Full Time RV Blog

Over the years that we have been RV’ing we have had any number of people who are naysayers. They will give you 101 reasons you should not be doing what you are doing. As I have mentioned in earlier posts this is because they are terrified to try and do what you are doing themselves, so will try anything they can to stop you so that they will not look bad.

I was just reading Rae’s blog, and noticed that she referenced another blog which mentions her. I went to read this blog, and found a poster who writes after my own heart. He says exactly what I do, and that is not to let others determine what your life is going to be like. His blog is called goin’ RV Boondocking

One of my favorite quotes says that “I do not want to get to the end of my life only to realize that I have lived someone Else’s version of it”.  Author unknown

As I have stated before, our forefathers crossed the plains in covered wagons to places that had no stores, doctors, churches, or any other amenities. Now a days we are afraid to cross the street. What happened?

Well my best guess is that we are being swayed by well meaning but ignorant people who are trying to “protect us”. The trouble is we are listening.

I went through a lot of this same stuff when I was first starting into the Full Time RV Lifestyle, and am now getting it again since I am getting ready to head out Full Time on our sailboat to see the world.

I have come to the place where I have to tell them, that I appreciate their concerns, but this is my life, let me live it as I please. Then I tell them that driving a car is about the most dangerous thing that a person can do it their life time. So I will let them drive their cars, and I will do something safe like Full Time RV or Sail my boat around the world.

I wish I could do what you are doing. This is a statement that I hear regularly. Well I am the wrong person to be saying that to. As you may have read in my other posts, I am also a certified Life Success coach with Bob Proctors organization LifeSuccess. Every person that says that they would like to Full Time RV is perfectly capable of doing exactly what I am doing. It is their conditioning or Paradigms that keep them from doing it. From childhood most people have been taught that you have to work hard, buy a house, have 2.5 kids and retire at 65. I say bullshit. That is just stuff that is programmed into your head before you are 6 years old. There is no reason you cannot do things differently. An estimated one million people are already living the Full Time RV Life of their dreams, and I am one of them. I started out dead broke, basically thousands of dollars in debt and I managed it. Most people have at least some equity in a house or other property that they can use to start their RV lifestyle. You do not have to quit your job yet or even ever. All you are doing is moving into a new style of house. A house that has wheels, and from which the view out the windows can be changed whenever the mood to do so strikes you.

You can even keep you old house and rent it out so that you have an extra income to support your RV Lifestyle.

If you have a business or job that can be done over the internet, there are a number of options available today that allow you to have internet access almost anywhere. You can run you business or do your job from beside a beautiful fly fishing lake in Canada, or on a beach in Mexico.

As a Life Coach I try and show people that they are living in a prison that is based on their conditioning, beliefs and paradigms. You cannot escape from a prison if you do not know you are in one.

Peoples own beliefs are just one prison that people do not recognize. The other is what will my friends and relatives think. I went through this also, and you know what, the same people that told me I was crazy at the beginning are the ones that are now wishing they could Full Time RV just like I do. I did not let the prison of other peoples phobias hold me back.

I am now hearing the same things again about my sailing my boat around the world. But I know that within a few years these same people will be wishing that they could sail around the world just like I am doing. I know that for most of these people their paradigms will keep them in the “normal” lifestyle where they will retire at 65 and die at 66 and 1/2.

For people like me who coach we know the statistics say that only about 2% of the people will break out of their conditioning or paradigms. Well if I can help even one of my readers break out of the prison of their own mind, I will be very happy.

As many of you know this blog is in support of my book website, www.fulltimeinanrv.com where I have my book for sale. The site has been doing excellent as far as hits and time on site are concerned, but my conversions have been dismal to say the least. I get about 25 % of all the searches for Full Time RV and I get an average time on site of close to 2 minutes. Many internet marketers would kill to get that type of figures.

But I am a writer and not a marketer so the number of sales that I have been getting are no where near in line with the number of visitors I am getting. So I have handed over the website to my son in law who has a lot more expertise in this area than I do.

It is sales that allow me to go on and provide the book and the material in this blog.

I have been told by a number of readers that my book material is excellent, about the only complaint I have had is that my grammar could be a bit better. Well that part is at the bottom of the list for me since I am more of a technical type person. I prefer to give good information, and worry about grammar second. But with that being said I will have others go over the book and ensure that how I say it is going to be as good as what I am saying.

I also hope to have print on demand books available soon. If you really want a printed copy of the book, a file will be forwarded to a print on demand facility near where you live, and you will get a printed book in the mail.

It is actually quite easy to buy the PDF from me  and then forward that to a print on demand facility of your own choosing to get the same results.

Keep an eye on the Full Time in an RV site, and you should be seeing big changes in the next couple of months.

I also hope to have an affiliate system set up on the new site, allowing you to sell my books at a handsome profit. You may be a much better marketer than I am, and have much better results.

Enjoy

As some of my followers will have noticed, I have not been very active in the last couple of months. I have had a number of things keeping me very busy.

We did a six week trip to Mexico, and are now back. But since I have been back I have been getting ready for retirement which is only about three months away.

As some of you may be aware of my wife and I are switching to a new form or Full Time RV’ing when I retire. What we are going to do is move onto our 36 foot sailboat, and sail her around the world over the next 10 years or so.

I have been shopping for some of the final items that I need for our sailboat such as a radar, water maker, and wind vane steering.

This stage in our lives is just as exciting as when we made our decision to become Full Time Land RV’ers. Believe me this transient lifestyle is a lifestyle that grows on you and will not let you go when it has fully gotten its claws into you.

