Full Time, Selling Everything

try it for one year,see if you really want to ft ,the house won,t rot,and pay a friend to look after it.

I think selling the house is based on your expectations. If you know you won't want to live in the same area when you stop full-timing, then selling now makes sense. If you really like where you live and want to come back to it, then selling makes less sense. In that case, you want to look at the house itself - will it work for you in your later years, or will you downsize or look for a one-story, etc.?

If you're not sure about full-timing, keep the house until you've been out for a while and know you want to keep doing it. When you're in an RV, you can always come back to sell the house later. And some folks full-time knowing they're only going to do it for 2 or 3 years, so in that case, selling isn't as important.

As for the stuff, I wouldn't keep everything, but I wouldn't hesitate to keep those things that I love.

As said, have an exit plan before you start fulltiming. Invest the house sale proceeds for when you need to hang up the keys for instance, rather than spending it on a more expensive RV. In our case, we sold our large home and invested that money, but kept our small lakeside cottage in the Adirondacks near our kids homes. Over the next several years, we converted the cottage from a summer place to year round living, and that's where we'll land when the wheels stop turning, health permitting. We did keep a few items from the house that were suitable for use in the cottage, but everything else was either sold or given away.

We sold a lot of stuff, gave a lot to our kids and places like the Salvation Army.
We did not follow the advice of many about getting rid of everything and put quite a bit in storage (10 by 30 storage unit).

After 11 years of full timing we bought a house in western CO and had all of our stuff moved here from NH. We had sold all of the big appliances and most of the soft furniture but still had a lot of stuff.

I am sure glad we did not follow the conventional advice and get rid of all of it.
We have spent about $15,000 buying what we need for the house - stuff that we sold for maybe 10 percent of what it cost back then.

If we had to replace what we had stored - like guns, complete woodworking shop, my wife's equipment for building miniatures, her genealogy research records and small appliances, desks and office equipment, and my electronic gear, it would have cost a lot more than what we spent for storage.
Some things like heirlooms that came from as far back as our great grand parents could not be replaced at any cost.

You don't realize how little your stuff is worth until you have to get rid of it all. The downsizing from things is very liberating.

We don't regret not having a storage unit.

As for what you do when you're too old you can either park the unit on your own lot and live like you would in a house but in an RV. Make a ramp up to the door and enjoy. Buy a house, buy a condo, move into assisted living, lay down and die etc.

If you've never Rv'd before then try it out first. You'll either love it or hate it.

Both spouses have to be on board with the decision or it isn't going to work well.

Living in an RV is no different than a stick and bricks. Just smaller. If you don't have hobbies to keep yourself busy during the down time you will have issues. So keep that in mind. If one of you needs to clean a 4k sq/ft house or tinker in your garage 8 hours a day because if you don't you become unhappy then you probably will have problems in a small RV. If you can keep active other ways like say via books, video games, computers etc and keep yourself busy in a small sq/ft you'll do fine.

You aren't going to travel all the time. All the time being moving every week to a new spot. Most people go through a period where they travel a ton and then slow down. Some people can manage that for 5 or 7 years sometimes and then they'll go off the road or park it for longer and take longer trips with periods back at home base. There are tons of styles. What I've learned in my time is the people that treat it like vacation can burn out on it after x time. People that treat it like a home and move when they want to go on vacation tend to deal with it better. What I'm trying to say is if you have the outlook that "well it is an RV if I'm not traveling in one why and I living in one" you probably aren't going to make it long term. Just my opinion.

Like Old-Biscuit stated, each person/couple has to decide based on their own circumstances.

We are most-of-the-timers, but could just as well be full-timers. Years ago, we planned to pay off our house before we retired (and did!). We didn't want to have to rent it out for income. We knew that we DO want to live in Sedona when we finish RVing. We have a yard person, a neighbor that takes care of our mail, etc. Occasionally we let friends stay at our house. This is what works for us!

We also know that we do not want to own another home where there are cold, snowy winters and that when the time comes we will want to rent an apartment or have a condo so that DH won't have to do yardwork. The sunny south is where we will be, but not for many years we hope as after 6 yrs, we are no where near ready to stop this lifestyle. As far as contents - we didn't keep much as when the time comes it will be outdated, wrong color for the new place etc. Not to mention the money saved by not storing "stuff". Certainly enough to have new furnishings at a new place.

We KNEW we would NOT be returning to same area WHEN it was time to come off the road.
(Baldy Mesa....between Victorville/Phelan off 395)

We KNEW we would NOT want to deal with renting out house while we were on the road.......didn't what that concern

We KNEW we didn't want to pay storage fees while on the road.....$$ spent for stuff not being used.

We KNEW we would some day stop FT travel so we had an 'Exit Plan'

We bought truck/5th wheel.....loaded things we KNEW we needed, things we THOUGHT we needed and things we WANTED to keep
Told family then friends....come get what you want
Then had an Estate Sale and sold everything left.
Sold House and LEFT for a new adventure/lifestyle

7 wonderful/awesome yrs we got to travel all over the USA using secondary/back roads----seeing/experiencing this vagabond lifestyle.
Staying/traveling when/where we wanted to go.

Then life threw a curve ball.....so when are now back in a S&B (with FHU next to house) enjoying a different phase in our life (took a bit of 'transitioning' to say the least but it's all good!)

Everyone has to make decisions based on what is best for THEM

Even though we are no longer on the road we wouldn't change a thing......it was a fantastic 7 years that we got to do/enjoy/experience.

Good luck.......and best wishes.

Storage rent could wind up costing you more than the contents are worth. A larger storage space is going to run you between 2 and 3 hundred dollars a month. You could sell or give away everything put the 300 a month in a savings, and at the end of 5 years have enough cash to buy new what ever you might need to set up housekeeping again.
Anything like heir looms you simply cannot part with give to friends, kids or who ever to hold for you. Bottom line, everything is replaceable, so disposal is sure the best.

Craig,

Head over to the Escapees RV Club forums:

Escapees Forums

and consider joining the club (very inexpensive) to get access to tons of educational material on the subject:

Escapees RV Club

Also check out RV-Dreams:

RV-Dreams.com

Howard and Linda Payne have put together a wealth of educational materials related to full-timing. Howard and Linda also put on week-long educational seminars for people considering the full-time lifestyle. The things we learning at one of their rallies have been invaluable. They also have forums with a lot of good folks:

RV-Dreams forums

Researching/reading on these sites will save you a lot of time, speed up your learning process, and save you having to ask questions piecemeal. All of the platforms above have discussions on whether or not to sell the house, "exit plans" (as we call plans for when we age out of the full-time lifestyle), and everything from domicile to insurance, healthcare, etc.

Happy learning!

Rob