Why would you make $100,000+ a month and live in an RV?

My name is Michelle and I live in an RV. And, yes, I regularly earn over $100,000 a month. A common question I receive is “Why would you make $100,000+ and live in an RV?” I am asked this question so often that it deserved to be its own article. And, if you want to…

Written By:

Michelle Schroeder-Gardner

Last Updated: March 18, 2022

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My name is Michelle and I live in an RV. And, yes, I regularly earn over $100,000 a month.

A common question I often receive involves why would I make a high income and live in an RV. As if only a "certain" type of people are allowed to live in an RV and everyone else is just lying about it. A common question I receive is “Why would you make $100,000+ and live in an RV?”

I am asked this question so often that it deserved to be its own article. And, if you want to get to the point quickly, it’s simple – we do it because we LOVE RVing.

There are a lot of assumptions that people make about why we live in an RV, like we’re hippies or even homeless. On the other end of the spectrum, some people assume that we’ve inherited a ton of money and don’t actually work, ha!

Other people assume that if we just bought a real house we would love it and quit RVing. Well, we did own a “real” house for six years, and we still love RVing more.

Whenever people make these comments, though, I think what they should be asking is, “Why wouldn’t a person live in an RV if they could?”

To us, full-time RVing is freedom. We can chase good weather, we can visit friends and families all over the country, we can wake up one morning by the ocean, and spend the night next to a snow capped mountain. It also means that we understand how little we actually need to live, and that is true freedom.

This freedom does come at a cost though. RVing can be a frugal way to live, but for many (like us) it can be more expensive than traditional forms of housing. We don’t RV to save money, which is something that many, many people think would be the only reason to RV.

Also, because we have to be so mindful about what we buy, we rarely spend money on things that would clutter a more traditional home.

RV-related content:

We’ve been RVing for over two years now, and we absolutely love it.

People keep asking us when we will stop traveling, grow up, and buy a house again.

Well, not anytime soon!

While I know that traveling full-time and RV life isn’t for everyone, I also know that I don’t want to live in a “normal” home anytime soon.

At this point in my life, RVing is a good fit for our family.

Just a few years ago, I never thought I’d live in an RV. It was never a dream of mine or anything like that.

However, one step into an RV and I knew it was for me. Living in our RV full-time has been the best thing ever, and we truly love it.

Here’s why I live in an RV even though I earn $100,000 a month.

Not everyone has to live the same life.

The great thing about this great big world we live in is that everyone is different.

If everyone lived the exact same life – well, that would be really boring.

Some people want to live in homes, and some may want to live in an RV. For us, we choose the latter.

We’ve lived in a house before – we owned the same one for around six years. However, we were bit by the travel bug, and we realized that RV life was for us.

Earning a high income doesn’t have anything with why we live in an RV – we just love to travel! Sure, we could have bought a big house and lots of fancy cars. But, is that what we wanted?

Nope.

So, instead we went with what we wanted to do.

GASP!

For many people, making the choice to live in an RV is shocking.

Again and again I have heard that I am crazy for deciding to live in an RV while earning a high income. To me, though, I don’t see what income has to do with RVing – it’s fun, so I want to RV!

Just because I live in an RV doesn’t mean that I’m lying about how much money I earn, it doesn’t mean that I am a cheapskate, and it doesn’t mean that I’m homeless.

I have a home and this is the home I choose.

We get to see so many amazing places.

We’ve already traveled to many awesome places in our RV, such as:

Many great mountains that we’ve summited, such as Huron Peak, Horseshoe Mountain, Mount Peale, and more.
The Pacific Northwest – Mount Rainier National Park, Olympic National Park, Kalaloch and Ruby Beach, Hoh National Rainforest, La Push Beach, and many other beautiful places.
Utah (many times) – Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Moab, and many other places.
Colorado (many times) – Rocky Mountain National Park, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado National Monument, Dinosaur National Monument, Breckenridge, Fruita, Aspen, Durango, Denver, and many other places.
“Home” in Missouri, and family in Mississippi and Illinois.
Arizona – Saguaro National Park, Tucson, Phoenix, Page, Flagstaff, Sedona, and many other places.
California – We’ve done the whole California coast, as well as central and eastern California, including Death Valley National Park, Sequoia National Park, King’s Canyon National Park, Yosemite National Park, and more.
Oregon – Bend, Newport, Portland, Silverton, and more! We’ve done the whole coast of Oregon, and it is absolutely beautiful.
Wyoming – Yellowstone National Park and Grand Tetons National Park.
Montana – Glacier National Park.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

And much, much more.

When you live in an RV, you can see all of these places from the comfort of your home. We pick where we want to stay, usually next to a fun hiking or biking trail for the most part, and for as long as we want.