If you go back thousands of years you will discover that man evolved as a nomadic being. It was only when the populations of humans became large that mankind settled into a stationary lifestyle. But I do not believe that hundreds of thousands of years of evolution can be bred out of the human race so quickly. I found that when I started the mobile lifestyle, I could not get enough of it. Hence the switch to a sailboat to travel around the world.

As I noted a sailboat is just another RV. It just expands the horizons even more. When you start your RV lifestyle you will begin to appreciate what I am talking about. There is always another place to discover and explore. There are always new people to befriend, and new humanitarian projects to get involved in. Life is an adventure to be lived.

I do not want to get to the end of my life and say to myself, “Man that was Boring.” But rather I want to say “Man What a Trip.” I also do not want to get to the end of my life only to discover that I have lived someone Else’s version of it.

On our family website we have a saying that is partly a quote from Mark Twain, and partly my interpretation of it. The quote says.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you did not do than the ones you did.”

Mark Twain

Our Translation of this is:

Twenty years from now when you are sitting in that retirement home, what are you going to remember about your life?

Will it be the houses, cars, and things you have owned,

or will it be the the places you have been, the people you have met and the things you have done?

Really think about this.

Our Other RV

Each year that we have traveled to Mexico and back, we have noticed traffic accidents. Now the first thing the reader will think is that we are talking about in Mexico. But that is not the case. On every trip to Mexico and back we have seen more accidents in the USA than we have in Mexico. In most cases we never saw any accidents in Mexico while we saw a number in the USA. The interesting part of this is the fact that we usually only spend about 3 or 4 days each way traveling through the USA but have spent as much as 3 months in Mexico.

In Mexico we do travel around a lot, it is not as if we are sitting still in one place and never see traffic.

On this last trip, we were only in Mexico for 5 weeks total. But we never saw any accidents at all. But on the trip down, and the trip back we probably saw at least a dozen. About 7 or 8 of these the vehicles being recovered looked so bad that we wondered if the people survived.

Now the reason that I am saying all this is that I have hear the objection a number of times that people are afraid of driving in Mexico due to the way Mexicans drive. But by my personal observations, an RV’er will be safer on a Mexican road than on a US road.

Now I am not saying that the Mexicans are not a bit crazy in their driving habits. The thing seems to be that they are so good at being crazy drivers that they seldom actually get into accidents. Where as we in Canada and the US have so much faith in our roads, and cars that we very seldom really become great drivers. We talk on our cell phones, talk to our passengers, look at the scenery, and just about everything else except keep our full attention on the road. Hence we have a lot more accidents.

In the USA and Canada we loose an estimated 50,ooo people a year to traffic associated accidents, and injure another 2,000,000. This is all for an activity that the average person only spends about 1/2 hour per day at.

Another good point to consider is the fact that people are afraid to travel in Mexico, because of being killed in some kind of violence. But consider this. There are about 5 million tourists that enter Mexico in a given year. About 5 get killed in some kind of Violence. (This number is much lower than tourists to the USA by the way.)

The average tourist spends about 8 days or 200 hours in Mexico.

Now compare this to drivers, where the average driver drives for about 1/2 hour per day, or close to 200 hours per year. About the same amount of time as an average vacation to Mexico.

Out of 5 million drivers about 700 will be killed and 30,000 will be hurt. The part of this I do not understand is that people will jump in their cars, speed, run yellow lights, pass on corners, and many other unsafe practices, many times with their children in their cars. Yet these same people will quake in their boots when travel to Mexico is mentioned.

Personally I would take the activity which is 140 times safer than driving, and that is traveling to Mexico.

For the full time RV’er Mexico is fantastic. The people treat you like gold, the prices are good. The main roads are in fantastic shape, and there does not seem to be near as many accidents. To me this is a no brainer.

See you in Mexico.

As I was sitting here starting to type this post, a couple walked by in front of my bungalow in La Cruz Mexico. He was wearing shorts, and she was wearing a bikini. I myself am wearing shorts.

Yesterday I talked to a friend in San Francisco, and she told me that they were preparing for a week of storms and rain. Other people have told us about cold temperatures in the Southern USA and Florida.

All this tells me that there will be a lot of people wanting to get their RV some place warm.

If you are a full time RV’er then now is the ideal time to come to Mexico. Many of the RV parks are almost empty this year. The US dollar is at about 13 Pesos. And with the lack of tourists due to the so called recession, there are deals to be had everywhere.

If you are new at this you really do not have to worry. You can cross the border at Nogales and within about 4 hours be ensconced in an RV park in San Carlos. This is the Mexican RV gateway. Here you will find other RV’ers that are either just learning, or experienced Full Time RV’ers that will help you to learn the ropes.

The highway from the border to San Carlos is in excellent shape, with the only hitch being that you have to drive through Hermosillo. But the roads through the city are in great shape and are easily traversed with an RV. About the only thing to be aware of is that you know the names of the upcoming cities so that you will able to recognize the direction signs. There are 2 places in Hermosillo where you have to turn left, so it is prudent to try and stay in the left lane whenever possible.

There is a Costco store in Hermosillo, so if you need a place to stock up on food and liquor you can do it here. There are directions on the Costco website to get to the store.

As you travel south from San Carlos there will be a few more towns that you have to go through, but most of them are easy to navigate. As before just be aware of the names of the town further down the road. This would be exactly the same as driving into San Francisco from the north, and know that you have to watch for signs to Los Angeles and San Diego. Having a good map book like the Guia Roji (Red Guide) available from Amazon is a good idea.

