How long to get ready?

[ctpres]

Once you decided to FT - how long did it take to: decide what to take, store, give away, sell house, get insurance and all that stuff?

[MaverickBBD]

I think two to three months to wrap it all up. We already had the MH and have spent months at a time out.

[MNRon]

Like the "waiting on DW" comment. My question is how long it took to 'decide' to full-time?

I've been toying with it on and off for a few years in the background. I retired earlier this year and talked DW into spending ~4months in RV spread across trips. Didn't work out this year as my mother just died (REALLY glad I retired so I got to spend lots of time with her before she passed). Lots of stuff to do around here now, but hoping to be closer to 3-4months on road in 2015.

Still, I really like my wood shop and DW loves her quilting machines. Our house has a gorgeous view over the lake. I want to spend time here AND full-time 🙂

Maybe after a couple years of 4months or so on the road we'll make the decision to FT. Regardless, cleaning our my mother's house is a very good reminder to us that we need to get rid of a lot of junk and simplify our lives either way.

[DianneOK]

We actually started years earlier. Once we decided we were going to sell out, we paid off the farm, and started saving like crazy. When we did sell, it took 8 months to get all in order including retiring. We hit the road debt free, no storage and everything we owned in the truck and fiver, except a few boxes of paperwork.

It is NEVER too soon to plan 🙂

[ctpres]

Hi OP here. Thanks for all the great answers. Very helpful. I think six months is a good number. But selling house seems to be the controlling factor. Now just waiting on DW to say yes.

[Old-Biscuit]

2gypsies wrote:
Decided in May 2006. Left in August 2006. No storage units. Absolutely no regrets 18 years later. 🙂

2006 OR 1996?

[2gypsies1]

Decided in May 1996. Left in August 1996. No storage units. Absolutely no regrets 18 years later. 🙂

[arhayes]

Once I firmly decided to retire, it took us 4 months. The house never was an issue because the market in Dallas was so hot right now. We actually waited until the time we were ready, put it on the market and had a contract the same weekend it was listed. We too sold virtually everything except tubs of memorabilia stores in the sister in laws attic.

Note that we'd been looking at rigs and tow vehicles for a year, so once the decision to retire was made, we were able to order both knowing what we wanted and were willin to pay.

[Old-Biscuit]

Bought 5vr and truck.......both ordered so that took 6 weeks (after 6 months of looking at 5vrs/deciding on what we whated)
Had an estate sale........1 week for crew to organize/advertise then 1 day to sell everything.
House went up for sale day of estate sale. Person at estate sale made offer.
Closed escrow 45 days later.

[C-Bears]

rockhillmanor wrote:
Yup. Start NOW! Start selling, donating and purging all your stuff. Just have the bare necessities in the house while it is up for sale.

I didn't.
I decided to 'wait' until the house sold before I started eliminating all my stuff. What a big, big mistake. 😞

Short on time and pushed to my wits end when the house did sell, I ended up with 3 storage units when I hit the road. Paying 10's of thousands of dollars in storage fees because I kept coming up with all kinds of excuses why I didn't/couldn't go back up north to sort thru them.

6 years later I still have one storage unit.

So my advice is:
"when you go full time, leave NO storage unit behind"! :B

Actually this is very good advise, especially if you are looking to save as much money as possible.

We thought we were getting rid of tons of stuff. We still started out by renting two storage units (10x20 and 10x30). The $230 a month didn't really sound like much at first but then I figured it up for a five year period, almost $15,000 with insurance! Heck, everything in both units was probably only worth $15,000 or less!

One unit had all my tools and construction equipment.....SOLD. The bigger unit we went through and either sold stuff or donated it. Now we have just the one storage unit with some clothing and enough room to store our extra vehicle.

[noplace2]

Nearly 14 years ago we were sitting around a waning campfire one Sunday afternoon in a FL state park. We were bemoaning having to go back to the real world, jobs etc. One of us said, "Why do we really have to?" Something clicked.

We were on the road almost exactly 1 year later and have been out here ever since.

[lj2654]

We have already started downsizing and we won't be full-timing for 3 1/2 more years. This is our second time to do this though, we full timed in 1998-2002 and had to settle down due to a family situation. Can hardly wait to hit the road again!

[rockhillmanor]

Yup. Start NOW! Start selling, donating and purging all your stuff. Just have the bare necessities in the house while it is up for sale.

I didn't.
I decided to 'wait' until the house sold before I started eliminating all my stuff. What a big, big mistake. 😞

Short on time and pushed to my wits end when the house did sell, I ended up with 3 storage units when I hit the road. Paying 10's of thousands of dollars in storage fees because I kept coming up with all kinds of excuses why I didn't/couldn't go back up north to sort thru them.

6 years later I still have one storage unit.

So my advice is:
"when you go full time, leave NO storage unit behind"! :B

[C-Bears]

ctpres wrote:
Once you decided to FT - how long did it take to: decide what to take, store, give away, sell house, get insurance and all that stuff?

We put the house on the market in the early spring and didn't do anything until we had a contract signed by the buyers.

Then in about 2 months we sold a ton of furniture, moved the rest of our personal stuff and my business equipment to storage facilities, finished going completely paperless, changed our address, driver's license, vehicle/trailer's registrations, and all the other required stuff.

I still had a small contracting business for a few months of the first year we were full time. If we had both been fully retired I think we could have switched over to full time RV in about a month or less.

[sdianel_-acct_c]

We had one huge garage sale and gave the rest to charity. We kept 5 plastic bins of photos and mementos that we didn't want to part with. They are stored in our daughter's garage. Start now. Sort: sell, trash, donate, keep. Limit to one garage sale. The part that is the most difficult is deciding what not to keep. You won't need much in the RV. Select clothes that can be layered and limit the number of shoes you keep. We started moving stuff into the RV right away. Staged and tagged what we were going to sell in the garage sale as we sorted. You can do it in one month but you have to be focused and stick with it every day. Very tiring. Just keep you eye on the prize! Full time lifestyle... priceless!!