We live in an RV.

Those of you who are new (because there are a lot of new people here in recent months) may not know this or the history of why we live in an RV.

Several years ago we had purchased a home in Georgetown, TX (a suburb of the booming AUSTIN, TX) with a FHA loan.

Random fact: Many people who are approved for FHA loans end up getting financed for more home than they can afford and end up losing their homes eventually.

In Austin, even back then, a small studio apartment (in a dangerous neighborhood) could easily cost over $1000 a month before utilities, so we thought buying a home in this price range would be a practical solution to rent that was skyrocketing ever time we signed a new lease….

I didn’t understand at the time that when property values are skyrocketing, so do your property taxes.

Similar to the apartment, the taxes on the home went up and up (driving up our monthly payment) as our home almost doubled in value in just under 5 years.

Whenever I tried to dispute our home value with the tax assessor, it was always denied because the value of the home was “at least what they had assessed if not more”.

We loved the home but this was not the stability and security we had been looking for.

In fact, keeping up with the home, quickly consumed our lives, time, and income.

We didn’t go out. We didn’t travel. We were paying for our own prison… until one day we decided to make a jump and sell the house we could no longer afford (and most of our possessions) to buy this RV.

There was an upside to the quickly rising property taxes….

The house REALLY was worth almost twice what we had paid only a few years earlier, so we had money from our house sale left to pay towards the RV.

We didn’t want to have a huge payment (or a payment at all) so we decided to look at older RVs that needed work.

Because our dogs are family, they were one of our top considerations in in our move.

We needed an RV big enough for our four dogs to still have room to play and have fun inside (since they were losing their yard).

Eventually, we found our RV (that needed a lot of work).

It’s a 2004… 17 years old. It’s 40 feet long. It runs on diesel.

Things are always breaking (for example we have not had hot water in almost a year or even running water since the storm in February) but we wouldn’t trade this lifestyle for the world.

We love this RV life, though it may not be for everyone.

Things break. The bus gets stuck. Things don’t always go as planned… that you can count on.

For all we’ve lost (house, yard, responsibly, stress, mortgage, being tied down), there’s so much we have gained like freedom – freedom to travel, freedom from the responsibility of upkeep on a larger home, financial freedom (from the mortgage and property taxes).

Also… we now have a roaming sensory bubble that’s so small it takes less than an hour for 2 people to get it SPOTLESS. (Need I say more?) 🤩

This weekend, we’ve driven our home to the beach. Just another day in the life of 2 humans not tied down by property, enjoying the earth instead of trying to own it.

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With gratitude, Lyric