Nest egg

[drjenk]

Wow lots of great info and advice thanks. I am more encouraged. We are in WA right now, we do plan on changing domiciles for the reasons mentioned here. Not to mention I can't stand the politics of WA so it might be nice to have a vote go my way once in a while.
We do plan on buying in to passport America or such. For sure at minimum, I think we are going to buy a thousand trails membership with a couple of the bells and whistles and paying the up front lump sum while we're still making paychecks, as that seems like a real money saver once on the road. It's about $800/year maintenance, which figures out to a very affordable rate per month. I don't think we'd exclusively be at TT parks, as we are experienced campers and prefer remote/no hookup camping when we go anyway. So we'd seek out boon docking whenever possible as well, I think with the occasional few days stay at a state park we like.
We are going to invest 100% of the house proceeds, if we sell, with a appropriate chunk in bonds/conservative funds. That with the 401k nest egg should put us right at the 4% rule territory, thus the 4k/month. It sounds like that is doable, although right now we're about double that. But I'm thinking the lifestyle change, limiting travel, and paring back our monthly budget between now and then, we'll hopefully be able to arrive at that. It's just a little nerve-racking prior to actually DOING it.
For medical, we're looking at medishare or samaritan. Haven't decided which yet.
Thanks again for all the thoughts. We're very excited and have started a rough blog/youtube channel as well, but no videos yet.

[drjenk]

Ya that's kind of our plan too. If we sell, we'll invest, and use the time on the road to scope out areas to maybe buy into for the time when we can no longer travel, or don't want to. Thanks for the input!

[SomeDay]

In the spirit of we've all worked hard for our money to enjoy the "highlight of our twilight" .........

Before you purchase a TT membership or any membership for that matter (not talking about PPA here at $44/year which is awesome if only used couple times a year even), really digest and analyze how you will utilize membership parks and where they are located! Some folks that don't boondock/drycamp as much as you'd referenced you intend to, make tremendous use of TT, however, there's been a lot of write ups by others that have commented often times there's limited availability in the areas in which they travel, the condition of the parks in some areas are less than desirable and other comments.

Purely an observation, but do analyze when, where, how often you would utilize versus upfront and other costs you'll incur.

PS: Just found this thread with Feedback on TT = http://www.irv2.com/forums/f90/do-yo...ar-278757.html

[JRPA]

Good Morning Folks, we are Pearl & Bob and publish the monthly expense report referenced earlier and I think the $4,000 a month number really is a sweet spot for the Full Time RV Lifestyle. As mentioned by several others, we find the Thousand Trails campgrounds to fit perfectly in our lifestyle making it very affordable.

The one note, I would like to make is we recently were hit with about $10,000 in maintenance bills at Lazydays in Tampa Florida. While this is most likely the exception and not the rule, you really need to be prepared for these type of expenses with an emergency fund. It could easily by a personal health issue or some kind of RV repair but it can definitely put a bump in the road.

A big factor we like about Thousand Trails is we can really cut back on expenses by staying at TT campgrounds and not traveling too much for a few months at a time which allows us to then splurge somewhere where we normally couldn't afford but really enjoy when we do.

Our youtube channel is all about Retirement, the RV Lifestyle and Expenses so feel free to join us if it is something that interest you. We just spent a week down in the Florida Keys and for folks like us from Nevada, that was a very new experience and now we are headed to Oregon for the Summer.

www.youtube.com/justpassingthru

Bob

[winniman]

Originally Posted by JRPA

Good Morning Folks, we are Pearl & Bob and publish the monthly expense report referenced earlier and I think the $4,000 a month number really is a sweet spot for the Full Time RV Lifestyle. As mentioned by several others, we find the Thousand Trails campgrounds to fit perfectly in our lifestyle making it very affordable.

The one note, I would like to make is we recently were hit with about $10,000 in maintenance bills at Lazydays in Tampa Florida. While this is most likely the exception and not the rule, you really need to be prepared for these type of expenses with an emergency fund. It could easily by a personal health issue or some kind of RV repair but it can definitely put a bump in the road.

A big factor we like about Thousand Trails is we can really cut back on expenses by staying at TT campgrounds and not traveling too much for a few months at a time which allows us to then splurge somewhere where we normally couldn't afford but really enjoy when we do.

Our youtube channel is all about Retirement, the RV Lifestyle and Expenses so feel free to join us if it is something that interest you. We just spent a week down in the Florida Keys and for folks like us from Nevada, that was a very new experience and now we are headed to Oregon for the Summer.

www.youtube.com/justpassingthru

Bob

Hey Bob and Pearl, I enjoyed watching your Vlog, and have subscribed. Thanks for posting your budget numbers. Its very helpful for those of us on the brink of retirement. Having some numbers to work with really help. Happy trails.

[grindstone01]

We have full timed for 6+ years now and our ave expenses are less than $2k/month. Our plan includes volunteering at public places for a month which includes free stays that keeps our RV and fuel expenses low. It's not for everybody but it works for us and allows us to keep as busy as we want and we really get to see/experience/know the local area.

