FIRE Community Guest Interview #5 – Driving Towards FIRE Through RV Living

Well FImily it’s that time of the year for the next installment of the FIRE Community Interview Series!

For anyone new here, this interview series will cover people within the FIRE community who are on their way to becoming financial independent, have already reached financial independence, or who have retired early. If you are reading this and you are financially independent, retired early, or close to reaching these major financial milestones, please reach out to the Modern Fimily! You can check out the previous FIRE Community Guest Interviews here.

I am so excited to have Brett and Meredith from Driving Towards F.I.R.E. on to tackle our interview questions this week. Brett and Meredith are a very unique edition to the FIRE interview series as they are living full time in an RV while working and exploring the US.  We are all about diversity over here and we’re trying to showcase that there is no one-size-fits-all path to FI.  What better way to think out of the box to increase your income while simultaneously cutting your housing related costs by living in an RV?!

I hope you appreciate these responses as much as I do and I hope you gain some knowledge along the way!  If you have any follow up questions or would like to get in touch with this awesome couple, please leave a comment below or check out their blog. Brett & Meredith, take it away!

1. Can you give us a little background of who you are, what you do, and how you became interested in personal finance? How did you discover the idea of financial independence?

We are the Shoemaker’s (@DrivingTowardsFire), married for almost 9 years, together for 12.  We have 2 big rescue dogs who travel with us in our 5th wheel RV.  Brett works in Healthcare Information Technology and Meredith works as a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist who works in surgery ensuring her patients are comfortable and safe during their surgical procedures.  Meredith takes contracts all across the country, typically 3-6 months at a time and Brett travels and works full-time remotely where her contracts are. Personal Finance has always been important to us, but once the reality and gravity of our student loan debt set in, we became more aware and dedicated to it.  We initially found out about FI from Dave Ramsay, which is likely the foundation for many like us.

2. When in your journey did you realize financial independence was actually possible?  Was that the original goal at the beginning?

We started watching Tiny House Hunters on HGTV and began asking ourselves if that was something we could do.  We came to the realization that Meredith’s job offered contracts that would enable us to travel, increase our income, and spend more quality time with each other.  Brett’s job was the easy one. He already worked remotely and could go where Meredith went. We opted for the RV because it would drastically decrease our monthly expenses, we could bring our dogs, and our home would remain consistent even when in a new area.  Our goal from the beginning was to achieve being student loan debt free.  

3. To help put things into context, if you are comfortable sharing some numbers, what is your savings rate, FIRE number, net worth, salary, how many hours a week do you work, etc?  How long have you been working towards financial independence and where are you today? 

Our numbers are a bit hard to share at the moment, because our entire focus has been putting everything extra towards our student loan debt, but I can tell you that we intend to drop from full-time to part-time at some point and continue working in a part-time fashion.  For Meredith, she loves her career, but would love it more without the requirement of being full-time with full-time hours. For me, I’d love to grow our investments to a passive income rate that supplements my income so that I can pursue other passions. With contract based work, Meredith doubled her salary.  Because of this and the decrease in monthly expenses, we started with over $125,000 in student and personal loan debt in October 2018 (this value is much higher, but it’s the point at which we started tracking it). As of November 8, 2019, we have paid off all of our debt. That was paid off in exactly 12 months time from when we started our RV journey.  Now that the student loan debt is gone, we plan to have a savings rate of at least 50%. For us, we believe our FIRE number is $2-2.5 million in net worth. We are mostly targeting the FI portion of FIRE with the plan to retire from full-time work. We have 2 real estate investment properties and we are looking to add a 3rd towards the end of this year.  We also have successfully opened 2 SEP IRAs with a 3 fund (ETF) approach in January 2020.  So far, its up 2%.  We currently have $70,000 total debt on the truck and RV remaining and the plan is to have that paid off in May/June 2020. We both work 40 hours a week. We started our FI journey 12 months ago and we plan to travel full-time in our RV for the next 2 years to achieve our definition of FI. 

4. What made you decide to transition to the nomadic lifestyle and become full time RV-ers? How long have you been living in the RV? Do you plan to be in an RV long term? What has been your favorite place you’ve been to in the RV and why?

Several factors went into the decision to live, travel, and work from our RV.  First was the comfort and consistency of the same bed to sleep in at night. Living in short term hotels, condos, etc had little appeal to us.  The RV is something that allows us to remain mobile as we can travel to new places while under contract. It’s a reminder to keep moving. We also have our 2 rescue dogs which finding places that allow big dogs is both challenging and costly.  Since I work from home, they are with me all day every day and it makes it easier for them to know this is home. We’ve been in our RV full-time now for 12 full months. We don’t plan to be in the RV for long term, but plan to live the nomadic lifestyle for the next 2 years.  Because Meredith’s contracts come every 3 months and making sure her licenses are established, we haven’t taken the RV too many states yet. Only Tennessee and Virginia. Our favorite place so far has been Williamsburg, VA. So much history in the area with mountains and beach as well as Washington DC and other historic states nearby.  We’ve traveled to many of them at this point.