Tolls and Gasoline are both paid cash in Mexico. For the tolls it is a good idea to have money ready, it does not have to be exact change, but you do not want to be sitting there holding up a line of other vehicles. The toll amounts are always marked just before the toll booths, so you know how much you will have to have ready.

Gasoline is always full serve. When buying gas, get out of the rig and watch what is happening at the pump. This is one area in Mexico where you will still find petty theft. Count your money into the attendants hand so they cannot claim that you short changed them. It is also common to tip the attendants. I usually tip 10 pesos (about 80 cents) For a large RV you may want to tip some more.

If you go into any of the large Mexican grocery stores you will find kids and disabled people bagging your groceries. These people are not paid. They are also usually tipped. The going rate is about 1 peso (8 cents) per bag.

Bartering is not commonly found anymore, except for in the village markets and tourist markets. But so many tourists have been paying whatever the vendor asks the first time around that the prices in tourist markets have gone through the roof. A short while ago a vendor tried to sell me 8 blown glass drinking glasses for $100 US. I found them later in the Wal Mart down the street for about $2. US each or a total of $16 dollars. Much later on yet we found a Mexican Restaurant Supply wholesaler who agreed to sell to us. We ended up buying a large box full of the same type of blown glass for about $40 US. So unless you really want to practice your bargaining, stay out of the tourist markets, and buy where the locals shop.

Most of these things are a learning experience. But the other experienced RV’ers that you meet will usually gladly take you by the hand and show you how it is done. They will show you where the American style stores are if you are uncomfortable with the Mexican markets. They will give you directions and suggestions. And in many cases you can find someone to buddy with who is going in the same direction as you.

So take the plunge, Turn south at Tuscon and find the jewel that many other RV’ers have already found.

Over the last month or so I have been quite tied up getting some more Personal Development training, and preparing for a trip to Mexico. Hence I have not been able to do much about updating my blog. But now we are comfortably settled in Mexico for a month, and the company that was with us for a week has left. This will allow me to get back into doing some more blogging, and other writing.

We did not take the RV down with us this time since I only had about 6 weeks total to do this trip. Instead we took down our 4 wheel drive Mazda van so we could make some really good time getting here.

We have rented a bungalow in La Cruz which is on the south side of the bay of Banderis, and overlooks all of Bucerais and Puerto Vallarta. We have a million dollar view from here for about $25. per day.

View of Puerto Vallarta From Our Bungalow

The property we are on has about 6 RV spots also available, but they are all empty right now. You can see them in the bottom right of the photo. We also checked a number of the RV parks on the way down, and most of them were either empty, or only had a few RV’s in them.

For an RV’er a holiday in Mexico would be a real bargain right now. To give you a bit of perspective, it cost us $450 in fuel for our 20 mile per gallon vehicle to get here all the way from Vancouver British Columbia. In a 10 mile per gallon RV it would cost less than $1000. But most RV’ers would not have to come near as far.

Mexican Insurance for 6 months cost us $89. and in most cases you can get a rebate from your US or Canadian insurance provider for the time that you were in Mexico, and they were not covering you. The rebate is usually much more than the Mexican insurance cost you in the first place.

The only other real expense will be highway tolls, but that only works out to a couple of hundred dollars total for the round trip.

RV park prices are all over the map, but except for in the big cities are much more reasonable than in the US or Canada. Monthly rates of $300 or less are common away from the big cities. You usually are still more than close enough to go the the big cities to visit the Costco, Sam’s Club, or WalMart.

For the first timer traveling to Mexico in an RV it may be a bit daunting, but rest assured it is very safe. In fact it is statistically much safer than the USA and actually even Canada. Right now the USA is on the list of some of the most dangerous countries in the world to travel in.

If you are a first time RV’er I would recommend crossing at Nogales Arizona and taking the freeway down towards Mazatalan and Puerto Vallarta. Get a good map such as the Guia Roji which is available at amazon, and a copy of Mike and Terry Church’s book “Mexican Camping” which lists all the RV parks in Mexico along with directions to get there.

Cross at the truck crossing at Nogales and proceed south about 12 miles to the customs and immigration center. Here you will have to get a temporary import permit for any vehicles you are bringing into Mexico. You will have to leave a credit card imprint for any vehicle you bring in. Also one person cannot bring in two vehicles. If you are bringing in a Motor Home towing a car, each vehicle has to be in a different name, and the person who’s name is on the registration has to be present, with a credit card with their name on it. The name on the credit card has to match the name on the registration. This rule does not apply to motorcyles and quads that are under 250 cc.

The reason you leave a credit card impression is that if you do not get the vehicle out of Mexico within 6 months your credit card will be charged with import duty for the vehicle. You do not have to worry though since you will be given a receipt when you return out of Mexico to prove that you have taken the vehicle out of the country.

You will also have to have about 250 Mexican Pesos per person with you to pay for your tourist visas at this time. You can buy Mexican pesos in Nogales USA or you can go into Nogales Mexico and get Pesos from almost any bank machine. This is the best way to get money in Mexico since you will be getting the bank rate for that day, and not getting charged a commission by a money exchange. Do not even bother with travelers checks  since they are a real pain to cash in Mexico. Get enough cash to pay for your diesel or gas at gas stations, since most do not take credit cards.

