-time rving might not be for you we hear it all the time we go somewhere we tell people how we live and they're like oh my God you're living our dream and maybe we are you know we're living our dream uh and this video is not going to be us just like down talking our full-time RV life like it's the worst thing ever and something we're reconsidering it's it's not about that but there are some some observations that we've made after 18 months of doing this full-time driving around the country working full-time and still work being full-time rvers where we're kind of thinking you know there's certain people this may not be the lifestyle for them so we want to help you avoid really making a big mistake yeah and it's some stuff that I don't think a lot of the other channels and the other rvers out there want to talk about uh not a comfortable topic we're going to reveal some things that we don't normally talk about but I think it's going to help you decide if full-time RV life is really for you [Music] so we are Barry and darling Nicholson and our channel is like there's no tomorrow and about 19 months ago we sold everything from our beautiful Florida home took our last kiddo to college and hit the road full-time trying to figure out this RV life and we knew nothing we had never RVD before we didn't know anything about it so just like you possibly we watched a lot of videos and uh we learned some things but these are some things that we're going to share with you that maybe people don't always share um for the last several weeks uh if you've been following our channel uh we have been going from the southwest all the way up to Northern Indiana and because we work full-time we can only travel on the weekends so this is not been the fun go out there and do great stuff time of RV life fulltime for us because we do have to have this repair we have a crack in uh coming out of our bedroom slide and it can be possible frame Flex we don't know we don't know how serious it is but we need to get it fixed and we wanted the factory to do it so we made that Journey we're going but it's not the ideal thing and it is again part of the RV life story that you may not always hear about and I tell you what going from Southwest to Northern Indiana this last week weekend of travel oh my gosh it was so cold yeah yeah and it's been expensive very expensive I mean we spent uh like $250 a weekend traveling all day three weekends yeah three weekends Saturday and Sunday all day those days usually five six you know hours each day and so this is the stuff that we're going to talk about a bit because uh sometimes this happens this isn't always happen no this is a unusual kind of thing but the more you know the more you can prepare and that's what we want this to be about so you think you're going to get into this full-time RV life to save money you could you know we have to say that we have uh a 44 foot toy hauler an alliance it's a 2022 it's a newer RV we have a newer truck we have a Ford uh 350 du um we spent the money on those things because this is the lifestyle that we wanted for us you could go Nimble you could go small you could go used you could get your cost down it really depends on what kind of camping you want to do and you can do it in a full-time manner right yeah yeah I mean we really feel like if your motivation to do this lifestyle is saving money there is a way to do that I mean maybe staying stationary or or doing something like that or or going like right out of the gate do a lot of boondocking or going solo solar or something like that but personally for us that was not our motivation our motivation was that we wanted to get out and travel and experience new things to change things in our you know cuz we' lived in the same house for so many years raised our kids did the typical kind of lifestyle and we wanted it we craved change WE craved adventure that's why we wanted to do this it wasn't because we wanted to save a lot of money yeah yeah and again if you really got into boondocking and you weren't staying at the RV parks and all that you could saveone money and let's talk about the RV parks okay since even we started we've seen prices rise um we have stayed in some State par parks with my some full hookups but sometimes just like partial hookups and we've paid between 10 and 20 $25 for those state parks but we've also wanted to stay in beautiful amazing places like Santa Barbara California where our friend lives and we paid $135 a night to be at this particular it was actually that was a a thing with our size there weren't a lot of options for rigs our size so we had to play and remember that and so we balanced some Boondock in out with those expensive stays and you can balance it but if you want those amenities if you want those really nice resorts you're going to pay for it and even if you do something like Thousand Trails it's still going to add up so really kind of when we started we thought we were only going to do um RV parks resorts nice places and after about a year we started thinking this boondocking thing sounding real good so we did invest in solar and we did spend almost the entire winter on and off grid so you know I think at one point we're a month month out uh boondocking with just a couple days in to do laundry and clean going back out and you can do that in C Parts certain parts of the country the East it's a lot harder and we've stayed in some amazing places boondocking so it's for us totally worth it for you you have to make that decision if you're willing to make those sacrifices to go off grid like that and that you know comes to some other topics of repairs yeah you're going to have a lot it doesn't matter it doesn't matter if you have a brand new RV or especially if you have a used one I've never had a used RV can't speak to that but I can only imagine that the repairs will probably be more often but even with a brand new RV you're going to be repairing something or you're going to be buying some new Gadget that you saw on a on a YouTube video that you got to oh I got to have that and so you're going to go install that now obviously you don't have to spend that money but there's things like maintenance you know I I for the first time did I greased the bearings on the truck well I bought a $100 uh you know wrench for that I bought you know by the time I got all the stuff the parts and all that stuff it was like 200 bucks so you know and I still had to do the work myself you know so and then if you're going to but if you're going to pay mobile rvtech which we highly recommend certainly opposed to to taking it to a dealer you know they make what 150 125 bucks an hour it can add up it can add up but you know things will break just because you get a new RV doesn't mean it our black tank poles have broke twice now I