5. As full time RV-ers, how are you able to work while on the road? Do you stress out about work? What has been the most unique part about living in an RV?  Do you ever feel like you need more space or need space away from each other?

Working on the road is relatively easy.  As long as I have a stable internet connection, I am able to work from anywhere.  We purchased a similar device that emergency responders and police officers use that allow us to use a dual SIM card setup for the best signal for data use.  It’s a range extender as well, so it provides us the strongest signal up to 50 miles away. Meredith’s CRNA licenses are the biggest hurdles that usually dictate where we go next.  If she likes a particular site and they offer to extend her contract, it was often best to accept the extension and continue earning the income to pay off the student loan debt. We do have work stress like anyone else, but we don’t stress for work as it’s been consistent in our specific careers.  The most unique part about living in a RV is the simplicity of our lives outside of work. Cleaning takes such a small effort and amount of time comparably to a traditional home and cooking in a small space has proven challenging, but totally doable. We cook at home 4-5 nights a week, which also saves us costs.  I’ll say this, I’ll never underestimate the power of a dishwasher ever again. Hand-washing dishes isn’t a bad thing, but the convenience of a dishwasher is something we miss most. We have days where we miss having more space, but we are instantly reminded of what the life was like before RV life. We had more space, but no time to spend with each other.  It might sound cliché, but we are each other’s best friends. We have the same interests and we love doing things together. We realized we spend so much time with each other usually in one room, that the RV wouldn’t be an issue. It also helps that we purchased a 42 foot 5th wheel RV.  So it’s not as small as you would think.

6. Do you feel deprived?  Do you feel like you are sacrificing and missing out on life?  How would you say your mindset has shifted throughout your FI journey?

We definitely don’t feel deprived.  We take trips to beautiful places, we see new places, we experience new things together, and most importantly, we have more time together than we did before.  We do feel like we are sacrificing but it is for our own benefit in the short future. Suffer present pain for future gain, something my dad used to say. Our RV is super nice though with all the comforts of home and it even has a king bed, so there’s a reason they call it “Glamping”.  Our mindset is definitely heavily focused on our financial freedom the closer we get to achieve each milestone. We are now more motivated than ever because we crossed the 1 year mark of RV life, which was a feat we thought before we started was a challenge within itself. FI is real for us now and we are hustling now more than ever to make that a solid reality. 

7. What do you spend your money on and what don’t you spend your money on? What brings you happiness and joy? How much money do these things cost?

Our typical expenses are our monthly rent and our grocery bill.  Those likely make up the greater percentage of our budget. As mentioned before, we cook healthy meals 4-5 days a week in our RV and we reserve the weekends as our opportunity to get out for date days and date nights to try fun and exciting restaurants in the areas we travel to.  We avoid spending our money on ‘knicknacks’, things that sit on shelves, etc. When we do feel the need to buy a new shirt or something clothing related, the RV helps us get rid of something old that we don’t wear any longer. Space is limited and it has to be something we like or it will get sold or donated.  Our monthly expense for the RV and lodging typically costs $1200 with our monthly groceries and dining out being our biggest budget offender. We usually spend $2,000-2,200.  Which as we’ve been told, is quite high for the two of us, but with our combined income, we make it work. We are also very into health and fitness and generally prepare our food for the week from scratch.

8. Do you use a budget?  Do you track your expenses? Do you track your net worth? If so, how often do you update these?

At the moment, we don’t track our net worth.  We have a ball park that we keep in the back of our mind, but now that we have recently removed the student loan debt, we have a better idea of what that value is.  We do use a budget and typically stick to it consistently and make adjustments where necessary. Because Meredith is a full 1099 contract employee and we have other investments, we track virtually 90% of our expenses.  The only expenses we don’t currently track are vacation related expenses. These we cannot claim for tax purposes. I use just 2 things to track expenses. The first is an Excel spreadsheet with formulas broken down by category and month.  The second is an App called “Expensify”. Expensify captures all of our receipts and I can build reports off of them for tracking and for tax reporting purposes. I track expenses every month. 

9. As a FIRE member living in the US, are there any pros to living in America specifically that have helped you along your journey?  Conversely, any cons?  