I have gone into quite a bit more detail on what you need to know to enter Mexico in my book “Full Time in an RV“. To try and put down all that information here would make the post too long. There are also other good guides for entering and traveling in Mexico. Among them Mike and Terry’s book Mexican Camping which I have already mentioned, and also the website “On The Road In”

So if you have not done so before, take the plunge. The people are great, the roads are good, there are many good RV parks, and your money is worth a lot here right now.

Enjoy

As this thread about what kind of rig do I need continues, I will give you a bit of our own story. When we bought our rig, slide-outs where almost unheard of. So we ended up buying a standard 36 ft gas powered Class A motor home. There were diesel units available but we could not find anything that we liked the inside of. It’s true that the diesel may have more power, and get you to that next location quicker, it is not the diesel that makes your life more comfortable when you get there.

We bought our rig because of how it was laid out inside, and how it looked. We wanted to be comfortable. We wanted to be able to sit and look at the scenery from inside our rig without having to strain to look out a window. We wanted room for our stuff, especially my tools. And one really important thing was the fact that my wife and I like to sit in bed in the morning, have a cup or two of coffee, and plan our days. We call these times our directors meetings. Now the reason I bring this up is the fact that for us it is great to be able to sit in bed and look out a window at the scenery. In our rig we can do this. Especially when we were parked on the beaches in Mexico, we just loved this time of the day.

So if you are going to get into the Full Time RV Lifestyle then you will really want to think this through. Will the rig allow you to do things that you really like to do. As I said in other articles the RV is your new home, you have to look for a new home, not an RV when you are making your choice.

Salesmen will tell you all the features and benefits of a particular RV, don’t let yourself be pushed into an emotional buying decision. Put yourself in the same position you would be if you are buying a brick and mortar house. What would you be looking for, look for the same things in the RV.

Remember flash and polish does not a comfortable house make. It is amazing but you will find that if you ask the salesman to leave for an hour or so, and then just spend some time in the rig imagining yourself doing some of the things that you do everyday, you will quickly see if the particular RV that you are looking at will work for you. Give yourself time to get by the emotion, and think practical. You can reform an emotional attachment to the outcome once the decision has been made.

Many people have made emotional buying decisions in regard to RV’s since it was a totally new field to them. They would not have done the same thing with a house since they have been around houses all their life, they know what they are looking for. Just keep this in mind when you are looking for that perfect RV.

Our RV When We First Bought It

The picture on the right shows what our RV looked like on the day that we bought it. Today it would seem outdated, but it has been a very comfortable home for us for over 10 years. We bought this unit for only $30,000 so our home expenses have basically worked out to $3,000 per year. To me this is an extremely economical price for a comfortable home that I can take with me anywhere.

You may wonder what it is you are going to do in your RV, once you become a full time RV’er. Well that is an easy question to answer. You are going to do all of the same things you like to do now. Always remember that when you move into an RV as a Full Time RV’er that you are not actually moving into an RV at all but actually moving into a home on wheels. If you move, it does not mean that your interests are going to change.

If you had a hobby before becoming a full timer, you will have the same hobby after. If you loved TV and movies, you will still like TV and movies. If you loved to entertain you will still want to do that.

With that in mind you will have one more criteria that you can use when looking for that perfect RV for full timing. That criteria is can I still enjoy what it is I like to do in my new home.

If you were looking at a new house, you would be looking at it with an eye to continuing to do what you like to do. I would suggest that you view any potential RV’s in the same way. For example if you love to quilt, can you work around the table comfortably. If you love to watch TV and movies, can you comfortably sit and watch the TV without getting a crook in the neck. If you like to cook and entertain, is there enough room, and is the kitchen area set up in such a way that you can do this.

All The Comforts Of Home

In closing I would say that if you are looking at an RV to full time in, do not look at it as an RV at all but rather look at it as a new home. You will start to look at RV’s from a different perspective when you make that switch.

The perfect RV is out there. Arm yourself with your requirements and happy hunting.

When people first look at RV’s they are usually taken by how nice many of them look, and how much they feel like a brick and mortar home. Yet it is true that many modern RV’s are truly comfortable and roomy. But if you base your purchase on just that, you may be in for a bit of a surprise.

When you talk to Full Time RV’ers about their choice of rig, you will find that the majority are quite happy with their decision except for one thing. And that one thing is storage. There never seems to be enough of it. As I mention in my book “Full Time in an RV” budget for at least 50% more space than you think you will need.

If you have hobbies or other interests that you now do in your fixed home, chances are that you are still going to enjoy them on the road. Look at how much storage space you will need for your art supplies, tools, or other hobby related stuff. You can get a good idea by looking at how much space these things take up now.

Moving into an RV Full Time is moving into a new home. An RV is nothing more than a home on wheels. Your interests and hobbies are not going to change. You may have to do them a little differently, but you will still want your supplies with you.

A word of caution here. All RV’s have a GVWR. This is a Gross Vehicle Weight Rating. If your RV is pulled into the scale by  the highway patrol, and they find you are overweight, not only will you have to pay a stiff fine, you will also not be allowed to continue until after you remove the excess weight. So with this in mind get a good handle on how much the things you want to take with you weigh, and then look for an RV that is rated to carry that much and more. You also have to put the weight of the water, waste water, propane, and fuel you will be carrying into this equation. In my book I give some information on how to calculate these weights.

If you are going to require a lot of storage space, then usually a motor home is the way to go. Most newer motor home have lots of basement storage space, and some of it usually goes right across and allows you to carry some very large items.

