The First 48 Hours + Tony Robins Podcast Notes

Lessons from the first 48 hours

• Gas is likely going to be our largest expense. 10mpg is not a lot of miles.
• Sunroof is amazing, even when cloudy you can see just fine without draining your battery for lights. 
• Propane is my new best friend. I made an amazing fantastic meal in the camper and it allowed us to have heat when it was only 35 degrees outside.
• You can sleep overnight at a Walmart and not get mugged. True story. 
• Learned how to replace a fuse when it gets blown due to trying to plug something in that really should not be plugged in (no smoothies for us)
• Planet Fitness membership was a good choice. After driving around in a bumpy truck you can work out, sit in a massage chair, and have a nice long hot shower.
• Being “home” literally anywhere is an amazing feeling.
• “Winter” still exists in the South. Maybe in the same way Southerners always assume that Minnesota is a never ending frozen tundra, I assumed that anywhere in the bottom half of the country had tolerable weather all year around. All the way down in Oklahoma we are still in 40 degree weather and many of the trees are still bare. Lesson learned. 

Listened to School of Greatness podcast with Lewis Howes. He was interviewing the legendary Tony Robins, one of the most well known life coaches in the world. The topic was wealth, financial and spiritual. It was interesting because he started out very basic, the importance of investing and compounding interest, really finance 101 stuff. He kicked it up when he started going into market trends and the value of dollar cost averaging. He finished it off with some good emotional lessons, as you should always expect from Tony Robins. Very well done interview, he was able to take complex subjects and break them down into easy to understand concepts.

My personal show notes:

We are all financial traders. We all trade time for money.

Pick a percentage that you will never touch. Seems hard at first but start with 3% and increase slightly every time you get a raise. Long rant about compounding interest.

You will never earn your way to wealth unless you apply the principals of saving and investing. People can earn a lot of money and still be broke, think about all the wealthy actors and sports players who file for bankrupcy. The ultimate goal is to create income for life without working (aka – passive income).

Stocks continually go up and down. Corrections happen every year. It will drop about 14% and last an average of 56 days. If it drops more than that it is considered a bear market. But it never goes down forever, eventually it has to go back up. Bear markets are always followed by bull markets.

The most dangerous thing is to not be in the market at all because you get nothing for cash. However if you are in the market, beware of fees.

The worst thoughts are the ones that include the concepts of Loss, Less and Never. Lost opportunity, lost time, lost money. Never have love again, never be free, never be wealthy. Do you tend to focus more on what you have or what’s missing? It’s hard to be happy when you’re only thinking about what you don’t have. When you have expectations you will always be miserable

Antidote is appreciation. When you start to feel negative emotions, cut them off by focusing on gratitude and things you love. You can’t be angry and grateful at the same time. You always have the ability to choose what you focus on.

The Quest For A Truck Camper

Prologue Part 2: Preparing for Departure

An important component of traveling around the country in a truck camper is having a truck…and a camper. Neither of which we owned when we committed to leaving our jobs. We learned from blogs that if you’re starting from square one it’s best to find the camper first, then find a truck with the right specifications to haul it. It took a few dozen hours of research and visiting RV dealers to narrow down our requirements. I was astonished at the amount of variety you can have in a structure that is so narrowly designed. There are campers for short beds, long beds, pop ups, no bath, dry bath, wet bath, one, two or up to three slide outs! Tank sizes turned out to be a big concern for Ryan. Even at this early stage we knew we wanted to move towards an off-the-grid lifestyle, so the bigger the water tank, the more easily we could accomplish that.

It didn’t help that Ryan and I were at a constant tug-of-war while searching for both parts. We are both naturally frugal people, it’s one of the reasons we were able to take this leap and one of the major reasons I love my husband. But while I am the frugal type that is willing to spend a little more for quality and convenience, Ryan is the frugal type that will spend hours of research to save $5. Many of my proposals were met with, that’s too expensive! While many of his proposals were met with, no that’s a junker that will break down in 100 miles!

We narrowed down our choices to the smaller style Lance campers. They were light weight, well built, and included all the comforts of home. The latest models run $25k minimum, which was significantly higher than our desired budget. We would have been happy to buy used, but the closest used camper in the models that we wanted was on the East side of Wisconsin…a good five hour drive. The best inventories were down south in Arizona and California.

