As far back as I can remember, I’ve always had a sense for adventure. Whether it was exploring the old creek behind our house or gazing out the car window was we drove in the country, my spirit has always longed to explore the unknown.

I immersed myself in publications about travel and adventure, envisioning how one day I would become some vagabond making my way around the world, discovering new cultures and experiences that would provide a lifetime of epic stories.

But I never believed it could really happen.

Everything I read about traveling painted a very clear picture. Unless you were on a family road trip or summer vacation, you had to be filthy rich or a filthy hippy to find your adventure. It just wasn't possible for the middle class American.

So I could only dream and hope for one day.

A renewed awakening.

Ten years ago, at the age of 44, my quest for adventure and seeing the world was reawakened with a fervency I hadn’t felt since childhood. I was consumed with a passion that could not be shaken.

I must live a life from the road.

It didn’t matter how it happened, I just knew it had to happen.

Like pouring gasoline to flame, my dream was ignited and there was no stopping the raging fire burning inside me.

The only things keeping me from achieving it all was convincing my wife to sell everything we owned to travel and having the money to actually do it.

Making the dream a reality.

There was no need to hone my sales pitch for a life of adventure. Donetta was fully on board for becoming a houseless wife in a pickup truck.

All we had to do was figure out how to make it happen.

We owned a house and had plenty of debt. We worked for ourselves and had no savings. Like most Americans we lived paycheck to paycheck. And our ongoing joke was, and still is, we’ll be hustling until we fall over dead.

Retirement for us is a fantasy!

First, we had to eliminate our debt.

This was really hard because we had credit card debt and owed a large amount of money to the IRS for accidentally filing our business taxes incorrectly. It was strangling us to death. But we fought our way out of it and put it all behind us.

Second, we decided to sell our home.

We wanted to sell our house for years, but the circumstances were never right – until 2020 when it was a sellers market! Within a day of listing our property, we received a dozen offers. We were finally free from home ownership.

Third, we started selling everything else.

The road life affords you no space to take everything with you. No matter how you travel, you will be forced to become a minimalist. So we sold or gave away almost all our stuff, keeping and storing only the most important things in our lives.

There’s a valuable lesson in all of this.

Choosing to follow your dream will require hard work and difficult decisions. There's no way around it. And while it feels insurmountable to overcome all the things you must do to travel, once you have a plan, it's not as difficult as you think.

It's nothing fancy but our set up works really well.

Travel doesn’t require financial wealth.

It’s good to have some savings in the bank to rely on before you head out on the adventure, but being wealthy is not a prerequisite for traveling.

You might have to adjust your expectations based on your budget, but you never have to give up the dream because of money. Where there's a will there's a way.

Just like us, many people we've met who travel part-time or full-time, are average folks without an endless supply of cash. They're nothing like the social media influencers or celebrities we see online and most aren't retired.

They’re typically middle class Americans living below their means while investing their money in memorable experiences. They work from the road, make their own food, stretch their dollars, and often live like modern day hippies.

It’s not always glamorous but it definitely works.

Of course there are some people with way more discretionary income who own fancy trailers and can afford to enjoy steak and fancy beers every night. Don’t let their high life standards discourage you from chasing your dream.

Still don’t believe it’s possible?

While I’m usually an open book, I don’t want to share my finances with others for lots of reasons, but I'll tell you the following.

We earn an average American salary from our business ventures and have three months of savings in the bank. We have the typical expenses to be paid monthly, including our truck payment, and zero retirement or backup plan.

Donetta and I have been on the road for four years now. Sometimes we have to hunker down and save money due to challenges to traveling full-time, but for the most part we’ve continued our unconventional lifestyle.

All on an ordinary, average budget.

So if you wanna to travel and find new adventures, it is possible.

We're gonna show you how.

It was a difficult seven hour hike but we made it to the summit and back.

For ordinary, every day people.

I recently watched a video on YouTube from an amazing van life couple I admire. They've been on the road for a while now and have amassed four million subscribers from publishing their content online. Guess we should’ve focused on doing video instead of writing!

Anyways.

It was their follower’s comments that inspired me to write this post.

Most people will never experience the epic things this couple has done without lots of money, lots of luck, and lots of elite influencer status. But that's OK because you don't have to live like them to enjoy your own epic adventure.

So what about the ordinary, every day people?

This sentiment was expressed many times in the comments, and it reminded me about the early days when I hoped to explore the world, when I believed traveling was only for the other people.

At that moment it occurred to me a majority of publications and influencers only promote the unattainable side of adventure travel. They focus on selling the lofty expectations or standards we’ll never achieve.

It’s depressing and I hate it.

Because we’re ordinary people who happened to discover an unconventional way to travel on an average budget, we want to ensure our publication helps other ordinary people believe it’s possible for themselves too.

Road Life Magazine is about the attainable.

I can't promise that your story will work out like our story, but I'm confident you will be able to pursue your traveling dreams with some hard work and planning.

So if you're ready to explore the options, join our community. We've got a lot to share with you.