Does buying that 45' rig do it for you?
Bear with me, this is going to take some verbiage to explain. The DW and I attended a presentation at Hershey this year and one guy explained the RV manufacturers' statistic that most new RV'ers tend...
Forum Discussion
I got home from work to find that my original question I posted this morning (does the 45-footer do it for you) generated 4 pages of comment! I guess I have found a subject near and dear to many peoples' hearts. I should explain a few things that a couple people have touched on but I didn't, particularly, originally envision a need for stating:
1. Our S&B is just outside Baltimore, Maryland, in one of the most expensive areas of the country (no, we're not rich but we are somewhere in the middle of the middle class). And Maryland is not kind to its retirees in the tax department.
2. We hatched a plan to go full-time just as soon as we retire in 2016, sell our home, and establish residency and a mail forwarder in S. Dakota. We'll rent RV's for short vacations until then just to see if our hunch for size of coach is correct.
3. We are decided on a 34-38' class A DP (no tag axles) because it falls into a price range that we can purchase outright from our house equity to avoid any sort of debt, an important consideration when we can only count on a pension worth 75% of our working-years income.
4. After 30 years of a $2000/mo. mortgage and $5K/yr property tax, $300-500 per month for a full hookup in an RV resort sounds peachy. This RV will be our full-time home, after all, and nobody wants to have a home in a slum.
5. My original question wasn't "why should I buy a big/small/medium rig? Or go for more/less than I need?" It was based on a curiosity of mine as to why I just don't see that many 3-4-year old class A's in our target size (34-38') up for resale. All I seem to see are ones that are too big for us. Several people touched on this as perhaps really good salesmanship or a desire by new RV'ers to downsize after their first rig purchase. I can totally buy that, and by stating that I wanted to get it right, I didn't mean "buy your 3rd coach 1st." I just meant that doing preparation and homework before we buy will mean less horse-trading later. That's why I pull up RVtrader every couple nights, 1.5 years before we even make our purchase.
We may end up with a new coach, with all the upsides and downsides of that. If we're lucky, we'll find a fairly new used one for less, with all of the bugs worked out, somewhere among all those too-big coaches. Either way, we'll probably be satisfied. Somebody I know even suggested running a "coach wanted" ad in a Tucson, AZ paper stating what we're looking for. Sounds like it might be wise.
Thanks for the comments, folks. I read every one and consider them all as valid for your particular viewpoints and lifestyles. I hope to meet you all on the road in a few years.
1. Our S&B is just outside Baltimore, Maryland, in one of the most expensive areas of the country (no, we're not rich but we are somewhere in the middle of the middle class). And Maryland is not kind to its retirees in the tax department.
2. We hatched a plan to go full-time just as soon as we retire in 2016, sell our home, and establish residency and a mail forwarder in S. Dakota. We'll rent RV's for short vacations until then just to see if our hunch for size of coach is correct.
3. We are decided on a 34-38' class A DP (no tag axles) because it falls into a price range that we can purchase outright from our house equity to avoid any sort of debt, an important consideration when we can only count on a pension worth 75% of our working-years income.
4. After 30 years of a $2000/mo. mortgage and $5K/yr property tax, $300-500 per month for a full hookup in an RV resort sounds peachy. This RV will be our full-time home, after all, and nobody wants to have a home in a slum.
5. My original question wasn't "why should I buy a big/small/medium rig? Or go for more/less than I need?" It was based on a curiosity of mine as to why I just don't see that many 3-4-year old class A's in our target size (34-38') up for resale. All I seem to see are ones that are too big for us. Several people touched on this as perhaps really good salesmanship or a desire by new RV'ers to downsize after their first rig purchase. I can totally buy that, and by stating that I wanted to get it right, I didn't mean "buy your 3rd coach 1st." I just meant that doing preparation and homework before we buy will mean less horse-trading later. That's why I pull up RVtrader every couple nights, 1.5 years before we even make our purchase.
We may end up with a new coach, with all the upsides and downsides of that. If we're lucky, we'll find a fairly new used one for less, with all of the bugs worked out, somewhere among all those too-big coaches. Either way, we'll probably be satisfied. Somebody I know even suggested running a "coach wanted" ad in a Tucson, AZ paper stating what we're looking for. Sounds like it might be wise.
Thanks for the comments, folks. I read every one and consider them all as valid for your particular viewpoints and lifestyles. I hope to meet you all on the road in a few years.
