Once you get that RV and start enjoying the RV life, you begin your dreams ­ what would it be like to quit your job and full- time? For most of us, this is only a fantasy ­ we have to work to pay the bills, we have family responsibilities, we simply don’t want to leave the towns and people where we live ­ but for a few folks, the dream has become reality. Below is a question that started some of us thinking about why we enjoy fulltiming, why we don’t want to fulltime, and some of the fears and questions we must resolve.

Here is the question that started it all: "We are still sitting on the fence and having nervous breakdown over selling out and hitting the road fulltime. I guess our greatest fear is finding out after a year that we made a mistake and wished we had kept our house.

"So the question that I will ask is this: Have any of you gone fulltime and after 6 months to a year, decided it was a mistake? If so, what were your reasons? Health? Tired of traveling? Closeness got to you?

"We have traveled extensively for years (vacation style-2-3 weeks at a time) then in the last 2 years have taken some extended 2 and 3 month trips. We have done ok but in the back of our minds, we knew we always had our home to head to if we got tired and needed a break from traveling. But if we sell, we won't have that 'security' blanket.

"On the other hand, one of the things that has worried us in the past is the "having to get home to check on the place", even though we have been lucky to have a very reliable friend of the family as a house sitter. There is only so much you can expect of a 'sitter'. Neither of us want to have to take care of the place anymore but have nightmares about what thought processes will take place when there is no longer any permanent home.

Here are some of the replies. As you can see, some of us love the life, some have no desire to do it, and a few have "been there, done that."

1. We have been full-timing for almost four years and wonder why we didn't do it before. I thought I would feel terrible pangs of doubt when we sold our house. I have had my own home since I was 20. But all I felt was relief: No more taxes! No upkeep! No insurance! No going home to check on the house! No relying on friends to take care of things!

As to all that "togetherness": My husband and I have always had small businesses and worked together. I think he knows when I need time alone before I do. He just goes grocery shopping or he does the Laundromat or visits friends to give me my "alone time at home." You definitely need to be considerate of each other to live in such a small place.

2. Although I am not yet a fulltimer, my hubby and I have discussed the possibility many times. He is the one, not me, that wants a "home base"; however, we don't want to have to come back to this house. He has now agreed to go fulltime in search of our perfect "home base", although we still have to wait a couple of years. Maybe this is the approach that you need to take---do you want to come back to that particular house---are you really attached to it---or would you want to look for another location to settle into????

3. In my mind, the "having to get back home" is definitely not what I wanted, at least not in the beginning. I have had "wanderlust" in my soul forever!! Every time we come home from a trip, even if it's only a week, I go into a depression because I don't want to come back home. I want to be out there on the road, experiencing this wonderful country. I would rather not have the worry or the expense of the house, and I certainly don't want all that junk mail that has stacked up!!!

4. Why can't you take a "break from traveling" while you're on the road, by staying in one place for weeks or months? You'll even get a monthly or better rate! By saying that you need a break from traveling might indicate that you're traveling too much . . . i.e., too many miles each day. I've heard someone report that they don't like full-timing 'cause they "don't like traveling every day." And I remember someone say that they left a campground to go to another point and only drove ~60 miles before finding a great place, and stayed there awhile

5. Have you considered renting out your house for a while. You can hire a firm to manage it for about 10% of the monthly income. That way, you can take off for a while, without feeling the chord has been cut permanently.

6. Just a comment about renting out your house while trying fulltiming. I was just talking to a friend about selling or renting my house and traveling. He indicated that there were some new IRS laws that if you rent out your house even for a very short time and then decide to move back, you would have to live there 2 years after moving back prior to selling it or you would owe capital gains on the sale. Didn't ask an accountant if this is true but maybe something to look into.

7. Find an RV park close to the 'old homestead and set a spell. You'll feel 'connected' again and get a chance to see family and friends. Let all your friends know you're 'home' and invite them to visit. Our friends enjoy coming to visit us in the 'campground'.

