How crazy is it to sell everything you own and take off in a freaking house on wheels? Insane. How responsible is it to live your life on the edge, and potentially quit your was-to-be career? Not very. What benefit would a person get out of traveling the country on a low budget to all of the nature-filled fun times? Unlimited, possibly. Will everyone who knows you think you’re crazy for attempting something like this? Of course, that’s the fun part. I’m CRAZY, step back! Back I say.
We’ve all seen those nomadic journeys, glorified on social media as insane minimalism. “What would it be like if I sold all of my stuff, packed up, and took off on the road for endless opportunities of adventure?” you might ask. After feeling burned out of the day job expectation placed on me by society, I’ve put a lot of thought into the idea. Today, I think I’ve got some pretty good insight – and speculation into what I would like to accomplish in a near timeline.
For a quick background on me, I’ve worked basically full-time since I was in high school (around 15 years old). I often didn’t have the time to play sports or join clubs like the other kids. I worked right below 40 hours a week, usually 35 hours, all the way up until I was about 21. Meanwhile, I was taking AP classes and early college classes as a senior in high school on top of this. Then, I went on to take engineering classes as a college student for a few years. You can imagine by now that I didn’t have a life.
My days often looked like: go to class from 8am-5pm, work from 5:30pm-10:30pm on the weekdays, then do homework from 11pm-2am. Then turn around and get ready to do it all over again the next day, woo! It was exhausting, and I did it for such a long time. I never went to parties, or put myself into social settings or fun. I simply didn’t have the time. Pity party over! On the plus side, I did learn a lot from over working myself for such a long period of time.
It’s not as crazy as you think (depending on your age and familial responsibilities). As a 25 year old guy with a girlfriend, we have no kids and one dog. For us, traveling the world is a future goal. Understanding how much it costs just to fly across the globe, we think starting with the realistic approach that traveling the US is a better immediate objective. What better way is there to travel the US than in an RV? We would not have to worry about costs of hotels and Air BnB stays. Sure, there is maintenance costs, gas prices higher than gold, and campground fees if you are connecting up to a local RV/camping park.
Honestly, we have the freedom to experiment and plan where we want our life to head. We have plenty of ideas of what we think we want, but life isn’t that simple. We’d like to start with not only a journey to find ourselves, but also a plan to meet countless amounts of people and experience what it truly means to live – and enrich other peoples’ lives.
We plan to document these adventures along the way, so that others may see the beauty of the world. Our goal is to encourage everyone out there to travel and see things outside of their usual routine. This will encourage you to break out of your shell, and ultimately learn about new culture and skills. Life is meant to be lived in the way that you choose, and you shouldn’t just accept that life is always going to happen to you.
Fortunately, my girlfriend is lucky enough to have a 100% remote-based job. This allows her to work freelance for multiple clients. It’s a pretty sweet gig, and very popular these days during COVID. Myself, I am able to work from home but there is this awkward old-school expectation of being in the office. It seems that some people truly believe that if they can’t see you working in person, then you must not be getting much work done. Huh.
I’ll have to negotiate to figure out if I can work full-time from the road, or at least try to. To be completely honest, I’d like to take some time off from my working responsibility. I know logically though that if I keep the job and income, it’ll keep me busy and paying the bills on the road. But then that will limit my creative freedom of blogs, filming our travels, and documenting our experiences. We’ll see what happens with this… once I get up the courage to talk with them. Although, I don’t think that they are currently in the position to be able to hire an equally capable person though! Checkmate, a card up my sleeves.
So are we insane to sell everything? Furniture, appliances, decor, electronics, lawn equipment, two cars, and even the house? Years of scouting department stores to find the best piece that will fit a room?
Of course it sounds insane.
But in this glorious year of 2022, housing prices are through the roof (hah! – gotcha). Another curious phenomenon is that car prices are through the hood (doesn’t work a second time, does it?). Sure, inflation is among us and its increasing the price of anything you could possibly want to buy at the store. However, this can be manageable when you don’t need to purchase things or consume much on a road trip!
If you aren’t familiar, Kelly Blue Book is a popular place to check the value of cars – new or used. I checked the price of my 2017 Honda Civic recently and it literally says that I can sell it for the amount of what I paid brand new for it back in 2017! I can possibly even sell it for thousands more to a person in need for this kind of vehicle. To simplify things more, even Carvana is willing to give me almost original MSRP that I paid for the vehicle brand new. I’ve never used them before, but I know that they will come to my door and pick up the vehicle and make it SIMPLE for me to sell!
I even lucked out on buying my house in January of 2020 – right before the pandemic. I couldn’t have been luckier with that decision. Now with the current strain on the housing market, it’s went up at least 40% in value since I purchased it. This is based off of a housing shortage in my area, local home values, and a Zillow estimate. It’ll be a significant pay day once I sell it!
I’m going to be able to set back a ton of money from selling all of these things to keep me safe for my journey on the road. So, is it crazy to pack up and leave everything behind now? No, I really don’t think so. It has been thought out and meticulously decided every step of the way of how to make this dream possible.
I’ll definitely miss family, and not being around to see them as often for a time. Although, I’ve lived in one place my entire life – for 25 years. I think it’s time to explore and get out there more. Who knows what’s waiting for me on the other side of those untraveled Country Roads? Consider me a wandering nomad, and I’ll see you on the other side.
Here’s another great read that will help explain a goal of mine with this journey – Financial Minimalism.
No Place Like Gone 