Five RV Considerations for Digital Nomad Couples

If you’re considering becoming a digital nomad couple (both people still working full-time) in an RV, here are the five most important things to consider when choosing your RV.

When we made the decision to sell our house and start traveling full-time, we put months of homework into RVs. Ultimately, I created a spreadsheet to track the pros and cons of the RVs we were considering.

Now, let’s dive in.

One office or two?

This is the absolute most important consideration. If you want to have separate offices, you will be searching for an RV that has a bunkhouse, or a bedroom that is large enough for a chair and desk, or a toyhauler that has a garage space. Do you need a desk? How many monitors do you want to use? Would you be comfortable at a dinette?

I have a considerable amount of conference calls. And I’m leading most of them, not just listening in. On top of that, I’m kinda loud. My husband, on the other hand, has no conference calls, but records podcasts/videocasts sometimes and can’t concentrate when I’m talking in the background.

For us, finding a way to have two separate office spaces was a must. We found a bedroom that could be easily modified to hold a desk and two monitors. My husband works in the living room; we removed a seating area and put in a desk. There are two pocket doors between us that help minimize the noise. Noise-canceling headphones took care of the rest.

What size of bed are you comfortable in?

As we all know, sleeping is incredibly important for your health, well-being, and overall sanity.

My husband is 6'5" — a regular length (80" long) king-sized bed was a must. Many RVs get sneaky about this. The description might say “king bed” or “queen bed”, but it will be shorter than what you’re used to (75" is an RV-short). And we just aren’t comfortable sleeping together in a queen for more than a night or two. We found an older RV that had a queen “long” (80") bed, but it had skinny nightstands. One of our planned modifications was to remove the nightstands and modify the bedframe to hold two twin mattresses (which equals a king-sized bed).

How do you want to get around after you’ve arrived?

Once you’ve arrived at the campground, how are you going to get to the grocery store? The national park you want to hike?

Fifth wheels definitely offer the best floorplans — they feel like a house. But they can get heavy fast and many require a heavy-duty truck to pull them. How do you feel about running errands in that size of a vehicle? A Class-A motorhome, on the other hand, can tow vehicles behind it. We were not a fan of driving big trucks with low gas mileage. That helped us make our decision to go with a Class A, towing a jeep. But I’ll tell you that we wavered on this decision frequently.

What do you want to take with you?

A minimalist lifestyle doesn’t mean sacrificing everything. What’s important to you? Mountain bikes? Kayak? Exercise equipment? A pizza oven?

You’ll probably laugh at this, but for us, it was a nugget ice machine. We LOVE our crunchy ice. So we decided that even though it was big and bulky, we really wanted to take our ice machine with us. As we looked at RVs, we thought about where we would set it up.

Be real: how do you cook and eat?

Do you really sit at the dining table to eat? Or do you usually sit on the couch? How much do you use the oven? Do you like freshly baked cookies or can you get away with store-bought?

We would NEVER sit at a dinette to eat. We’re perfectly happy to eat in our recliners or outside at the picnic table. We use a Tovala oven (kind of like a toaster maker on steroids) for baking, broiling, and steaming. We use an electric skillet for eggs and bacon, for instance. We microwave veggies in the bag. And we use an Instant Pot to cook everything from spaghetti to soup to pot roast. We don’t use the cooktop and don’t need an oven.

I hope this helps you quickly narrow the field on RVs.

Godspeed on your digital nomad adventure. And let me know in the comments if you’d like a copy of my spreadsheet.

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