8. First of all we are lucky enough to be living in a small national park. We have only one neighbor on an adjacent acre. Park headquarters and the ranger residences are a mile away to the west. Closest neighbors to the east are 2 miles away. North is a range of mountains. South 1 mile is the border with Mexico and not much down that way. Our property is in an oak forest at an altitude of 5000' so we're not getting the high summer temperatures usually associated with AZ. And we generally get a little snow during the winter months...that may stay around for 2 or 3 days before melting. A nice climatic change.

We love the place we live....almost like camping out with *all* the amenities. And the place is paid for. We're 18 miles from a good size town and 100 miles (2 hours) from a large city

We are semi-retired and work about 1 week a month. This gives us the opportunity to get out on the road for 5-6 weeks 2 or 3 times a year as well as lots of shorter trips throughout the rest of the year.

We've talked about going full time on several occasions and have always decided against it. Were we to sell the house most likely we'd never be able to find another place like it. Even investing the money from a sale may not keep up with the cost of a house sometime down the road should we decide that's what we want/need.

If the grass doesn't get mowed all summer....hey, we're surrounded by range grass anyway. The trees and other desirable plants are on an automated watering system.

Then there is the RV. We enjoy being out in nature, the woods, streams, lakes, etc. And we like some space between us and our RVing/camping neighbors. When we're out in the RV we mostly stay in federal, state, or county campgrounds. Many of the places we go are size limited. Our 28' 5th wheel and 1-ton truck just fit into many of the spots we choose. I wouldn't want to live in an RV of this size on a full time basis.

9. We too have been thinking about full-timing. I think it maybe comes with being retired. I do understand your concerns. We have decided to buy a four seasons 5th wheel because we plan to be away from home on different trips about 10 months out of the year. But I can not imagine selling my house. We are real pack rats and our stuff would never fit in a RV no matter how big. Plus family contact, including my church family is very important. We are comfortable with what we have decided to do for now. This way we will be getting a idea of what full timing might be like.

10. I think the "whether to sell the house" issue comes down to whether you like where you are living when you retire or could care less about the house and neighborhood. We don't like where we are and can hardly wait to get out of here; we don't want to stay in this house. We'd go now, but it's just not feasible. So, we are eventually going to fulltime for a while, to find where we want to have a "home-base."

11. The reason we decided to leave the road has to do with my personality, I think. I sometimes tend to get really carried away with a project or an idea until I've figured it all out, and then I'm tired of it and want a new challenge.

I grew up with a father who did the same sort of thing. As a little girl I remember helping him and Mom out in the yard with millions and millions of small seedlings planted in recycled oil cans. My dad couldn't just garden; he practically grew a nursery. And then one day, he just quit and hired a gardener to keep up the yard from then on.

After that he got a couple of goldfish for a pond in the yard, and that started what is forever after referred to as the "fish" era. He and Mom (mostly Dad) devoted an entire room to tropical fish and raised hundreds of them. And then one day they were all gone and the room was empty, ready for his next project. He became a ham radio operator, built a Heath kit TV, played golf excessively, traveled excessively, and, well, you get the idea.

I think I inherited some of this quality. I dearly love to get in a room all by myself and figure out some impossibly complicated task, once. I don't want to do it again once I've figured it all out. It bores me then.

Did we get "tired" of fulltiming? The answer I believe, is yes. We are not tired of RVing. We dearly love our little slide in camper and will probably keep it forever. We have RV'd extensively for years and years, and will do so in the future.

12. When you lead a highly structured life out of the necessity of earning a living, caring for your family, & maintaining yourself & your possessions, vacations are a time to regroup & recharge your batteries. You return to these challenges refreshed & with renewed vigor.

But, as much as we long to stay on that endless vacation. The prospect, for many of us, is terrifying. Because we know that has much as we enjoyed lying on the beach or climbing that mountain, if we did it every day we would soon be bored. Then what would we DO?