Ok let’s go at this in a different direction. We knew for the camper models we wanted we would need a heavy duty truck, the Ford F-250s or higher, or the Dodge 2500 series. Maybe we can get a truck and then go down south to find the camper. It will be worth spending a few nights in a motel if we can save several thousand by going to the source of good used RVs.

Except try and find a decent used heavy duty pickup truck for less than $20k!! The Ford F-150s are a dime a dozen, but as soon as you narrow it down to the 250 models, you have to be willing to part with a small house down payment if you want something with less than 100k miles on it.  I made Ryan agree to finding a truck that was less than 10 years and had less than 100k miles on it, but the sticker prices on those requirements made him twitch.

If I may inject a story: Within those parameters we did find one option, a 2008 F250 for sale up in Ham Lake. It was a white, dual cab with only 75k miles and listed at $12k. It was only a 40 minute drive so we took off.

We arrived at a small independent car dealership. The inside floor was full of all these old classic cool looking cars. It made us wonder if maybe this would be a place to bring the Talon. When a nice older gentleman came over we asked him a few questions about the business and the Talon, but as soon as we inquired about the Ford F250 he said, oh no I only deal in classic cars, you want the guys next door! Oops.

Outside we did indeed see that his door was on the right side of the building, while there was another door on the left with a different logo on top. In that side of the building we found an office with two guys who welcomed us. It seemed we were in the right place this time because as soon as we mentioned the 2008 Ford one of them hopped up and said he would bring it around.

A white, dual cab Ford pickup gets parked in front of the door, but I notice instantly that the decal says 150 instead of 250. The guy apologized and said it must have been a miss-print. The truck looked really nice though, no dents, clean interior, quiet smooth engine. We took it out for a test drive anyway. On the road Ryan notes that the mileage is up at 150k miles! Twice what it was listed at. Now we're suspicious. I pulled out my phone and found the original listing (thank you modern day technology). It was a white dual cab but it was definitely listed as a F250 and definitely said 75k miles.

Back at the office we questioned the guy and showed him the listing. A moment of hesitation, then “OOH You wanted Route 65 sales, we're Freedom Car sales! That guy is down the hall.” What?! So there are three dealerships in the same small building, and two of them happened to both have a white dual cap Ford pickup truck in their inventory!

But it turned out the other guy was out at an auction so all we could do was leave our contact info. A little more chatting revealed that the three dealerships worked well together since they all worked with different markets (newer, older, and classic) and were able to share parking lot space. It made sense but please put some more signs up!! We laughed the whole ride home.

About a week later we came across an ad for a Ford F-350 that only had 27k miles on it and listed for $11k. It was a 2005 with only basic package and two wheel drive but still, it either had to be a misprint or a total junker. I initially scrolled past it because it was older than I was comfortable with and at that low price there had to be something wrong with it. But Ryan clicked on the ad and said it wouldn’t hurt to simply go look at it. Yeah ok, it was at the local Ford dealer in Bloomington so we could check out other things while we were there. 

The guy who helped us was named Jim, he was in super friendly sales man mode, really nice guy. When we told him that we wanted to check out the red F350, he looked at the inventory, narrowed his eyes in confusion and excused himself to go talk to the manager. His first instinct was also sure it was some sort of mistake or misprint. To all of our surprise though, he came back confirming that it really was for sale at $10,999. 

I was still sure there would be something wrong with the body or the engine, however, when they brought it over for us to inspect I saw no initial problems with it. Only the most minor basic surface rust, clean interior, not even a door ding dent! Hmmm maybe this would actually work?

Both Ryan and I gave it a test drive, down the highway and around the block. I've driven a minivan before on road trips but never a big truck. I was amazed at how easily it responded, my first turn out of the dealership I practically ran into the curb because I turned the wheel too far! Accelerated nicely, ride was relatively smooth. Neither of us noticed any odd noises in the engine, all the buttons worked (what few of them there were). 

When we were done Ryan was ready to sign the paperwork right there and then. I held him back saying if I bought a car, especially a truck, without letting John look at it first he would kill me! To our luck John was just hanging out at home and was there in 20 minutes! He was a little miffed that we were considering buying a giant pickup truck but never passes up a chance to put his skills to work.

The boys took it out for another test drive. Even John couldn't pick out any major problems! Battery is a few years old, so that will likely need to be replaced soon, and maybe some new tires, brakes are a little stiff, but other than that he really had no concerns with it. 

It seemed we were really doing this!