This is a great question.  Arguably, the US has pros and cons.  I would state that in America, the ability to find a job that works best for us living nomadically is definitely a pro.  Another ‘pro’ may be the abundance of RV parks and campgrounds across the country that provide electricity, water, Internet, and TV for a bundled monthly rate oftentimes less than what rent would be on an apartment.  Not having to pay separately for utilities in our case helps our FI journey. Conversely, America doesn’t want you to live nomadically. Our system is built on a physical address for everything. Receiving mail, paying your taxes, registering your automobiles, applying for loans, etc.  It’s ironic because America at its roots was a nomadic culture so many years ago. The Government makes it difficult to work and travel at the same time. These are all cons that take careful planning and constant review. For Meredith, the licenses for her profession are often independent of each state which prevents her from applying for one and using that same state license in another state.  Some states have agreed to build a ‘multi-state’ license, but that is a relatively small amount of states. Each state has different requirements for her to be approved and a lengthy application process. The ironic part about this is that these states and specific areas experience staffing shortages, but make applying to assist with these shortages a challenge.

10. What is your investment strategy? Do you invest in mutual funds, index funds, dividend growth stocks, real estate, other businesses, etc.?  Has your investment strategy changed over the years?

Currently our investments are mixed mutual and dividend funds and stocks with real estate.  We are more interested in building a real estate portfolio than investing mostly in stocks and funds.  We realize the importance of IRAs and want to ensure we continue investing in them, but we like real estate.  It’s a tangible asset, something you can leverage for the present while also planning for the future. We are also strategizing other businesses to build and invest in as well.  The strategy has changed a bit over the years. We were taught to maximize in your employer’s retirement plan. These days we don’t believe solely on this strategy. 

11. If you could go back in time and change things, what would you have done differently?

We would both answer with wishing we would have started our full-time RV life journey sooner.  We’ve already experienced the benefits in just one year’s time. We always say, ‘can you imagine if we had started 3 years ago where we’d be’?  If we had it to do over again, we may have opted to hit the road full time first instead of purchasing our home. We have a hard time fully committing to that thought though, because if we hadn’t we may have never found the journey we are on now.  If we didn’t have one we likely wouldn’t have found the other. 

12. Has discovering financial independence changed how you view your job and life overall? 

Absolutely.  I (Brett) was recently laid off from my employer for the first time in my life.  Fortunately, this happened early in my life so I was able to bounce back quickly, but it served as a reminder that my life and my life with Meredith is more important than the time and effort I put into a career or with an employer.  Life’s too short to be identified solely based on ‘what you do’ career-wise. We’ve changed our life drastically so that we leverage our skills and experience to benefit us and our lives outside of work. An employer these days only care about their bottomline and could care less about the lives of their employees.  Why should we care about the employer’s success? We provide what they need to be successful, not the other way around. It’s about getting some control back in our lives. RV life and travel has helped provide this. Life is short and we’d rather experience it for what it truly was meant for than sacrifice it for work.  Don’t get me wrong, we love our careers and what it took to accomplish them, but for us it’s about working smart, not hard. For Meredith, she loves her career, but it is and can be highly stressful. Her ability to take contracts gives her freedom to choose her hours and days worked as well as opting to not take call, etc.  She essentially wants much more work life balance.

13. Do you take advantage of tax advantaged accounts offered to you?  If so, which ones and how so?  Do you have a game plan to be able to withdraw from these funds without getting hit with a penalty?

We have as my former employer offered them.  To start building our real estate investments, we utilized this benefit.  

14. Do you have any thoughts/plans to have kids in the future? If so, is RV life still in the plans post kids? What do you estimate your annual child related costs will be each year?

We get the kids question asked pretty frequently.  If we are blessed to have a family, we’d be happy.  If that doesn’t work into the equation, there’s other options and we’ll be happy with that too.  RV life with kids can absolutely be done.  There’s so many full-time RV families out there making it happen now! We likely would continue this RV journey if we are able to.  As for cost, I’m sure it would dip into the savings rate a bit, but we honestly haven’t punched in any numbers for that at this point.

15. As an American pursuing FIRE, what are your post-FIRE thoughts/plans regarding health coverage? As a reference, what are your current annual or monthly health related costs (be it insurance, co-pays, deductibles, etc.)? What do you estimate your post-FIRE health costs to be or year? 

16. Where do you see yourself in the next year, 5 years, 10 years?

Hopefully, working part-time for an employer, and full-time for our investments.  Helping our money work for us. The goal is to continue our RV life and build our investments while removing all debts to possibly reach the RE side of FIRE at some point. 

17. Have you come out of the FIRE closet yet? Meaning, do your friends, family, co-workers etc. know about your financial independence goals?  If so, how did you bring it up and what were their reactions?  If not, why not?  Why do you struggle with this conversation and why do you feel that money such a taboo topic?

