We going to take everyones advice and full time ASAP!

[G-JLD9]

I have gotten lots of great advice from the forum about our plans to full time in summer of 2019, but the most advice was to do it now and not wait. Everyone is right about how anything can happen health wise and if we can do it now we should. Well this past few weeks Gary and I have been talking about selling everything this spring and full timing in what ever DP we end up with at a RV park near work. I would work till Gary gets his Army reserve retirement check in June of 2019, then we would be off on our adventures across the country. We would actually save a lot more money full timing now vs living in the house till 2019. If we are tired of mowing the lawn, weeding, cleaning the pool and raking leaves now, why are we waiting. We some times talk about the days when we lived in a 5th wheel when we first got married and how easy it was. So we are going to do now.

So my plan:

Start selling stuff I have not used in years. Finish up the little project around the house, and get it ready to put on the market about May time frame. I would do it now but I think it will take us about 6 months to find a DP we like, get stuff sold and projects done. But most of all Husker football season is almost here and every thing slows down to a crawl during the weekend to watch and go to games.

Start over on our must have list for a diesel pusher, and focus more on buying our last rig first and the must have options for full timing. We have been looking the last few months for one that was going to be ok for now and just going to some footballs games or the lake. I wonder what options are a must to consider for full time living? I read a lot of people love there Aqua-Hot type system, and I think Im going to put it on my must have list.

Since I will still be working till summer 2019, we need to decide if we are going to have our domical here in Kansas till I retire, or once we sell the house have it in South Dakota. If we get a DP before we sell the house then I will have to register it in Kansas, which is not too bad. I looked up what a 40,000lb 10 year old DP would cost for tags and its about 500 a year. Sales tax here is 7%, so we will just have to pay it to have one now.

We drove though the RV park by work and it is nice with concrete pads, about 400 a month for full hook ups, cable, internet, but electric metered separate. I don't know what electric may run for a RV every month, but it has to be cheaper then what I pay now to run the house.

I only work 4 days a week so we could roll out every weekend and go some where if we wanted to. Every holiday is a 4 day weekend, and with all the annual leave work gives me we could go on many 2 week trips through out the year. Then when it is time to quit work, we just fire up the rig and roll. I don't know why I felt like we had to stay in the house till 2019, I like the do it now plan way better.

So thanks to everyone who said do it now, we really feel it is the best thing for us to do. Now on to finding our DP, which can be fun but exhausting at the same time. So many choices out there and my idea of good condition is far from what some sellers think. But I know our Dutch Star (our favorite so far) is out there some where just waiting for us to find.

Jen

[Stripe34]

We are in a similar situation - had been talking about full-timing "someday" but focusing on doing it ASAP now.

We also want to get a DP - we are currently PT in a class C diesel (Winnie View) which is too small for us to full time in permanently.

We plan on selling or donating everything in the house when we get home from the current trip. We will put the house up for sale right away, and if it sells before we get our DP we will just move into the Winnie temporarily.

It will be great to get away from the leaf raking, lawn mowing, and other S&B maintenance.

Best of luck on your transition! I'll be watching this thread to hear the "must have" replies.

CC & Paul

[twogypsies]

Good plan and hope it works for you. However, you have some things to think about.

- winter in Kansas with a RV. You'll have special issues in keeping warm and your piping. Also, you'll be going through a LOT of propane for heat. All doable...but think it out.

- check out your domicile issue. If you're still working you might have to domicile in Kansas

- Newmar? Excellent We full-timed in ours for 8 of our 16 years of full-timing. No problems.

Here are two consignment places to keep a lookout for your motorhome. We sold ours through PPL.

http://motorhomesoftexas.com/

http://www.pplmotorhomes.com/diesel/...motorhomes.php

Best of luck!

[G-JLD9]

Originally Posted by twogypsies

Good plan and hope it works for you. However, you have some things to think about.

- winter in Kansas with a RV. You'll have special issues in keeping warm and your piping. Also, you'll be going through a LOT of propane for heat. All doable...but think it out.

- check out your domicile issue. If you're still working you might have to domicile in Kansas

- Newmar? Excellent We full-timed in ours for 8 of our 16 years of full-timing. No problems.

Here are two consignment places to keep a lookout for your motorhome. We sold ours through PPL.

Luxury Pre-Owned Motorhome Dealer for Foretravel Newell Country Coach.

Diesel Motorhomes for Sale - PPL Motor Homes

Best of luck!

Yes, winter here in Kansas are not fun. Not the worst place for winters but I hate snow, and that's probably why our first plan was summer of 2019 so we would never have to be in the cold. But when we lived in a 5th wheel for almost 2 years here, it was ok. We were never cold in the RV, but one time the pipes froze and that sucked. So the DP we get I want Aqua-Hot system with heated basement to help make things easier and not rely on propane. But in the winter I can take a lot of vacation time to the south to escape some winter blues.

We are doing a lot more research on the domicile thing now that Kansas is in the mix. Never considered Kansas before since we know South Dakota is the better choice for us, but now we need to see what Kansas is going to cost us all together.

Really like Newmar and their Dutch Stars, we even walked through so Mountain Aires and liked those also but my budget was not liking the price. If I had the money I would order a new Dutch Star and do factory delivery, but we want to have no payments so we look at what 100k can get us. I have not drove one with Comfort Drive yet but this weekend we are going to PPL in Cleburne and Motor Home Specialist so we hope to see if Comfort Drive may be a must have. But we would have to up the budget to get one with that feature. PPL has a 2007 Mountain Aire and MHS has a 2009 Dutch Aire that we are going to eyeball and see if we need to up the budget and take a loan on the rest. I don't know if a 2009 Dutch Aire has Comfort Drive, I looked at the broacher and it does not mention it but the salesmen said it does.

