How We Made the Decision to Go Full-Time (RV) in Less Than 60 Days

Most people plan their journey to full-time RV living through a thoughtful, phased approach. They come up with the idea, discuss it with friends and loved ones, research the best way to go full-time, make decisions on when and how to go full-time and then pull the trigger on those things based on the timeline that works for their lives and budgets.

We're not most people. We started our RV journey sort of on a whim. We went from our first conversation about full-time RV living to buying an RV in twenty-four days. There were no conversations with friends and family, very little research (at least on my part) and no well-thought-out plan with a formal timeline. We made decisions on the fly which caused us to move quickly

The first big decision we made to make to become full-time RVers involved our house. What would we do with our house while we were on the road? Sixteen days after our first conversation about full-time RV living, we put our house on the market. We have a beautiful, historic home in downtown Oklahoma City (our dream home, really). We made the decision to sell it because we didn’t want the risk of not being able to cover our costs of the home while we were on the road. Since we were quitting our corporate jobs to run our business, we were concerned with the strain that would put on us financially. However, twenty days after listing our house, we took it off the market. It truly was our dream home and we were terrified we were making the wrong decision by getting rid of it. We listed it as a short-term rental on Airbnb and VRBO instead. The house was officially listed on both platforms within four days of making that decision and we had our first booking two days later. It was official – we had to be out of our house within three weeks.

The second big decision in becoming full-time RVers was the RV. Rob spent the first couple of weeks doing a ton of research on what type of RV would be best for us. He would send me texts with links and pictures and go into these huge, in-depth reasons why we should (or shouldn’t) choose this model. He looked at everything from fuel mileage to towing capacity. I mostly focused on what layout made the most sense for our family. We finally decided on a Class C motorhome (Super C). We even went to look at a few of them in person. Then, one morning I woke up to tons of links and pictures of different Thor Outlaw Class A motorhomes in my text messages. Rob had stayed up super late the night before doing more research. He found the Thor Outlaw 37MD layout that was ideal for our family. He found two that he was interested in – one in Texas and one in Florida. The one in Texas was obviously a lot closer but the one in Florida seemed to be nicer and was less money. After several phone calls with the dealership, we put a deposit down on the one in Florida and had one-way plane tickets booked for three days later. Within twenty-four days of our first conversation about full-time RV living, Rob and I were officially RV owners.

​The next big decision we had to make about full-time RV living had to do with our jobs. Some people go full-time but stay stationary most of the time due to work or any other reason that may keep them close to a certain geographical location. Our plan was different. We wanted to go full-time to build our business so there was going to be a lot of travel for us. We needed the flexibility to work on the road. Since I had made the decision to leave my job of nearly eight years and my career as an accountant at the same time, I was faced with the decision to not only find a new job but also find a job in a completely different space. Let me tell you – switching careers, looking for a new job and needing that job to be flexible to lend to RV life was quite the challenge! I did find a job that I thought was going to work but that only lasted about three months (long story there). By November, I was convinced that the perfect job for me didn’t exist so I forged a new path to figure out how to make money on my own. (That’s probably a blog post of its own.) Meanwhile, Rob had quit his job as the Service Director of a couple of car dealerships to focus on building our business full-time. Since our business, Bison Track, operates through an e-commerce store front and does not involve a physical store front, the flexibility for travel was certainly there for him.

The last big decision in our series of decisions was deciding how to educate our children on the road. Believe it or not, that one came fairly easy to us because we had been going down that path for three years already. Three years prior, our son, Carter, started having severe abdominal pains in the fourth grade. They caused him to miss a lot of school (50+ days in one school year). Over the next two years, we took him to several doctors, ran countless tests and couldn’t find any answers until mid-way through fifth grade when his neurologist suggested it might be abdominal migraines. We started him on some medications and things started to improve. He wasn’t having migraines nearly as often and, when he did, they were rarely as debilitating as they had been previously. By the end of fifth grade, we were pretty sure we had him on the right track with his medications. However, as it was time to research and decide on a school for him for sixth grade, we realized there was a misalignment between the school we wanted him to go to and the needs of his health condition. We decided the best option for him at that point was an online charter school where he would have the flexibility to go back to sleep if he needed to sleep off a migraine but still do all the work he needed to advance his education. Sixth grade went great for him. He had some bad days but he had the flexibility to do the work when he was feeling better. We were also extremely lucky that our employers were both flexible and allowed him to go to work with us daily. After our experience with the online schooling, we knew that was the best option for both of our children as we began to travel. Edith has been more of a challenge because she has a completely different personality than Carter (and she’s also much younger). However, we were able to get her through first grade remotely and she’s excited about continuing to learn on the road.

​Becoming full-time RVers was a decision we made and implemented in less than sixty days. This involved four critical decisions. What do we do with our house? What RV is right for us? What should we do for work on the road? How will we educate our children? I’m not recommending anyone else necessarily make the decision on that timeline but it worked for us because we didn’t have the opportunity to drag our feet or back out when things got tough – we just figured it out. If you’re struggling with either of these things as you’re trying to go full-time, consider just doing it. It’s amazing what you can figure out when you make yourself.