The Millers in Motion Podcast
The Millers in Motion Podcast
Join Ryan and Lauren Miller as they take you beyond the world of RVing to explore all things travel! Whether it’s road trips, flights, cruises, or the hidden gems of small towns and big cities, the Millers bring you along for the ride. In each episode, we’ll dive into our latest adventures, share insider tips, discuss travel challenges, and meet fascinating people along the way. Whether you're an experienced traveler, a weekend wanderer, or just looking for inspiration for your next trip, we’ve got stories and insights that will inspire your journey. Let’s keep those wheels rolling—wherever the road, sky, or sea might take us!
The Millers in Motion Podcast
How to Know Full Time RV Life is Right for you.
Trading a bustling ranch for life on the open road, we've spent the past three years exploring the joys and challenges of full-time RV living in our 2024 Alliance Valor 44 V14. Join us as we share the unexpected turns and inspiring moments that led us to embrace minimalism and a life without a permanent address. This episode unpacks the emotional and practical shifts that come with leaving behind a traditional lifestyle, and how personal events, such as the loss of a loved one, can inspire a radical change.
We uncover the vibrant community we've found with the Alliance Allies, illustrating how these connections have enriched our travels and made the transition to full-time RV living smoother. From our first expedition to Disney's Fort Wilderness to handling the unpredictable elements of life on wheels, we offer candid stories that highlight the importance of adaptability and community support. Discover how our YouTube channel, Millers in Motion, serves as a real-time chronicle of our adventures, aiming to inspire others to consider this unique lifestyle.
Whether you're on the fence about trying RV life or are simply curious about the pros and cons, we tackle everything from financial considerations to the joys of discovering hidden gems across the country. We also reflect on the challenges of RV maintenance, campground logistics, and managing personal space in a mobile home. With practical advice for those pondering a similar path, this episode promises an honest look at who might thrive in this lifestyle and why flexibility is key to making it work. Don't forget to support our journey by sharing the podcast and rating us on your favorite platform, keeping the wheels rolling for future adventures.
This week we're going to dive into the highs, the lows and everything in between associated with full-time RV life and hopefully by the end of this we'll be able to give you a little insight to whether or not it's for you or maybe not for you. Welcome to the Miller. My name is ryan and my wife is lauren. Together we are millers in emotion and we have been full-timing for just over three years now. In a couple of different is our 2024 Alliance Valor 44 V14. So we've had this request, a lot to kind of chat about on the podcast and it's essentially we want to answer. The question is what is full-time RV life? What's the realities of full-time RV life and whether or not it's right for you essentially, or the person asking us the question. So let's dive into a little bit of what exactly is full-time RV life. For starters, there's a lot of terminology out there and it gets kind of cross-contaminated quite a bit, and so when you're talking about the different styles of RV life, you have what we call part-timers, some-timers. Pretty much essentially, you have a home base somewhere, regardless of the style, but you have a sticks and bricks house, an apartment, whatever. It's not your primary residence, and you get in the RV and you go. Now you could spend 98% of your time out on the road okay. But if you have somewhere to come back to on the road, okay. But if you have somewhere to come back to, then I consider that not necessarily full-time, even though you are almost literally as close as you can possibly get. And the only reason I say that is because it's a little different if you know you have that security of a house to go back to versus not. That, to me, is the really big distinguishing factor here. Is not that to me, is the really big distinguishing factor here. Then you have full-time, which is exactly what it sounds like. Whatever RV you choose is your home and so, regardless of where it is, whether it's stationary, whether you move every two days, at that point it doesn't matter. That's just kind of how you RV. So that's what I would consider full-time. Now there's different stages and there's different levels of both of those things. Right? So you could take four RV trips a year. You're a part timer you could take, you could be on the road, you know, 50 weeks out of the year and you're still part-time because you still go home at some point. You can hit a reset button if you need to, whereas someone in the full-time category is not going to exactly have that same ability because they're just going to have to make it work while they're on the road.
Speaker 1:So let's talk a little bit about the dream of full-time RV life, in other words, why people choose to do this lifestyle, and I'm going to talk about some generic things as well as Lauren and I's experience as we go through all of these things. So why people choose to full-time RV? Well, at the end of the day, the freedom to travel and explore is probably the biggest one that we've noticed in talking to people. So you know the whole I haven't gotten to see anything. You know a lot of. You know a lot of.
Speaker 1:You talk to a lot of the YouTubers out there and the content creators and we're no exception to this is you hear a very common story. Well, someone in our lives either passed away for us it was Lauren's dad or something happened that made them realize that going to experience things with your significant other, family, whoever, is more important than grinding out an 80-hour work week and trying to get monetary achievements and all of those things. But there's been a shift in your thinking and that's kind of been the fuel to stoke that fire, if you may, to get out and experience and travel. More. Kind of going hand-in in hand with that is also breaking free from the traditional nine to five lifestyle.
