Selling your house to live permanently in a motorhome sounds pretty extreme. Most people we talk to about it can’t believe it and say ‘you’re brave!’ or ‘that sounds amazing! but i couldn’t do it’.
Edit March 2023 – 4 years since going full time: since first publishing this post, we have both learned a lot from our full-time lifestyle and so this post has been updated to reflect that. Plus, it now shares the benefit of our experience with others who are also looking to sell up and go full-time
To be honest, it is quite extreme and probably one of the scariest things we have ever done. It’s also one of the most amazing things we have ever done. 4 years on, we still agree it was the best decision. At the time, both of our gut feelings’ were that keeping our house didn’t feel like the right thing to do. We were more comfortable selling it and we still stand by that decision today.
Why would you sell your house? Why not keep it?
Some people ask why we didn’t keep our house and rent it out, either to make an income or to give ourselves some future security. Our honest answer is that we never saw that option as secure. If anything, we saw it as more of a tie and a risk. Because we didn’t own the house outright, renting it would simply be a way of keeping it on ice and we wouldn’t earn an income from it.
Our honest answer was that we never saw that option as secure
Also, if we were unlucky enough to have any issues with tenants, we would still be responsible for covering the payments. It was simply a risk we didn’t want to take. Because we initially took time out from work to enable us to travel full-time, we didn’t have a steady income. We were using savings to fund our travels.
Of course, now we both work but because of factors like the pandemic and Jon not working remotely, we are still funding our travels on the same basis. We stop and work for a while and then go off travelling for a stint. This means we are still happy with not having a house or mortgage to worry about.
Isn’t it a good idea to have a base though?
We often get asked how we feel about not having a ‘base’, somewhere we can always go back to. To be honest, it has never bothered us. Initially, we knew that once we began living in the motorhome permanently, we had use of facilities and a spare room at a family members flat. Plus kind friends who offered us a bed for the night if needed.
As time went on and we made connections and settled in to the lifestyle, we realised we naturally built up a little network of places to stop. They are mainly campsites but we also know of a unit or two we can now stop at if needed.
That may seem too unpredictable for some. If I’m (Tash) honest, it probably would have sounded too unpredictable to me as well a few years ago. I would have needed to know exactly where my bolt hole was. But as we have learned in the last 4 years, you have to trust the process.
For some people, they prefer that safety net, which we can totally understand.
What do you do when things go wrong?
There are plenty of considerations for when things go wrong. Cats, parking, transport and costs but you can’t plan for every eventuality. You have to be as prepared as possible. It’s still good to have back up plans but otherwise, you just tackle things as they arise.
You can’t plan for every eventuality
We certainly have not had a smooth ride since we started this journey and whilst it can feel like everything is going wrong at times, you get through it. Nobody ever said this is plain sailing and we have certainly never portrayed it to be 100% perfect. We have always been quite honest with people. When they chat to us and ask us questions we include both the good and the bad.
We have said from the start, this might not be forever. We just want to travel for as long as we could and for once, please ourselves. That is why we don’t have a travel plan because we wanted the flexibility to change direction as it suited us. That was another reason not to keep the house because then it would always feel like there had to be a deadline. Like there was an end date because you would have to go back there at one point. We want to choose our own end date, when it feels right or we feel we have got everything we can out of this experience.
It’s not forever, just for now
Not having a house might not be forever either, its just our preference right now. We have kept some provisions back, should we wish to purchase again. The thing is, we have both lived in the same town for years and when we do buy again, who says it has to be back there? That was another reason we wanted to sell the house, because we didn’t see ourselves going back to where we used to live. We might come across somewhere on our travels that we like even more and decide that is where we would like to have our ‘base’.