think it's a little user error on that one but you'll walk through your RV after you move and there's screws out and on the floor and you're like okay what was what was that holding in you know what's going to so it's just always a little something hopefully it's nothing big like what we're dealing with right now but you know what if you're prepared for those things if you know okay things are going to break I'm going to get them fixed you know I'm going to figure this out YouTube's your friend there's some Great Courses that nvta has a course that will help you fix things um and understand how the systems work and I think that's a great idea but yes repairs are constant and it doesn't matter if you're a new RV or not yeah okay so this is the one I don't know that a lot of people are willing to talk about in the bedroom I know change of venue um but uh the challenges on your Rel relationship with full-time RV life and uh it's a thing it's a big thing it's something that I don't know that we really took much consideration about we didn't really think about when we I think when you first get going full-time you're just so consumed with the how to RV that you don't realize what all these anxiety moments and all this stress is going to do to you um as a family as a couple individ ually for yourself you know it it really was a bigger player than I ever anticipated yeah I mean cuz you really you think about it here's a few things that that I want to spell out is that you are in a 300q foot space you know and that's that's considered big yeah that's big some of these others rigs that are smaller if you're thinking in like uh you know smaller trailers or or whatever I can only imagine that could be even more of a challenge because you don't have separate time or you're just in proximity to really close all the time at least we have some doors we can shut you also need to think about the fact that both of you are doing something that is very much out of the norm you are you know we're in our 50s we went 50 years of our lives without ever doing anything like this we never even camped much before actually I didn't camped at all and so it's stressful for both of you individually right you're you know I'm having to learn the drive how to drive the truck I'm having to learn how to back up the truck I'm how to learn how to Hitch the truck to the RV all these things that are completely new to me and then everything else that goes with rving and that's just in the beginning so automatically you have that stress and then but then there's some things you know okay so we got over that a little bit but but then there were some things that we discovered especially about uh the way the darling travels after we started yeah yeah so you know I always consider myself Super Adventure I never felt like I was a fearful person or I mean sure I think like any mom you worry about certain things stuff like that but I didn't realize how much anxiety I would have about hauling this 44ft toy hauler around and in particular in Mountain type areas like high high elevation and um I had no idea it was going to be such an intense anxiety I've never had a panic attack I've never you know had anything like that in my history so I it kind of hit me unexpected but it is something that we've dealt with since probably the third month um when we were in West Virginia in the mountains and we had a little episode and it could have been serious it ended up being okay but that set into this fear of oh my gosh we're going to go tires off the road we're gonna you know it it was it's almost ridiculous and sometimes I catch myself and I'm like what are you freaking out about you know you're not gonna just fall off the the road you know but you know we when we get into mountain passes we had one in in going through uh to anab BGA we went through Julian and it was tighter than I think either one of us liked but I literally had to put my head down yeah yeah and as I mentioned in the previous video previous thing is that I'm on medication for for anxiety so I don't have that he doesn't react so maybe I should look into that but it's it's getting better the longer we do it the more I learn to trust I think it's going to get a lot better when I finally swallow my fear and learn how to drive the rig myself because I can take some of the control I think that as a passenger you have no control and so you tend to react because you're not the one driving right so um it's something we're working on but it it was really hard for him to handle it's hard for me we've had a lot of arguments because I react you know and that bothers him and so these are things that you know we didn't see coming like I had no idea idea I was going to be that way so it comes with the stress of RV life I I don't know how many times Well it happens here and there you'll hear them and y' all know you do it when you look and someone else is backing in their spot and you're like waiting for the explosion to happen some people are really not nice to each other I mean screaming matches and we've never been like that we've really it's been tense when it's hard to get in a spot you know that kind of thing but you really have to invest in each other just like you would in life in a Sticks and Bricks but the challenges are more often I think in full-time life because you're under some stresses a little bit more and you're in a close space and when you argue and there's nowhere to go there's not even you know you got to just work it out so if you think RV life is going to like improve your relationship or save your relationship if you got some problems all those problems are just going to be enhanced okay so you need to be ready and willing for both parties to work through this stuff as it happens otherwise you're just going to feel like you're arguing and stressed and this thing is not fun anymore so we've I think finally gotten to the point where we know when we cross a line we know okay take a breath we're going to get in the spot it's going to be fine it may take a few backends who cares you know so you kind of just have to get to the point where you take a breath and go it's this not worth arguing about yeah absolutely and we have had we have some good friends who um one of them is very gung-ho about going after this lifestyle and the other one we just know does not want to do it nope and if that's the case you're never going to convince them and even if you did convince them it would be against their will yeah it I think you're setting yourself up do the weekending try it out and if you if the other person's really willing to to try full-time then maybe you'll be okay but if you're I mean we didn't even try it we jumped in and um we've been married a very long time we've been with each other since we were 15 15 and 