With careful, patient shopping you should be able to find a 20-25 year old motorhome suitable for single living and with low enough mileage to have some travel left in it. A friend got one (32 foot Brave) for under $1000 two years ago but that was a special find. Here are some examples of what is on the market today:
26-foot 1993 Flair.31-foot Allegro Bay35-foot Bounder22-foot WarriorI selected those because they are a range of sizes, not too much mileage, all described in good condition and under $15,000. They are all in East Texas (Houston, specifically) where there is a good size market in RVs. I don't know if there is an equivalent market in the Northeast, I would not consider going to snow and salt country to shop for used RVs.
You are talking about payment schedules, I think you may find that RVs at this age and price level are difficult to finance, as they have nearly zero value as collateral. Think about saving up for the purchase, and whatever preparation is needed.
At your price level, I would shop for a house in good to very good condition, moderate mileage (30,000 to 80,000), and expect to buy new tires (another $1500-3000 depending on wheel and tire size) and need only moderate service on other mechanics. You might find a lot of motorhomes in this range that need quite a bit of work (and should be selling at scrap prices) but you don't really want to put this much money into a junker when there are better examples at the same price, if you only keep looking until you find one.
Travel is going to cost you about 50 cents a mile, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. Compared to costs of fuel and tires, everything else is minor: tolls, propane for heating, dump fees.
Places to stay range from free overnight parking (no services), $10-45 a night in public campgrounds with partial or full hookups and short stay limits, $20-80 a night for RV parks with full hookups and some amenities. There are modest parks, resort-like parks, destination parks, but the primary factor determining cost is location. I do most of my traveling in the middle of the country, staying away from vacation destinations, and pay an average of $30 a night for RV parks, half of that in public campgrounds. But the same facility on a lake will be higher, in a densely populated metro area higher yet, and prime locations and facilities sky high. There are places where people pay $400 to sleep in a tent; you don't want to go there.
Long term, not moving around, your big cost is going to be rent. On my social security, I can afford to live in the South, East Texas or South Texas, some of the lower-scale snowbird destinations. Most of those $30 RV parks I use have monthly rates in the $300-400 range (electricity billed separately). Some are even waterfront: rivers, lakes, reservoirs but not beaches. There are parks in the Mississipi Delta country where you can stay for less than $200 a month, my senior discounted rate at a COE campground is higher than that.
I don't think I can afford to live in Southern California, and I have a lot more resources than Social Security. A nice RV park in the area between Los Angeles and San Diego is going to cost $1600 to $2400 a month, and resort parks will be even higher. Even South Florida will be not much more than half that (though WDW's campground may be even higher).
Another alternative for long term (but not necessarily in urban California) is dry camping on public lands. There are places you can stay for free two week before moving, and there are long term visitor areas with flat fees for a designated season: four in California eastern Sierra for $300 March through October; Imperial Dam (Yuma) in Arizona $180 September through April; and LaPosa (Quartzite) in Arizona $180 September through April. You have added costs of buying fuel to generate electricity, fuel for heat, having water brought to you, and having your waste hauled away.
Yet another option, depending on your abilities, is work-camping. You work for your parking space, and maybe for a small wage. Work might be clerical and customer service, it might be physical, or it might be both. The physical work can get pretty heavy when there is brush to clear and timber to handle. Work might be anything from 20-60 hours a week, and your status might be "volunteer."
I question whether parking outside for a year or more in New Jersey, to prepare a RV for a trip and to save money, is going to work, simply because getting through the winter is going to be a struggle in a place with long periods of sub-freezing temperatures. Compared to New England, or the Mid-West, winter in your area is fairly mild, but it might not be mild enough for a RV to be comfortable.
When you get started on this venture, I suggest you first go south, at least past Savannah, check out the southern part of the Atlantic coastal plain, then across the southern tier of states in the area between I-20 and I-10, then Louisiana, East Texas, and the Texas coastal plain inside the box defined by connecting Houston, San Antonio, Brownsville, and Corpus Christi. These are all places with a livable winter climate (livable year-round if you can stand the heat) and in the rural parts a much lower cost of living than any densely populated place in California.
Getting into a few of the details.
I know slideouts are "in" and they do make the living space feel more open. I have two. But for motorhomes in your price range, slideouts were just starting to appear, and add $5000 to $10000 to the price of a used A gasser of equivalent length. Part of the reason for this was that slides were appearing only in the premium-price model lines, and the extra weight (500-1000 pounds per slide) forces the manufacturer to use a heavier-duty chassis. For the space you will gain with each 8-foot slideout, you gain the same for much less cost by going 18-24 inches more in length. In the early 1990s, what you usually get with the first slideout is a foot to a foot and a half extra space in front of the couch. It wasn't until later that decade that slideouts were used to make change bedroom configurations for more walkaround space or storage.
All the motorhomes of this era have enough power to go up any hills encountered in U.S. highways. They just don't go up as quickly as you might in a passenger car. Power to weight ratios for motorhomes built on the Chevrolet "P" chassis will be 40 to 60 pounds per horsepower, unless further weighed down by slideouts. This is in the range of subcompact import cars of the 1950s to 1960s; RVs will accelerate slowly. This is not as bad as heavy trucks, which might be 200-300 pounds per horsepower ans climb long grades at a crawl, but also not as lively as any modern sedans or light trucks, which might be 20-30 pounds per horsepower for an economy subcompact to as low as 12-15 pounds for a mid-size V6 sedan. We who drive motorhomes have learned to adjust our performance expectations.
Things like insurance for roadside assistance, comprehensive and collision coverage, satellite TV, mobile Internet connections, might be seen as luxuries when income is low and we reduce our standard of living accordingly. We prioritize are wants, figure what are the real needs, and look for low-cost solutions. Cranking up the antenna to watch TV is free. Pay-as-you-go smart phones provide a low-cost connection, if your data usage is low, much cheaper than paying monthly for big data limits that go unused.
Insurance is a bit different. Borrowing on the motorhome, you might be required by the lender to insure the collateral, but at the age and price level we are discussing, a loan on the vehicle is unlikely and an insurance company is equally unlikely to cover it for the purchase price. I've done that several times when the annual premium for collision and comprehensive got close to a quarter of the market value of the vehicle.
You might also be in a situation where it is useful to pay for comprehensive and collision insurance in the case of a total loss, just to have an exit for that situation, even if the insurance company is not going to make you whole again. You might also find yourself in a 'no fault' state where you are required to carry insurance to cover your own losses.
Tom Test
Itasca Spirit 29B