Speaker 1:I can tell you that when we started our journey three years ago, you know I was still working in the golf industry. I was looking to get out of it but I had. I was still working in the golf industry, I was independent and I was teaching golf lessons and you know, for me, you me, we did the content side and now that's kind of become my full-time job as well as event management stuff and I freelance on all of them. But for me, breaking out of that 9 to 5 was important. Now I say that Lauren kind of did as well. She left her job about the same time that we decided to make this change and she shifted to a new job and that job allowed her to work improvised schedule, whether it be in person or remote. And so you know, I think an important thing too is you don't have to work full-time or part-time if you have a different kind of schedule, like you don't necessarily just have to be retired to full-time RV, but it does add a layer of complication to everything. So the other side of this is like the downsizing or kind of embracing minimalism.
Speaker 1:So you know, lauren and I had a almost five acre ranch in Texas. We had horses, which we still have, the horses, we had donkeys. We had a very full ranch. And you know something for us, what we realized is we're going around and a typical week for us would be like, let's say, we start on a Monday. Well, you know we have to get up at five ish, depending on the. You know what day it is, and you know you have to feed the horses and then you have to turn the horses out and then you have to muck stalls, do all of that stuff. You still have to feed yourself, get ready and then you have to be out the door by anywhere from seven to eight o'clock, sometimes six o'clock, depending on what you're doing for work. You know we had to get out. Well, then you come home and you have to do the reverse of that, right? So you have to make sure the horses, any other little projects that they have, that gets done in the early evening hours. Typically we would make dinner at that point, feed ourselves, and then we'd bring the horses in and then feed them and you hit the repeat button every single day on that.
Speaker 1:And then when Saturday and Sunday rolls around, inherently things break and horses like like to break stuff and donkeys like to break stuff and dogs like to destroy stuff and if you've owned a house you know exactly what I'm talking about. Things just break and that's Saturday and Sunday. You spend most of the weekend just trying to recover from the week of anything that kind of got out of hand that you didn't have time to fix during the week, in addition to still feeding mucking, doing all those things. And I'm saying this like we didn't enjoy it. It's not that we didn't enjoy doing it, it's just that we realized how much of a time suck it kind of became. So we fix all those things You're mowing or knocking down brush or trimming trees or fixing fence or fixing whatever they broke in the barn. You know that kind of stuff picking up hay, getting hay delivered, moving stuff around on the tractor it becomes quite a bit, and so for us you know it very much so was an accumulation of not only the time suck but also stuff.
Speaker 1:You know a lot of people don't realize time and things kind of go hand in hand. You know, the more things you have, typically the more time you have to maintain those things, or time you have to commit to maintain those things. So you know, in addition to that, when you live in a house it's really easy to kind of get out of hand of like buying Christmas decorations and just putting them up in an attic crawl space and, you know, buying a set of gear for the podcast or this and then just putting it in a in a closet and kind of forgetting about it and then slowly, next thing you know that closet's full and you move to another closet. You know you have a closet and a half worth of clothes that you're going. Well, I don't wear hardly any of this very often.
Speaker 1:And so we kind of had a realization after Lauren's dad passed that you know we have a lot of stuff and we actually before full-time RV life was even really a thing had kind of decided to downsize, and not downsize in the sense of the house. At the time we hadn't considered full-time RV life but we wanted to declutter, I think is the best way to say that we wanted to start living a little bit more minimalistically so that it would be easier to do things that we want to do. Now. The last, and I would say probably potentially one of the biggest things, would be being part of the RV community, and this is something we didn't a hundred percent understand when we got into full-time RV life. But looking at it now, you know being associated with the community, whether it's ours, you know when I when I say ours like everybody in rv space will create their own community and it's on your terms and you will hang out with the people you want to hang out with. Um, some good friends of ours talk about the circle of community and, and you know, you, you end up with this really close-knit small circle of you of a handful of people or couples, and then you have that outer ring where it's like, yeah, we're going to go out of our way, but you start to meet people on the road and, because there's no guarantee you're going to see them after that, you try to take advantage of things a little bit more and, at the end of the day too, being in a bigger picture with the RV community and I will say this this goes.
Speaker 1:There's extremes on both sides of this. Right, there's some people that go out there and maybe they're working full-time at a job and the RV is the way they have to live and they're going to work 10 hours a day. They're not, you know, sometimes they're not, they're just looking to get point A to point B as quick as they can. There's those. Then there's the other people where they only go to things because of the RV community. Lauren and I land somewhere in the middle of all of this stuff. We love the community we've built through Millers in Motion, rv Shenanigans, all of that stuff. We also are proud to be part of the Alliance community, so we call them the Allies. That's been a blast because there's kind of some shared camaraderie with the style of RV we have, and this goes for a lot of the manufacturers have this as well. I know the Alliance one for us is super special because they really you know the guys there go out of their way to kind of help and promote and get that community kind of going and the company as a whole actually does a lot to help financially do things, whether it be rallies, regional or national, you name it. So being part of that RV community I think now is becoming a bigger portion of that conversation if you're looking to go full-time.