16 so I think over time we've learned how to deal with challenges and we know how to work it out we're not going to keep arguing we're not going to hold grudges we're just going to work it out because we love each other and we want it to work and we want this full-time lifestyle to work so I think if you go into it knowing both parties are going to be that way I think you'll be just fine and it's not always all tense y'all it's great I mean we have amazing experiences we do fun stuff we laugh a lot you know I think we're enjoying life more now than we ever did in our regular sticks and Brooks lifestyle so for us this is a a great move but just know there's going to be challenges and but the thing is I also want to encourage you to always have your separate time so Barry goes fishing I go shopping or I just let him go fishing and I chill out here all by myself watch whatever I want do whatever I want so it's good to separate and have separate time doing things because otherwise you're with each other nonstop and you never get a break and I think everybody needs a break okay here's another big thing that uh might be a deal breaker for some of you and that is that RV or full-time RB living it can be a challenge to meet new people um and even frankly sometimes even have just even adult conversations with somebody other than your than your spouse or the one you're with so um it can be lonely on the road that is something that about probably around six months in uh really started to kind of kind of bug me a little bit because I felt like you know we were definitely going to a lot of our RV parks and I always say that RV parks are of lots of friendly people but it's hard to make friends right because you're just there you don't really have much in common other than the fact that you have an RV and um there's not really a lot of activities at RV parks that that are kind of meant to get people to mingle if you will uh so uh one big lesson that we learned over the last year and we've taken actions to kind of counteract is that we feel that you really need to be intentional about trying to meet people on the road and uh so the good thing is we've we've been able to do that we've um we we've went to a couple actually three different escapers events um we talked about that in some of the other videos we've been to Las Vegas we went to Joshua Tree uh National Park we also went to where was the other other place lake havu Lake Havasu and um those are they're basically just meetups now the thing is with with those those events is they are basically for people who can offgrid so they typically don't don't have those in RV parks um so it's places where you pretty much have to go and you have to be have your own solar power or water all that kind of thing so but I would highly recommend them if for no other reason than the fact that we were able to meet some couples that were very much like us um they were all kind of in the same life situation a lot of them still worked full-time and U you know and so we were actually they were just kind of the folks that were camped around us and we all kind of gathered around the campfires few times and got to know each other and and we we remain friends uh but along those lines the other real trick to it is that you need to stay in touch right because you're going to go your separate ways and maybe even end up on different sides of the country at some point and if you don't stay in touch and make an effort maybe to get back together to hey let's meet up and you know and and wherever in Courtside or something like that you're probably going to lose touch with those people and it was nice well bled but you know so that's that's the thing that we have seen it's that's been a challenge but absolutely if you're going to fulltime it's it's not healthy to not have relationships with other people other than just the one that you're with so that was a lot right I think the thing that we want to make sure that we leave you with is don't let any of these challenges stop you we just want to make sure that we reiterate that we do love this life style even with all of its challenges and uh there are a few things that I want to make sure that if you're when you're before you start you you have a lot of what ifs like you're worried about what if we uh get lost or what if we uh you know can't figure out how to park the RV and and we get in a weird situation and people are looking at it don't worry about any of that stuff we've all been there and you'll get over that kind of stuff that's that's yeah no big deal just keep in mind I mean we didn't know hardly anything and which several of you have commented to let us know we don't know anything but we are learning and we want people to see us learn and ex experience this thing because that's the reality you're not born into it you don't know every single thing I mean the guys that have been doing it for 20 30 40 years they aren't making the videos it's the people that are getting out there putting in the time figuring it out and it's not that bad guys you there hasn't been a challenge that made us think we made a mistake you know like this is not for us you know so you can overcome anything that comes at you you just have to be willing to do the work to get there yeah it's because I got to say it's totally worth it if you're if you're going to take the good with the bad the good can be great we have been to places and experience things that are were simply impossible for us to do if we would have stayed in our Sticks and Bricks home and just went on vacation a couple times a year there would have been enough a vacation to even touch the number of amazing places that we've been able to see in this 19 months on the road and we're not done yet we have so much more to do and try and see and you know what the way we RV is changing we're changing and the more you do it you're going to figure out what your style is what you like where you like to stay how long you like to stay at places you'll figure figure it all out in time and that's the beauty of it is there's a life full-time lifestyle is not for everyone but you can make the choices to make it the best [Music] lifestyle

Channel: Like There's No Tomorrow

Views: 36,317

Keywords: Full Time RV Life Is Not For You, full time rv life, rv life, rv living, full time rv living, rv, rv lifestyle, rv travel, full time travel, full time rv, rv life full time, living in an rv, full-time rv, full time rvers, is rv living worth it, why i live in an rv, rv living full time, fulltime rv living, rv newbie, quitting rv life, rv mistakes, rvlife, rvliving, downsides of rv life, why to not full time rv, quit rv life, full time rv couple

Id: 8Y1J_ai48oU

Length: 20min 49sec (1249 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 21 2024