Living with Less, Experiencing More

Living with Less, Experiencing More

In this episode of TravelEssary, we delve into our new lifestyle of living minimally while experiencing more. We share insights about transitioning to full-time RV life, including the benefits, challenges, and experiences that have come with the change. Discuss cutting down on unnecessary items, reducing bills, and how this lifestyle has allowed more family time and opportunities to explore. The episode also touches on our preparations for RV living, including setting up Starlink for internet access, and plans for future adventures. Whether it's advice for those looking to live vicariously through this journey or tips for those considering a similar transition, this episode provides a comprehensive look at the our family's new way of living and traveling.

00:00 Introduction to Travel Essary
00:22 Embracing Minimalism: Living with Less
02:08 Transitioning to Full-Time RV Life
02:58 Benefits of Minimalist RV Living
04:22 Challenges and Family Time in an RV
05:23 Exploring New Surroundings
14:54 Financial Benefits of RV Living
17:32 Practical Tips for RV Living
19:25 Internet and Connectivity on the Road
24:13 Distinguishing RV Life from Camping
26:41 Conclusion and Next Episode Preview

Transcript

  We're the Essary family and we're exploring America one destination at a time. On this episode of TravelEssary, we are going to be talking about living with less and experiencing more. Let's chat. Hi.

Welcome and thank you for joining us on this episode. This is an episode that we are excited about we can bring y'all even more details about living with less and experiencing more, as we are living it, we have experience doing it.

Mm-hmm. In in other aspects of our lives. And this is just one of those amazing things that. If you get the opportunity to kind of live this lifestyle, I mean, you think about all the people that are retired and everything about how, they're always like, oh, I want to travel. Oh, I want to do all this. And by living with less and experiencing more, especially in the RV life makes all the difference in the world.

Yeah. And even if it's not something you think you could ever do, it's always fun to watch someone else. Possibly crash and burn or, . Oh, that looks like a fun life, but I don't wanna do it myself. I'd rather be cautious, but I wanna watch someone else do it. Well, this is the podcast for you because, uh, you know, this may be a horrible flop on our end, which we absolutely hope not.

Or it could be the greatest adventure of our lifetime. Yeah, I mean, whether you want to go adventure, you know, on your own and kind of do what we're doing, or if you wanna live vicariously through us. Or if you just want to get a RV and kind of make it a, a weekend or, you know, a week here and a week there type thing.

I mean, , there's no better place to kind of get tips and tricks for that than here and to listen to our experiences, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and to hopefully learn from them, hopefully with all the tips and tricks that we get and all the, the advice that we give that, you know, you, you learn something from it.

And it is a lifestyle that we have. Thought about and we are definitely jumped off into it now. Oh yeah. We're full-time in the RV now and I mean there, there's really no going back unless no other things happen, but we finally closed on the house. We are fully moved into our rv. We have all of our possessions.

Yeah. In about. 300, 400 square feet. Yeah. And we're ready to go. Yeah. And no, this is not going to become an RV only podcast. We will still go back to our normal, you know, travel tips and specific locations we'll give a lot of details about. , But we are wanting to definitely go full in with our RV life.

We want you guys to. To tie it into our travel because it is a part of our travel life now. So although it's not only going to be about the rv, we will be talking about it extensively. And I think the biggest pull for us of living this life of minimalism,

the biggest benefit we're going to have is we're gonna get to experience so much more than we did before.

And for us experiencing more by getting on the open road is definitely one of those things that we have been fully focused on for such a long time. And just being able to bring you on our adventure and everything that , we get to do and just kind of. Reveal like what's going on in our lives, but also giving all the tips and the tricks of, of, you know, not only RV life, but even traveling because we're gonna be doing other stuff as well.

And I mean, it's like Misty said, it's not gonna be all up just straight up RV because. This is a travel podcast. This is for traveling in any way that, that you choose, whether it's, you know, the train bus airplanes, getting in a RV and going on a weekend or just fully taking off and, and, and living the lifestyle that, that we've chosen to.

And . By shrinking down we've been able to experience more. Just, I mean, even in the last couple of weeks has been one experience after another. Mm-hmm. Whether it's good or it's bad. Yeah. Because there's, we definitely face some challenges. Definitely face some challenges, and that's something that just happens in life.