Speaker 1:Now again, kind of the thought process for us as far as deciding whether or not to go full-time for us was really about, you know, we wanted to get out and see more, do more. Our slogan for the YouTube channel is we just want to experience more. So experience more. You see it quite a bit on the Miller's in Motion side, you know. The other side of it too was we wanted to be more nimble. So you know, the thought of being able to take our home with us versus, you know, have everything that we own for the most part with us, then that was a big portion of our decision in going full-time, knowing that. You know, when we rolled up to Disney's Fort Wilderness, we've only ever done Disney in a way that allows us to.
Speaker 1:How do I say this? Right, we have to stay in a hotel and so you have to pack. It's air travel, it's all those stressful things and, and you know, towing an RV for for us from North Texas down to Florida is about a 16 ish hour, 16, 18 hour drive, and so obviously you're going to break that up and so a flight, you're going to get there in half a day, you know, between the getting up, going to the airport, getting on the plane landing, getting to your hotel, getting reasonably unpacked, assuming your room's ready, and then you can have the evening. But for us, knowing that the dogs can come with us, knowing that we can have everything we do, do laundry, have our normal days and our normal mornings just in a fun place, was a big deal to us. I know that I didn't have as many fears. I kind of have this weird tendency to just dive in headfirst, whereas Lauren had some more anxiety probably built up around it, because there is a lot of uncertainty. What happens if we're in an accident and the RV gets totaled? That's things you have to think about.
Speaker 1:Luckily, our families had space for us. If push came to shove and a big shout-out to my parents because you know they have had a house as soon as I left the house they got a bigger house. Why I don't know, but um, they have an upstairs that they really don't use very often, and so if we ever had to be in town or the rv had to be somewhere like recently I had to take the rv up to indiana. We had a more ride. Uh, 12 month independent suspension, uh, maintenance thing we had to do and we kind of used it as a crime of opportunity to go see our friends over to Alliance and shoot some videos and dealer open house. Well, during that time Lauren couldn't come up because she had to work and unfortunately she had a little too much in person to do as far as work. So she just went and stayed with my parents and that gives us the ability to kind of fluctuate and do the things that we need to do.
Speaker 1:But there were a lot of fears getting into it and you know, if you go back to some of our first videos, you know we're excited about it for like the first two, three months of videos as we're still in the house. But then I remember we filmed a video where we were. It was our last day in the house, in fact it was that morning and we were completely moved out, minus the things that we had agreed to leave behind in the contract, and Lauren wrote a nice note for the new owners left all the extra keys and gate clickers and all the things garage door openers, all that stuff on the counter and we wanted to film a little, you know, as we're leaving kind of thing and then loading the dogs up in the in the truck and hooking up to our original RV and then pulling out was a very emotional thing. And so you know, after that, when we were in it, I think we both had a small panic attack that evening. So we went after that and closed on the house, you know, got our monies and we went back to the RV at the RV park we decided we didn't want to just bolt out of the area that quickly. We wanted to spend a month or two near everybody, kind of get adapted to this full-time life. We knew it was going to take a second right, so we decided that we were just going to kind of hang out and we did that and to say that we didn't sleep great that first night would be an understatement. I don't know that I went to sleep because there are a lot of fears and things that go into that. But as it starts to settle in and it becomes more normal and understanding what you can do in an RV and what you shouldn't do in an RV and how to kind of fix things and do all that stuff, started to calm us both down a little bit and we've never really looked back since.
Speaker 1:So what are some of the pros of full-time RV life? Well, flexibility and freedom is one of them. Obviously, go where you want, when you want, assuming you know. If you're fully retired or don't have to work, you can literally do whatever you want. Now, with that being said, you know, in picking your RV there is that option of you can go smaller and be more nimble, like our friends Howard and Caitlin, the new state nomads. They're in a pretty small little class B with a fiberglass back. You're going to call it a. B plus is kind of the term. I'm using air quotes that you can't see. But you know B plus isn't really a grade of RV. Technically it's a class C. It's just a small Class C. So it's almost a camper van but it has the Class C body style on the back of it, like on the back of the Mercedes chassis or the Ford Transit chassis.
Speaker 1:You know they have a lot more flexibility in where they go. Then you have kind of that middle of the road, like our friends Phil and Stacey who are in a. I think Ruby is like a 34-foot Class A diesel pusher. You know they're not huge, they are bigger and it is very much so more comfortable for them to live full time but being able to get in and out of stuff. Then you have the other extreme, which would be us. We're in a 46 foot fifth wheel plus the truck, so we're at 65 feet when completely hooked up. We have to be a little more cautious when we travel and where we go so that we don't necessarily get ourselves into a pickle, because it's a lot harder for us to recover than, say, howard and Caitlin. So you know having that flexibility and freedom and all that stuff, you know discovering hidden gems and lesser known destinations A lot of times.