Motor Homes of Texas has a great web site with lots of pics. I mostly see Foretravle motorhomes listed and most are more then I want to spend. I do like rear engine compartment access on Foretravle, I can see everything. I should go look at one to see if it needs to be on our list. I also like Monaco Windsor and Dynasty, and we pretty much look at everything with a side radiator to see if we like it. I do all my own maintenance so the only thing that is a must have on the list right now is a side radiator and I'm pretty sure a Aqua-Hot type system will be too.

Jen

[G-JLD9]

Originally Posted by Stripe34

We are in a similar situation - had been talking about full-timing "someday" but focusing on doing it ASAP now.

We also want to get a DP - we are currently PT in a class C diesel (Winnie View) which is too small for us to full time in permanently.

We plan on selling or donating everything in the house when we get home from the current trip. We will put the house up for sale right away, and if it sells before we get our DP we will just move into the Winnie temporarily.

It will be great to get away from the leaf raking, lawn mowing, and other S&B maintenance.

Best of luck on your transition! I'll be watching this thread to hear the "must have" replies.

CC & Paul

Gary and I have talked about doing full timing now off and on for a year now, and with these past few weeks we talked every day about doing it ASAP. The one thing that pushed us to doing it now was last week our dog was almost injured and it made me realize how things can change in a flash. We were our front about to take her on a walk and I though I was holding on to the leash tight enough, but she must have seen some thing to make her bolt for the street and leash flow out of my grasp. I quickly looked to where she was heading and saw a car coming up the road. OMG, I bet the whole neighbor hood could hear me call her but Husker was just going after what ever it was. Good thing the car was not going fast and saw her and slowed down. I went across the street and Husker quickly came to me, I waved a sorry to the driver and took Husker into the house. I told Gary we are doing the Dutch Star thing now, and he must have seen what happened through the window because he said Lets Do It!

There are many more reasons we are going to do it now, but this just made us see how things can go wrong in a instant. And we really are tired of yard work, pool maintenance and miss the ocean.

Jen

[twogypsies]

I don't know if you saw on the above linked 'Foretravel' site this Country Coach. We have a few friends with that manufacturer and they are very nice motorhomes. It seems to be close to your price range. It's now $129,500.

2006 Country Coach Allure 40 Priced at $ 144500

[G-JLD9]

Originally Posted by twogypsies

I don't know if you saw on the above linked 'Foretravel' site this Country Coach. We have a few friends with that manufacturer and they are very nice motorhomes. It seems to be close to your price range. It's now $129,500.

2006 Country Coach Allure 40 Priced at $ 144500

I did see that DP but when I looked at the specs it does not have Aqua-Hot type system, but we have walked through a few Country Coach rigs and we do like them. We also like American Coach rigs. I guess we like the fact Newmar is still in business over the other brands. We have not walked through a Tiffin yet but will this weekend to see if we like them.

Jen

[BigD629]

I would highly recommend taking a closer look at Foretravels for your Fulltime Coach. I just went through a yearlong search comparing all the top manufacturers. Foretravels are a very high quality coach, And they are still in Business in Nacogdoches, TX.

[G-JLD9]

Originally Posted by BigD629

I would highly recommend taking a closer look at Foretravels for your Fulltime Coach. I just went through a yearlong search comparing all the top manufacturers. Foretravels are a very high quality coach, And they are still in Business in Nacogdoches, TX.

Foretravel is about 8 hours from us and we should take a trip down there to look at them. I do really like how every thing seems accessible to fix if repairs are needed. And of all the ones I have looked at Foretravel has a huge engine access door, I really like that you could see so much back there for maintenance. At first Gary was thinking our budget could get a much newer coach but the newer ones may not have all the stuff a early 2000s Foretravle has. We can easily change out furniture if we like everything else.

Like these 2 Foretravels have everything I think we would want in a full time rig.

http://motorhomesoftexas.com/coachrv...20--40--C1879A

2003 Foretravel U320 40' Priced at $ 139500

I think we need to stop looking too much in to how old the coach is and more at what it has for options and what condition it is in. Foretravel uses a transmission retarder and all the other rigs we have looked at us a exhaust or engine brake. Going to have to do so research on transmission retarders, none of the stuff I work on at work have this, so today I'm going to take some time and look this up.

Thanks,
Jen

[BigD629]

Those are both beautiful Coaches. I would recommend joining http://www.foreforums.com/. There is a wealth of information and expert advise regarding Foretravels. I had to go back to an 05 in order to fit our budget, but I felt our 05 Foretravel was far superior to anything newer we could afford.

[harryn]

If you can swing it, consider to keep the home and rent it out rather than selling it.

There are of course pros and cons to this approach:

Pros
- Monthly cash flow
- Avoiding many taxes related to selling it
- Potential to gain from the value of your home increasing (nearly all currencies are dropping in value compared to housing values)
- Potential to rent out "most" of your house and retain control of part of it to stay in occasionally
- Rent out long term or shorter term, example air bnb

Cons
- Renters can be a challenge
- Damage risk
-

[TechWriter]

Originally Posted by BigD629

I would highly recommend taking a closer look at Foretravels for your Fulltime Coach. I just went through a yearlong search comparing all the top manufacturers. Foretravels are a very high quality coach, And they are still in Business in Nacogdoches, TX.

1988 - 2005 Foretravels can suffer from bulkhead separation or chassis failure.

If you go with a Foretravel, at least have the chassis inspected.

Finally, IMHO, when I looked at these coaches I found them overpriced. That's why I went with Newmar.