Time to prepare?

A year or less. Anything more and you run the risk of over thinking it.

We put our house up for sale about a year before we retired in case it took a while to sell it - - 3 days later it was sold! So we had to scramble and find a townhouse to rent for a year - which turned out to be a blessing for us - we down sized from 3500+ sq feet to 1400 sq ft to 389 sq ft. And because we weren't rushed, we took our time to find our motorhome, then had it out on some shake down cruises and we able to get rid of all of the stuff we needed to without much hassle. We gave our daughter all of the furniture, etc., as part of her inheritance. Shipped most of our art work to my sister & mother for safe keeping, gave a lot of books and other things to the college and then we moved into the coach over 2 weeks before my last day. Our only hiccup was Dave needing 3 stents implanted during those 2 weeks, but we managed to get through it all.

Barb

We made the decision and left in 3 months! Sold the house and everything in it. Full-timed for 16 years without a regret.

We were a little bit different. We planned for 15 years, bought our full time rig ~ 1 1/2 years before, and got rid of as much as possible from the house in the final month.

Put it on the market Feb 15th, and it sold for full price the next day. We have been technically full timing in Nevada since Feb 17th while the house is in escrow.

All we have left is waiting for a big check, doctor appointments, a bed, and 2 lazy boys.

Life is good. Our only regret so far, is not doing it sooner.

Once you start applying a plan to go a year tops. This is different than having a vague idea that it might be fun years out.

The reason being with years to seriously plan and prepare, people over plan and want everything perfect and since that never happens, they are never ready.

3 months to one year.

We started about 5 years out. Paid off everything. About 8 months out we put the farm and business on the market. Sold and closed in 6 weeks. Fortunately we had the rig and we're able to stay on the farm until we wanted to leave....6 months later.

I am about 8 years out. But I am working on paying everything off before then. I keep looking at my spreadsheets and doing "what if". I'm trying not to over think, but I don't want any surprises. And while I am doing all this planning, I am dreaming of it. Keeps my happy for these last few years of work. We will sell the house a year or 2 before and rent an apartment. So when we are reading to go, we will have a couple suitcases to take and a few pieces of furniture for Goodwill.

lcseds wrote:
I keep looking at my spreadsheets and doing "what if". I'm trying not to over think, but I don't want any surprises.

We did something similar, but there will still be surprises. Expect to spend more that 1st year.

Another vote for 3 months+.

We decided in July and moved into our camper in September.