Speaker 1:I grew up flying all the time with my family. My dad worked for American Airlines. It was pretty cheap for us to get on a plane and fly away. So for us you know me I missed all this stuff in the middle. We went to California, we went to Florida, we went to the Midwest my family's originally from the Midwest, even though I was born in Texas. So we went up to Wisconsin quite a bit, you know. We went to all these places but we flew over all these other things.
Speaker 1:And then you know for me you know when I was talking to Lauren about some of the things that we really wanted to do. This became. A big portion of it, at least for me was I wanted to see the stuff that was in between, because I hadn't really seen it. And for Lauren, she really hadn't traveled all that much prior to us starting to date. I mean, she had been to Colorado once on a church ski trip and she'd only been on an airplane once that was to Houston to go visit her cousins, and so you know she really hadn't done much travel. She'd done some stuff like camping trips and that kind of stuff around the state of Texas, but that was about it. Her family just didn't travel, whereas it's for me.
Speaker 1:It's been a passion for a long time. I want to see everything, and when I say everything good, bad, ugly in between, I don't really scare away, and you'll see that in some upcoming video series that I have that's going to be coming up on the main YouTube channel here in probably the next couple of months. I can tell you I'm getting ready to film it and I'm a little scared not going to lie First time I've been anxious around travel. But yeah, I just want to see stuff. The other side of that is and this is going to come with a big old asterisk.
Speaker 1:As cost savings, there is the potential that you can lower your living cost compared to traditional home ownership and I say that there's a chance. I'm not saying that it's cheaper the way Lauren and I do it. Unfortunately, it's not that much less expensive. You just trade things if that makes sense. So you know, the one thing I would tell people is you know, if you're looking to trade in traditional home ownership and moving into an RV, you know there's a little bit less stability in your finances when it comes to the RV and I'll talk about finances and thinking it's cheaper here in just a little bit. But you know, one of the things we always tell people is, if you're considering doing this, understand if you're selling a house, you're selling an appreciating asset. For an RV, which is a vehicle which is a depreciating asset, and so you really have to kind of pay attention to some of those things. And in doing some of that, you know, it becomes this situation where you think that, oh, campgrounds aren't that expensive.
Speaker 1:Campgrounds have gotten expensive, like when we first started out. You could very easily find a very nice campground for 40 bucks, you know, a super, super nice like a Camp Margaritaville or a Disney's Fort Wilderness. Well, let me take Disney's Fort Wilderness out of it. That's probably an extreme to a different level. But you'd get a very nice resort style like a Camp Femme for that, for maybe 80. And so those would be splurges and you could find campgrounds for 20 bucks a night, reasonably full hookups, sometimes not Even less if you don't have full hookups or you're only 30 amp that kind of stuff, have full hookups or only 30 amp that kind of stuff. Now I mean, it's hard to find an RV site less than $80, to be completely honest with you. And you're getting into like where the Camp Margaritaville is and the Camp Fimfo is of the world. And if you don't know what Camp Fimfo is, it's a really, really big resort in Texas Hill Country. They have one in Waco now as well. But you know you're starting at $110, $120.
Speaker 1:Well, I can get a hotel for that. Now, obviously there's some differences there. I get a whole space, I have my house, the dogs can come. There's a lot more amenities potentially at that campground that I might use versus a hotel, and that's situational depending on the hotel. But there's so many things that you have to take an account for when you're paying for things.
Speaker 1:Now I would argue that we save money when we travel versus the traditional way like getting in an airplane car, whatever driving, staying in a hotel, because in that scenario you almost have to eat out exclusively the way we do it, and using Disney as kind of a good example, like Disney's expensive right. So if we were to go stay in a hotel we would have to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner out, no matter what right. There's not really an option of cooking. Well, if we take our RV all of a sudden, you know we might go splurge a couple of mornings and get some Mickey waffles and all of that stuff. But we don't have to. We can have our coffee, we can make our little egg bites, we can do our normal thing and kind of keep our cost a little bit down because you can provision in stock before you get there. Same thing for lunch. We do this scenario when we do the parks, that we eat breakfast in the RV. We'd go into the parks until we got a little bit hungry or we would just kind of snack a little bit and I just go along with whatever she wants to do. But you know, for that scenario it does allow us to be able to lower some of those costs. So there is a chance you could lower your costs, but don't be shocked if it's about the same.
