Our Good Sam RV Emergency Roadside Assistance service saved us when we locked our keys in the truck before we had the chance to unhitch in the parking lot of an RV shop where we were getting service done a few months ago. Sigh, long story.

And it certainly would have come in handy if the recent flat we got had happened anywhere other than at the Flying J while fueling up.

Suffice it to say, we will be renewing our RV ERA when the time comes, and we highly recommend it to any other traveler. But there are many other reasons to join the Good Sam Club, including these savings and promotions they recently announced!

New members can receive $30 in FREE Camping when they join the Good Sam Club through October 31 only!

Act now to receive an extra 2 months of coverage FREE when you sign up for Emergency Roadside Assistance now through November 15.

The NEW 2012 Trailer Life Directory is a long time favorite among RVers. Since these essential guides usually sell out before it even hits the stands, now is the time to order yours and get it by the end of the year!

Colorado gave us a spectacular farewell on Monday while closed up the cabin to head south. A surprise snowstorm dumped several inches of white powder on us as we hitched up and pulled away.

Originally we were supposed to head to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, an artsy little town that I’ve always wanted to check out, but instead we drove a little further southeast to the Workamper Rendezvous in the Ozark town of Heber Springs, Arkansas. What a great decision that was!

Networking and Road Tripping with Like-Minded People

Workamper Rendezvous is a new, twice-yearly event put on by the good Workamper folks. This crash course is a 3-day seminar series geared toward anyone who wants to explore fulltiming and workamping arrangements that allow RVers to work a few hours in exchange for a free RV site and sometimes even pay.

The sessions were a little too beginner-level for us, so we didn’t attend the conference but instead went to network with others who work from the road.

Honestly I had forgotten about what fun this crowd can be. We were made to feel at home from the minute we showed up. From the nightly campfires to the folks I interviewed for an article I’m writing about workamping, everyone was so enthusiastic and welcoming!

If you’re unfamiliar with workamping and dreaming about ways you can live and work on the road, do yourself a favor and check out this seminar, held in April and October. The price is well worth it, and will pay for itself when you get that first workamping job.

We first started this blog as a marketing tool to sell our home based graphics business back in 2007, promoting it as the dream live/work opportunity.

After hitting the road, we started blogging about our adventures, reviewing campgrounds, and searching for the best biscuits and gravy.

For nearly three years, LiveWorkDream was our full-time RVing sabbatical blog as we searched for the perfect mountain property to call our summer home.

As seasonal snowbirds, the blog became a place to write about both our life in the mountains and the trials and tribulations of RVing.

After listening to Tim Ferriss, I realized he had coined the term I was looking for to label the new focus of our ramblings here at LiveWorkDream.com: Lifestyle Design.

After all, this is what we’ve been doing all along – creating our own reality, taking charge of our destiny, designing our own lifestyle.

In line with our new business venture, going forward we will share our lifestyle choices and the strategies we implement to stay on our path to total wellness and financial freedom. Please stick around and enjoy the ride.

This isn’t to say we won’t keep looking for tasty biscuits, or sharing any RV mishaps that we may encounter. But we’ll also review health and wellness products, and share our methods of making money on the road so others can do the same. What exactly would you like to hear about from us?

Do you road trip with debt? If so, does debt interfere with your ability to enjoy your nomadic freedom?

Roadtripping with debt didn’t seem like a problem to us in 2007. After all, this lifestyle was only supposed to last a year. After that, we were supposed to settle down and get back into the “normal” routine of a mortgage and living beyond our means with the miracle of plastic.

We didn’t know that being normal was dumb.

But when we discovered that we we loved the nomadic lifestyle too much to stop, we knew we had to scale back our spending to keep going.

We still had no idea where our income would be coming from, but our original road trip budget could last another year if we got out of debt. Meeting real life examples of debt free road trippers also helped.

Old Habits are Hard to Break

In 2008, we painstakingly cracked open our nest egg and paid off our last debt, the rig. But old habits are hard to break, and we kept using credit cards.

There’s something about the security of using a plastic when you don’t know how much money you’ll make each month.

Physically we were debt-free, but mentally we were still enslaved by the credit card security blanket. We paid off the balance each month but I would sweat as I scrambled to find the funds.

But I Pay My Balance Every Month!

Studies show that when you use plastic to shop, you’re automatically spending more than you would if you paid in cash. But somehow I thought I was different, and poo-pooed those studies thinking “Oh  not me! I’m always careful.”

But after some agonizing credit card billing hassles with Bank of World Domination earlier this year, we burned the security blanket and committed to paying cash for everything.

