Community Forums

Stripe34 · 07-12-2016, 06:08 PM

Hubbie and I are recently retired (OK, quit jobs early) and finishing up a long trip in the Rockies in our 2010 Navion.

Getting ready to go home, sell house and contents & vehicles, and order a Newmar Dutch Star if we can't find the perfect used one :-)

If anyone else has advice either on the transition to full time, or specifics on the Dutch Star, please chime in!

If we order new MH, we still need to decide fridge (RV vs residential), stove (propane vs induction), tag axle or not, 37' or 40', and full-wall slide vs 4 slides.

Other transition open items are medical insurance (he's 58, I'm 52 but post cancer & transplant), RV insurance, domicile, etc.

All thoughts and advice welcome!!

CC & Paul

Zac808 · 07-13-2016, 04:55 PM

Congrats. Sounds exciting. Let me know when you are ready to sell that Navion. My parents will be looking for a Navion/View in the near future.

Captjake1 · 07-13-2016, 05:15 PM

We are doing the same. Accelerated time line puts us at full time in 94 days. It came about quickly for us.

Even having planned for this for 5 years, I have been overwhelmed with things that need to be done.
Already sold the house, we will be moving to a nearby campgorund for our final 5 weeks of work.
Get a storage unit
Glad we have so much time to empty the house relatively slowly. The kids pretty much took anything of value LOL, the garage sale is in the next several weeks. It is amazing the amount of stuff one accumulates.

mail forwarding service (I found one local that does it for cheap).
Change ALL of those addresses! OMG!
Fulltime insurance. I am going with Miller Insurance our of Portland Oregon (best price after shopping and shopping).
We are keeping our domicile in WA State. No income tax. There is a sales tax, but we already bough the RV last year and paid it.

I have been working on the coach for over a year. Fixing, tweaking and upgrading. We upgraded to a residential Samsung fridge. The Dometic we had was way to small.
Kept the propane stove top.
Changed out the 35 gallon propane tank for a 5 gallon one. Now that bay is storage for other things.
Cell booster, small computer (NUC) for onboard network (movies, pictures, music). Luckily have a grandfathered unlimited data pan with Verizon.

Looking at bicycles the end of the week.

Both of our daily commuters are 'pre-sold' to fiends or family.

Start making a list. It will get surprisingly long. I think the list that keeps growing is the one for address changes. There are so many on line accounts, at least for us.

G-JLD9 · 07-15-2016, 03:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stripe34

Hubbie and I are recently retired (OK, quit jobs early) and finishing up a long trip in the Rockies in our 2010 Navion.

Getting ready to go home, sell house and contents & vehicles, and order a Newmar Dutch Star if we can't find the perfect used one :-)

If anyone else has advice either on the transition to full time, or specifics on the Dutch Star, please chime in!

If we order new MH, we still need to decide fridge (RV vs residential), stove (propane vs induction), tag axle or not, 37' or 40', and full-wall slide vs 4 slides.

Other transition open items are medical insurance (he's 58, I'm 52 but post cancer & transplant), RV insurance, domicile, etc.

All thoughts and advice welcome!!

CC & Paul

I read your posts about RV vs residential fridge and propane vs induction stove, lots of good info there since I to really need to deiced what will make full timing easier. After reading the replies I think I would go with residential fridge and induction stove, so basically go all electric step up. But since im going for used in the 100k range, I don't think I can find that. So if I find one we like but has the other kind of fridge and stove, I can change that. In my research there is lots of stuff I can add or change to a used rig, but I cant change if it has no tag, too short, not enough slides or Aqua-Hot type system (I guess you could add Aqua-Hot but its very pricy).

I know we want a W/D for sure, kind of hated walking over to the laundry place when we were full time in a 5th wheel for 2 years. I don't know if I care about a dishwasher, but it cant hurt. I use the one at home all the time. I did dislike the small 10 gal water heater we had, always had to take quick showers or shut the water valve off to put on shampoo. That s why Im putting a Aqua-Hot type system on the mandatory list.

I'm hoping to drive a tag DP this weekend, we have only drove non tag ones. I know a tag will help with Net Carrying Capacity but also takes up space, but I bet I'm going to like the tag. And it looks cooler.