Second on the list is usually 5th wheel trailers. These usually only have one large storage compartment in them. Usually at the front underneath part of the overhang.

Regular holiday type trailers usually have the least amount of storage space, and these are really usually only designed for 2 week vacations.

There are also C class motor homes, while usually not being known for large amounts of storage, there are a few out there that are quite surprising in that respect.

If you look at the spec sheets of most modern RV’s you will usually find statistics for the amount of cubic inside and outside storage capability. This is a good place to start. But take a close look at the unit, and make sure it will work for you. If none of the storage bins are large enough to take your golf clubs or skis or what have you, then all that cubic capacity is not going to be any good to you.

Room For All Your Stuff

Our own RV is an older 36 foot motor home. In the picture you can see it parked on the beach in Chacala Mexico. As you can see in the photo there is a zodiac boat, plastic lawn chairs, a table, ladder, and various other items. We have room for all this and much more besides. We were also carrying a 7 and 1/2 horse boat motor and gas tank. It is the ability to carry the things with you that allow you to do the things you want to do, that makes this such a great lifestyle. Now you can have all your interests and hobbies, and travel besides. How much better does it get.

Well we have taken a change in direction on the blogging front again. For the last while we have talked about the psychology of RV’ing, other peoples blogs, and also some more information about running a business on the road.

Now I am going to take the jump into what kind of rig do I need. I would guess that I am not going to do this justice even in a few articles, but here goes.

Many people ask, what kind of rig should I get to RV. Well the answer is the same as the answer to what kind of house do I need. Some people prefer a small rancher, others a three story with a double garage. In short the answer to the question is you should get the kind of rig that works for you. There may be some mitigating circumstances, such as if you already own a 3/4 or 1 ton pickup truck, in that case you may want to go for a trailer or fifth wheel. But if you are starting from scratch the best way to go is to ask yourself a number of leading questions. Such as how do I see myself living this RV lifestyle, what do I like to do, and what do I want to carry with me? Once you have the answers to these questions, you will start to get a bit of an idea of what will work for you.

Decisions

As an example when my wife and I started full timing, we knew it would be to follow my job around. We also knew that we would be wanting to travel back to Vancouver frequently since our boat was there. We did not want to bring the RV back each time since we could stay  on our boat and we did not need to have the RV there. There was also the fact that  my company would still pay the pad rental during the times we left our unit parked at an RV park.

Decisions

We already had a small car that could be towed 4 wheels down, and we saw this as our ideal commuter vehicle to get back and forth from the RV to the boat.

So in our case the best solution was a motor home that could tow our small car. With a fifth wheel being in distant second, since that would mean having to sell the car, and also commuting back to our boat in a large pick up truck.

This example shows you how we came to our decision. You will have to think through how it is you see your RV lifestyle becoming, and figure out your RV requirement needs accordingly.

As I continue on this article train I will discuss other factors that you will want to consider in your choice.

Stay tuned.

As I was going through my email, I noticed a Google alert for Full Time RV’ing Online Internet Business. Since this is an area that we ourselves use, I went to take a look at it. It seems quite interesting, and has to do with internet marketing. I took a scan through it, and it seems to cover a lot of the same things that my wife covered in the course that she took with Eben Pagan. That course was about $1,000 and she said it was worth every penny.

This course is less than $250 but still has a lot of the same material.

Now I know that Eben Pagan is one of the best known internet marketers in North America, and it sounds good to say you were trained by him. This only does any good if you have paying customers like my wife has. If you looking to run a small or medium marketing company, you do not really have to worry about the status of your training. So a $250 dollar fee would be quite reasonable, and would not represent a great loss if you find that the information is not for you.

Internet marketing, drop shipping, and Virtual assistant services are excellent businesses to run out of an RV. Your customer does not know where you are, and usually does not care.

The things my wife learned from Eben Pagan, have allowed her to attract higher class contracts, that are potentially worth much more money.

You can take a look at this course by clicking on this Link.

You can also look at Eben Pagan’s information here.

I do not know anything more about this course than what is advertised on their web pages. I am just basing my knowledge on similar courses that my wife has taken. Do not take this as a recommendation of this course, just an avenue for you to explore potential Full Time RV business opportunities.

Last night we started a 6 day course with PSI Seminars. These seminars are geared towards personal development, and recognizing how the Paradigms or Prejudices that we carry in our sub conscious mind hold us back.

In almost any area of life, be it a job, business or changing your lifestyle to living full time in an RV, there are things in your own mind that will hold you back. In the job it could be, am I good enough, nobody in my circle of family or friends makes that much so how could I, my neighbors all have this type of job, so why should I look for a better one.

In the area of business, it usually is, I am just a small business, how could I take on this large contract, If I stick my nose out my bigger competitors will eat me alive.

In the area of Full Time RV’ing you have the paradigm of having to own a house or property, and working at a full time job, “like everyone else”.

Paradigms are beliefs that are buried in your sub conscious mind. You do not even know they are there, but the control everything that you do.

I read an article a while back where some experiments were done with salesmen. Now most salesmen will sell about the same amount of product each year, since they have a paradigm that says that this is what they are capable of. What they did with these salesmen was get them all excited in sales seminars, and promised them free trips and other rewards if they would double their sales for the year. For the first month or so it worked, most of the salesmen would sell three or four times their normal amount, but then something interesting happens. That is they will actually sell less than their average for the rest of the year, so that at the end of the year they will have sold their usual volume or dollar amount. Their sub conscious mind told them that they were a salesman that sold X amount per year, and it made sure that is exactly what they did.