Because we have the most sporadic, unpredictable income, suddenly every purchase we made was under scrutiny. Knowing that we could suffer the embarrassing fate of being declined at the checkout counter gives us a self-discipline like we never had before. It was scary as hell the first two months, but now it feels “normal” to us.

The Results

Since we stopped using credit cards, I can’t say that our expenses have gone down a whole lot (after all, we were pretty frugal to begin with), but the peace of mind I find in knowing that everything in our possession, everything we eat or consume, is paid for on the spot.

Next week we’ll hit the road, completely, truly debt-free for the first time ever. I can’t wait!

Disclaimer: I’ll confess that we still use one piece of plastic to handle some aspects of our business. The efficiency and protection our card company offers when dealing with vendors, product returns and exchanges and other things that make our businesses run can’t compare with the lame customer service we get from our bank. I know Dave Ramsey would disagree, but since we don’t use the business card for normal everyday spending, I’m OK with it.

We still pay our balance every month, but until our business ventures stabilize our income to a level where I feel comfortable dealing with vendors in cash, we’ll continue wearing the credit card security blanket for the business.

And now with our new business venture, that shouldn’t last too much longer!

Recommended Reading:

Debt Free For Life: The Finish Rich Plan for Financial Freedom, by David Bach



Don’t Own, Don’t Rent, Live Well: How to be Debt Free, Build Your Nest Egg & Live Life on Your Own Terms, by Matthew & Fiona Peters

Our health insurance is so horrendous, we know that unless we’re bleeding to death, using it would bankrupt us. We had another opportunity to test this theory recently when a tree fell on me.

Watch Out for that Tree!

What began as a volunteer effort to clear slash piles from our community greenbelt turned into a scary reminder that life can change on a dime.

As we were preparing to wrap up the day, I was about to bend over to pick up my work gloves to leave.  Then, WHAMO! A sickening CRACK! knocked me to the ground.

(this is not the tree that fell on me!)

I  fell, and when I opened my eyes, I swear I heard birds chirping around my head. I wondered “What the hell?

Wrong Place, Wrong Time

A nearby volunteer had been goofing around and decided to push over the one, dead  limb-less tree left in the work area, not realizing that this 25-foot tall log would fall directly on top of me. Everyone saw what was about to happen, but apparently were too dumbfounded to yell out “HEY!”

I never saw it coming as it struck me dead center on my noggin’.

EMTs showed up, a cervical collar was slapped around my neck, and in my woozy haze, my fuzzy mind heard someone say “Life flight helicopter” over a radio.

“Noooo! I will NOT go to the hospital!” I yelled out.

I could sit up, turn my head, see straight and although I felt like hell, I knew whatever had happened wasn’t going to instantly kill me. At that moment I felt strong enough to walk out on my own.

Recollections of my 2001 motorcycle crash came flooding back as I recalled the $8,000 life flight ambulance ride and the $25,000 in medical bills from one emergency room visit. No way in hell would I get in an ambulance. After all, I wasn’t bleeding or unconscious, so I didn’t need it.

After convincing Jim I didn’t need to go, and a long verbal wrestling match with the EMTs, I signed a waiver of responsiblity, and we left the scene.

Brain Hemorrhage or Just a Bad Headache?

Being one hour away from a hospital is a scary thing when you think you might need one. That evening, I felt like I might need a doctor, but I knew if I woke up in the morning, it would’ve been a waste of time and money.

What doesn’t kill ya makes you stronger, right?

The next day I felt like a truck ran over me. So away we went to see a doctor, who gave me mental competency tests to ascertain the severity of the blow.

I never realized how frightening it would be to have a doctor look you in the eye to examine your mental capacities.

After passing the test with a “D,” the doc said to me: “Hitting your head the way you did is just like when a diver hits the bottom of a swimming pool.”

Oh crap.

“You’ve very lucky that you seem OK. But you need a CT scan and x-ray. You could have bleeding going on around your brain and not know it.”

Damn. Medical bills!

Diagnosis: Lucky Girl

I shook all over and wanted to puke, not knowing if brain surgery was in my future. But less than an hour later, I found out I was OK, relatively speaking.

My moderate concussion me out of commission for all of last week and somewhat this week. But after several days of medicinal naps, restricted computer time and general malaise, I’m feeling better. My brain is still playing tricks on me when I try to do things like focus and type, and my neck is still tweaked, but it’s better than having a hole drilled in my skull.

Just another reminder that life is darn short.

Sometimes a lot shorter than we ever think it could be.

Now get off your computer and go live, darnit!