So fulltiming become a vocation instead of an avocation. We attack it just like that job we left behind, cramming every available space with projects and over scheduling our time with a variety of activities & destinations. Surely, if we take enough stuff & plan hard we won't be bored.

After a while we long for that house & garden which become the vacation from fulltiming which is now the job we left behind. A job we did for many years out of necessity that fulltiming is not. So we stop fulltiming, the challenge is met & conquered.

What you need to understand is that true fulltiming is embracing an unstructured lifestyle. The desire to travel & live in various locations & to experience what this world has to offer on its time schedule, not yours. The willingness to chuck schedules because of an unplanned opportunity while still making commitments to things that really matter like weddings & surgeries. It is NOT working as campground host for 16 months STRAIGHT.

13. We are getting older and a little more tired and have decided that we'd like to continue traveling, but also want a home base at which we can stay if we choose to do so. We're planning on selling our big 5W after the house is livable and getting a large camper for continued travels and maybe finally adding Alaska to our list of states visited, bringing the total to 50.Of course, this is all in the planning stages, but we sign the papers for the house on Monday, so the wheels are turning.

We have thoroughly enjoyed our travels and being full-timers. We have realized our goal and can say with experience, been there, done that. Our faith in humankind is complete. We have only met one unkind individual during our whole 5 years, and he was probably just very tired and didn't realize how he was behaving.

14. I don't know if we really qualify for Fulltimers. Bought the MH in 1976, moved into it full time after coming home to a keg party at the house. Gave the kids the house, mortgage, and everything in it. Took what we needed and moved permanently into the MH. Parked it by our office. Later bought a company and parked it by the back door, that way we could work from 6 am to 2 pm and use it to sleep in. In 1984 went to Winthrop to help out a friend who had a heart attack and ran his campground for 3 years. In '88 and '89 we parked for 2 years behind my folks' home on the island so we could care for them while they took turns in the hospitals and recuperating. '90 and '91 parked on our lot where I planted flowers and such, but were kicked off by the county rules - can't live in a MH on your own property in the county. Moved behind our apartments and office for a couple years, traveling whenever we wanted. Now have a lot and will park there most of the time. Do my work by e-mail and express mail with our managers.

I would not want a house. My MH is my house, home and safety zone, no matter where it is I am always home. I expect to live in a MH for another 63 years. :)

15. I think many of us judge ourselves by what we do and accomplish (good ole Puritan work ethic strikes again), rather than by who WE are. Retirement (whether voluntary or forced) shakes up our value system regardless of how badly we think we want to retire. People who had lots of hobbies and other things outside of work fare better in retirement than those of us who had little time for extraneous pleasures. Fulltiming can amplify our feeling of worthlessness because of the constraints of living in an RV, especially if you spend too much time sitting in the RV instead of going out and becoming involved in the world around you.

The good news is that the more time and distance you put between you and your old work life, the more able you are to enjoy RVing without guilt. For people anxiously anticipating that final moment when you achieve your freedom, you must be prepared for the psychological changes that come with it. We expect RVing and, especially, Fulltiming to be nirvana. And I believe it can be....just not instantaneously.

16. We have been Fulltimers for over a year and a half. For us, it just gets better. My attitude toward many things has changed. I am a lot nicer now! I used to think I wasn't a worthwhile person if I didn't have a clean house and everything in order all the time. Boy, has that changed. I have learned to live with a lot less than perfection in a lot of ways.

I understand how some people have problems going from a highly structured life to living as most Fulltimers seem to be living, without much structure. That just hasn't been a problem for us. My husband and I have been married eleven years, and for the last ten he has received disability from the VA. I had worked, but never really had a career, then I started a business at home and did that for six years. So, I guess we are used to a relatively unstructured life. Our biggest problem was money, so now that we are free of the house payments and all the related expenses, we have more freedom to do things and less worry. For us, being tied to the house and work and other responsibilities, when all we really wanted to do was get in the RV and go, was depressing.