You're gonna face challenges in life. And I just think that , by taking on , this lifestyle where you're not having to stress a whole lot about a lot of items that you think that you need or you're holding onto by letting some of those go, kind of gives you freedom to do a whole bunch more.

Yeah, like you said, just in the last couple weeks we have experienced more. , You know, I definitely feel like we've had a lot more family time being in the RV than we did in the past. We have sat around outside, around campfires and in lawn chairs and letting the baby play and just really enjoying each other and enjoying being outside way more than we did in the house.

And you know, it could be because the RV gets small and after a while you just don't wanna be in it anymore. And I mean, which is, which is fine. I'm okay with that. And it's been beautiful weather, so. Well, another aspect that you can also look at it is a lot of people, I. Like out their front door or even out their back door, don't really have a great view.

Yeah. One of the reasons in our last house we weren't outside a lot is because it just wasn't, we didn't like the, we didn't like the, the surrounding area around us we're, we're gonna be honest their dogs and not having a privacy fence. And it, you know, the land itself, it just was not idea. For hanging out outside.

Yeah. We didn't have like our own little oasis. If we wanted to go outside, we came into town to a park or something. Right. Where we actually had more open space, which is really weird 'cause we lived in the county. I know. You have to come into town to have more open space. Yeah. Than you do. Yeah. Anyways, it was a really weird situation and we, we are kind of sad to leave our house, but I'm not, it's a really good thing that, you know, we're out from that.

Our view right now is not. Perfect by any means. But it's still really nice. Yeah, it's really nice. , We're gonna have to show a video soon of our setup where we're get to podcast now. I got a little bit more cleaning to do. Yeah. We've got a little bit more we need to do to the fifth wheel and get it ready.

But you know what I'm looking forward to the most, um, as far as experiencing more is that our view is going to change so frequently while we're podcasting it. It's gonna change a lot.

But I can't wait to see some of the places ', especially the first little trip that we take out. And if you don't know kind of where we're going or what our kind of plan is, . I highly suggest that you jump onto our Patreon page as there is a whole lot of details and way more information if you would like to know more about us.

Yes, and we do have a Chattery 1-year-old in the background. He has joined us on many podcasts in the background, and I do believe this is going to be another episode where he is joining us in the background. Absolutely. So if you hear him just kind of chattering and running around. Uh, just, it's just part of the whole experience in the family.

Yeah. It's part of tribal ery. He's a member of the family, so he has to get his voice in every now and then. But let's talk about what living with less means to us. Absolutely. In our moment of life right now. Living with less is to me, I, I think we, I think we kind of have the same definition, but maybe just a little bit more on the detail part, because living less for me is like getting rid of monetary goods or, or items, physical items, physical items that kinda keep you from being tied down.

You know, we talked about, you know, we're living in a rv. Our backyard's gonna change. Mm-hmm. I don't have to maintain that yard anymore. Right. You don't have to keep up with lawn mowers or anything like that. , I don't have any of the outside chores that I, I did beforehand that we had to do the, the size of our house has shrunk considerably.

Yeah. So cleaning within itself has gotten a whole lot easier. Right. At 30 minutes at the end of the day and we're done. And then , I'm one of those people that. If I pay for something, it doesn't matter if it's a subscription, it doesn't matter if it's for, you know, internet or, any kind of membership or anything like that, that I feel like I have to use it because I, I want to get my money's worth from it.

Mm-hmm. Whereas now that we've minimized. A whole bunch and kind of getting rid of some stuff. I don't feel like I'm, I'm tied down. Yeah. We've not only, you know, minimalized the items we have in our home, but we have done that. We have went through our subscriptions and now we have what, two streaming services?

Yeah. Two. And, you know, that, that is another way that, you know, we have less, we have less subscriptions and less streaming services that. Maybe you feel obligated to be on 'cause we're paying for it. That has made us wanna go outside. You know, we have, we only have two things to watch and if we don't wanna watch anything right now on those two things, it just, it's more incentive to get out and do things.

And I think our whole mindset has changed a little bit because we don't have, we, we don't have all that, I don't wanna say responsibility because we still have responsibility that we have to do, but it's definitely one of those things that. It takes less time to do those things that we used to do or that we had to do to be on the responsible level, which has opened up more time to do more things.

And so by living with less, you just kind of untie yourself from, from certain things. But you know how many people are working either eight hour days or 10, 12 hour days that whenever they come home, even on the weekends, they're like, I'm done. I gotta stay around the house because I gotta get X, Y, and Z done around the house.