We did when we told them we were selling everything and hitting to road in our RV full-time to achieve FI.  We were pretty nervous to tell them truthfully. Much to our surprise they supported us and our decision to do something differently.  When people ask us where we are from, we tell them EVERYWHERE! We love the confused looks and then once we tell them what we do and what we’ve achieved, they almost always want to know more, how, etc?  In our experience we’ve met so many people both young and old who love what we are doing and support it 100%. At the beginning we didn’t want to share for fear of judgement, but now…we can’t wait to bring it up.  Discussing money and personal finance is still a tough one to discuss openly, you never know who you can trust. People can be vindictive, want what you have, and make it their mission to take something from you. We remain as open as possible on this topic, but in some cases we do hold back.   

18. What pieces of advice would you suggest to someone who is just starting out or someone who is working toward reaching financial independence? 

Read, research, and reach out to like-minded people.  Find a community that supports your thoughts. Leverage others’ experiences to help educate yourself on what would work best for you.  There’s a ton of material out there that can help you build what your goals should be. Stay true to what your passion is and don’t accept that it cannot be done.  Ask questions, even if it’s a silly one. Understand that there is no perfect guideline to follow as everyone’s situation is different. Make lists, develop a budget, and track every expense.  Leverage your career to maximize your worth and what will give you the best success. If the opportunity to move for your job opens up, take it. Especially if it increases your income.

19. What has been your greatest accomplishment to date?

It’s hard to pick a single instance as independently we’ve both accomplished quite a bit. But for us together, accomplishing 1 full year of living, traveling, and working from our RV full-time.  This was a feat that seemed larger than life when we started. We had many setbacks, some of them major and we kept pursuing our goals. Financially speaking, we’ve removed over $125,000 worth of student loan and personal debt in just a year’s time.  

20. Are there any books, blogs, or podcasts that you would recommend for our readers to check out?

Books:

• Brene Brown – Daring Greatly
• Chad Carson – Retire Early with Real Estate
• Brene Brown – The Gifts of Imperfection
• Tanja Hester – Work Optional

Websites: 

• Bigger Pockets
• Mr. Money Mustache
• Dave Ramsey
• Reddit

Podcasts: 

• The Mad Fientist 

21. How can people get in contact with you? (if you want to remain anonymous ignore this question) 

We have our blog (www.drivingtowardsfire.com) and we usually respond quickly on our Instagram (@Drivingtowardsfire).  We also have a Facebook page (DrivingTowardsFire). 

22. Anything else you’d like to share?

Just to encourage those that think differently and want more from life, there’s no better time than now to start.  You can make changes anytime you feel something is working right for you. Don’t accept what ‘you are supposed to do’, challenge that and find what you are meant to do.  

• They too felt the pain from their student loan debt and wanted to get a better handle on their finances.  This is very similar to our beginnings as we too became interested in personal finance due to the burden our student loans put on us.
• We love that tiny houses are becoming more and more popular.  Nic and I have binge watched all episodes of Tiny House Nation on Netflix in the past and would love to live in a tiny home someday.  Hearing Brett and Meredith’s story is just further fuel to the fire!  And for anyone interested, you can check out a tour of there RV 🙂 It really is quite spacious!
• Holy crap, in a year they were able to pay off $125,000 in student loan debt.  That is INCREDIBLE!!! Hope you guys celebrated that milestone!
• I had to chuckle when they stated they miss their dishwasher the most.  You can have ours!  I think we use ours 2-3 times a year simply for the sake of running it.
• Surprise, surprise – just like every other guest interview from the past, Brett and Meredith do not feel deprived.  It truly is all about the mindset.  They have created a happy life and know that the end goal is worth it.
• I love how the RV forces them to be mindful of their spending as the limited space does not allow them to make purchases that do not fit their needs.
• Track your expenses!  Thanks for letting us know about Expensify, I had never heard of that app before.
• It’s unfortunate to hear about the additional cons that living a nomadic life presents.  But clearly Brett and Meredith have figured out how to handle all the hurdles they’ve faced (along with the many other nomadic people out there exploring the world).
• LOVE your answer to question 12.  We WHOLEHEARTEDLY agree with everything you said.  No one is looking out for you and your best interests more than yourself.  Make sure you take care of yourself.
• Also, your response to question 18 packs so much useful advice!  It’s ok to deviate from the norm.  You do you, whatever it may be.  As long as you have the passion and the drive, you can accomplish anything.

• FIRE Community Guest Interview # 1 – Empowerment Through FIRE
• FIRE Community Guest Interview # 2 – We Quit Our Jobs To Retire Early & Travel The World
• FIRE Community Guest Interview # 3 – Dividend Investor Reached FI By Living An Intentional Life
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #4 – Pursuing FIRE With Multiple Passive Income Streams in Australia

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