Retirement is a time of life to be as active as you can.


https://www.stateparks.com/wy.html

[CLP4]

It sounds like your ready to have fun. The expenses are what you make them. You can pick a $100 dollar a night or $15 a night spot. You can boondock or camp with a monthly rate. You can buy diesel and travel five hundred miles a day or fifty miles a week.

That said, it’s your trip. We have TT but we will drop it this year because the areas we stayed were dumps in our opinion. Passport America has been great. FMCA has been good, Good Sams has also saved us money on diesel discounts at flying j and camping.

If funds get tight, find an area with free camping or friends and just slow down for a while. Go have fun.

[Barbaraok]

Curious as to which TT parks you feel are dumps. Now they aren't 5 star resorts, but for $3/night I don't expect a lot. But that's just us.

[grindstone01]

Originally Posted by Barbaraok

Curious as to which TT parks you feel are dumps. Now they aren't 5 star resorts, but for $3/night I don't expect a lot. But that's just us.

TT cost of $3/night is not a true cost. You need to account for the yearly fees and the initial investment divided by 10 or 15 years of use and then divide that sum by last year days spent in a TT park. Then you can see your true per night cost.
Like any investment, TT is a good investment for some and bad for other's. My advice would be to try TT parks for a year before investing into their program.

[frede]

Bob sent us a copy of his spreadsheet and put us on on the road to our TT membership. Thanks Bob

[Jean n Steve]

Originally Posted by drjenk

Wow lots of great info and advice thanks. I am more encouraged. We are in WA right now, we do plan on changing domiciles for the reasons mentioned here. Not to mention I can't stand the politics of WA so it might be nice to have a vote go my way once in a while.
We do plan on buying in to passport America or such. For sure at minimum, I think we are going to buy a thousand trails membership with a couple of the bells and whistles and paying the up front lump sum while we're still making paychecks, as that seems like a real money saver once on the road. It's about $800/year maintenance, which figures out to a very affordable rate per month. I don't think we'd exclusively be at TT parks, as we are experienced campers and prefer remote/no hookup camping when we go anyway. So we'd seek out boon docking whenever possible as well, I think with the occasional few days stay at a state park we like.
We are going to invest 100% of the house proceeds, if we sell, with a appropriate chunk in bonds/conservative funds. That with the 401k nest egg should put us right at the 4% rule territory, thus the 4k/month. It sounds like that is doable, although right now we're about double that. But I'm thinking the lifestyle change, limiting travel, and paring back our monthly budget between now and then, we'll hopefully be able to arrive at that. It's just a little nerve-racking prior to actually DOING it.
For medical, we're looking at medishare or samaritan. Haven't decided which yet.
Thanks again for all the thoughts. We're very excited and have started a rough blog/youtube channel as well, but no videos yet.

If you don't know it already, you can buy 'used' TT memberships from online brokers and save a ton of money.

Originally Posted by grindstone01

Retirement is a time of life to be as active as you can.

Great advice!

Originally Posted by frede

Bob sent us a copy of his spreadsheet and put us on on the road to our TT membership. Thanks Bob

Yay, Bob!

[frede]

Originally Posted by Jean n Steve

If you don't know it already, you can buy 'used' TT memberships from online brokers and save a ton of money.

Make sure the 'used' TT membership locks the dues at age 62, most don't and a 10% increase annually can quickly wipe out your "savings". That's why I bought new.

[Barbaraok]

Originally Posted by grindstone01

TT cost of $3/night is not a true cost. You need to account for the yearly fees and the initial investment divided by 10 or 15 years of use and then divide that sum by last year days spent in a TT park. Then you can see your true per night cost.
Like any investment, TT is a good investment for some and bad for other's. My advice would be to try TT parks for a year before investing into their program.

I agree try out the Zone Pass, which is what we use as we have other memberships. Annual dues cover first 50 nights, after that $3/night. We average over 50 nights in TT parks each year. And if you want a regular TT membership you can often buy used for $1000 or less including transfer fee. And you can often get one for just the transfer costs since a lot of people will sell them for $1-10 without going through a broker, often times on different forums.

[marjoa]

Originally Posted by drjenk

budgeted for $4k a month worst case..

My question is, what have you all got away with on for a monthly budget?

Well there's a few tiny itsy, bitsy pieces of info (other than you like to eat out a couple times a month) that would be helpful to give an opinion on whether 4K/mo. would be adequate or not. Like.....what type of MH and toad you're going to buy, whether or not there will be a note on it, how will it be cared for and maintained, will you be buying an EW or not, what will the insurance be on that set up and what type of traveling and camping will you be doing....just for starters.

Or maybe you don't even care what our opinion is on whether 4K/mo is workable or not...and that's kewl too. Heck, if you've got 10K/mo. to FT and travel that's awesome.

But, other than that....

We took 18 months to plan how we were going to FT and travel and for us we easily get by with $1,500-$1,800/mo., (a couple of months less than that) we do whatever we want, we are debt free and we couldn't be happier.