Speaker 1:The other side is that the simplified lifestyle and that's pretty easy as far as it's just less stuff, if you know what I mean like it's just there's not as many things you have to worry about. Now you have to worry about weight in an RV and you don't obviously have to worry about weight in a house, but you know, because of that you end up with less things and so there's less of everything that you kind of have to deal with and you can focus a little bit more on some of those experiences. We talked a little bit about RV community, but that is a big pro community and connection, meeting like-minded people, whether it be at campgrounds, going to rallies and or events, that kind of stuff. And then also, like for us, we've met some of our best friends in the world now through RVing because we are so like-minded and we're excited because we've got travel planned RV cruise, non-traditional with these people and we would go out of our way to spend time with them and we plan stuff around that now as well.
Speaker 1:The other side and this is kind of like a subcategory, I would say is personal growth. You know learning. A lot of people get into an RV and they're apprehensive about like well, I don't know how an air conditioner works, believe it or not. A lot of the systems in an RV are fairly simple, and so taking some time and learning some of these new skills like RV maintenance, you know how to navigate, you know driving with it, all of those stuff. It's part of it. And I will say a phenomenal thing is the guys at the NRVTA Todd, tony and everybody down there have a great tech course that you can buy into as well, and that's a great wealth of knowledge. It's online or they can send you a little USB drive and that thing in itself has been an amazing tool for people to start learning that. Now, if you want more hands-on, you can go down to the National RV Training Academy, which is in Athens, texas, which is southwest of Dallas about an hour or so, but it's technically the North Texas or East Texas area. It's kind of just south of Tyler, so over in that neck of the woods, and they have a week-long fundamentals class. Now, if you're an Alliance owner, in addition to having a week-long class, they also have a Alliance owner's fundamental class specific. So they kind of dial it even more specific to the systems that Alliance uses. And there's a bunch of other Alliance owners there, so that would be the other thing.
Speaker 1:And then also adapting the challenges on the road. One thing I didn't do well with was changes in the adaptations, because I was so like this is the mission kind of a thing when it came to travel and when you're RVing, inevitably something will happen. You're going to get a flat tire, you're, you know, in our scenario, you're going to take a lug nut to your front cap and it's going to look like somebody put a 50 caliber bullet through it and it's about to start raining. There's always going to be something, and so you really learn to kind of roll with the punches and kind of get past a lot of those things. So all right.
Speaker 1:Segment three the cons of full-time RV life. Though that was the good just previously. Now let's talk a little bit about the things that kind of make you question just previously. Now, let's talk a little bit about the things that kind of make you question. I know for us initially. We don't necessarily do this all the time, but so the challenges of consistent travel so you can have burnout from simply just being on the move all the time. And this is where some people will start spending more time at campgrounds or like up to a month in some area or seasonal things. And so there is a little bit of exhaustion that can come with finding, scheduling and planning these things.
Speaker 1:Especially if you move a lot, you know whether you're boondocking looking for campgrounds. It all has its challenges, right. There's going to be the goods and the bads associated with that, and some people that has a tendency to stress them out sometimes. So you have to be a little careful of that. Also. I'm going to say this now but difficulties in finding campsites during peak seasons. So RVing has become incredibly popular, especially in the world of COVID. It was the only way people could travel, so they did it. Now, with that being said, nowadays it is slowly sliding back to more of a normal standard.
Speaker 1:But I think campgrounds, while they're catching up it's just now catching up and they've gotten so expensive that it is sometimes hard to find. And I'm going to say this it's sometimes hard to find reasonably priced campgrounds during peak seasons. So reasonably priced campgrounds during peak seasons. So Florida in the winter, you know, upper Michigan, door County, wisconsin, the Midwest, if you may, during the summer, that kind of thing. So you know you have to either plan way out or be super flexible in what you do. But that can be a con. Now I talked about pros on RV maintenance. There's some, there's some negatives there too, right? So sometimes you're going to have issues that can cause it to be considered a con.
Speaker 1:Now, I don't necessarily, because you can get a flat tire in a truck just as easy as you can get a flat tire in an RV. And in fact I was coming back from Indiana and I was trying to get about eight hours down the road on my first day. Now, I didn't get to start until late morning, so it was like 10, 11 o'clock and I ended up experiencing a flat tire. Now, luckily we have a tire pressure monitoring system, all these things, but it took an hour to switch that tire out. Luckily I found a cracker barrel. I can get to without having to do it on the side of the road. If it would have been on the side of the road, that's a massive stress. I got super lucky that one of my pre-planned like one of my first cracker barrels that I was going to overnight at happened to be within like a mile and a half of where I got the flat tire and I was able to just kind of pull in there, do it on my own terms, get cleaned up and then, just if it went quick, I might get back on the road. It didn't. It took over an hour and I just said you know what I'm gonna be done for the night. I'm gonna if this thing stressed me out, I'm a little more exhausted now. I'm just gonna call it. And the nice thing about that was I was literally able to just relax, put the slide, you know, get cozy, go get some dinner inside Cracker Barrel, come back out, take a shower, get cleaned up, get some good rest and get back on the road in the morning.
