Imagine yourself in your 70s and full-time RVing. To help make ends meet, you volunteer looking after a visitor center for the National Forest Service. For your work, you get a $20 a day stipend, and you depend on that extra cash. Until it doesn’t come because the government has frozen the funds. Meet Alan Willes and Teri Gilfilen—it’s their true story of RVers and budget cuts.
Putting a face on RVers and budget cuts
Alan and Teri work winters in Sedona, Arizona—or, at least, they used to. The Palatki Heritage Site is an archaeological site and park in the Coconino National Forest. Besides manning the visitor center there, the couple also provided tours. But now, they’re parked at a Camp Verde, Arizona, RV park, shelling out $1,500 a month, waiting for the weather to warm up in Wyoming. Alan has a job driving river-rafting shuttle buses—but that doesn’t start until May.
The check the federal government owes them amounts to $3,000—and it’s more than two months late. The couple told Wyoming Public Radio things would be better “If we could get [our stipend] without it costing us an arm and a leg.” Hiring an attorney to press for the money seems like something that could be done, but “It’d probably cost us $20,000 to go get $3,000. No, we can’t do that. They got us over a barrel.”
Not just the money, their place to stay
Alan and Teri, although not federal employees, are sweating out the fallout from the “budget cutting” process. Not only are they reliant on the stipend they get for the volunteer work, their housing is also at risk. If their positions with the historic site are eliminated, so is where they “hang their hats.” When working at the Palatki Heritage Site, the Forest Service allows them to park their RV in a nearby pasture. It’s just another face of RVers and budget cuts.
“We’re very nervous about that,” Alan told the news service. “If the park service closes down, I don’t know if we’d be closed down. I would think so.”
Teri tries to put a positive spin on things. “ Never in my life would I have thought I would be living in an RV in [my] 70s. Yeah, it just totally surprises me. But we do have an adventurous life.”
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##RVT1200b
They might want to find a cheaper RV park if they’re hurting.
Plenty of jobs available in Quartzsite… LTVA right now is still $180 for all season.
Seems like bad planning if the $20/day stipend is all that stands between them and pan handling in retirement. The math ain’t really matching either, 60 days late on a check with a $20/day rate is $1,200.00, not $3,000.00. Also, 60 days late for problem proposed by someone in office for only 48 days …..!
A lot more to this story I’m afraid which may be found in the details untold.
No doubts they could find $500 a month rv parks instead of paying the exorbitant $1500 a month too!
Not in Sedona. You ever been there? I’ve never seen $500/month anywhere.
Maybe Sedona is out of the price bracket for this lovely couple, in retirement? As I previously indicated, if the line between pan handling in retirement or not, is so fine of a line, perhaps Quartzsite or Yuma is the better choice versus a very high cost area like Sedona. They can finish the winter in Quartzsite while waiting for the back pay to catch up, as I am certain it eventually will.
Sedona is after all, the most pricey tourist town built for and around, the rich and famous in Arizona.
My thoughts exactly
Sedona is pricey, but they moved on to Camp Verde…talk about what you actually know.
Vail Colorado is about the same as Camp Verde. 65-105/night. Maybe something in the $35 bracket would be better suited for these folks if $20/day stipend is a make or break in retirement. Maybe talk about what you know Paul and that obviously isn’t financial planning.
Then maybe they should roll down the road to a more affordable area since they aren’t working…duh.
There are two of them – $20/person/day, and you have no idea how many days they are owed for. (They are not getting $20/day for # days late, which is how you came up with your number.) It does take some time to process a stipend with the Fed Gov’t, but then the payment was frozen for work they already performed. No private employer could get away with that, because it’s illegal not to pay people for work they have already performed.
What makes you assume the payment is “frozen.”?
The fact that the goverment, just pulled the rug out from under there feet is the issue. All national parks might not be worth seeing this year. I for one will boycott them until jobs are returned to all that lost one
At most, this couple is inconvenienced, not “out in the cold.”
I appreciate you boycotting the national parks though… more room for me!
So u let someone else influence your travels….not me….travel baby travel…
You might be right about some of the peripheral damages or perhaps as Bob Walter said below, “inconvenience”, but today DOGE uncovered $312,000,000.00 of loans that went out to children 11 years old and under, in 2021 and 2022.
No one, including myself, supports the idea of not funding parks and park services but it appears that the rot is so deep in all of Fed Gov’t that it may take some temporary adjustment of our expectations or suffer some “inconvenience” to get things back to sanity and avoid the eventual bankruptcy of our beloved America.
Nicely said!
Very unlikely. Musk has provided no substantiation for this. DOGE has made many claims that were later quietly removed because they lacked any evidence.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/03/11/doge-312m-loans-children/
DOGE.GOV
It has been the most transparent thing I have ever seen in Gov’t.
The Inspector Generals going back decades find a half trillion of waste every single audit. Then a blue Ribbon commission is set up and then crickets. No cuts, no nothin. I’m all for trying something new and will happily give them another 6 months to implement changes. Let’s see if spending recisions actually happen thru the referral process to congress before the next budget is due. Continuing down the same path is bankrupting the country. The old solutions are not working.