I actually did wonder after the newness began to wear off, if we would get tired of living as fulltime RVers, but when we start getting restless we move and do something different. We stayed in San Diego and enjoyed the city environment for three months, after checking out places in Texas we had heard about and found interesting. Then we worked our way east, staying in Las Vegas two weeks, doing the National Parks in Utah at a leisurely pace, enjoying the sights in Colorado. The diversity of these places just awes me. Now we are back in the Midwest, doing what we like to do here which is fishing and visiting the state parks in the area where we used to live. We have never been able to spend the time we wanted doing these things until we became Fulltimers.

I have not missed our house for one minute, even though it was a very nice house and one I thought I wanted very much at one time. I missed and worried about my son, now age 20, but I underestimated his ability to take care of himself - he is doing great. I do wish we had our car and our boat with us; we could really use them, especially the car. But keeping them would have been totally impractical and a sacrifice we gladly made. Becoming Fulltimers has been the best thing we ever did. We have really enjoyed the things we have been blessed to be able to do, and, more importantly, we have enjoyed each other more than we ever did when we had a more traditional life. I read others' posts about becoming bored and feeling there was no longer a purpose in life, and I feel thankful that we seem to be meant to be where we are. I am especially thankful I have a husband who feels the same way I do. Our purpose in life is to enjoy each day to the fullest!

17. The first thing you need to do is very carefully analyze what you will do when you start traveling. Lots of us "base camp", our term for sitting in one place and seeing that area before moving on. It's is an excellent way to do it.

Consider carefully the type of rig you want to use, along with the size. Analyze your personal daily needs and select a floor plan that will give each of you your own "space," no matter how loving you are. There is a time in everyone’s life that you need some solitude "away from it all" and the place to do it should be available without going outside to the truck or picnic table (although it can be if that's what suits you at the time).

I'll mention one other tip. If you have a video camera, take it with you every time you go looking at RV's. Take lots of footage, talking freely about things you like and dislike. Be sure to mention the brand and model of unit, the dealer it is at and the price. I can't begin to remember the times we have gone to look at RV's and when we got home, we couldn't remember what we wanted to about the various units, even as to which dealer they were at.

18. If you are uncomfortable about striking out with just your shell on your back for a home, perhaps a compromise situation would be more settling for you. Perhaps keeping your current house for an agreed-upon period of time as a "test bed" would be wise, if finances permit.

When you are out, try not to think about what it will be like when you go back to the same old house, but picture what it would be like if there were no house to go back to. Perhaps you could keep a diary of your thoughts pertaining to the house. Re-reading it might show you a pattern of how your feelings change the longer you are away.

If you find yourself pining to return, then you must determine the reason. If it is just to" check on the house", then perhaps you are ready for a change. If you feel a flood of relief upon your return, then you are probably not ready.

19. We started in to our full-timing life with the assumption that it wasn't forever. We knew from the start that eventually we would get tired traveling, and would want a fixed house again. Our guesses as to travel duration ranged from two years to 10 years. We've now been on the road for a little over two years. The reason we quit probably won't be any of the ones you mentioned.

Rather, we'll want to get back to activities that aren't practical while traveling. One of us is a dedicated gardener, who will eventually need an acre or two of her very own soil, and several years of labor to turn it into her own special place. The other will need to re-establish a big workshop with lots of bench space and a zillion tools (and shelves full of all kinds of wood and metal and plastic pieces), and also hope to re-establish a singing career with a top-notch chamber choir somewhere.

We also suffer from the lack of consistent high-speed Internet access, the lack of a large permanently-set-up office area, the absence of our thousand or more books, and the lack of regular access to good libraries where we can actually check out an armload of books.

Keeping the house wouldn't have been a "security blanket", but rather, a "ball and chain" - providing constant worry about safety and upkeep no matter what arrangements we made for others to care for it. Selling the house and putting the money into conservative investments is what provides the security blanket, and when we finally closed the sale and mailed the check to our investment account, there was a wonderful feeling of freedom and relief.