Speaker 1:So the other thing too is and again, a lot of these things are kind of pros and cons but space limitations. You know, adjusting to living in a smaller space with very limited storage can be challenging, especially if it's two people. You know Lauren's used to having a lot of shoes and a lot of clothes. I've never had just an absolute ton of stuff, but I've had a lot, and so both of us having the downsize and also taking weight into consideration so that we don't overdo some of our capacities or GBWR, all of that stuff becomes a little bit of an issue.
Speaker 1:So the other side is like for lauren and I in our first rv, we didn't know how much we needed. Occasionally. We needed some privacy, and I say that in terms of if there was ever an opportunity for me to go play golf or something while she needed to work. That was one way we dealt with it. But my office in our old rig we had a rear kitchen that was elevated and then a living room down below and then the bedroom up front and bathroom in between the two kind of, at that point, traditional RV, and I had to set my office up in a way that was kind of at like a bar top counter that overlooked the living room, and so if Lauren was trying to relax and I had to be on a conference call on Saturday, there was really nowhere for anybody to go, kind of a situation. And so you know that was a big reason why we decided to switch to our current toy hauler is because I could customize the rear space, like right now I'm recording this podcast in the toy hauler section, which is also my office, and now if I need to be on a call and she's just relaxing, all I have to do is close the door. And so we understood the importance of having that differential, that different space so that we could both work simultaneously or she could relax. Also, I didn't know how much it was important for me being that I work from home to be able to leave my office here at the desk and go into that other space and actually relax. Like that became a really big deal for me. So, yeah, obviously if you're solo that doesn't matter quite so much, but for us that was a big deal.
Speaker 1:So, okay, now cost the unpredictable cost, so things that move around like unexpected repairs. Now we budget our lives essentially Lauren and I are kind of penny pinchers when it comes to that and so we budget like a company would in terms of we have what's called a maintenance budget every year, and so we put a dollar amount at something and we say, hey, we're assuming that we're going to have $5,000, $2,000, $9,000, whatever dollars of maintenance. Now we don't know what that maintenance is going to be. Some of it we do. We know we're going to have to repack bearings, inspect things, oil changes, all that stuff. That's going to be things. But then there's we didn't expect to pay that or we end up whatever could happen, especially once you're out of warranty. Then obviously we have to take some of that into consideration and we try to budget for that. But there is that unexpected repair Fuel prices.
Speaker 1:If there ends up being some sort of a trade issue or, god forbid, another war in the Middle East which I think they're just always at war over there, but anything that affects oil prices, fuel costs could go through the roof. And now all of a sudden it may take you, let's say, $600 to get to your destination. Now it takes $1,200. Like, can you? Is that okay, or is that really not something that you budgeted for, kind of a thing.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to say this and this is only going to be meant for solo travelers but there is a chance of loneliness. If you're an introverted solo traveler then yeah, you're not. You know, you may have a harder time trying to meet people and get out and do things if you don't ever leave your RV or you only go boondocking off by yourself, and so loneliness is a real thing and what we try to tell people is, if you get in that experience where you're starting to get too lonely, go to an RV rally and that'll instantly meet people. Like for us I would say like well, actually, if you're a solo traveler listening to this or considering listeners, come to the United Rally. The United Rally is kind of fun because it's a bunch of YouTubers that got together or content creators that got together and we are able to then kind of create these small communities amongst a bigger community and you get to know people and meet people a little bit better. And now all of a sudden you may potentially have friends or anybody else that you can all of a sudden get in with. Also, as a full note, if you start to hear some pretty heavy rain, we have some storms coming through North Texas. So if you start to hear that sorry, now the last but not least, internet or connectivity issues with the outcoming of Starlink and those types of things, it has gotten significantly better, so this isn't as big of a deal anymore. But just know that there is, you know you do have to pay some attention to that, all right.
Speaker 1:So moving on, essentially, is RV life worth it and this is a little bit of our personal opinion here Um, you know who thrives in full-time RV life? I'm going to say anybody that has that desire to really just want to get out, kind of that adventurous spirit and kind of enjoys a little bit more of a challenge, people that feel like they can embrace a little bit of a flexible schedule and lifestyle, to be completely honest with you, and anybody that's going to prioritize like an experience over like a material possession, if you may, at least to a point. You know who may struggle if you really really really like your routine and the stability of a home. I'm going to say the stability of a home, um, and I'm going to say the stability of a home. And just because I'm saying it doesn't work for full-time doesn't mean you can't RV, it just means full-time RV life. You know, I think you're going to struggle a little bit more.
