Welcome to Why Not Wander! We are Matt and Laurie, and we are so thankful you are here.
We help 9-to-5ers pursue a life of travel and adventure as full-time RVers YEARS sooner than you ever dreamed possible by providing steps you can take starting today, answers to your most burning questions, and all of our behind-the-scenes experiences to show you what workamping life is really like!
We have always done things that make people wonder what we are thinking!
- We’ve resigned from jobs and taken a 60% cut in pay to intentionally simplify our lives.
- We bought a bus that Matt gutted and spent months converting for our road trips. It turned out so dreamy!
- We ended up selling the bus when Matt decided at the age of 47 to pursue his dream of becoming a police officer.
- Matt recently resigned from law enforcement, and within 2 weeks, we moved into our 28′ travel trailer.
We know what it’s like to be stuck in the 9-5 life, or as we knew it, the 7p-7a life. We know what it’s like to watch other people chase their dreams and feel like it could never happen for us. Our story is a little different than a lot of full-time RVers. We don’t have multiple streams of income from other businesses and/or rental properties. We didn’t have money from the sale of a home and aren’t beneficiaries of any trust fund. We don’t have a new (or big) truck. In fact, we drive a 2010 that is starting to rust. We aren’t retirement age with amazing pensions. We’re just an everyday, middle-class couple who dreamed of living tiny and traveling full time “someday.” We’ve had to work hard to become and remain full-time RVers.
We’ve never shared this story publicly until now. Matt was a police officer prior to us hitting the road. He began experiencing some health issues that were impacting his ability to perform his job safely. He didn’t share what he had been going through for several months for fear of us losing the security of his income, insurance, and other benefits. Matt is the strongest, bravest, and most determined person I have ever known. As a police officer, his line of work leaves no room for error or hesitation. I knew in my heart we needed to make a huge change, but I also knew he would never want to go back to his corporate management roots. With the state of the world at that time, I would not be returning to my medical background. We needed as little stress as possible to allow him time to heal.
I started researching alternatives for income. If we were going to make a change, we financially couldn’t stay where we were currently living. I thought about the fact that we had just purchased a new RV a year prior and wondered if we could live in that. I remembered hearing about people who were camp hosts so they could have a free site, so I started looking into that as a possible option just so we could have a place to live. I ended up coming across the word “workamping,” and before we knew it, we were applying for positions in some pretty amazing places.
Work camping is the way we have funded our travel lifestyle, and we’re having the best time! If you have been dreaming about living on the road but have no idea how you could make it work financially, we are here to tell you it is possible! We will show you the options, talk about pros and cons, ins and outs, and tips and tricks we’ve learned along the way. We’ll even show you what our actual workdays look like. We are boots on the ground living this lifestyle, not just making videos and posts about it (but never actually work camping) to gain views.
We are ALWAYS here to answer your questions! We had so many when we first found out about work camping, and we had no one we could ask! We will respond to every email, comment, or direct message we receive because we want to connect with you and help you as much as possible so we can see YOU out on the road!
Thank you again for being here!
-Matt & Laurie
Here’s a behind-the-scenes look as we were making this life-changing decision to hit the road full time, emotions and all.