Executing The Plan

Well, it’s certainly been too long between posts, but that will probably be changing. A lot has happened in a short amount of time and we have big news, but first some backstory. Warning: this will be a long post.

For several years now, Patti and I have been generating and researching our plans for retirement. The overall plan is to travel, travel, travel. The implementation we decided upon was to buy an RV, get rid of most of our possessions, sell the house, and hit the road full time. We’d like to travel here in the U.S. for 9 months or so each year and then store the RV and head overseas for a few months. Rinse, repeat. In order to get ready for this, we have been doing a lot of research into both the lifestyle and the various RVs out there to determine what will fit our requirements. After lots of online research and many trips to dealers and RV shows, we decided on some basic requirements, desires, and nice-to-haves:

• Diesel rather than gas. This is more expensive but more comfortable, capable of larger cargo and towing capacities, and safer going up and, most importantly, down steep grades. We plan on spending lots of time west of the Mississippi.
• 37-41 feet long. Any smaller and we felt we’d be tripping over each other. Any larger is just too much.
• King bed. We’ve grown accustomed to our sleeping space.
• Light and airy inside. We looked at many large coaches that seemed claustrophobic due to layout and lack of windows. We need light for sanity purposes.

A couple of years ago, we found a floorplan that checked all of our boxes and more, the Winnebago Journey 38P. Its biggest feature for us — huge windows. We couldn’t afford a new one, but when the time came to actually pull the trigger and buy one (between Labor Day 2017 and Memorial Day 2018) we hoped we could find a used one in our range. Unfortunately, Winnebago only made that model for a few months before halting production. Apparently this floorplan wasn’t selling.

Fast forward to late May of this year. Patti started having doubts about the RV plan. We talked it out and agreed to consider alternatives, specifically just bouncing around the world from Airbnb to Airbnb. Looked like it would be lots of fun, but very different from our long standing plan. Still, we considered it.

And then the Universe stepped in and played its hand. Patti found a (very) used coach that was a good deal, met many of our needs, and was affordable. Downside: it was in Michigan. Upside: one just like it was on a lot in Tampa. We scheduled an appointment for the following Saturday to take a look.

Then, a day or two later, I get an email from Patti with the Subject “OMG!” A dealer up I-95 had a new 38P that had obviously been sitting on the lot for quite awhile and they wanted to move it. It was just under 40 percent off MSRP. We scheduled an appointment for Sunday. It was going to be a long weekend of driving to look at coaches.

The used coach made for an easy data point: we didn’t want to buy an old one and fix it up. Too much hassle to install the technology gains of the last decade on top of all of the upgrades needed after 12 years of ownership. Sunday we went and looked at the 38P and fell in love. We came back and I asked Patti one question: was she comfortable with the RV plan? She said she was. We decided, given that fact, that we would be fools to pass on our “perfect” RV. We looked at the numbers, decided we could afford it and bought the sucker.

It needed some repairs and prep work, so we took the time to sell our travel trailer. While showing it to one gentleman, he asked why we were selling it. I told him of our plan and casually asked him if he wanted to buy a house. He did.

We now have in our possession a new 40′ RV and a signed contract on our house. Holy crap, things got surreal pretty quick. We are 4 to 10 months ahead of schedule on the RV and 18 to 20 months on the house!

But we’re executing “The Plan.” Stay tuned for our break-in stories. We’ve already had some misadventures, but that’s for next time.

(BTW: we’re brainstorming names for our new ride. Feel free to provide us with suggestions.)