Speaker 1:Um, if you don't handle like uncertainty or dealing with, uh, frequent logistical challenges, whether it be planning, executing all of those things, I would probably say you know, whether it be planning, executing all of those things, I would probably say you know, it's a little bit, it's going to be a little bit more of a struggle. So, as far as Lauren and I, you know it, we're always kind of assessing his full-time right life right for us, and we still are very firmly in yes, now we do it a little differently than everybody else in the sense that we do we, we do travel quite a bit, but we also come back to North Texas a lot because Lauren does have to go to an in-person job every so often. So while living in and we don't have a house here, we'd stay in the RV when we're back back. Um, you know, it has its challenges, like I wish we could travel more, but that's not the reality at the moment. Um, and I think the big thing is, you know something that we're willing to acknowledge, that maybe not a lot of other people are that make content in the space is like you don't. You're no less a part of the RV community if you only part-time or still have a sticks and bricks, it's. You know, living in an RV is an acquired thing. It's not something that is for everybody. Now, traveling in an RV, I think that most people, as long as you're willing, you know, you're up for it. I think that that's one thing, living in it's a whole different thing, and so I know that this lifestyle isn't for everybody.
Speaker 1:Now I wanted to leave you with a little bit of some tips for deciding if it's right for you. Okay, so try before you commit. And so how in the world would you try full-time RVing? Well, for starters, you have to determine if you even like RVing, and so I would tell you maybe try to rent an RV for a few trips, or maybe take an extended vacation to test the lifestyle. So maybe rent an RV for a couple of weeks and hit the road. You can do that. There are plenty of RV rental companies out there. In fact, one of our friends, rodney, he, rents on them, and now he's more in the Alabama area. But you know, getting into an RV and determining whether or not you like it is a big deal.
Speaker 1:Now, Lauren and I would do this for horse shows, so we would rent RVs when we didn't have a hotel option. We always like to stay on property when we go to horse shows, because you're just that much closer. I can go back and get some work done while she's doing the things that aren't showing, and then, when she shows, I just get a text message and I wander down to the arena, I watch her show, I help her with whatever she needs help with, and then I can head back while she wraps up for the day. The flip side of that is, you know, you have to know that you can do that small space with your significant other if, assuming they're going with you, I mean I guess you could just leave them behind. But I don't recommend that for the sake of the marriage. And so for us, we would rent RVs at horse shows quite a bit and be there for upwards of a week, sometimes less, sometimes more and so we already knew that we liked the idea of it.
Speaker 1:So the other big thing I would say you know, when you're making your decision on whether or not it's right for you is, know your why, and I say that in terms of understand your motivation from wanting to go full-time. I would say, if you just think it'll be fun, I do honestly think you need to have a little bit more of a why than just this could be fun, because I think that that could hurt you in the long run, because maybe you don't completely understand what you're getting into. The other side of it is your finances, be realistic about the cost of full-time RV life. And if you think it's going to be this massive money saver, then I hate to tell you it's probably not Now. There's ways you can do it. That do you know? If you're looking for like van life and you're okay with a little bit of heat and it's just you, then yeah, you might be able to save some money stealth, camping, all of that stuff. But if you're looking to get into a bigger RV, stay at campgrounds, that kind of a thing, then unfortunately you know you might not save just a whole lot of money over sticks and bricks.
Speaker 1:And I say that, you know, depending on the size of your home, or it could cost more if you're coming from a really small home, that kind of thing. And RVs are expensive at the end of the day. I mean just the initial purchase of an RV is expensive. I mean a lot of fifth wheels now on the luxury side of the high end side are definitely going to be over $100,000. I haven't seen a diesel pusher under $175,000 new too, by the way. So, yeah, just that's one of those where I'd say you know, understand your finances really, really clearly and, just you know, make there some buffer room just in case, because there's a lot of uncertainty.
Speaker 1:Start small. You know, kyd always says start small, start now. I think that's what they say. But, you know, start slowly downsizing to see if it works for you. So, like, if you're in a home, like, try to maybe separate some of your clothes, what you think you could put fit in an RV, and just try to live off of those clothes. You know, and doing laundry at a laundromat every you know four or five days. You know now, if you're planning on putting a like we always had a washer dryer in. In fact our dryer is going right now, right next to me. We always have a washer dryer in our unit, but it does take a little longer. It's much smaller loads, that kind of thing, but try, try doing that.
Speaker 1:Another thing is, if you're curious about the people and all that stuff, if you're curious about the people and all that stuff, I would say, attend an RV rally or even an RV show. So some of the bigger shows Hershey, tampa, both of those are in the winter, one's early in the fall and then one's going to be more in January. You know, those types of things I would absolutely go do and then find some RV rallies, like I know a line. Well, anytime you're going to have a rally, like I know, rv unplugged rally. I'm working on another concept with somebody else. That would be a good one, because there'll be cabins, other means to stay on property that don't require an RV, or you can rent an RV for that, and sometimes campgrounds happen. Sometimes you have to go through like an RV share or outdoorsy that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:But you know, test the waters before you maybe spend all that money and that commitment, don't just dive into it. First you go into those rallies and those type things. You can then ask questions. I know if you go to an RV show, at least for Alliance, they have the owner section where that's what we're there for, that's what the owners are there for, so that you can come in and ask questions. It's just a group of people that are volunteering their time, that are passionate about the lifestyle, that happen to own alliances, and so you can ask that question of whether it be technical, with their experiences with the alliance that you're looking at, or if it's just a generic full-time question. Another thing that I'm going to add in here too is there's a bunch, a bunch of like facebook groups and all that where you can kind of see people communicating back and forth, search for stuff, all of that stuff. So, oh, yeah, okay, last but not least, on our instagram. So if you don't follow us on instagram it's just millers, underscore in underscore motion, or just search millers in motion Our faces will pop up.
