More RV thoughts
Sunday turned out to be a hellish day at work which was followed by a bout of discouragement last night as I probed the internet for more information on what we hope will be our new lifestyle of full-timing it in an RV down the road. There's a lot of information out there on the 'net - probably more than I can read over the next two years, especially since it's added to on a daily basis. And while there's a common statement that full-timing can be done on any budget, it's not so easy to find examples of folks that are actually doing it on the low end of the scale. The initial outlay for a traditional fifth-wheel and tow vehicle is pretty steep for our budget, even one that is used. The original thought was that we would purchase our rig with the proceeds from the sale of the house, but I've changed my mind on that. We'll need that money in savings for expenses such as major repairs that we'll inevitably occur as we travel. Depending on what breaks or goes wrong, one could be looking at thousands of dollars in repairs to one's "home". Plus, the monthly cost of being on the road isn't that much cheaper than what we spend to live in our house and the thought of living paycheck to paycheck on the road with little or no savings as a backup scares the heck out of me. Of course, we live paycheck to paycheck right now, but it's the house that serves as the savings backup since it can be sold easily (nothing stays on the market longer than a month in this neighborhood, even in the worst housing downturns.) There are a lot of people that just RV as long as they can and once they hit that financial snag that can't be overcome, they just settle back down (and usually hit the road again as soon as they can.) I suppose that's an option, but I think it would give us too many sleepless nights and we are looking to reduce the number of sleepless nights in our future, not maintain or add to them. And so it seemed to me last night that we were either going to have to get a lot more comfortable living on the edge or come up with some other plan besides just selling the house to finance this dream.

This morning I realized the foul mood I had brought home from the office had put some serious blinders on my eyes. The fifth-wheel rig is just one of many options. Plus, I've only been looking at used RV prices for the last week or so which is not long enough to get a good feel for the market or give me more than a vague idea of what we might spend down the road. And who knows what our house is going to be worth in two, four or seven years? At the rate things are going in our neighborhood, we could walk away with an extra $50,000 over today's prices.

I had somewhat ruled out motorhomes as an option (irregardless of price) since we need a vehicle for Rob to get to work and back. I just can't imagine Rob or me driving one of those with a car towed behind the back. Maybe after a few years experience with something smaller, but certainly not right off the bat. But one thing I hadn't thought of until today - there's no reason we have to tow the second vehicle. We can both drive so one could drive the behemoth while the other drove the car. Or we could just buy a cheap used car when we got to our destination if Rob was going to be working there for several months (as seems likely.)

And I'm also discovering that I really like the Class C motorhomes. Yes, they are small and cramped compared to a fifth wheel, but that also means they are small enough to go places you can't go with a bigger rig. I suspect we wouldn't be spending much time inside in it anyway, at least not the first year or so. Heck, when the weather's nice here, we always sit on our front porch instead of inside our stick house and I would imagine it's going to be no different when our house is on wheels. Especially when we can change the weather by moving on to better climes.

I spent some time today reading about folks that have purchased used Class C motorhomes, then fixed them up and modified them to suit their needs without spending a fortune. This just might be the route for us or there could be others that I haven't even thought of yet. If nothing else, it should be an interesting and educational next couple of years as we shoot for that goal of hitting the road.