Questions for "half-timers"

Rock Hill that is some of the best advice I have heard.
Seems obvious but anyone considering full timing should at least snowbird once.
I like the idea of getting a small place in a warm climate as well.

Full timed for five years. Sold house and stuff in California at the market peak in 05. Payed cash for RV and banked a modest sum. After five years bought a 1700 sq ft manufactured home in a 55 and over sub divison mixed with site, modular, and manufac homes in Yuma, AZ with a full hook up RV pad and 12X16 workshop. For me it was all about timing, and mine could not have been better. Got 8000.00 cash back from Uncle Sam and a nice modest home to retire in for good.

CKNSLS wrote:
My wife and I had planned what we called our "trip of a lifetime" and have been traveling in our 29 foot travel trailer for 6 1/2 months. We are currently finishing our trip and heading west back to Utah.

Please don't misunderstand what I will tell you-we have had a great time and have seen almost everything we have wanted to see. I think between this trip and previous travel we are still about 5 or so states short.

After this trip we feel that fulltiming would not be for us. Some campgrounds are great...some are not so great. We were in a park where a spouse had to go into the hospital for a knee replacement. Their beautiful class A had three steps just to get in to it. After dealing with this situation in our family, he is in for a rough go of it just to get in to the RV.

It's great to have a home to go back to, and a appreciating asset and not a depreciating one.

I know there are those that feel differently and you will probably hear from them as well.

Good luck on whatever you decide.

Good lord, you must be exhausted. You never got out of vacation mode and no wonder you don't understand the fulltime lifestyle. We've been fulltiming since 2006 and have enough left to see to keep us busy for many years to come. But then we don't try to see it all in under a year - we KNEW that was impossible.

As to recuperating after surgery. Yes, those 3 steps will take a little doing, but once in the rig, everything will be easily accessible on the same level - - much easier than a lot of S&Bs.

Some people don't like RVing - they feel the need to have a S&B, sit there staring at the same front or rear yard, year after year after year, worryign about crabgrass and gutters and neighbors that they wish would sell. Been there, done that, We enjoy this lifestyle and will continue as long as we can, then it will be into a Park Model/Condo where someone else does the maintenance or maybe assisted living by that time.

Barb

We still have the 3200 sq. ft. home. It has a garage apt. that my sister lives in and helps us look out for the house. We typically go off in the motor home for 6 to 9 months, but have been gone as much as 11. We took up work camping for two reasons. One was to supplement the traveling budget. We don't like to use principal to fund our "fun." The second was to give us a home base, however temporary, to work out of while we thoroughly explored the area. Working 20 or 30 hours a week then having time to go off as much as a couple of hundred miles in all 4 directions allowed us to see the stuff the casual tourist has to miss. We have gotten to really experience the Cape Cod region, the mountains of Central Colorado, the seashore of Matagorda etc. Eventually we tired of cleaning bathrooms and being nice to rude campers who felt justified in acting arrogant to "the help" and have opted to work as seasonals with Amazon.com. We work for 3 months while they pay for our site with hookups and give us a better than usual wage for all hours worked, regular hours that we can count on, a bonus for completing the assignment, all with a 10% discount on Amazon products! We set that money aside and use it for the next grand adventure. Right now we are traveling the Pacific Northwest and will go on an Alaskan inner passage cruise, then continue touring until September. We will not worry about how much we spend and will not pinch pennies because the morny was already earned and is there for us to use. We love our life style.

We started as full-timers for 3 years and then bought a sailboat and became half-timers between RVing and sailing.

It is much more complicated owning two homes than owning just one. For one thing, you have to duplicate a lot of your stuff.

It's probably easier if the other half-time home is a house with a big lot where you can park your RV and work on it (we have friends that have done that for nearly 30 years).

We did it for a couple of years in our early 30's. We rented out the house and bought an rv with cash and hit the road. the house was paid off so we could live off the income from that and my dad was in town and helped out when the renters had an issue. we also planned on using a family house in Michigan during the summers but we were happy in the rv so just parked beside it. So we had plans on halftiming but didn't really need to. we were fine in the rv and felt we had plenty of space. then kids came along so we sold the rv, kicked the renters out and bought a business.

We full timed for eleven years but for several reasons felt it was now time to get a home base. Last summer we bought a four bedroom home on 3/4 of an acre. So we are transitioning to snowbirding now.

We put in two RV sites with water and 30 amp hook ups. I ran a one inch PVC pipe 130 feet underground to a a sewer clean out in the back yard. There are valve boxes on each end with a female hose connection. I got a macerator and 12 vdc supply to power it. I can use that to dump my coach and any friends that come to stay can use it also.

After full timing for eleven years as you can imagine a great many of our friends are either full timers or RVers and we wanted to have a place they can come and stay for weeks or months if they wish.
One couple stayed for 1 1/2 months last summer and gave us a hand with some unpacking. We had our stuff stored in NH for all those years and had it moved to CO last summer.
We are having the yard xeriscaped (desert landscaping) so yard work will be minimal.

We thoroughly enjoyed our eleven full timing years but we never intended to do it forever and have always had an exit plan which we are now implementing.

BarbaraOK wrote:

CKNSLS wrote:
My wife and I had planned what we called our "trip of a lifetime" and have been traveling in our 29 foot travel trailer for 6 1/2 months. We are currently finishing our trip and heading west back to Utah.

Please don't misunderstand what I will tell you-we have had a great time and have seen almost everything we have wanted to see. I think between this trip and previous travel we are still about 5 or so states short.

After this trip we feel that fulltiming would not be for us. Some campgrounds are great...some are not so great. We were in a park where a spouse had to go into the hospital for a knee replacement. Their beautiful class A had three steps just to get in to it. After dealing with this situation in our family, he is in for a rough go of it just to get in to the RV.

It's great to have a home to go back to, and a appreciating asset and not a depreciating one.

I know there are those that feel differently and you will probably hear from them as well.

Good luck on whatever you decide.

Good lord, you must be exhausted. You never got out of vacation mode and no wonder you don't understand the fulltime lifestyle. We've been fulltiming since 2006 and have enough left to see to keep us busy for many years to come. But then we don't try to see it all in under a year - we KNEW that was impossible.

As to recuperating after surgery. Yes, those 3 steps will take a little doing, but once in the rig, everything will be easily accessible on the same level - - much easier than a lot of S&Bs.

Some people don't like RVing - they feel the need to have a S&B, sit there staring at the same front or rear yard, year after year after year, worryign about crabgrass and gutters and neighbors that they wish would sell. Been there, done that, We enjoy this lifestyle and will continue as long as we can, then it will be into a Park Model/Condo where someone else does the maintenance or maybe assisted living by that time.

Barb

Yea, I like the crabgrass, it goes along with the monetary appreciation that's happening these days. Have you looked at how much houses have gone up in the last 12 months? Some of you full-timers in all likelihood couldn't afford the S&B house you sold to go full-timing. Not a putdown, just the way it is.

Hi,

We are in our coach from April 1 thru Nov 30. We sold our single family home and bought a downtown condo in the city. Most often it is empty, but this year our son and new wife are renting it, while looking for a house to buy. Once I reach retirement age, we will fulltime and probably rent out the condo year round.

I think it's important to have a place to fall back on, should we be forced to give up the RV lifestyle for some reason. A condo in the middle of the city, is perfect for someone who may have problems getting around, etc. And there's no yard or outside maintenance required, on our part.

CKNSLS wrote:

Some of you full-timers in all likelihood couldn't afford the S&B house you sold to go full-timing. Not a putdown, just the way it is.

You may be incorect on this one.... a successful full-timer goes into it with little or no debt.