Born to Be Wild

In the 1960s, when many who are now entering retirement age were youths, a movie called Easy Rider made quite a stir. It was the story of two young men riding motorcycles across country to discover America and enjoy the freedom of unrestrained travel.

The song that got most associated with that movie was called “Born to be Wild”. This is an image of unrestrained freedom that seems to stay in our spirits even as we move through life and into our retirement years. Small wonder you may have as your retirement dream the idea of selling the house, moving into an RV and hitting the road to discover America yourself, maybe not as young hippies but with that same sprit of adventure and fun.

This is an “alternative lifestyle” that many people enjoy in their senior years. And to be fair, RV technology is so advanced that you really can enjoy virtually all of the luxuries of home but be able to rove the countryside bedding down anywhere you can find an RV hookup and some water.

But even though this exciting prospect for your retirement years scratches that itch for you to be “born to be wild”, you are not so wild that you are not going to do some careful planning so you and your spouse can pull off this big change of lifestyle comfortably and safely. And because it is a big change for both of you, careful planning is in order.

Probably the biggest investment of this retirement dream is that RV itself. Fully loaded, these magnificent living centers on wheels can often cost as much as a house itself. Now one way to really get your preparations underway would be to buy the RV well in advance of retirement. You can make payments on it and plan to pay it off when you sell the house and use the proceeds to make that traveling home your own.

By buying in advance, you can take some trial run trips for a few weeks at a time and begin to get used to the lifestyle on the road. These are important trial runs because there are going to be a lot of new issues that go with staying gone virtually forever that you will need to cover so you are not being irresponsible in your wild wanderings across the landscape.

Your kids will worry about this big adventure. But if you listen closely, buried in those worried lectures they are giving you is a sense of envy and admiration that mom and dad had the courage to get out there and live their dream with their retirement years. And you can help them feel less anxious by keeping communications active on any trip. With modern cell phone technology, not only can you always stay in touch, you can text them, email them and even send them pictures from your travels for them to live the traveling lifestyle with you vicariously.

You will need to make arrangements for mail to do your banking from the road. Your retirement program and Social Security can auto-deposit in your bank back home but you will be using those funds all over the country so it will take some smart planning to stay fiscally responsible while living the free and easy lifestyle of a road warier.

One approach to organizing your finances is to do all of your financial activities through the internet. You can keep wireless communications going in the RV and be able to log into your bank accounts to make sure everything is as it should be. You can pay for most things by credit card and pay the credit card off via automated bill pay from your bank account. And by making arrangements that all of your bills be sent to you via email, you can do your budget and pay your bills all at the comfort of your laptop computer screen.

By living smart and using the best of modern technology, you can hit the road and enjoy the wide open spaces and the freedom that will make you and your spouse the “easy riders” of your time. And by living out your dream, you are doing what millions of people say they will do with their retirement years but never do. You are living life to its fullest and letting retirement be the best time of your life.