When we finally are ready to settle down again, the money from the house will have grown substantially and will be there waiting for us. Better yet, we can buy exactly the house (or apartment, or condominium, or assisted-care space, or whatever) we want and need at the time, in the area where we want to live, instead of being forced to go back to the same old place. We may *choose* to go back to the same area we left - but it's an option, not a requirement.

As to "getting tired and needing a break from traveling" - that happens to us quite frequently. When it happens, we find a nice quiet scenic place to park the trailer, and we simply stay home (in the trailer) and quit traveling. So far, after a week or three of wonderful relaxation, we find we're itchy to move on. For me, going back to a house somewhere would be less relaxing than just staying where we are for a while, since the house would have a big accumulated list of maintenance chores waiting for me. The RV is a much smaller maintenance problem than a house - particularly if we aren't traveling.

Also, when I begin to feel like I "need a break from traveling", the last thing I want to do at that point is embark on a hurried 2000- mile drive "home" to get to where I can actually take the break. Much more pleasant to take the break *today* when I feel like I need it.

20. The folks who sort of horrify me are the ones I see who sell everything, house, furniture, everything, and then use that money (all of it) to buy a very expensive fifth wheel and truck or motorhome, and they are then 'stuck' with their chosen lifestyle. If they wanted to come off the road, what would they buy another house with?

Do you have any idea how expensive it is to start from scratch, buying and furnishing a house? Do you have any idea how limited the buying market is for our big, fancy rigs?

I am not making a blanket condemnation here of folks who sell out completely and buy a rig. I am thinking of a few that I know who really thought it through, and have covered the very real possibility of discovering that they need to "settle" down for awhile with definite, real, affordable, realistic plans for that possible situation.

Don't buy the most expensive rig on the planet. Keep some reserve. Nobody worth bothering with would ever judge anyone's worth based on what kind of RV they have. The really expensive ones have all the same things that the cheaper ones have. (I mean, important things, like a bathroom, and kitchen, etc.) Seriously consider used. Seriously consider used. Seriously consider used.

One last comment: As several folks pointed out, fulltiming is not a permanent, irreversible decision. You can fulltime for a year, two, six, ten ... as long as you want. Then when you want to come off the road, buy or rent a foundation home, and you are back.

If you think fulltiming is for you, you might also want to check out some of the following titles.

• Full-Time RVing: How to Make it Happen by Sharlene G. Minshall
• Living Aboard Your RV : A Guide to the Fulltime Life on Wheels by Janet Groene and Gordon Groene (Contributor)
• Movin' on : Living & Traveling Full-Time in a Recreational Vehicle by Ron Hofmeister and Barb Hofmeister
• Home Is Where You Park It by Kay Peterson
• Living aboard your recreational vehicle : everything you want to know about the full-time life on wheels by Gordon Groene
• Living in a Motor Home by Laura Wolfe
• Living on Wheels by Richard Wolters
• Full Time RVing by Bill and Jan Moeller
• Complete Guide to Full-Time RVing by Bill and Jan Moeller
• Extended RV Travel by Joe and Vicki Kieva
• Freedom Unlimited by Bill Farlow and Sharlene Minshall
• Fulltiming by Gordon Maxwell
• The RVer's Bible (Everything You Need to Know About Choosing, Using, & Enjoying Your RV by Kim and Sunny Baker.
• Living On 12 Volts with Ample Power by David Smead, et. al.
• The Amateur Radio Mobile Communications Guide published by FMS Services; it is available from most major amateur radio dealers and bookstores around the country. It's is the only ham oriented book that addresses full-time RVing and digital mobile operations--for email via ham radio while on the road.
• Survival of the RV Snowbirds by Joe and Kay Peterson.
• Travel while you Work by Joe and Kay Peterson.
• RVing For Fun and Profit by Tom & Mary Lou Magee.
• Retirement Secrets, What They Don't Want You To Know, by Boardroom, Inc.