Happy Nomadiversary to us! Three years ago we purchased our first-ever RV and promptly moved in! To celebrate the occasion, we’ve decided to reflect on the top 3 lessons learned and our biggest regret after 3 years of full-time RV living.
UPDATE: It’s been 3 years since we’ve written this article and we still agree with the lessons learned below. We’ve updated the video to include three more lessons…Watch our two part series: 6 Lessons Learned & our 2 Biggest Regrets after 6 Years Full-Time below.
Lesson #1: Take Your Time
We realized early on that we get travel fatigue when we move too often. We prefer to stay at least one week and often up to a month per location. This allows us to take time to see the sights in the local area, as well as save on fuel costs.
Lesson #2: Be Flexible
I’m a planner and have reservations several months in advance. However, I’ve learned to be a little more flexible and only make reservations at places that have a liberal cancellation policy. In fact, my rule is that I don’t make a reservation at any place that will charge me more than $15 to cancel or make a change.
Lesson #3: You Don’t Need as Much Room as you Think
We thought because we had a large 2400 square foot home, that we needed a large RV. As a result we purchased a 44′ Fifth Wheel toy hauler. Now after three years on the road, we realize that we do not need such a large RV. See the interior tour below.
Update: We recently downsized to 30′ Arctic Fox Fifth Wheel. We love it! Learn why we choose the Arctic Fox below:
Biggest Regret: Our RV Purchasing Mistakes
We were not very savvy when we purchased our first RV. We bought brand new, paid too much, and financed the RV. While we spent a lot of time researching the type of RV we wanted, we didn’t really research costs. Click here to read our article on how painful depreciation can be.
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Happy Nomadiversary! That is awesome!
It’s funny that you mention the importance of traveling slowly and being more deliberate. We tried to do that from the beginning and still feel like we haven’t gotten it right. I am in the process of writing an article right now about how easy it is to go too fast and do too much. There’s just a lot to see and do and sometimes it’s difficult to say no!
I also agree on staying flexible. I have such a hard time with the reservation issue. On the one hand, I know myself well enough to know that having reservations makes me less stressed out. On the other hand, we have missed out on some great opportunities because we didn’t want to lose deposit money at campgrounds. It’s just a hard thing to balance.
Anyway, great post and congratulations again!
Thanks, Laura! I enjoy reading about your travels. You seem to have a pretty good rhythm to me. 🙂
Congratulations! Happy nomadiversary! We totally agree on taking your time. We work as well and find even 2 weeks is sometimes not enough. We were in Bar Harbor Maine in August and decided to extend our stay a week as we loved it so much. Fortunately the next campground we had booked was flexible and moved our dates without penalty. Congrats again and thanks for sharing your advice and knowledge with us.
Thanks for reading my post! We visited Maine a couple of years ago and didn’t spend nearly as much time there as I would have liked.
Nice informative video. We are in the process of selling our houses, and we’ve picked out a ’16 Keystone Fusion Chrome 43′ TH, and a ’15 F350 diesel puller truck. We live in WI., and plan on staying in TX/NM/AZ area for winter, and back to the Midwest in the summer workamping. Liked some of the ideas you had for the pictures. We have so many!!! Also the Command strips. Hope to see you out and about in our travels!! Mark Rasmussen
I am amazed how good your couch still looks. We have a 2014 HD 3110 toyhauler. The couch is peeling so bad, one backrest is almost bald. Lippert offered 40% discount on another of their sofas in a color that wont work, but I can buy residential for same price AFTER their 40%. ANd we only used this gently for about 1 month a year.