Handling a Lack of Continuity while Traveling Full Time – Excuse #12

One of the advantages of a stationary life, is a local knowledge of things and services around you.  You know where your favorite dentist, doctor, hair dresser, grocery stores, restaurants, vets, bank branches, mechanics and more are.  You know what produce is in season in August, and where the best pizza is. There’s a certain level of security in knowing that when you need a service or product – you know where to head.

So it’s no surprise that one of the fears in adopting a location independent mobile life can be the loss of this little continuity security blanket.  It’s a fact of nomadic life, living on the road equates to always having to find a new service provider at every new location you find yourself in, and always adapting to local variations in the way things are done.

Never Fear

However, it’s really not as big of a leap as it might seem while you’re in the overwhelm of thinking through all the details of the mobile life you’re envisioning.

Sure,  you may be giving up your favorite hair dresser or dental hygienists as your regular provider in the process.. but there are many talented and qualified providers all over the place. It’s just a matter of being able to find them, being adaptable and trusting a bit in serendipity to make their location known when you need them.

In the past 3+ years of us being on the road – we’ve navigated a wide variety of services. Everything from every day needs to needing urgent care.  Hair cuts, vet appointments, dentists, grocery shopping, a soak in a hot tub and maintenance on our truck and trailer.

Reduce Reliance on In Person Services

The first step is to consider what things in your life can be switched to not needing in person services.  Things like banking, insurance, bills and other things can be handled pretty much online if you set them up that way.

Until recently however, banking with check deposits was more of a hassle as you had to either find a branch of your bank to make a deposit at, or risk mailing your check to them.  More and more banks are doing stuff via mobile phone – such as allowing you to upload a picture of your check for remote deposit.  Chase and USAA are two such banks that are currently offering this service – for free – with their iPhone apps.   We’re loving it, and it’s given us a great sense of freedom to handle receiving check payments from clients, friends and family without ever having to leave our house.

Find insurance agents that are comfortable handling things via e-mail and phone, and not needing you to come into their office to sign paperwork.

We even selected a health insurance plan that included the TeleDoc service, allowing us to request remote consultations for typical stuff – like sinus infections and UTIs- via phone or internet. They can even prescribe medications for us, reducing our need to find urgent care clinics or physicians while traveling for the basic stuff.

For the In Person Stuff

Many things however require a human touch, and will require you to seek out services in a new environment.  And it can be a daunting task sometimes.  Is the company reliable? Do they offer service up to our expectations? Do they have a good reputation and stand behind their work? And even if we do research them to be a good service, will they have availability to see us while we’re in town?

There are several resources we use to track down services when we need them:

• Yelp – Yelp is a fantastic crowd sourced resource that lists a variety of services, along with user reviews. In areas (such as larger cities) where Yelp is more utilized, this can be quite useful. Unfortunately, many areas that we find ourselves in don’t have many Yelpers – so it’s not always useful for us.
• Google Search – Sometimes, just searching Google for the service you’re looking for, along with the location – will yield a list of results. Sometimes even with reviews from several sites gathered into one place.
• Concierge Services – We’ve recently been turned onto the Visa Signature’s concierge service – a free service for Visa Signature card holders (which we have been for years).  Recently I had an infected wisdom tooth while in Colorado, and needed to see a dentist ASAP. As we had limited cell phone reception, we placed a call to the concierge service to ask them to find us dentists in the area who had availability today.  They did all the calling around for us, and sent us a list of dentists with appointment times available. They followed up with a phone call and an e-mail within an hour.  Impressive. While we didn’t end up using one of their suggestions (our host was able to get me into their dentist within minutes), we can definitely see us using this service in the future for a whole range of things.
• User Groups – Find and join user groups that fit different facets of your life. Many models of vehicles and RVs, for instance, have Google, Facebook, Yahoo or self-hosted forum groups. We’ve gotten great recommendations on places to get maintenance on our truck and trailer. There are also groups focused on topics, such as: nomadic, location independent, simple living, traveler, knitting, fire dancer, etc. that you can join.  When you’re in search of a service, often times you’ll be amazed at the results you’ll get from locals who share a common interest with you when you shout out something like ‘I’m currently in Austin, TX and looking for a great place to get a haircut.. any recommendations?’
• Talk to Locals – Locals know their area best, and regularly utilize services around their area.  Chat up your wait staff, campground owner, hotel staff and hosts and ask for recommendations.  We’ve often gone into locally owned coffee shops or boutiques (shopping there of course), and gotten great information about the local area and recommendations for things we needed. Just recently we had a coffee shop barista sit down with us at our table for a good 30 minutes and tell us all about his little town, and where to get a great pizza.  When you’re a unique visitor to their establishment as a full time traveler, many times locals are just as interested in chatting with you as you are with them.
• Talk to other Travelers – When you’re staying in places where there are other travelers – such as campgrounds, hotels and hostels – ask others what they have discovered in their stay in the area.  Particularly other long time travelers tend to have similar needs as you for every day things. We’ve shared many great tidbits of information with other travelers we’ve passed in our own journey.
• Paying Attention – When we’re pulling into a new town, we tend to take note of things – where there’s urgent care clinics, vets, grocery stores, propane fill-ups and any other project we might have pending on to our to-do list.

What other resources do you utilize?

Be adaptable and resourceful

The biggest key of course is being willing to have this sort of variety in your life. You’re always going to have a different hair cut, a different brand of milk available at the closest grocery store, different produce in season locally and wide variety of personalities attending to your needs.

You will have to take more responsibility for seeking out services, taking the risk of bad service and relaying your history as needed.  Particularly in the case of medical, vehicle and vet services and not seeing the same staff all the time – you will be an unknown each time you enter a new waiting room.  As not all records are as portable as they should be, you’ll have to give an accurate summation of any relevant facts about your history to ensure the highest care you can. Which means you’re going to have to keep good records.

You’ll also have to take responsibility for any follow-up care, as it’s unlikely you’ll be around in the long term.  Be sure to remind your providers that anything you’re seeking service for needs to be portable and not reliant on you coming back to this location for repeat appointments long term.  This may require you asking for more detailed receipts and records at the end of your appointment to take with you and/or taking good notes.

When you can turn lack of continuity around and see it as an advantage to embrace variety instead of a disadvantage – you’ll thrive.