Category: RV Living

Becoming South Dakota Residents

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To us one of the essential parts of becoming full time RV’ers was to establish residency, or domicile, in a state other than California. This is something most full timers do if they no longer intend to have a permanent residence or home base in a state. There are several reasons both financially and logistically to take this step and although it takes a little bit of work it is a fairly easy process and well worth the time.

When it comes to full time travelers some states are more beneficial than others. Have you ever noticed that many RV’s on the road are to be registered in South Dakota, Texas or Florida? This is because these three states are considered full time friendly states and make it very easy to become residents even though you don’t intend on being in the state most of the time. Another thing these three states have in common is they have an income tax rate of ZERO!! That’s right, if you are a resident of one of these three states you do not have to pay a state income tax. Contrast that with California who has one of the highest state tax rates in the nation and you can start to understand our motivation for getting out of the state. Continue reading “Becoming South Dakota Residents” →

Living The Dream For 30 Days

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There is a common understanding in the RV community that the full time lifestyle while amazingly liberating, can also be extremely challenging and frustrating. The mantra that you have to take the good with the bad is repeated adnausium in social media groups. There is no going into this way of living without knowing that you will eventually face your share of challenges and adversity. Well, after one month of living the dream, consider us fully christened into the realm of taking the good with the bad! Continue reading “Living The Dream For 30 Days” →

Campground Review – Pechanga RV Resort

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Welcome to the first edition of our campground review series. This is something we wanted to try doing as we travel the country and visit campgrounds. We know that there are a ton of sites where people leave campground reviews. However part of the problem we find when doing research is that most of these reviews are based on unreasonable logic or even flat out anger. Let’s face it, happy campers are also less likely to leave a review because they are not looking to vent. Sure people have the right to be angry and/or dissatisfied when they have what they perceive as a negative experience. But when you leave a bad review for a resort or campground because they are trying to maintain a certain standard for ALL of their customers or because their FREE Wi-Fi doesn’t let you stream movies and work on your computer all day long you are being an unreasonable person. Continue reading “Campground Review – Pechanga RV Resort” →

February 2021 Financial Update

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We are one week into living the RV life and to say the last month has been a whirlwind would be a drastic understatement. After getting everything loaded up and driving to our first stop we looked around and saw a giant mess. It looked insurmountable at first, but once we started tackling each area of our storage we became more encouraged as we cleared out bag after bag of our belongings. It turns out we had a lot more stuff left than we realized but after a week of organizing and adjusting to a new routine we feel a lot more at home. Continue reading “February 2021 Financial Update” →

New Beginnings On The Open Road

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We did it! After years of planning, saving, investing, researching and pandemic delays we are finally living in our RV as full timers. There is still a lot to do but the hard part is done now that we took the leap and made it to the other side. It’s wonderful to say we actually achieved a long term goal and hopefully our journey will help inspire others to do the same.

We all have goals in life. Some people write them out or track them in one form or another while others just keep a mental note of things they would love to do and call it a goal. Typically those that track their goals are actually working in some fashion to achieve them while those keeping a mental note are mostly just dreaming about it. I call it the “maybe someday” syndrome, which is something we suffered from for many years. Continue reading “New Beginnings On The Open Road” →

From House To Home

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We are entering the final week of living in our old sticks and bricks house. It’s been a great place, but we knew it was never going to be our final home. The excitement of finally living in our RV full time far outweighs any emotions of leaving the house and to be honest there really aren’t any emotions about leaving. It’s a great house in a great location but it’s just not us and never has been.

It’s amazing what we have been able to accomplish in the last three weeks. We have sold nearly all of our possessions including our furniture, dishes, cookware, everything in our garage including a car and some of my musical equipment. There have also been some bumps in the road along the way but we have managed to figure out a solution and move along. Continue reading “From House To Home” →

RV Life – The Final Countdown

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This is it! Everything we have planned for over the last few years is now, finally, coming to fruition. The last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind and we expect that will continue for at least another month now that our house is sold.

Once we settled on the decision to go with a real estate agent everything seemed to move at a breakneck pace. Using a traditional agent was a tough pill to swallow at first but when he got started we quickly realized it was the right decision, albeit an expensive one. Every agent has the standard responsibility of listing and showing the property. But generating interest and creating a competitive market to gain the best price definitely takes skill. It was fun to watch the process play out and it also paid off with our property selling for a record price for our neighborhood. Continue reading “RV Life – The Final Countdown” →