Back at the table we had a look at the car fax and history report. It had been purchased originally for commercial use and was most likely the backup vehicle which would explain the low miles. No major accidents or problems with the engine. While Jim was off doing his thing the three of us were able to theorize why such a good condition vehicle was listed at such a low price.

If you go to the Kelly Blue Book website and pull up the main article for 2005 Ford F350 it says a fair value on the truck is between $9,500-$12,000. BUT that's for that car with the average number of miles on it, and the average 2005 F350 has about 140k-160k miles on it. If you look it up again and input the actual number of miles, suddenly the value jumped up to $16k-$18k. We assumed whoever posted it on the website didn't double check the miles!

We happily wrote them a check and brought our new giant-ass pickup truck home!

Back to the search for a camper to put on top of the truck, having an F-350 expanded the weight restrictions we could look for, and our new purchase was a long bed which also expanded our options. Ryan pulled up a craigslist add for a camper up in Big Lake. We had looked at it before but the weight was 3,000 which was a little higher than we wanted, and it was a year 2000 model which was older than I wanted. This camper looked good though, it even came with two solar panels and was listed at a price of $8,500 which fit perfectly into our budget. Big Lake was only an hour and a half north of the Twin Cities, so again, Ryan didn’t have to twist my arm too hard to at least go look at it.

The guy’s house was easy to find. The camper itself was clean, inside it had an adorable dinette, 3 burner stone, tiny little toaster oven and microwave, wet bathroom, TONS of storage space and the queen sized bed. It was clean, it smelled nice, everything was in perfect working condition, it even had a sun roof in the living area which Ryan was thrilled about. It was manufactured in Canada so it came winterized with working heat. After only a few minutes I was head over heels, I loved it. The guy showed us the outside, how everything worked, it was obvious he took great care of his things and knew what he was doing. By the end even Ryan couldn't say no. We offered to take it!!

Things were coming together, we were now the proud owners of both a truck, and a camper. I couldn’t wait to get on the road!!

Total Rejection of "The System"

Prologue Part 1: The Decision

The “correct” formula for life was drilled into me at a very young age. Be kind, be respectful, work hard in school, go to college, get a white collar job, a house, a husband, a few kids, live below your means and retire comfortably. I never questioned the system, to the point where when a classmate told me they weren’t going to college it legitimately confused me. A part of me hadn't realized college was optional!

My first clue that this formula wasn’t going to work for me came after I secured my first job out of university. I had worked hard, gotten a socially respectable degree in accounting, and was hired by a small business who sold refurbished electronics as an accounting assistant. Within a few short months I concluded that many of my classes had been completely useless. The software did all the back end work, everything else was largely data entry and industry specific tasks that they would never have taught us in a classroom setting. Why had I worked so hard, spent so much money, and suffered so much stress when I was only using maybe 5% of the information I had learned. What was higher education for if it didn’t teach me the real skills I needed?? I couldn't deny that the piece of paper had gotten me the white collar job but any thoughts of a masters or higher went straight out the window.

The second, bigger, clue came shortly after my Dad passed away from esophageal cancer. I was only 24, still only a year or so out of college, I worked hard at my job but I felt no joy from it. When Dad was going through chemotherapy he talked all the time about the things he was going to do when he got better. The places he would go, the hobbies he had been neglecting. When he died, it hit me hard that he would never even have the opportunity to do those things! He was only 59, never made it to retirement, worked his whole life for what? I vowed there that I wouldn’t wait until “someday” to do the things I wanted to do. Still afraid to leave the system, I kept my day job but started taking night classes at a local culinary school and planned summer road trips with friends.

It was a few years later during one of these road trips that we found ourselves in Los Angeles. One of our group had an aunt who lived right in the city and was kind enough to let us crash at her place. Ben got the spare bedroom, one was on the couch, one was on a blowup mattress, and then out in the driveway was a parked truck camper where Ryan and I got to sleep. After two nights, I was enthralled. It was tiny, just big enough for a bed, a little table, and a sink, but we slept really well, it was adorable, and it fit on the back of a truck!!! You could take it anywhere and sleep in a real bed!! I said to Ryan, if we ever move we need to take a year off and travel the country in a truck camper! He laughed and said yeah that sounds awesome, but in that, 'yeah I’d love to win the powerball but it’s never going to happen', tone of voice. (he also was very indoctrinated into “the system”) I said, no I’m serious! He shrugged and said sure if we ever get the opportunity.

