1. We are in our early-mid 60s and in excellent health. So, I would expect we would have a good 10-15 years to full time. Did you sell everything or did you store some "seed" items to restart housekeeping after the road?
Unless you're storing antiques, everything you stash will be obsolete by the time you come off the road. And the antiques won't probably handle storage all that well. We gave family and friends their pick and then sold or donated everything else.
2. We are burdened by generations of family stuff plus 40 years of our own collecting and buying and selling. We have everything from a grand piano to a 6 1/2' antique rolltop desk. We have no kids or family that needs or wants our stuff. How long did it take you to sell out your stuff?
We made our decision in October. We were on the road the second week of April.
3. How did you get rid of the stuff? I figure some will go on eBay, some at an antique action, some at specialty auctions such as Native American stuff, a couple of yard sales and then a final on site auction to get rid of the lawn mowers, snow blowers and yard tools.
We made our decision in October. Our grand piano was gone by Christmas. Judy sold four of her five Celtic harps through various harping groups. We then put together a "moving out" sale. Three days later, whatever was left went to the local thrift store. Computer and A/V gear went to the local schools. What those two didn't want went to the landfill. Our second car actually sold the last day before we hit the road. Your specialty items can best be sold through groups of folks interested in those kinds of things. Don't underestimate the potential value of the tax deductions from those donations - could be more than the cash you'd get by selling.
3. Did you rent a safety deposit box to keep jewelry and important papers or take everything on the road? What about your will?
How you handle your will depends on the state it's drawn up in. We made enough copies for all our relatives and heirs, and then put the originals into the hands of our executor. We kept copies with us. Judy picked the jewelry we wanted to travel with, everything else went as per question 2.
4. Did you sell the house or lease it in case you didn't like the road?
We took a four-month trip to see how we liked it. Came home to a house full of stuff we hadn't missed and couldn't find each other in. It wasn't until then that we came to the decision to fulltime. Up 'til then, the idea had frankly never occurred to us. We made the mistake of selecting a realtor who was also a rental agent. Plus we listed it the very week the real estate bust happened in 2007. I'd take the test drive for 4-5-6 months and then decide. But if you decide to go fulltime, sell, don't lease.
5. Please share any additional information from you experiences!
It helps a lot to have some idea of what you want to do while you're fulltiming. For us, it's travel and sight-seeing (60,000 miles so far). For some, it's driving around the country looking for someplace to settle down. For others, it's just to get out from under all that stuff. It's a lot easier to get bored in a 350sq ft RV than in something with more distractions if you don't have a general idea of what you want to do.
We also spent the time to scan all of our essential papers into PDF files and keepsake photos into jpegs. That happened over time as we traveled - started out with a 2-drawer file cabinet and a big box of pictures. Now it's all on a USB drive (2 copies, plus on-line backups.
Most of all, have fun.
al
