We’re the McNeills, a Christian family of five, living in Austin, Texas on a great adventure to tour the United States. For many years we dreamed of a different lifestyle offering adventure, access to nature, and memorable experiences we would cherish forever. When Dale’s company was bought-out in May 2014 and he was laid off, along with most of the executive staff, we knew God had given us an opportunity to change our course and make our dreams a reality.
As the months passed, still without a job and with our finances beginning to pose a problem, we looked into dome homes, manufactured homes, and earthships. Although neat, none of them quite fit the bill. One night we watched “Tiny”, a documentary we found on Netflix about people who were moving into tiny houses. Not long afterwards we saw “Tiny Nation”, a TV series about families joining this movement. It got us wondering why people were choosing to build these homes over buying a travel trailer, fifth wheel or coach.
In October, we wandered over to Crestview RVs in Georgetown, TX where we met Beth. She showed us some awesome travel trailers. Very soon we realized the potential for adventure and the financial benefits this lifestyle could offer. Since Dale is a software engineer it would be totally possible for him to get a job telecommuting, which would make this lifestyle a real possibility. It wasn’t but a week later that we were driving all over Central Texas looking at different styles of RVs.
When we committed to moving forward with this plan, everything began to accelerate. We were able to get our house up for sale within the next week, then sold it a week later before it even hit the MLS. The cash buyer wanted to close two and a half weeks later. Giddy-up! So we proceeded to sort all of our stuff into “sell”, “store”, “take”, “swap”, and “charity” piles. It was a blessing that Dale was out of work because we could not have accomplished all this so quickly without his full time help.
We moved in with our parents who were as happy to have us as us them. We will spend the holidays with them while Dale begins a new type of job search. It’s our hope that very soon we will be blessed to purchase the Fifth Wheel and begin the next phase of our adventure!