Probably the number one question I get asked all the time is how do I finance my dreams of RVing full-time? This is a difficult question to answer. If you aren’t in the United States and you are a citizen there, this is actually pretty easy. Citizens of the United States have a very wide demographic that they can live within. There’s no work restrictions for somebody who is born and raised in USA.

If you have dreams of RVing full-time, and you are going to to with the United States, you can literally work as you roll. You don’t have to have high-paying jobs to live very well when RVing full-time. If you’ve gotten rid of all the debt that you have, your living expenses should be very very low. For example, it costs me about $7000 of gross income every month to make ends meet. But when RVing, this number drops below $4000 per month. And that is living very well.

So that brings in a second aspect to full-time RVing and finances. It’s not about how much is coming in, as to how much is actually going out. My recommendation is to keep your credit expenses very low. There’s some things you just can’t help but there’s a lot of things that you can help. Avoid credit card debt like the plague. If you go on your RV, consider it a living expense, just as much as having a mortgage. But I do not recommend spending half million dollars on a coach home and then try to pay back two or $3000 per month in loan payments for that motorhome.

But let’s get back to the idea of making finances. As you can guess, I am not a resident of the United States. I would probably be best called the Snowbird. I am a native Canadian but I really don’t like Canadian winters. Unfortunately because I have an existing health condition, I need to have my medical insurance in Canada. That does cause a lot of problems. If I didn’t need it, I could sever my ties to Canada completely over the course of two years and apply for green card in the United States.

Being this is impossible, I had to find a different route to finance my RV dreams. Now you not like to hear this, this will take some time. What I’m about to suggest is extremely radical and goes against everything you know at this time. About four years ago, I left my full-time position with a company that I was working for. We put away quite a bit of money on the pretense that I would release myself from being in a single location for a job.

We have bled through our finances to realize our dreams. It took that long for us to learn how to work with location being completely independent. One book I recommend that you read is called the four hour workweek by Timothy Ferris. It’s a good starter but I will warn you things will take longer than he does mention.

The first thing you have to work through is your mindset. It’s really easy to get a job, work at that job and collect a paycheck. It’s really hard to RV full-time when your job does not come with you. If you are a lucky person, you can find a job that will let you be location independent. But that is not the norm.

You have to make your job completely independent through your own resourcefulness. That is exactly what I have done. At this time I have a business that I run on line. The really neat thing, is that there is a lot of business to be done through the Internet. Businesses all around the world have finally come to the realization that they need to be online. With that realization comes the fact that they also know that they can hire people that are better online as well. They can literally select from the whole wide world if they’re willing to hire people through the web.

I have watched this change occur over the last 4 to 5 years. It is really tough to convince anybody to do work on the web for years ago nobody seemed to get it.

Part of getting it, it’s changing your mindset as well. It’s pretty hard to be diligent doing things that actually make money instead of just doing work. When you work for somebody else, they normally factor in the amount of time that the average employee goofs off. Believe it or not, the average employee can get everything they need to get done in a week within a day or two. You’ll probably not agree with me but proving this point. I find the normal person will ‘work’ through five days really only accomplish about a days worth of work.

 

The trick is to learn how to work five days a week and accomplishing five days of work. Now my definition of work is this quote, something you do that you’re getting paid for and you’re producing good results on. Now that sounds just like a job, right? Not so. The average employee shows up and puts in 40 hours and has absolutely no clear accomplishment list for the week. If you are an independent contractor working for yourself, this does not work. One of things that Timothy says in his book is doing work for work’s sake. This is so true that cannot be said better. You can check e-mail for two hours every day isn’t really helping your bottom line?

 

I’ll look in my e-mail maybe twice throughout the day. Once in the morning and once after lunch. I do not goof off looking at spam e-mails. I’m looking for the meat. These are e-mails that are action items that need to get accomplished. And then I ensure that I get those action items accomplished.

 

What this will do is create a reputation for you that you are someone who will get the job done and people will not mind spending more money on you per hour. And as your reputation grows so will your workload. To give me some idea, I went from burning a little over $8000 per month working for somebody else and now I’m hoping to break $25,000 per month by the end of this year.

 

Another thing you need to do is start to advertise yourself on the Internet. People just won’t know that you’re there. One of the best ways to advertise yourself is defined like locations on the Internet to your expertise. For example, if your are an expert bookkeeper, hang out in forums or websites that talk specifically about bookkeeping. Be sure to help other people by answering the questions. Within a month or two you will be perceived as an expert if you really do know what you’re talking about.

 

In a few help somebody get through problem for free, they may come back to you and ask you to just take care of it. That’s where the work starts. As you continue to do good work for these people your name will get passed around. It will not be long before you are so busy that you could easily enter a full-time RV lifestyle.

 

Another place for you to advertise is through YouTube. This is a fantastic place to advertise. Put together simple 10 to 15 minute tutorial videos on your area of expertise. Post those links in the like sites that you’re hanging out in. For example, I kept answering questions on a particular tool used by Internet marketers. It wasn’t long for somebody came to me and said that I should put together course that shows people how to use it. They would gladly purchase it.

 

I spent two days putting together a three hour video course. I gave away the first hour for free and charged $37 for the last two hours. It sold like hotcakes. Within about two weeks I easily sold 100 copies of this video. If you do the math I made pretty close to $250 per hour for those two days with of work. When you find a market, satisfy it.

 

I hope this helps you to realize your dreams of traveling full-time in an RV and I do hope to meet you on the road. If you have any questions on financing your dreams be sure to leave your comments below.