And they're kind of tied down to that location. But as the lifestyle that we chose with living with less. We're kind of cutting those ties. Mm-hmm. So we can experience more. Yeah. So I'm definitely looking forward to the experiencing more. I feel like, like we said, we have already started having more experiences together as a family, but I can't wait until we are on the road full time and instead of, you know, this, that spare time we have instead of just being outside around the campfire, that we're able to explore the surroundings that we're going to be in.

I mean, absolutely. Now I am nervous as all get out. And we've kind of already talked about our fears and, and kind of where we are through our question and answer podcast. But it's definitely one of those things that I know whenever we actually get to it, and especially whenever we actually get out beyond Texas.

'cause I'm really looking forward to that. I know it's gonna be Bibo. It's gonna be magical. Stop abusing ity. Bty. I'm gonna make it click. Don't worry. But , it's one of those things that, nervous, giddy, I, I guess that would be the best way to describe my feelings, where I'm really nervous about doing it, but I know it's going to be something that's gonna be amazing.

Yeah. So like the entire concept of. Our journey is less, is more. You know, we're, we're doing less, we're living with less because we want to experience more. And I definitely feel that there are a lot of people out there right now that that's what they're wanting out of life. Less things. I feel like the minimalist.

Um, trend, I don't know one other word to use. It is kicked off so much lately, and this lifestyle has become way more popular than it used to be. Even for young marrieds and single young adults, it's become way more popular because people want to experience more out of life. They want more out of life than the.

Original. Typical, I guess, American dream, you know, the nine to five come home with your white picket fence and live the, your whole life in one house. And, well, I think it's also the concept of, I can have less still do the things and enjoy life even more. Yeah, and I think with things like social media, YouTube, TikTok , things like that, people are realizing more that there is so much out there, so much beyond the little circle that they're used to and they wanna go experience it for themselves.

I mean, even whenever we first started this whole channel and, and. Of course we were traveling before we started. Just the things even in our own backyard that we didn't even know that was there. Mm-hmm. , Our focus was just around our little bubble.

Yeah. Your focus constantly on your responsibilities, your jobs, your, your family, your circle of friends, and your community,, and it doesn't always allow you much time. Or space in your mind, I guess, for what's beyond that? Oh yeah. 'cause , you're always thinking about the next step.

You're always worried about, you know, the next bill that's coming around the corner or you know, what, what project you gotta get done at work. And , we're not saying that any of those are bad things. Mm-hmm. Because, I mean. , I have a great job right now. , I'm hopefully going to another good job that will work out and everything will be fine.

, But some people need that safety net. Some people just can't get up and, and go for their own, you know, mental health. Mm-hmm. Kind of standard of like, Hey, I need, I need this stab ability, which there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah. And if you're that person, then you are welcome to view it through our eyes as we take this journey.

Absolutely. You know, good and bad. But there are so many things I guarantee you, even in your backyard where you're like, oh, I've lived here my whole entire life and there's nothing to do. Look at it at a, different perspective and you're gonna see things that you've never seen before. You're gonna see views that are just breathtaking, even in your backyard.

And it's just one of those things that, you know, get out and, and explore. . I mean it absolutely, it depends on your priorities in life and everyone's is different and what works for one family doesn't necessarily work for the other. But for us, let's see. We're living with less we've, we're living with less bills less, oh my goodness.

I think our monthly bills have been cut in half. In half, if not more. Yeah. Actually no, it's, it's about half now and it will be more whenever we travel once, which is really the same once because of how things are gonna work out. Yes. Which we will happily explain later, and I can't wait until we get to that.

But yeah, our, our monthly expenditures have been cut in half and that alone allows us to experience more because we're able to do more things with that money now. Yes. Instead of having, you know, car payments and house payments and utility bills and things like that, we. We can take that money and go somewhere for the day.

We can take it and go experience something we've never experienced before. So that, I mean, that alone is another way. We're living with less and experiencing more. So, especially for us, whenever we experience more, it's. You know, we, we take full advantage of the three day weekends. Oh yeah. We got a three day weekend coming up and we taking the kids to the zoo , we're going on a trip. We two, three day weekends coming up, two three day weekends coming up. And we have something planned for both. We got something planned for both. We got, um, another trip planned and although it's not ideal 'cause it's really not ideal to travel during those times and do things because mm-hmm Everyone gets a three day weekend pretty much.

