Is retirement as we know it over?

Retirement—more and more articles are saying that a leisurely retirement where you retire at 65 and live happily ever after on a pension is a thing of the past for most people. Some cannot afford to retire. They either didn’t save enough or now their retirement savings have tanked. Health insurance coverage is an issue for others who would like to retire early. Still others aren’t ready to retire, even if they reach that magic age. They like working! When you consider our life expectancy now, that isn’t hard to understand. Even if the economy improves, the 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce found that 75 percent of those 50 and older who were surveyed expected to have retirement jobs.

Retiring to an RV can be a way to combine work and leisure. Traveling in an RV and working or volunteering can add to retirement income (or at least reduce expenses) and be an economical way to live, while allowing you to fulfill dreams of travel. For us, as well as many others, RVing has led to amazing experiences we wouldn’t have otherwise had. My most awesome experience was kayaking in Glacier Bay, Alaska among dolphins and whales. That happened because we worked in Skagway, Alaska. George and I took incredible hikes in Big Bend National Park because he volunteered there for three months. As a result of our travels, we have stopped at places we might never have seen—both those we already knew about and those we became aware of because we were in the area.

Though many people do work because of the money, other factors come into play. In that same study, 77 percent worked for other reasons. Those included avoiding boredom, being productive, interacting with people and having fun jobs. Workamping jobs can provide all that. Workamper jobs run the gamut from working at amusement parks and Disney World to working in a national park or forest to working at any number of tourist attractions. Then again, you can make more serious money on the road as well, if that is your need or desire.

Think about it. Retiring to an RV is a way you can have your cake and eat it too!

For more information on how you can live the RV lifestyle and work or volunteer as you travel, see

Retire to an RV: The Roadmap to Affordable Retirement by Jaimie Hall Bruzenak and Alice Zyetz.
Support Your RV Lifestyle! An Insider’s Guide to Working on the Road by Jaimie.

Jaimie Hall Bruzenak is an RV lifestyle expert, specializing in getting started in the RV lifestyle, life on the road, working on the RV road, and solo RVing. She has been RVing since 1992. She and her late husband weren’t retired so RVed on a budget and worked on the road. She is the author of Support Your RV Lifestyle! An Insider’s Guide to Working on the Road and other RV books. Find out more at RVLifestyleExperts.com.