Speaker 1:We did ask if you have any questions about full-time RV life and we did get a handful. So I picked out about three of our top ones. So this one was a popular one. What's one thing you wish you knew before going full time? I'd probably say a better understanding of our schedule, and I don't know that was possible. So if I thought that we were going to be more stationary, I'm not 100% sure I would have done full time initially, but I also wouldn't trade it. So, yeah, that's probably the easiest one. A second one we got this a little bit, but I thought it was a really good one.
Speaker 1:How do we handle mail and bills on the road? So there are a bunch of different ways you can handle this. So, obviously, if you're selling your sticks and bricks, you know we just had an election. You want to be able to still vote. You want to be able to get mail from people when you have to be able to get mail from people. So there's two different ways. So for one, if you have family that still has a sticks and bricks, you can use them as what we call a domicile. So like for us, my parents spend half the year in Wisconsin and half the year in Texas, depending on where it's hot and cold, and so, like for us, they forward their mail from Texas up to Wisconsin when that happens. So that doesn't work for us, because trying to get our mail would be like pulling teeth. So we use Lauren's family's house and they're nice enough to just kind of toss our mail in the corner, and then we make sure to connect with them every so often, or we'll pay for them to FedEx it to us or UPS it to us or that kind of stuff, and that allows us. So like on our driver's licenses and all that stuff. We own multiple businesses in the state of Texas, so we actually need to reside in Texas. Now there are other services out there that allow you to create a domicile, escapees being the biggest one, and they have a couple of campgrounds that essentially you buy a lot which it's not that expensive. One of the biggest ones is in Kingston, so if you're looking for a Texas residence, that would be somewhere where you could potentially do that as well.
Speaker 1:And then, what's the best advice for someone starting out? We got this one a lot as well. I will tell you. It's be ready to go with the flow, like, don't take anything too seriously, go with the flow. Anything too seriously, go with the flow it's. It can get to a point where you're really starting to question whether or not you there are. Things will happen in your RV, and this is a complicated thing. Things will happen in your RV life that will make you question if you did the right thing or not. Um, and so just every take a big deep breath and just know that there's a community of people out there that are willing to help. But if you don't ask, they don't know. And so it is one of those situations where I would say just go with the flow. And and that is probably the best advice I could probably come up with so, oh, all right, before we leave you, I am going to go get something real quick and I'm going to start trying to end these episodes a very particular way. So I will be right back.
Speaker 1:Okay, on our Instagram, I used to do a dad joke of the day and, to be honest, you'd be surprised how much that starts to weigh on you. So I'm going do a dad joke of the day and, to be honest, you'd be surprised how much that starts to weigh on you. So I'm going to start doing one at the backside of these episodes. So, if you heard it, please do me a favor and let me know you heard the dad joke by maybe giving me your best one back, whether it be in the comments. If you're listening to this on YouTube or through the show, note links that we have down below. So, all right, you ready.
Speaker 1:Why don't RVers ever get lost? Because, naturally, they're always going to take the scenic route. All right, that was bad. That was actually really bad. So do me a favor, send in your favorite RV-themed dad joke and I might give you credit for it and read it on the podcast. So, full-time RV life is an adventure like no other. Okay, it has its challenges, but for the right person, it's an incredible way to live and explore.
Speaker 1:If you enjoyed this episode, please don't forget. If you're on YouTube, subscribe to the channel. Also, make sure and check out our main channel, Miller's in Motion. You can find everything there at millersinmotioncom. In addition to that, a big, big, big, big, big help.
Speaker 1:These podcasts don't magically just promote themselves, so we rely on you. If you enjoy listening to this podcast, please share it with a friend. Uh, if, especially if they're thinking of getting out on the road or just into rving and that kind of stuff, we would love it if you shared it with them. Also, if you can, please do me a huge favor and rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform, whether you're listening to us on Apple, spotify, google, all of the other things. There's so many of them now. I was looking at our directory the other day. Wow, I didn't realize we're on like 40. So wherever you're listening to this, do us a favor, hit the. So, whether, wherever you're listening to this, do us a favor, hit the little follow button and set us up for an automatic download so you can listen to us on the flight, on the drive, wherever, and all of those things. Thank you for tuning into the rv shenanigans podcast. Until next time, keep the wheels rolling and the venture's coming. See ya, you.