Yeah. On those national holidays. But even getting out and usually there's big events that are happening, even experiencing those big events, although the crowds are gonna be large, you still have a great time. Most of the time, most of the time, unless it's a pickle festival at the Braunfels, yeah, you're gonna, you're gonna have to put up with people and things are gonna happen.

But if you just go with the flow and you're flexible and you're not really worried about traveling with a trunk full of stuff mm-hmm. And you're like, you know what, I'm only gonna be gone for the day. I just need the clothes that are on my back. Yeah. Let's just make it happen. And a diaper bag. And a diaper bag, depending on your situation.

. But there are, there are times where even in our, our own lives, we packed everything. Mm Oh my goodness. Everything. Yeah. To take a trip. It didn't matter if it was a, if it was a one day or a three day or a week, two weeks, we packed everything,

all the nooks and crannies were filled. We were hiding stuff in places. We were trying to come up with ways of, of how we're gonna get all of our, our possessions to one point. And then here, what, eight months ago? No, no. Whenever we, about a year ago. Yeah. Whenever we started thinking about the whole inv year, like how can we travel?

Mm-hmm. And we just started traveling with less. , If we really needed it, we would go out and purchase it. Yes. But I only think we only did that like once or twice. Yeah. It, it was very rare. And it was like very minute stuff that they're like, oh, we forgot a toothbrush. Or, oh, I forgot my razor.

Mm-hmm. I mean, sometimes you forget a razor and you're like, ah, I'm just not gonna be shaving this weekend. Yeah. And so I mean, you, you'll find that you can actually do with a whole lot less. But your experience doesn't diminish at all. Yeah. If not, it even goes up even more because that's less that you have to worry about.

Yeah. Less that you're, you're, you're mentally thinking of. Mm-hmm. And it just kind of opens you up and kind of frees you. Yeah, definitely. Our checklist, our daily mental checklist, I feel is smaller. Very small. I mean, even whenever I used to come home and I was like, okay, what needs to be fixed around the house?

I need to do, to be fair, the rv. So it's still kind of the same thing, if not even more frequently, but it's on a smaller scale, I guess. Well, it's, it's, it's different. 'cause then I'm like, oh, I need to mow, what night do I have to mow? Mm-hmm. You know, I, I was in a. 2025 commute depending on what traffic was.

Now I'm in like a 10 minute, 10, 10 minute commute. Mm-hmm. So it's a whole lot different. Um, in the wintertime, of course, the sun goes down a whole lot earlier and so you won't be able to do some things and so you had to like. Make a checklist for Saturday so you can knock out all the honey-do list and everything that you need to do.

Yeah. And I can literally come home and then with like 15 minutes, all my check items that I need to do are totally done. Yeah. But to be totally transparent, because I try to do that as much as possible. Um, we're, it's not like we're plan on boondocking at any point. We are not. Oh, absolutely not. We're not really the type and we're not there yet.

In fact. You know, we are, we're talking about living with less and spending less, but I do wanna be totally transparent. We actually just today, which is how we're able to record this podcast at the time of this recording, we just finished installing our our star link. Because we cannot do this without internet.

We cannot do the whole travel thing with our internet because how would we reach out to you guys and continue this podcast? . And beyond, you know, the travel RY stuff and our content and our podcast, our family in general, we, we've all grown so accustomed to internet, even down to the baby of just having that option when we want it.

That I would not ever do that to my children, of forcing them into a life so minimalistic that I didn't even allow them access to internet. Right? I mean, I still believe in. , The basic necessities and just the life that we live, you know, I, I do believe that our family, you know, deserves the bare necessities of what. Livelihood in this day and time is like, mm-hmm. Which is internet. You do need some data access. We need it for, you need some social media. We need it for schooling. Schooling. We need it for business stuff. Like it's just, we almost live in a day and age where it's really hard to function without internet and whether it's a fun thing or a necessity like.

We are taking our internet, so we have our starlink ready to go and hooked up you guys. And it was not cheap. It's not as cheap. It's, it's not a cheap monthly payment. It's not a cheap installation, but I feel like it's definitely worth it. However, by being able to live with less, um, bills. Now it's, it really, it wasn't a, a big dent in our budget.