Now the only way this can be changed is by changing the Paradigm that controls the behavior. This is the same in all areas of life. The reason most people make $50,000 a year is because their paradigm tells them that is what they make. If they could change the paradigm to say $200,000 I can almost guarantee that is what they will be making within a few years.

So if you want to break out of the home ownership paradigm and into the Full Time RV paradigm, you are going to have to do a bit of work. The work is basically forming a goal, getting emotionally attached to that goal, and thinking about it all the time. Anyone can do this, but it takes time. The only way it can usually be sped up exponentially is to get life coaching.

When you talk to Full Time RV’ers, or any body that is perusing an alternative lifestyle you will soon find out that most of them first thought about it for a few years, then dreamed about it (emotional) for a few more years, till finally the paradigm had shifted enough for them to actually make the move.

One of the buttons you will see at the top of my blog says coaching. I have been trained by Bob Proctor’s (from “The Secret Movie”) company LifeSuccess as a Life Coach. I am trying to specialize my coaching toward people who want to change their life by becoming Full Time Rv’ers. I want to coach in this area, because Full Time RV’ing is one of my passions, and I understand the draw.

If you are interested in coaching in this area, the contact information for coaching is available on the coaching page.

Today the conversation came up again about safety while full time RV’ing, especially in Mexico. The conversation also went into the BLM or free camping areas of the USA. It seems a lot of people are concerned about safety when traveling. But if you look at statistics you will soon start to wonder why you were concerned in the first place.

A couple of years ago I came across a statistic that said that out of every five million tourists that went into Mexico, five died in some kind of violence. When people first hear this they say “see I told you so”. But lets analyze this a bit. The average tourist spends about 8 to 10 days in Mexico, or lets say 200 hours.

The average person drives about 1/2 hour per day or also approximately 200 hours a year. When you take the same number of five million, approximately 700 are going to die in car accidents, many painfully, and another 300,000 are going to be injured, many of them seriously. Yet people think nothing of getting in a car and driving with their family in the car with them, yet quake in their boots when traveling in Mexico is mentioned.

If you look at the numbers for death by falls and drowning in a shower or bathtub, my comment is you go take a shower, and I will go to Mexico where it is safe.

Recently on Yahoo I read an article that the United States is one of the most dangerous western countries to travel in. This is the second time that I have come across a similar article. Yet most people do not think twice about getting in their vehicle and going to the mountains or a lake for the weekend.

So if you are comfortable traveling in this way, you should not be concerned with traveling Full  Time in an RV. If you are nervous about traveling in the USA, consider traveling in Canada where the gun murder rate is about one tenth of what it is in the USA. Or travel to Mexico where it is even lower than that.

The fact of the matter is that there is no difference in the safety level while living in a regular home or condo, or living Full Time in an RV.

Have you ever noticed that when you decide to do something like live in an RV or travel to Mexico, that people will start telling you stories about things that supposedly happened to others who did the same thing. These stories are always bad. If you do a bit of digging you will soon find that the people who are telling these stories actually would love to do what you want to do but they are scared. So they will tell stories to try and keep you down at their level, since they do not want to see you succeed where they are afraid.

Always consider the source when you hear these stories. I heard many stories about Mexico before the first time we took our RV down there. But when we were actually in Mexico and talking to all the other RV’ers we met down there, we found that we never met anyone who ever had a problem, in fact we never met anyone who knew anyone else that had a problem.

So go ahead take the leap into the Full Time RV Lifestyle, travel to Mexico and Canada, and before you leave tell your friends to be carefull in the bathtub.

As I was rereading my list of RV Blogs that I follow, I found I had forgotten to mention one that has a huge list of RV Blog sites on it. Just scroll down the right side of Sandra and Gordon’s “Nightly News Blog” to see them. One of the things I learned in Life Coach training was to teach people to keep something foremost in their minds and think about it all the time if they want to achieve it. If you have a dream of Full Time RV’ing, reading all the blogs and posts is a good way to keep your dream foremost in your mind, and you will find that the things you need to realize your dreams start to appear in your life.

As I have mentioned in an earlier post, the main reason for my blog is to help you in the technical side of Full Time RV’ing. I hope to stay fairly true to this but there are times that the reader also needs real life stories and information from other view points.

In this are I have found that a lot of bloggers are very supportive of each other, and do not usually hesitate to mention other blogs.

This is my intention in this post. There are a number of sites that I follow my self, both for information, and inspiration for my own blogs.

One of the blogs I have mentioned before is RV Home Yet This bog is written from a feminine perspective, and on her blog site/website Jaimie also has some of her books for sale. Interestingly I just discovered that Jaimie has also just received her Personal Coaching certificate, which is something that I also have. Just from reading a few of her postings,  I find I identify with her quite closely.

Another Blog by a female Full Time RV’er is Travels with Miranda. It is written by a young Canadian Gal, who is traveling with 2 cats. I met Rae at our RV park a number of months ago, and she actually helped to edit my book “Full Time in an RV” . One my last posts talked about a brake incident that almost ended in tragedy for Rae.

A new blog that I have just been made aware of is Croft’s Mexico. I just found out about this blog from Rae’s blog. Interestingly the blogger in this case is someone I used to work with. His blog has a lot to do with RV travel in Mexico which is probably obvious.

Today Google alerts alerted me to another interesting blog called Frugal Retirement Living This website/blog deals with retirement living in RV’s, sailboats, other countries and overseas. It gives a lot of information on living an exciting but low cost retirement life.