My point was many of the DOGE dollar claims of fraud or waste are simply posted without a lick of evidence, and quietly removed from their “wall of receipts.” Transparency would include providing real evidence.
No doubt Warren, it has been a bit messy. I feel it is worth the inconvenience if it proves effective but time will tell. I figure 4-6 months until we actually see some real meat on the bone from votes in congress. Not holding my breath tho, 65% confidence level on it but it will be in congresses hands in a couple of months and they will have 45 days on each item to review and vote uo or down on individual line items for rescission.
✌️brother.
My belief is that the “Young Folks” working for Doge are using large DB data mining techniques to find common sense discrepancies in data that MAY indicate an issue in a spending program. A whole new career field the last several years is “Data Science.”
But, Data Science to uncover things, or better understand mass information, is just one step in a process. Doge is announcing “success” too fast, IMO. Validation needs to be done first.
The data is just that…data. After validation, the actual impact will be known. Some savings will be real, some “kinda” real, and some “false.”
I’ve heard it referred to as Quantum Mapping. Overlay Mapping at light speed decoding the spider web of transactions including money coming back and money being dispersed through a chain of recipients. I don’t know for sure but I’m guessing some jail time is coming for NGOs, political kickbacks, Federal Emoyees and others involved in the graft.
Keep the faith brother. ✌️😎
Right – On Diane!…..One day you have a job, bills, housing and one day later, only the bills. Without warning, unreal!
Diane, did you know you can donate money to Nat’l Parks or even the Fed Gov’t? Yep, you can, in a small way, choose to help alleviate the federal deficit and help save jobs! 🙂
People lose jobs in ALL sectors every day. Why should fed jobs be any different??
I have “lost” jobs in the past…but still got paid for what work I did. I think that’s the key difference here.
Correct. Something seems to be missing in this article. “Owed $3000”? That would be 150 days. So they are only “paid” once a year?
Considering the new administration has only been in place for about 60 days, it seems like there is something missing in this story.
More “sky is falling” news.
Something seems not right about this story. What federal job positions pay $20 per day?
It is a stipend for volunteering, it is not “Pay”. But if one has completed the work, then the federal government has agreed to pay the stipend, and has reneged on them, that is a sign that the government cannot be trusted. We have a similar gig. We had to wait several months for our stipend to come in last year but we never doubted that we would receive it. But this is a whole new world with a president who has never honored his contracts when he was in business, and who seems ready to behave the same way with our nation’s contracts. It is a sad state of affairs.
NEVER honored his contracts? Just recently all the banks he was charged with “defrauding” stated on the record that all monies were paid back and there was no harm.
Do you literally have personal knowledge of all the contracts he has, or ever has had, to make such a blanket statement?
Now, I do think these folks should get paid and on time. But as I’ve related many times here of late, is that we are seeing common business practice being applied. The first thing a new CEO coming into a failing company does is freeze things until the full situation is understood.
Thank you for the news, Russ and Tina! Sounds like a contingency plan or two is necessary. Is $1500/month typical for that area, state? That ~$50/day, which, again, seems remarkably high. They must have some omitted contraints that “forced” such an expensive solution to no longer have their campsite in the field. Have a great day and safe travels!
Sedona is to Arizona, what Aspen is to Colorado. The most expensive touristy real estate in Arizona. A solid plan B, contingency is the best answer.
Is it really ‘volunteering’ if you’re getting paid even if it is a ‘small stipend’ or an RV site? Sounds more like workcamping. And, yes, they should get paid for work they’ve already completed. As others have stated, the numbers do not seem to add up.
Just a thought, but they could move on to somewhere that is a better fit to their budget. I’ve been to Sedona and it is a beautiful city, but, geez it’s spendy.
If this were the private sector there would be no outrage. The federal government is out of control – it has to start somewhere. Sorry, but no sympathy here.
In the private sector,people lose jobs all the time due to budget cuts and economic down turns. Why should the federal government be any different. I agree this sounds more like work camping. We ALL know RV life is expensive. Live within your budget and have plan B,C,D in place is only way to survive. I am tired of Fed workers complaining about the same economic problems the general public have always dealt with
There is a difference between losing income because you lost a job and not getting paid for work performed- or having a legal contract terminated prematurely.
Well said Darla.
Let’s see, did the couple “volunteer” at the visitor center, which means they donated their time and skills without compensation, or were they “paid” contractors working for an agreed amount wage for their efforts? Volunteer and Stipend is an oxymoron.
Isn’t paid volunteer a contradiction of terms?
At least Alan and Teri are/were working. They may be there because it’s a job they enjoy working and being with the visitors. Not everyone was lucky to have a good job like many of us commenting. It’s sad to hear so many heartless commenters.
I don’t understand? Volunteering means working for free. At least it used to be that way. Also I may be out of touch, but they must be staying in a pretty pricy RV park. $1500 a month seems a little high in Arizona. I am sure they could do better if they are really on a budget.