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our dream and a wwyd....

post #1 of 10
3/21/11 at 8:21am
Thread Starter 

Dh and I have decided to make our dream of traveling the country happen.  We want to buy a travel trailer and a truck to pull it, and travel several months per year.  Dh is able to work remotely and also will start getting 4 weeks vacation/year starting next year (has 3 weeks/yr currently).  We think it will be feasible to do this and have him take part vacation, part working remotely (depending on if there's a connection available and what our plans are, I guess). 

 

We had originally planned to sell our current house to downsize to something where we could pay off most of the mortgage via equity from selling this house.  We realized last night, though, that even if we stay here, we'll probably be able to free up about $1500/month to either work toward paying down this house (we are half way through a 15 yr, $110k mortgage - very low cost housing area... we think we can sell it for about $30k more than we bought it for, though...) or to just save so we can travel or ... whatever.  Anyway, it seems doable, but less easily if we stay, though we'll end up with more equity in our home in the long run.  We also realize there'd be costs incurred in the move and whatever.  Also, since we've lived here for 8 yrs (in april) we're fairly familiar with the normal kinds of costs of this home and all that... but if we move, we could potentially have no mortgage or a very small one... thus really low monthly payments freeing up more cash on months that we choose to travel. 

 

So, now we're torn.  We don't love this home, but we don't hate it... we never intended to even stay this long.  We're not in love with any of the homes we're looking at (they're closer to his work - we're hoping he can walk so we can cut back on commuting costs, though he only has a 20 minute commute, now).  Also, this house has a 3 car garage (space to store our other car when we're traveling) and a 3 car wide driveway (space to keep the trailer and still have a usable driveway when we're not traveling)...

 

 Ideas?  Advice?  questions (I'm sure I left plenty out)?  WWYD?

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post #2 of 10
3/21/11 at 10:26am
Thread Starter 

Wow, no one with experience?  No one with an opinion ("lady, you're crazy!  That'll never work!" "omg, I'd looooove to do that...")?  No sage advice??

 

I was so hoping your brilliant ladies on here would bring to light things for us to consider when making this decision...

post #3 of 10
3/21/11 at 10:44am
How long are you thinking of being gone per trip? If you can do a few months at a time, how about renting the house out as a short term rental? It would help w expenses, although there are also plenty of down sides.

How much are you budgeting for road costs? Have you looked into mobile/satellite internet while on the road?

Have you looked at some of the blogs for RV living? My big concern for doing something like this is the cost (both $ and enviro) of all that gas.

How much of an EF will you have? How much room does your monthly budget have? How much will payments on the truck/trailer and ins be? These are all things that would impact my choices.
post #4 of 10
3/21/11 at 11:10am

How important is it to keep your current location as a homebase? Do you have family in the where you could park your RV?  How practical is it for DH to get meaningful work done with four other people around in close quarters?

 

I guess I do a trial of it to find out if you liked RV'ing and then if it seemed to be working selling your house and not buying another.

 

My long term concern would be that I wouldn't like homeschooling and to be gone that much wouldn't jive well with school at school.

 

DH and I have an interest in doing something similar, but tend to view it as an empty nest project.  I also think we would use both my parent's place and my IL's place (both rural settings) as a place to park for extended time frames in warmer weather and as a way to help and support my parents/IL as the age (while having our own space).

post #5 of 10
3/21/11 at 11:29am
Thread Starter 
Yeah, we don't want to be full time. just a month here, a month there. the question was more whether you'd keep the more expensive mortgage or trade out for a much cheaper house and hardly any mortgage. I highly doubt dh would be willing to rent. gas costs will depend on what rv we end up with... so will insurance costs. we usually get edgy if our ef gets below $3k, so we'd keep more than that in savings, but we also have investments and a good sized 401k we could borrow from if we get desperate. beyond that, we could probably just refi the house if we want to have occasional very low monthly costs...
post #6 of 10
3/21/11 at 11:31am
Thread Starter 
Oh... also, we're planning to homeschool whether we travel or not.
post #7 of 10
3/21/11 at 4:00pm

have you researched renting an RV for the times you want to travel instead of purchasing one.  RV's can be costly to puchase, keep insurance on, continually maintain, etc.

Does DH employer have any idea about this?  just because he can work remotely doesn't mean when it comes time for working 'remotely' to happen, it will.  Has DH worked 'remotely' before, has he worked from home before?

 

 

post #8 of 10
3/21/11 at 4:17pm

the price of gas is going to keep going up.

 

 

post #9 of 10
3/21/11 at 5:41pm
Thread Starter 
Yes, dh has worked remotely before. We had actually talked to them about us moving far away and continuing to work there and it was fine. He has worked part time through vacations before.

Re: gas, we know... that's part of why we're going for it now instead of hoping for it later. Travel is likely to just become more and more expensive, in general (though I have hope that someday the train will be a good option). Just can't decide if it's smarter to move first it stay here... we believe it's do-able either way...

Eta... we'll have to look into rentals. The original thought was that if we buy used we may be able to sell for nearly what we bought it for, and since it would be a trailer, presumably would have less upkeep costs than a motor home, but now you've got me wondering.
post #10 of 10
3/22/11 at 11:13pm

I say go for it!!! Dreams are meant to be achieved.

 

Just be aware that if you aren't occupying your residence for 30 days, your home might need to be covered by a "fire" insurance policy, which is more expensive. I'm not sure if it applies to you, and if they would ever know how long you left your residence (checking w/ employer?). I'm guessing that if you left the house empty for more than 30 days and had a claim, maybe it'd be an issue.