Well, even with that addition added to it, with the current budget that we have now, it's still less than, than it was before, than what it was before. Oh yeah. Tremendously. So, and, and we're able to, to put back some and get ready for, you know, the, the things that are to come, uh, get a few things, especially whenever we, we show you the video of the rv and some of the stuff that we were able to change was because we were able to.

Cut our monthly bills in half. Mm-hmm. By getting rid of some responsibility, well, I don't even say responsibility. We were able to get rid of some bills, um, because of the lifestyle that we chose. Yeah. And we're able to kind of set this up as, as we want. As we want it. Yeah, and that's the great thing, especially with us in traveling in the rv, is we have so many options.

Yeah. But I'm, I, I don't want everyone to think that's always the case. It's not always cheaper. No, absolutely not. It all depends on so many different things. If you're taking monthly payments mm-hmm. If you're, if you don't get a membership or you think that you're just going to. Just start driving and you're automatically going to rent a, a spot for your, you know, to camp overnight or something like that.

It can get extremely, extremely expensive. Yeah, we're extremely blessed and we do not have a truck or an RV payment. In fact, all of our vehicles are paid off. Everyone that we have is paid off. Our fifth wheel is paid off .

And it's because we don't have a house payment, we don't have a car payment that, you know, our, our bills are very minimal right now because if you did have an RV payment and you did have car payments along with everything else, and you're just going from one park to another park without truly planning anything out, and you're always going out to eat and you're not cooking inside.

It can be extremely expensive whenever you're trying to do all that and experience as much as the local culture that is out there as possible. And we have just chose to do. As much as we possibly can to prevent a vast majority of those issues.

Yeah. We tried to minimize our bills before hitting the road. I. Like more than minimize, like cut in half and then something. , For a lot of 'em the lifestyle is actually more expensive Yes. Than it was before. And then there's others that.

Try to do their best with saving as much as possible. And so they boondock. Mm-hmm. And, and we are not boondockers, some of those boondock stories are like hellish nightmare. I don't know if I would ever wanna sit in that situation. I mean, would I for maybe a night or two if the spot was just like, picture perfect, maybe.

Yeah. If we're like moving from like one to another and we need like a, a small break or something like that, then I could see us. But longer than 24 hours. No thank you longer, especially longer than a couple of days. I don't, no, no. We, no, I want my water. I want my electricity. Yeah, we, we got to go there.

There's some, there's some, there's some necessities that we absolutely love that we are not willing to separate them. Yeah. I, I wanna make it very clear right now, because there's always a debate and a discussion. We're not camping. No, we're not camping. We're not doing this lifestyle to camp. This is our home.

Yes, we have, we have no intentions of camping. We live in this, and so whenever we are going from park to park, whether it's s boon docking or whether it's in like , the most expensive RV resort you can get are, this is our home and we are, we, we're not even gonna pretend. Yeah, we're not gonna pretend.

That, that we're trying to rough it out 'cause we're not Yeah. . That we're trying to camp or that we're trying to live that lifestyle. And if, if no one knows the difference between RV life and camping glamping, glamping, like those that. You know, they set up their whole RV in order to camp and just show you the difference between camping and truly living the RV life because there's a difference. . Yeah. Our purpose of being in the RV is being able to explore and travel more. Uh, not because we just wanna sit around campfire all the time.

And, and you also have those, they set up their place like they would a backyard. Yeah. And it's beautiful. Yeah. They got like those big old oh man TVs and this big expensive lawn chairs and canopies and gazebos and all sorts of stuff that they set up. That's absolutely wonderful. I. We're not really at that point that wanna spend, you know, an hour and a half, two hours after we set up, not mention.

Yeah. I was like, I don't want to do that. Put every three weeks, put that out. Yeah. So, I mean, but there's some people that definitely stay in some RV places for a lengthy period of time that truly set up like it's their backyard. Mm-hmm. And, but I mean, for, but some are beautiful for that. They use it as a vacation.

It's totally understandable. Like, totally like you said, because. They're at that spot. To stay at that spot. Yes. And to enjoy that spot that they have rented for us.  📍 We, we will do that for maybe a few nights out of the three to four weeks that we're there, but for the most part, we're not gonna be there.

We're going to be out exploring and experiencing the local communities, right. Taking in as much as we can with the surrounding areas

yeah. And that's, that's the main takeaway of this entire. Journey we're about to do. Absolutely. . So join us next week as we talk about tips and tricks of RV life with kids.