Change… change is hard, uncomfortable, and oftentimes scary and I have to admit this change is all of those things on steroids for us.
I’m Dom and my wife Heather and I have decided to sell 98% of our belongings and our home to live with less and to make more memories. We have decided to RV full-time! That’s right; we will be living and traveling in a motorhome with our 3 dogs.
Why did we decide this, and what went into finding our new home on wheels?
Keep reading to get a front-row seat to the what, why, how, and when of this change.
How Did This Happen
Heather and I …. Heck, let’s start with a little back story of who we are. I’m Dom, well, Domenique but, Dom sounds more masculine so that’s what I go by. Heather is my wife and we’ve been married for 27 years.
I retired from the Army in 2011 and started an online and social marketing business in 2015. Heather was the CEO of our home and made sure our kids spoke proper English and could spell words that had more than 3 letters (which is more than I could do).
In 2015 Heather managed a customer service team and later became Director of Operations for a massive company.
AND…now we are empty nesters and had an epiphany (had to spell check that one) of living with less while living more.
Alright, so to the present. We decided to sell just about everything and buy an RV. A 45’ diesel pusher to be exact (diesel pusher meaning the diesel engine is in the back). We have decided to sell our 7-acre 3,500 sqft home for a 380 sqft home on wheels.
The Why
Why…This is the most asked question we received when we decided to travel and live in an RV full-time. Actually, the question asked was “What made you decide to do that?” people seemed confused and intrigued but, everyone seemed to be excited for us and would say “you’re going to be living the dream”.
“Living the dream”, is why we decided to do this full-time RV thing. We have seen so many people work their entire lives with the dream of being able to travel and create amazing memories and when most people retire, they are unable to travel due to health or finances. The dream remains out of reach and unachievable for many.
This is our WHY. We are blessed to have a business that we build and grow by talking with and helping people.
So...
One day we were sitting in our home where we sat in one of two seats, used the kitchen, master bath, and the rest of the house was mostly unused or even seen.
Heather was sitting in one of the seats that we used and was looking out the back windows into our yard and that’s when she thought “why are we doing this (living in a large house and having all this stuff)”?
We both felt that we weren’t living life to the fullest. I felt like we were doing a disservice to all those who had come before us (parents, grandparents, great grandparents) that had the dream to travel, explore, and make memories.
We decided that if we were to truly live life, we needed to start collecting memories and stop collecting stuff.
The How
Ok, so we know the what and why but, how did we decide on our new home and how are we going to afford to travel full-time?
One of the most challenging decisions was deciding on our new home. Did we want a travel trailer, a fifth wheel, or a motorhome, a class A to be exact?
So, we ruled out a travel trailer and fifth wheel right of the bat since we would be traveling with two large dogs (Belgian Malinois) and a small Yorkie. We did want to travel in one vehicle while being crowded and then have to set up another to sleep in.
The Class A seemed to be the answer for us. We liked the idea of driving a vehicle and when we stop everything is in place. And, the dogs would have more room while we were traveling.
Once we decided that a Class A was the way we wanted to go we had to decide on which Class A. This decision was not an easy one. More to come on that subject
At the end of the day, we decided on a 45’ bath and a half with opposing slides, a 2015 Newmar Mountain Aire to be exact.
The When
We closed on our home on April 22, 2022, and since we already purchased our Rig (motorhome) we started full-timing that day. Needless to say we are newbies to all of this and that is scary and exciting at the same time.
Conclusion
To sum everything up, we decided that since we run a home-based business and most of the time, we run it from our phones that we were not living life to the fullest. We looked around our home and saw that we had collected a lot of material things that didn’t have any meaningful value.
So, we decided to minimize and collect memories while traveling and meeting new people. At some point in the future, we will purchase or build a much smaller house for us as our home base but we’re not sure where that’ll be. We are “Just Wheeling It” and are looking forward to sharing our adventure with you.
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