I can live by the beach, mountains, desert, and anywhere else.

To continue from the previous section…

Living in an RV means that you can live wherever you want. The United States has so many beautiful places to see and live, and because it would be hard to just pick one place, RV life allows us to live in as many as we want.

And, it’s more than just going on a vacation, which is nice too, but I love being able to bring my entire home with me. This way I’m not forgetting anything, and because my home is always with me, I still get to live comfortably.

If I want to spend my summer in the mountains and my winter near the beach, I can do that. If I want to do the opposite the following year, I can do that too.

If I want to have my front window open up to a beautiful national park, I can even do that.

By living in an RV, I can choose to live wherever I want.

I can spend more time outside.

There’s nothing more that I love than a good hike.

Like I’ve already said several times (because it’s such a big deal to me) is that RV life means you can park your home wherever you want to. And, because we love being able to do things outdoors, we usually pick places that make that even easier. We often find ourselves in places that have hiking trails, bike trails, rock climbing routes, and more.

This is great because we can usually just walk or ride our bikes to wherever we want to go, which allows us to spend even more time enjoying the outdoors.

It’s amazingly beautiful living in an RV.

You simply cannot beat the views we’ve seen out the window of our RV.

And, there have been many of them.

We’ve seen beautiful national parks right outside our window, amazing mountain ranges, desert landscapes, lake views, wild animals, and more.

For this reason alone, I’m not sure why anyone wouldn’t want to live in an RV.

I can follow the weather.

Since we can park our home wherever we want, we can follow the weather. To us, around 70 degree is just perfect, so we like to stay in places that allow us to live in those temperatures year round.

Following the weather is something that we truly love.

After all, who wants to be too cold or too hot?

Thankfully, the RV life lets us just leave whenever the temperature is too hot or too cold for our liking.

We really only have clothes for one season, and because of that, we avoid places that are cold. I pretty much wear dresses, sandals, shorts, and/or tank tops year round, which is really nice and comfortable.

I don’t need a ton of stuff.

This is a big misunderstanding when people find out how much I make. Sure, we could be spending our money on new clothes, shoes, home decor, whatever, but having a high income doesn’t mean that I have to spend every last penny on material things.

In fact, that’s not what I want at all.

To me, more stuff does not equal happiness.

I’m not alone on this either, Why You Should Spend Like A Millionaire- The Frugal and Smart Money Habits of Millionaires.

Living in an RV means that you’ll have to downsize. While some people dread this, getting rid of nearly all of your stuff is extremely liberating.

When we sold our house and decided to live in an RV, we donated and got rid of a lot of our belongings. At first, it was difficult to get rid of so much, but it became easier as time went on.

These days, all we have is what we have with us. We have a small amount of everything, and we like it best this way.

We are much more mindful of what we buy, we waste hardly anything, and this is allowing us to save money as well.

Plus, when you live in an RV, you no longer have a need to buy as much stuff because the outdoors take up all of your time. We used to waste time and money going to the mall, Target, and other stores- but we hardly ever do that now. Instead, we spend a lot of our time exploring new places.

I can work and travel at the same time.

Yes, it is possible to do both.

I LOVE being able to work and travel at the same time.

We’ve met many amazing people while RVing. Some are retired, but others are like us and also trying different things in order to make their traveling dreams a reality. I know that thinking about making money while traveling can be a scary thing for many people, but it has really allowed us to live our dream life.

This factor is something that holds many potential full-time travelers back, but it shouldn’t! Don’t let making money on the road hold you back from living your dream, because even though it may seem big, it’s something that can usually be worked around.

Related articles on how to make money while traveling:

To be able to live in an RV full-time, I run an online business which consists mainly of this blog- Making Sense of Cents. It is a lot of fun to work and travel at the same time.

At first, I thought it would be difficult. I thought internet would be hard to find, that I would be too distracted, and so on.

I’ve come to find that I’m more motivated than ever when it comes to working, and having a great view out my window each day definitely helps as well.

If I want to take a break from work and go on a hike, I can do that. If I want to go on a mountain bike ride in the morning before I start answering emails, I can do that.

The list goes on and on!

Living in an RV makes traveling and working (and living) much more enjoyable because I can bring my home everywhere I go. I don’t have to worry about forgetting something, bringing a suitcase, or anything – I just always have it all with me.

Do you look down on RVing? Why or why not? Do you want to live in an RV?

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Author: Michelle Schroeder-Gardner

Hey! I’m Michelle Schroeder-Gardner and I am the founder of Making Sense of Cents. I’m passionate about all things personal finance, side hustles, making extra money, and online businesses. I have been featured in major publications such as Forbes, CNBC, Time, and Business Insider. Learn more here.

Why would you make $100,000+ a month and live in an RV?