Coming back off the road

Currently we have a motorhome, full time and own our own rv lot. Come and go as we want. When I have to hang up the keys, can sell/ trade motorhome for travel trailer or put a park model on our site. Park models seem to be the way to go
and some residents have sold out and gone to manufactured housing development in same town.

If you reach the "end of the road" for fulltiming for health reasons, as many do, are you really going to want the hassles of another sticks & bricks? As long as you have enough set aside to cover a decent apartment or other rental, you should be ok. Of course your health might also dictate more advanced living accommodations by then. In our case, we sold our house, but kept our small lakeside cottage in upstate NY, converting it to year-round living. Taxes, etc., only cost us a couple of thousand a year, and we use the full hookup RV pad there as our base while visiting our kids and friends that live nearby.

I think it depends on two factors. Number 1: how strong is your retirement income, and Number 2: what is the total expense liability of keeping your existing home while full timing.

For us it only made sense to sell the house when starting full timing. We were not interested in renting it out and in our area property taxes were running us almost $5,000 a year.

Since we started with hardly any bills, plus no more house expenses (property tax, utilities, insurance, etc.) we actually started saving more money each month.

So for us the money balance was okay and we really didn't have to worry about an "exit" plan. We just figured we would travel and do what we wanted to do and not worry about it.

I'm also in my mid-40's and have dreamed of full timing for 10 years now. My wife and I think we might be about 10-12 years away from full timing.

Our plan, while not a single plan nor "nailed" down, consists of scenarios. I feel the scenario way of planning (having more than one plan) is usually a good way to go.

Our scenarios:

1. Keep house we have now (it will be paid for in a few years) and full time but with a home base, where we come back to visit family, maybe one or both our daughters may live (in the house that is). Our home now has RV hookups (installed by Dad and I), is outside town, and is a comfort.

2. Sell house, full time 100%. This gives us a chunk of cash from sale of home, and we would no longer be tied to it. Kind of like your scenario.

3. sell house, buy house in another city (South, South West, West, someplace different!) to use as a base of operations.

We have a few other scenarios, and maybe some don't consider having a house and full timing to go together, but the reality is we like our garden, our home, our family close by.

To answer your question specifically, if you 100% full time, with house gone, and later need to have a stick built home but can't afford it, consider renting or a condo or apartment. Honestly, there are so many choices and if you plan for it, it can happen.

Hope this gives some ideas.

We are not yet full timers, but that's our goal and we know we need an exit strategy. Like you, we're lin the "brain storming" process at the moment. We've mulled over every option at least a hundred times.

It's not a simple thing to plan, since you never know what life is going to bring you (or throw at you) next.

Keep in mind that just because you leave the road, it doesn't mean you have to leave your RV. There are places where you can buy/rent land or a site and still live in your rv.

We just retired last year and started full-timing. Proceeds from our home sake are in the bank waiting for use. We figure well do this till we get tired of it, then buy a small place somewhere in an area we like. Part of our journey is deciding WHERE we want to spend our later years since the kids are spread out anyway. We'll be looking for an area with 4 mild seasons. Don't want snow or 100 degree summers. We're thinking that unless something happens we'll do this for 5-10 years, but we'll see.

We are in the process of buying a home with wife's son. It has separate in-laws suite. That is our off the road plan.