Fulltime RV Guru

Looking for really useful resources to help make the move into the full-time lifestyle easier? Here’s a list of the 5 top-selling books for full-time or extended-time Rvers:

1. RVing & Your Retirement Lifestyle: A Cost Effective Way to Live Your Dreams

As we enter our Third Age (that period of time after family and career), many of us are searching for ways to reinvent and redefine ourselves. After all, we are living longer, healthier lives. A recreational vehicle is the perfect tool to assist you in the pursuit of your retirement interests and the realizations of your dreams. It can make life more accommodating. And, the RV lifestyle is very cost effective.

Hopefully you’ve devised a plan for retirement consisting of goals that will encourage an invigorating lifestyle. This plan will help you rediscover yourself. Most research concludes that boomers want to stay active and engage in meaningful activities and continue to learn and grow.

2. Full-Time RVing : How to Make it Happen

This book is brimming with information you’ll need to start the full-time or extended-time RV lifestyle. This is not a technical book, but that’s what makes it worthwhile to the average person. This author gives you the straight scoop of what it is really like out on the road. She writes in an easy-to-read, humorous fashion that will keep you fascinated to the end of the book.

3. RV Living in the 21st Century: The Essential Reference Guide for ALL RVers

RV Living in the 21st Century; The Essential Reference Guide for ALL RVers will quickly become your best friend as you explore North America. It combines basic timeless RV information new RVers need to know, plus seasoned RVers will value the numerous hints and tips covering everything from packing to stretching dollars to driving their unit.

RV Living in the 21st Century also includes a wide overview of updated changes in technologies that were not even thought of pre-9/11. Peggi McDonald freely relays both the good and not so good happenings she and her husband John experienced during two decades of fulltiming. As a Canadian snowbird that spends half the year in the U.S.A., she also readily shares her comprehensive border crossing knowledge.

<

4. RV Traveling Tales: Women’s Journeys on the Open Road

Fifty-two women answer the question: What is it like to be a female nomad on the open road, leaving family, community, and possessions to head into the unknown in an RV?

This anthology features the writings of women of varied backgrounds, many living full-time in their RVs, ranging in age from 13-85. They take a humorous look at situations unique to the RVing lifestyle: living in a small box on wheels, maneuvering a 38-foot RV, or surviving bears and other calamities. On the road and away from the support of family and friends, they also cope with life’s issues—breast cancer, divorce, loss of a child.

5. RVing Alaska and Canada: A “How to” and “Why not” Book

Sharlene “Charlie” Minshall, a single, solo, full-time RVer for twenty years, criss-crossed North America countless times from Mexico to Labrador, Florida to the Northwest Territories. She toured Alaska and Western Canada five times for a total of two years. This fourth revision reveals “How to” chapters on where to stay, when to go, what to take, road conditions and distances, plus information on border crossing, communications, boondocking, safety, pets, and photography. Tips are scattered throughout the book. One chapter reveals the necessities, pitfalls, and approximate costs of flying into Alaska and renting a RV. “Why not” mapped chapters include all major paved and gravel roads as this author of six RV-related books leads you through her humorous misadventures with Katmai grizzlies, remote villages, the Aurora Borealis, Segway riding, dog mushing and canoeing the Yukon River. Whether you are driving a car, RVing, or an Armchair Adventurer, it is an exciting and helpful book.

Have you found any other resouces that were really helpful? Let me know and we’ll include them!

If you and your significant other are considering moving from a house to an RV full-time one of the most basic things you must do is make sure that you are both on the same page before you do anything.

You must both have a clear understanding of what you are about to do, and what the pros and cons are of the move you are about to make.

This requires a very high level of communication and lots of  ’what if’. . .  scenarios thrown back and forth and worked out.  What if the money runs short?  What will we do if one of use decides that they really love it and the other one doesn’t?  How do we want this new life to be different from the one we have been living?

There is nothing more deadly to peaceful co-existance in a marriage than when Amy absolutely loves the life, but Joe has reached the point where he can’t stand looking at the RV anymore, but goes along because she’s so happy.  (Come to think of it, I guess that’s true whether you’re in an RV or not).  Each of you must undersand what compromises you will be willing to make to make sure you BOTH get what you want.

Initially I was going to use this video clip in connection with a talk about workkamping (workamping is term used to describe work that people do part time while traveling on the road.  It is a term coined, and registered by, the Workamper News group.

But in watching the clip, what really caught my interest is the revelation at the end of the interview (she hates it – he loves it) and the compromise that will have to be made if they are both going to be happy.

One fact of life on the road is that, well, you may spend a lot of time on the road. And the odds are that the more time you spend on the road the more likely you are at some point to experience that most dreaded of RV experiences. . .a blowout.

The thought of a blowout in something as big as an RV going down the road at 50 miles an hour can be pretty scary. 

And it must be said that if you follow standard operating procedure by checking your tires every time before taking off, replacing tires as soon as they show any signs of wear or cracking, or replacing them before they reach they age limits (5 years is said to be the max) your chances of experiencing a blowout will be significantly lessened.

But it still could happen and you need to be prepared.  Not being prepared could lead at the worst to fatalities or at the least to a lot of expensive damage to your RV.  We know of people who have experienced this first hand.

In this excellent video John Anderson of A’ Weigh We Go shows the simple action to take if you experience a blow out that will save your life and your vehicle, as well as the science of why it works.

One of the great pleasures being a full-time RVer offers is the almost limitless possibilities of how you want to structure your life; deciding where you want to be, when you want to be there and when you want to go someplace else.

In this video full-timers Jim and Jan Waytashek talk about living the good life and following the sun.  They also offer a creative look at how they dealt with getting rid of all their stuff when they made the transition from ’sticks’ to a full-time life.

One common stereotype of the full-time RVer is that of the octogenarian in a 90-foot  motor home,  peering over the steering wheel as he creeps down the road – a trail of cars a mile long stuck behind him. 

The reality of the full time RV community is much different.  It is full of people of different ages from different social and economic backgrounds who are living the the lifestyle for many different reasons. 

And while there are certainly many retired people included in that number, there are also a growing number of younger people who have taken to the road as well; young couples, couples with families and singles, all who have decided not to wait to live their dream.

However a number the issues that must be taken into account in making the choice to move into the full time life are different for younger people than for people who have worked a full career and are now ready to sit back and enjoy the fruits of their labors.

In this short video one younger fulltimer talks about her enjoyment of the life and some of the challenges that younger fulltimers face.