Another similar site is the Frugal RV Travel Blog. This blog is also part of a website by Marianne Edwards. On her website she also sells a number of Frugal RV guides that she has written. Marianne also has a Travel Blog List where she list a large number of other blogs. As I mentioned earlier, bloggers support each other in this way.

Something I learned when I was taking my coaching training, is that you teach people not to be competitive, but to help each other. The most successful people are not the ones who compete for a piece of the pie, but work together to make a bigger pie. In our case it is getting more people interested in RV’ing and traveling instead of trying to get more of the current RV crowd to follow our blog.

We all have different information and different angles on the information. The more sides of a topic you see, the easier it will be to see the whole story. So go ahead, check out other blogs, I will not feel hurt. In fact I will be happy to see the light in your eyes as you start to understand this lifestyle that us bloggers already love.

Many of the blogs listed have RSS feeds. What an RSS feed does for you is tell you when a blog has been posted. This way you do not always have to go back to the blog site to check if there is anything new. Instead you will be sent a notice that you can receive in one of your Outlook folders, or Internet explorer. I prefer the Outlook folder method myself, since I have to check email each day anyhow, and the RSS feed folder is right there. The problem is though that not all types of RSS feeds are consistent and they inform you in different ways. To understand how they work, google RSS feeds for more information, it would be a bit too much to explain all the variations in this post.

Yesterday as I was driving to Whistler British Columbia to do a job for the Canadian Military, I stopped in a town called Squamish for a Starbucks coffee.

As I was adding cream and sugar to my coffee I noticed someone walk into the coffee shop who really looked familiar. As she got closer I realized that this was Rae, who writes the Travels With Miranda Blog. I met Rae at the RV park where we have been spending most of our time for the last few years. Rae is a young Canadian lady who travels full time in an RV alone, except for two cats.

As I started to talk to Rae she told me about her very recent near escape from tragedy when the brakes on her rig failed on a very steep hill north of Whistler. From her description, she did everything right, including gearing down. As it turned out there was a run a way lane on the hill, but a vehicle was blocking it. She had to go on to the next run away lane where she finally managed to stop. With the result that her brakes where so hot that a tire caught fire and was destroyed. She describes the incident very well in her blog.

In my book I write about learning to gear down, and how to use the brakes when you are driving a larger vehicle. This incident underscores the importance of this information. An RV is not a get in and drive vehicle like a new or rental car would be. There are some things that have to be learned.

When you follow a large truck down a hill, you will notice that they are going slow, and that their brake lights rarely come on. This is because they have geared down, and are letting the engine do the braking for them. Very large trucks also have some thing we know as engine brakes, or exhaust brakes, but even if we do not have those, we can still use the engine for very effective braking.

To use the engine as a brake, first use the regular brakes to slow down to about 40 mph or 60 km. Then shift the automatic transmission into 2nd gear. You will notice the engine starting to hold you back. If this still is not enough, use the regular brakes to slow you down to about 20 mph or 30 km and then shift into 1st or low, depending on how your shifter is marked. If you are driving with a standard transmission, you probably already understand how to do this. You will have to do a bit of experimenting with your vehicle to determine the best speed for downshifting. You want to make sure that you do not over rev the engine. If you have a tachometer this will be easy. For effective engine braking you will want to run the engine fairly fast. Usually about 20% below red line. So if your red line is 5000 rpm, about 4000 rpm would be a good engine speed.

Once you are down in 1st or low you may find that you still have to use the regular brakes to some extent if the hill is very steep. But at this point it should not be a problem since the engine will now be doing most of the breaking, and the brakes will not heat up near as much.

But then there are hills such as Rae descended. In cases such as this sometimes the only option is to stop occasionally, and let the brakes cool off. The problem is that many times you are into brake failure, before you even realize what is happening.

Sometimes it takes having an incident like this shown to you to make you aware of just how dangerous it can be to take a large RV down a steep hill. Now that you are aware you will think of it the next time you start to decend that hill, and you will make it safely to the bottom.

An RV especially the size of RV that most Full Time RV’ers use can be very heavy. If you have one of these large units, or are considering buying one, it is really in you own best interest to take the time to really learn to drive it properly. The live you save may be your own.

Our Other RV a 36 ft Sceptre Sailboat

This week we took a small holiday from everything. We packed what we needed from the RV and went to our other RV. At this point you may be wondering “What?” But beside our 36 foot A class, we also own a 36 foot sailboat. We have been out on our RV (sailboat) now for about 5 days. Tomorrow we have to head back to the Marina since work is calling.

As I have mentioned before, the Full Time RV Lifestyle can be very addicting. Once you really get to understand what it is all about, you really never want to go back.

As our plans stand at the moment, it is our intention to take our sailboat, off shore and around the world once I retire next year. We also plan to keep an RV parked on the west coast, so that we have a place to come back to when we do return trips from our boat. We truly want to travel both North America, and the world.

Having talked to other people who do something similar, they tell me that it is still more economical to live this way than it is to live full time in a brick and mortar house. That is unless one insists on spending all their time in either marinas or RV parks.

But the beauty of both these types of RV’ing is the fact that one does not have to connected to any services if they are so inclined. In an RV you can park in a free area, and on a boat you can swing on the hook.

In this article I am not going to go into any technical RV’ing type information, but am just tossing this bit of information out there in the hopes that it may start you thinking along a different line.