The following year I started doing minimal research into trucks and truck campers. Keep in mind I have never cared two spits about cars. I need something to get me from point A to point B and after that I could care less about the brand and style and whatever, and trucks were complicated! All these industry terms for weight and power and towing, then is it a short bed, long bed, single or dual cab, engine size, four wheel drive or two? I got overwhelmed very quickly, but I knew I needed to educate myself if I wanted this new dream to happen. However, Ryan and I happened to be wandering around a Ford dealership one day and he came out as completely opposed to owning a pickup truck. They were big, ugly, and represented the worst part of American culture. I gave up that plan quick after that.

But I instantly switched over to a new plan. If Ryan didn’t want a truck camper we could get a tiny little towable trailer. My new research yielded tiny little A top campers and tear drop campers. They basically provided a bed, some storage and some even had a tiny little fridge and stove burner included! They were light enough to be towed by a basic SUV and small enough to go anywhere and fit anywhere. Ryan admitted they were adorable and I was excited to take the next step. There was an A-liner dealer up in Elk River, about an hour and a half north of the Twin Cities. We went to check them out, and indeed they were small and cute as a button, but our jaws dropped at the sticker prices. Brand new these things were $20-$30k! I had incorrectly assumed that smaller would equal cheaper. Even used I couldn’t find one for less than 10k.

Well bugger that, if we have to spend that much on a travel trailer let’s at least get something that we can stand up in. The more traditional travel trailers were in much higher supply and you could easily find a good one for around the 10k or less range. With a suitable range of trailers I switched my focus back to looking for trucks I could tow things with. I learned all about the world of SUVs and we even went to look at a couple for sale.

A few weeks later Ryan started to express anxiety over having to tow a big box behind a vehicle. The visibility, trying to turn corners, how the heck to even back it into a space, what if we get stuck and have to try and turn around on a narrow road? His concerns were valid, and being he was the one who was going to end up doing most of the driving, I switched gears, once again, and dove into the world of true RVs. It was easy to rule out the big class As, so I focused my search on the small class B and Cs.

Class B’s are basically remodeled minivans, which look cool, but just like the small A-top campers, there is such low supply of them that even a used one will cost upwards of $20k. Class Cs are the in-between style. You could find a small one about 20-25 feet that had all the comforts of home but were common enough that a used one wasn’t going to break the bank. However, a quick trip to a local RV dealer had both Ryan and I shrugging. Even the smallest one they had (22 feet) was too big for Ryan’s taste, and if that was the route we were going to go, I still wanted to tow my Honda civic with us so we could visit the cities and leave the camper parked, so we still would have had to deal with the towing problem.

At this point we were both pretty down about the situation. Was there anything out there that we could agree on and was reasonably priced? Not ready to give up on the dream, we packed up our laptops and headed to Caribou for a full on focused brain storming session. Not far into my vanilla latte Ryan brought up the topic of truck campers. He loved the small size, maneuverability, and it has all the creature comforts of home. I said of course I’d love a truck camper but you vetoed it ages ago saying you didn’t want to own a pickup truck. Ryan responded that he didn’t think I was actually serious at that time, but if we really were going to take the plunge and live in a moveable vehicle this seemed like the best option.

This whole discovery process took course over about a year. After test driving a pickup and checking out some truck campers at the local dealer we were both solid on the idea.

The final turning point in my complete abandonment of “the system” came in the middle of 2016. On Easter weekend that year we learned my Mom had stage four melanoma cancer. I spent the summer being her caretaker. I think anyone who has ever had to care for the terminally ill can tell you that it changes your view on life. She passed away in September. Before the age of 30 I had lost both of my parents to cancer, both in their 50s. That’s when I decided I was done. Screw the normal path of life, even if you’re lucky enough to make it to retirement who says you’ll be healthy enough to enjoy it. I would rather travel now while I’m young and live my life to the fullest, I’d rather work in a bakery for minimum wage than sit at a soul sucking desk.

Emotional escapism? Most definitely. Irrational? Possibly, if you continue to believe that the only true way of life is the one where you sell your soul to a corporation to scrape by. Irresponsible? Nope, my only responsibility is to be true to myself, and for the first time in my life I am going embrace all that I am without holding back.

Ryan admitted later, he still didn’t think I was actually going to abandon the system until I texted him one day in November that I had turned in my resignation at work.  He quickly followed suit and our new life began.