If you order a new Dutch Star, do the factory deliver. I have read its well worth the extra cost and if for some reason we decide on a new Dutch Star we will be doing it for sure.

Have fun looking at DP, we have been looking for 6 months now but have not found the one. I liked a lot of them but when I did my inspections I found many things wrong for the price they were asking. Going this weekend to the Dallas area to look, there is almost nothing here in Wichita, KS DP wise.

Jen

twogypsies · 07-15-2016, 05:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stripe34

Getting ready to go home, sell house and contents & vehicles, and order a Newmar Dutch Star if we can't find the perfect used one :-)

Good choice - Newmar. We had a very good experience with ours. We RVd simply.

We purposely ordered it with only two slides on the same side because we love public parks and didn't want to deal with fitting slides between trees. There's a lot to go wrong with a full size slide and we heard of horror stories of the kitchen being in a slide.

Our 40' didn't have a tag but we were extremely pleased with handling. We were in the mountains all the time.

We definitely didn't want a W/D. We did all the laundry in town every 2 weeks when we did other errands. We didn't use RV parks except for a few instances. We never ran into a problem with laundramats. We couldn't have stood to have to do small batches of laundry daily.

We also loved dry camping in national and other public parks so we didn't want a residential refrigerator although if you have enough batteries you could do it but with careful monitoring. The propane stove and convection microwave worked just fine for us. We used solar panels for our power.

We also sold all contents of our house and never regretted it. When you add up storage fees you could buy new. Furniture and clothing gets outdated.

Other transition open items are medical insurance (he's 58, I'm 52 but post cancer & transplant), RV insurance, domicile, etc.

We domiciled with the Escapees RV Club address in Texas. Their mail forwarding was awesome - never a problem with financial institutions accepting the address. It's a great full-timers organization overall, not just for mail. They have some great co-op parks and a fantastic bi-monthly magazine written by RVers with very little advertising. We made many great friends through the organization because we did things with the club.

Medical insurance will be the biggest issue for you. You definitely need something you can easily travel with and choose your own doctors. We also were 'downsized' from our company in our 50's but luckily we were able to keep our insurance until we got on Medicare. The new medical issues nowadays will take a lot of research on your part and it will be expensive, unfortunately. Also, if you have to buy your own plan insurance goes by state and also by county within the state. It's not a simple thing anymore.

Best of luck to you. It was a fantastic lifestyle for us for 16 years. We also volunteered in public parks a lot and gave lighthouse tours at times. Lots of interesting things to do!!

Selah · 07-15-2016, 06:34 PM

My advice is to go with an all electric coach, especially for full timing. The 22 cuft residential fridge is a world above the small 12 cuft absorbtion type. The hydronic heat is quieter than propane and if you get heated floors, completly silent. You do have to make sure the manufacturer installed a quality induction cooktop as some of the cheaper ones don't do a good job of slow simmer.
as for boondocking; One hour of generator in the morning and two at night will keep your batteries up for as long as necessary.
My thoughts when starting full time is that the coach is going to be our home. I would expect nothing less than I did for my house; washer dryer, dish washer, heated floors, full size fridge with through the door ice and water, excellant cook top, etc... With the added benefit of being self contained when I wanted.

Trapper2022 · 07-17-2016, 10:19 AM

We full time and went all electric. Love the residential frig over smaller one in 5th wheel we used to have. Oasis for unlimited heat/hot water and separate washer dryer. Also we went 45 feet long so have tag axel. Love the tag because we no longer have to worry about weight. Pull a CRV which has worked out well. Most important think is find a floor plan you like and look real hard at how many inside storage areas you have. We carry more than we need and keep lightening the load at every stop. Enjoy you will love seeing everything out there. ��

Stripe34 · 07-22-2016, 12:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zac808

Congrats. Sounds exciting. Let me know when you are ready to sell that Navion. My parents will be looking for a Navion/View in the near future.

Zac, we will most likely end up trading it in as part of the new DP deal. I'll let you know what dealership it ends up at. Our current home base is in Ohio.

Thx -