The sailboat type RV idea first came to me during a trip to the Dominican Republic, where I took a sailboat excursion, with a father and daughter team from Spain. When I looked at what it would cost me to travel around the world for a few years using airlines and hotels, compared to what it cost them to do the same thing, I was hooked.  It was this same thinking that eventually led to the land RV lifestyle. Even though in that case, it was my job that finally pushed me over the edge to actually do it.

So go ahead free up your mind, and take a close look at the RV lifestyle. I promise you it will not disappoint. If you would like to try it but are having some fear or other issues that are holding you back, I can offer my services, since I am also a certified life coach. My wife is a life coach also. We were both trained by Bob Proctor of LifeSuccess. I hope to specialize in coaching people who really want to make changes in their life in regard to Full Time RV’ing, be it by RV or Boat. These areas are my passion, and I want to help others who would like to try it. You can contact us for coaching at the coaching link at the top of this page.

In my last post I mentioned that you can have full RV hookups at a friends or relatives home installed. I only talked about the electrical and water connections in that post. In this post I will talk about sewer connections.

When you think of sewer you are probably thinking of the normal 3 or 4 inch sewer lines that you have to dig into the ground, and connect to the city sewer system or to a septic system. Well if it happens to be a very easy thing to do at the particular friends or relatives home where you are attempting to do this, there is nothing wrong with doing it this way. But in most cases you will be dealing with a paved driveway, or the fact that the sewer lines for the property are at the opposite sides of the house, and in that case you will have a problem.

So what to do in this situation? Well I am going to show you a solution that will make it as easy as running a water line. The solution involves something called a macerator pump.

Macerator pumps can be bought preassembled for RV use. The main problem is that most of the commercial units are one piece, and sometimes a bit to long to fit the sewer connections on a particular rig. In my case I built my own using a pump from a marine supply store, and a few fittings from a hardware store, and an RV store. The price came out to less than half of the commercial versions.

Home Made RV Macerator pump.

My home made macerator pump set up. This unit fits in the sewer compartment of my motor home, yet can be disconnected so that I can use a regular sewer hose instead.

The output of the pump can be connected to a regular 3/4 inch garden hose and pumped up to 150 feet. If you do not want to install any permanent connections, the garden hose can be inserted into any toilet. If you do this make sure the hose goes down around the bend in the toilet, and then stays put when you turn on the pump. The other easy way to go is to find the sewer clean out cap on the property, and insert the hose there.

But if you want to make a permanant connection that you can connect your pump to whenever you are parked you can cut into a sewer pipe inside the home and install a T fitting that has a 1 inch line off the side. From here you run 1 inch plastic line to where you want the RV connection to be. You can terminate the plastic line at your RV parking spot with a small adaptor that has a female garden hose fitting on the end. When you go to connect your RV you only need a short 3/4 inch garden hose to connect from the pump to this fitting. You can put together an appropriate length of hose with parts that you can find in any hardware store.

As with dumping at a sani dump, you want to dump your black water first and your grey water second in order to clean out the pump, garden hose, and the 1 inch sewer line.

In my book I give full instructions for building this pump set up, along with building it into your rig. There are pictures of the parts you will need, and some notes on wiring. I also talk a lot about how this pump will help you in boondocking situations.

Find my book at www.fulltimeinanrv.com

In a previous post I alluded to the fact that one can add hookups at a friends or families home with not to much difficulty. In most cases if all you need is 15 amp power and water, most homes already have these installed outside. You may just have to run an extension cord or extra hose to get to the existing installation. You can also dump gray water by bucketing a few bucket fulls into a toilet or laundry room sink.

A set up like this is great if you are only staying at a friends, or relatives place for a few days or so and then moving on.

But in some cases you will want to do extended RV stays, or make regular returns to particular friends or family with your RV. Especially in such cases where you have to stay to help care for a loved one. In this case it may be a good idea to put in some hook ups. You may have to look into the legal side of this if you want to get really fancy, but there are ways around some of those things also.

If you are going to wire in an outlet for the RV it is prudent to get the proper permit, and have a certified electrician do this. You may not always be able to get a permit to install an outlet for an RV, in that case get a permit to put in an outlet for an Air compressor, a welder, a canning stove, or what have you. Some of these type of outlets will be 220 volt outlets, but if they are at least 30 amps, you can get the electrician to make you an adapter plug that will only supply 110 volts from the jack, but still have 30 amps available. 220 volt outlets are just 2 opposing 11o volt outlets, so the adapter that the electrician will make you will just leave one of the 110 volt circuits disconnected. You will not be able to inadvertently plug your RV plug into these 220 volt outlets since they are a different pin configuration. While the electrician is there, he should also be able to put in a cable vision, and possibly a telephone outlet for you.

Unless the water tap is a long ways away, it is usually not a great problem to run a water hose. But if this is a problem, it should be no real problem to get a permit to put in an extra tap. It is usually also a good idea to get a reputable plumbing company put in the water connection. The reason I mention permits, electricians and plumbers is the fact that you do not want to do anything to compromise your friends or relatives home insurance in case something did happen. You may have the skills to do these jobs yourself, but just for this reason, it is best to contract it out. In most cases it should not be a very expensive proposition.

The sewer connection I will leave for another post. As I mentioned in an earlier post there are ways to do this that do not involve digging in a large 3 or 4 inch sewer pipe. But more on that later.

I personally have put in hookups in two sites. One on a friends farm, and the other at a small restaurant on a beach in Mexico. It is not hard to do or get done. And when you are not there, your friends can use the hookups for their own RV or to have other RV’ing friends visit them.