Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Full Timing, How Do We Plan For RV Retirement?

Ronda is 48 and I’m 46, in debt to our eye balls but wanting to fulltime some day. So, how does a couple in debt to their eye balls living pay check to pay check get their debt paid down and save for the RV life style they want to retire to? We have decided to start selling things off, the house is so full of “stuff” from things we thought we just had to have. Working on computers and networks for a living ,I work a lot of hours and kept my computer gear up to date and this cost us plenty. Wanting the Mustang’s and HD TV’s and Ham Radio gear and Antique tube radios plus everything my wife has bought over the years etc… put us in deep. I digress…

After we bought the RV and took it camping we very quickly decided that we would love to retire to this lifestyle some day. Some might read this and comment that it was a stupid idea to purchase an RV when trying to reduce debt. You would be right, the past decade we have made some rather impulsive purchasing decisions and while this one was researched we probably should have waited.

When my mother died I believe some bells went off, I’m diabetic and having difficulties keeping my A1C down and feelings of do this now or it will be too late were hitting us pretty hard. If my diabetes is going poorly now when I’m trying hard to keep it under control how will it be at 67? I have knee issues and a bad back that lately has been the worst it has ever been. I’ve lost 40lbs and trying to lose more and to also get into better shape, but the pain is worse now then it was when I was over eating and sitting on the couch. So, we decided to at least try and enjoy RV’ing on weekends now and try as hard as we could to down size our lives. Going camping really helped lower stress levels and I have been able to work many weekends from the campgrounds that I would normally be sitting in my basement doing.

We hope to get there some day, I have been reading blogs of people who obviously were much smarter with their money and now full time and enjoy it. Hopefully we’ll be able to get their as well, wish us luck!

2 comments:

GoneRving said...

How do you do it? Just do it. Sell everything and move into your motorhome. Even if you have to continue working and camp nearby. Do whatever it takes!

Erik's RV Blog said...

Unfortunately while a great idea we have 4 more years to go at paying off the major debt before we can even give any thought to this. Plus, our house is so worthless right now and getting worse.

In 2006 is was worth north of $290,000, now it's worth $155,000 and dropping every month. We are stuck here until things improve.