[ThursdayClub] #RVLife – Money & Selling it all
Morning sunshine!
Currently sitting in Niles, Michigan and once this email hits send – Dave and I are off to the RV Hall of Fame. Yea – it’s a thing and it’s right over the border in Elkhart, Indiana. As a full-time Rver I feel compelled to go. I’ll give you some reviews next week. 🙂
Today I want to chat about the process of budgeting, how we paid for our RV and then selling our S&B – that’s Sticks and Bricks in RVer lingo – aka our house.
Budget
There are two schools of thought on this – many people choose to be completely debt-free when they hit the road, use the money from the sale of the house to purchase the RV, and live off savings, retirement, etc.
Since Dave and I are NOT at retirement age and still working, and our house wasn’t paid for prior to us selling it, we chose to finance our RV. Plus money is cheap and RV loans – for the most part – can be stretched to 20 years. As of this writing, you can also write off that interest as a home or second home on your taxes if you itemize.
There was a gap of 5 years from the time we said, “We are totally doing this” until go day – Dave’s 50th birthday, the random date we chose to be full-timers. During that time we watched pretty much every YouTube video on RV life. Initially, we decided to remodel our first RV Newman – a 2014 35 ft NEWMAR Baystar. It was a great RV but very brown and ugly on the inside – well in my opinion. I made the grave mistake of following RV Renovation and School Bus (Skoolie) remodels and I wanted a shabby chic, boho little cottage on wheels. That little vision on my part would have required probably 10-15K of rehab – plus we needed to do a bunch of maintenance including new tires, adding solar, and a long list of little things. We decided to trade him in.
Initially, we were looking at a Leisure Travel Van, but their mother ship is in Canada and maintenance would have been a hassle – that’s when we stumbled on the Tiffin Wayfarer – we spent months looking for a used one, but since the model was only a couple years old the inventory was 0 to none.
Buying new was something we vowed NEVER to do because the depreciation on these puppies is gross – almost 30% as soon as you drive them off the lot unless you are in a market like right now where the inventory on ALL RVs is really low and people are paying MSRP new prices for used ones. It’s crazy and won’t last – and it surely is NOT the norm.
Most people when they buy a new RV design it and order it from the factory. The typical turnaround is 2-3 months – currently, due to parts shortages, some models are taking up to 18 months. Covid supply chain issues.
We got lucky and found the exact model – the 2020RW with a Murphy bed – on a lot at LazyDays outside of Tampa Florida.
Negotiating – if buying new you can typically negotiate down to 25% below MSRP – just as an FYI – when markets are normal. We also tried to sell Newman outright to make more money, but selling in CT isn’t easy – we ended up trading it in. BTW – when you trade it in, you get a break on the sales tax at least in Florida as they deduct the initial sales tax you paid for it! So that saved us several thousand dollars.
LazyDays is a huge dealership with spots around the country – you want to go to one of these spots because you can haggle pricing AND the inventory is large. Be wary of RV dealerships in the north – they typically don’t carry the higher-end models, their pricing is higher because they don’t sell the volume, and in my opinion, they aren’t as knowledgeable. If you are just looking for a tiny travel trailer – it’s fine, but a motor home – head south or to AZ or TX where the snowbirds are.
Since we are still working and not on a fixed income we are different than most retirees – our monthly budget didn’t change all that much. I’ll go more into dollars on the road next week!
Selling it all
This part is the most daunting.
We chose to NOT rent a storage unit to hold onto furniture – it wasn’t worth the dollars.
The first step was giving the kids all their “stuff” – from their childhood, dividing up holiday ornaments, and the like.
Next – we told them they could have anything they wanted in the house – because the next step was a series of yard sales and donations. They of course felt weird about that and ended up not taking things they should have – but that’s another story. Encourage family to take stuff that way when you visit you can see it being used and loved by a loved one!
We utilized Facebook Marketplace for all the big ticket items such as furniture, cars, appliances that weren’t staying with the house, etc. In fact, we made over 20K on marketplace by the time we were done. After the yard sales – anything that didn’t sell got donated to a few select charities, what they didn’t want went to Goodwill.
The emotional part isn’t easy and it is overwhelming to go through everything and sell it. I bought stickers on Amazon that had prices on them so that made it more manageable, but trust me it’s a lot of work.
Do it in stages. Because even when you think you’ve purged you are only about 10% there.
Clothes – in an RV you’ll use maybe 1% of the clothes you would use in real life. Ladies – you get about 3-4 pairs of shoes and that will include hiking boots, sneakers, and Keen sandals or Tevas! Choose wisely. Same with purses, jewelry, scarves. The bigger your RV the more you can bring – but trust me – you won’t wear it.
To make the process easier – I utilized Marie Kondo’s book – where she has you hold an item to see if it brings you joy. I realized that most of my stuff was just stuff. Dave opted to keep all his tools and we stored them in his Dad’s basement along with some of my grandmother’s china and art I’ve collected over the decades. Everything else went – all the treasures, the furniture, the clothes and the “STUFF”!
To be honest, when it was gone it was liberating and it made staging the house for sale much easier.
Our house went on the market – we had 2 offers in 36 hours and closed 4 weeks later on Dave’s 50th birthday. It was a lot of work to get there and it was exhausting but totally worth it.
We haven’t looked back. I won’t be able to capture every single detail in these emails but hopefully, this gives you an idea of the process!!!