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tncamperRVer

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 19, 2017
Posts
59
Location
NC for now
All I do is work on the house all the time. This whole summer has been nothing but working on the property. Why am I doing this? I don't like it anymore. We have a van and love being in the van but it's small to live in. 4 days, we're good. After that it's small. We're thinking about a trailer behind the van as a home base that moves around as the seasons change. Then a day or two trip with the van away from base. Currently we're getting the house ready to sell and throwing away all kinds of stuff that drags us down. Wife is coming up on 65 and I'm close behind. I don't feel like anyplace is home. It's just property and all I've done my whole life is fix up every house we've owned and sold it. When we sell this one we'll have 400K from the sale and we've got another 150 in the bank. Also we get an income of 7K each month. Shouldn't that take us where we want to go? I'd rather go on a walk with my dogs and sit by the campfire than burn brush piles and yard waste! We did a 30 foot classA for a while. Stayed 6 months in the same spot one summer but never jumped in for good. My heads there, just need to figure the rest out. I'll be asking questions and listening.
 
Travel while you can. Wont be as long as you think before you cant anymore. Sounds like you have bern in larger houses. If you can find a small one that is easy to care for you can have the house and still travel.

We fulltimed to find the place we wanted to settle down and successfully did that. We wanted to get away from the sprawl and expense of the east coast and we found that in so colorado.

You will need a really good financial team that really understands taxes and social security to figure out if you have enough to do what you want to do. If you are good about minimizing expenses, budgeting, and living withun your budget you may have enough. Part of making it financially is having enough to withstand investment and income variations.

If you need a great financial guy i can recomnend one. He took 3 yrs off my retirement age the first 6 months we had him.
 
Yep, a financial rep is a good thing. RVing ain't cheap so make sure you have your ducks in a row. My wife and I couldn't live in what you are talking about, but that's just us. We have 3 dogs that have to go along. I RV for work instead of planes and hotel rooms. Do it while you can.
 
Just throwing this out for thought... My wife and I fulltimed for 13 years starting about 5 years after I retired until health issues took us off the fulltime road last year. The maximum we ever spent was about $3,000 per month, with most months closer to $2,500. Since we favored state and national parks, we typically moved every two weeks, and never got bored with where we were. If there was a lot to see in a given area, we just chose a couple of parks that were nearby so we could stay longer.
 
When we sell this one we'll have 400K from the sale and we've got another 150 in the bank. Also we get an income of 7K each month. Shouldn't that take us where we want to go?

If you each make $7k a month why do you only have $150k in savings? Depending on what RV you purchase you could spend the entire $400k from the sale of your house on it. That only leaves you $150k in savings for emergency money. Since you are bringing in $14,000 a month I would double the $150,000 before I took off on your adventure. We quit saving about 10 years ago because we decided we had enough. We about a half million in investments and about $400,000-$500,000 in equity in the house. Our retirement income is $120,000 a year which is at least 90% due to my government pensions. We don’t spend outrageously. We’ve pretty much stopped traveling due to health reasons. My wife will need the investments and home equity if I should die first for a decent assisted living facility. Yeah your savings will purchase you a nice RV and your monthly income will take you pretty much wherever you want to get but IMHO you need more backup funds.
 
We sold everything in 2017, bought a used 36' diesel pusher for $80K and full timed for nearly three years until covid hit. I was 67 and DW was 65 at the time with one dog. We got stuck in a campground in Fort Myers and when the campground restrictions due to covid ended we had already decided we liked Fort Myers and bought our sticks and bricks. Loved the full timing and we still travel a few months each year.

So, now I'm busy remodeling our kitchen (already did three bathrooms, new tile floors, fixed crown molding, etc.) and, of course, there is always work to do on our 2008 motorhome...
 
I'd say you are financially adequate for a comfortable RV life style, but individual spending habits can vary widely. We traveled for years in a luxury class motorhome and lived well, though not extravagantly, on about $6k/month. That included owning/maintaining a modest bungalow as a winter home base (it was in a low-cost area).

If you don't have a fixed home base somewhere, you need to have an exit plan from the RV lifestyle - you will need it eventually. An RV is a rapidly depreciating asset, so don't wait too long before figuring out where to go when you hang up the keys. But it's ok to use your first few years of travel to locate that ultimate destination.
 
So, now I'm busy remodeling our kitchen (already did three bathrooms, new tile floors, fixed crown molding, etc.) and, of course, there is always work to do on our 2008 motorhome...
Do all that while you can. I retired ten years ago and we had a house built close to the grandkids. I did some work in and around the house but now I find it harder everyday to do those things. I can’t hardly do anything that requires bending, stooping or kneeling. I just installed an electric outlet behind the den TV that required running a circuit down to an outlet directly below. Took me two hours because I had to get on the floor twice. Liked to killed me.
 
Do all that while you can. I retired ten years ago and we had a house built close to the grandkids. I did some work in and around the house but now I find it harder everyday to do those things. I can’t hardly do anything that requires bending, stooping or kneeling. I just installed an electric outlet behind the den TV that required running a circuit down to an outlet directly below. Took me two hours because I had to get on the floor twice. Liked to killed me.
My dad (86) and I did some work to level his shed this summer. I used a car jack but a few weeks later, one corner was still off and needed a 3/4" shim between the concrete block and frame of the shed. I was able to lift the corner using a 5' metal prybar but could not hold the bar and reach to put in the shim. I asked dad "Can you get down there?" He said "getting down is not the problem!" So, after I lifted the shed, I lifted dad, LOL.
 
If you each make $7k a month why do you only have $150k in savings? Depending on what RV you purchase you could spend the entire $400k from the sale of your house on it. That only leaves you $150k in savings for emergency money. Since you are bringing in $14,000 a month I would double the $150,000 before I took off on your adventure. We quit saving about 10 years ago because we decided we had enough. We about a half million in investments and about $400,000-$500,000 in equity in the house. Our retirement income is $120,000 a year which is at least 90% due to my government pensions. We don’t spend outrageously. We’ve pretty much stopped traveling due to health reasons. My wife will need the investments and home equity if I should die first for a decent assisted living facility. Yeah your savings will purchase you a nice RV and your monthly income will take you pretty much wherever you want to get but IMHO you need more backup funds.
they get $7000 total a month not $7000 each
 
Do all that while you can. I retired ten years ago and we had a house built close to the grandkids. I did some work in and around the house but now I find it harder everyday to do those things. I can’t hardly do anything that requires bending, stooping or kneeling. I just installed an electric outlet behind the den TV that required running a circuit down to an outlet directly below. Took me two hours because I had to get on the floor twice. Liked to killed me.
Sounds like we've both learned to laugh at ourselves - yup - the ground has gotten a lot further away as I've gotten older! The good news is that as you get older, you get smarter and remember to bring ALL the tools you might need when you get on the floor to do a job or have to go to the second floor or up a ladder. The real trick is remembering where you left those darn tools after the last job.
 
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