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Old 10-06-2011, 09:43 PM   #41
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I like Missouri. Good food, pretty women, and nice scenery. Back in the 90's I spent Aprils in the Ozarks with my camper and motorcycle. I based near Washburn, Missouri, on a friend's 100 acre chicken farm. The local restaurant had smoked pork rib special every Friday night. I can't remember the place's name. It was a guy's name. Mmmmm!!
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Old 10-07-2011, 09:01 AM   #42
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It's been said earlier that there are garages, and there are garages.

Fulltiming with a home base looks good, but not (at least to me) in the conventional way of the past. Fulltiming means just that. Otherwise, maybe property jointly owned with others.

Nice to see what you have going there, Del Gurney.

Splitrock, it's hard to know what's worse. Can't sell an uneconomical, deficit-producing "home", remaining stuck in one place, or what you describe above about being hemmed in.

There's garages, and then there's garages.

I think about a "garage" with a big sun room and screened porch. Some architectural details on the outside to conform to local taste.

But the money needed to operate in mobile manner is likely still better in Paula's example of RV time-shares.

.
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Old 10-07-2011, 10:42 AM   #43
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Here in Minnehaha County South Dakota, I can have a camper stored on my property outside but not inside a garage. I can build one house on my 5 acres. Mobile homes are illegal on lots like mine. If I put a single or doublewide here the government would send guys with guns to take me off to jail.
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Old 10-08-2011, 10:27 AM   #44
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We're currently checking out Escapees. It sounds like they have at least some parks with more or less permanent arrangements for some people. That may be one way to go. I've also heard that there are some Airstream-only parks around. That may also be a way to have a home base.
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Old 10-10-2011, 10:48 AM   #45
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We're currently checking out Escapees. It sounds like they have at least some parks with more or less permanent arrangements for some people. That may be one way to go. I've also heard that there are some Airstream-only parks around. That may also be a way to have a home base.
We are Escapees and they have CoOp parks. However, the waiting list for some are long (Coarsegold, Chimmacum...not sure about the rest). You can check out their individual websites for information. You can also travel to the individual parks and stay for extended periods (most have a 90 day limit per year).

We have not had the pleasure of staying in an all Airstream park yet......
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Old 10-10-2011, 12:54 PM   #46
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Our expenses are now different but the same as owning our house.

We are full timing, and we are now entering our third year since selling our home of 30 years. Our traveling mode has been to spend winters in Tucson, AZ, and travel during the summer months. Anne-Marie’s mother lives in a small gated community west of Tucson, and we stay at a RV park two miles away for five or six month continuously. Last year we pulled the Airstream 11,149 miles, and touched 24 states, and this year we will have only about 7,000 miles and 17 states when we return to Tucson.

Our present monthly retirement expenses vary between $4500 and $5000 before taxes, and we believe that there is a lot of room to economize the budget. We have no debt, and we seem to live and spend as if we are perpetually on vacation. We have three adult children, and we try to be generous towards them and help occasionally.

We do run short of funds at times, and slow down till another retirement check lands.

The expenses that we have every month are:
$500+ Health insurance
$100 Auto-trailer insurance
$70 Cell phone
$100 Prescriptions
$75 Storage unit, we still own stuff

$1000 RV parking when traveling, we look for TV and Internet when choosing a RV park
$500 RV parking when in Tucson

$2000+ Annually, repairs, tires and maintenance

$120-$150 A day fuel costs when traveling, .50 cents per mile when moving the Airstream.

Travel days we seem to eat out at least 1 or 2 meals in restaurants, and 1 meal almost every other day, when we are stationary.

As Anne-Marie and I have reflected on where the money goes in preparation for this post, we do see areas that can be greatly economized.

Steve
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Old 10-21-2011, 10:36 AM   #47
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Thanks very much for this thread. I appreciate having the dollar amounts for reference, as well as the lists of things to consider.
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Old 05-07-2012, 01:38 PM   #48
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My parents always waited for the Gurney catalog to come in the mail to plan the garden and order seeds and needs. When I bought my acreage in 1980 it was legal to build almost anything. The only restrictions were deed restrictions and I almost didn't have any. Then they changed it to zoned use and then they changed my zoning. By the time I had saved up enough money to build my building, it was illegal.

My next door neighbor is a bare 40 acre bean/corn field. The reason for the prohibition on building on private land is that the owners of the city own all the commercial land and they want that sold and filled up. Now they say I have to own 40 acres before I can build a storage building for my tractors and trailers. I'll never save up enough to buy 40 acres and build a building. Plus, I don't want to move. I like my lot right where it's at.

I'm not sure if all of the United States is like this but I'm pretty sure why there's no building around here.
Build a small HOUSE with a 1.5 story great room that takes up 90% of it, an open plan kitchen/laundry, a small bath and a loft bedroom over those would be the rest.

This Great room will of course have oversized "French Doors" at each end... say about 12' high by 12' wide, with rollup storm shutters that come down for privacy and safety. The floor will be concrete - nicely finished of course, and the furniture would be minimal wicker or bean bags, or nice lawn furniture. The "ART STATEMENT" in he great room would be aluminum!

Paula
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Old 05-07-2012, 01:52 PM   #49
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Paula, your rock!!!! Your info. is always helpful and I love your sense of humor!!
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Old 05-07-2012, 05:55 PM   #50
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Build a small HOUSE with a 1.5 story great room that takes up 90% of it, an open plan kitchen/laundry, a small bath and a loft bedroom over those would be the rest.

This Great room will of course have oversized "French Doors" at each end... say about 12' high by 12' wide, with rollup storm shutters that come down for privacy and safety. The floor will be concrete - nicely finished of course, and the furniture would be minimal wicker or bean bags, or nice lawn furniture. The "ART STATEMENT" in he great room would be aluminum!

Paula
For with no TT one could also set up and run any of a number of businesses with that excellent arrangement.
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Old 05-07-2012, 08:50 PM   #51
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Paula, I've had more or less the same loft idea as yours for 2 or 3 years now.

It was to look much like a South West Ontaro rural barn outside, hip European inside.

It remains to be seen whether mine will be realized but our dreams are aways the first step.

Good luck,


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Old 05-08-2012, 04:19 PM   #52
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Something like this?
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Old 05-08-2012, 04:25 PM   #53
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Nice!
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Old 05-08-2012, 06:03 PM   #54
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Something like this?
The ultimate man cave!!!
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Old 05-11-2012, 06:42 AM   #55
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Going into fifth year on our odyssey, chasing 75 degrees. Budget hasnt changed much, and is considerably less than city living. Major differences are

Far less clothing expense now. our professional work required nice suits and we dry-cleaned and laundered clothes more.
Far less housing expenses. Mortgage, homeowners insurance, taxes $6k/yr, upkeep on 70 yr old hse with maintenance and repairs, seed and feed for lawn, bushes.
Far less vehicle expenses. Formerly two commuter cars plus the tow vehicle and trailer. Now just the tow vee and the trailer.
Far less utility expenses. no cable, no water, usually no electricity, no natural gas.

We wear our clothes until they wear out, then try Value Village and other thrifts before we head for store sales. Nice pair of wranglers already broken in $3.
Sold the house and repaid the loan. Airstream is paid for. Site rental average is $20/day, we stay Close to this despite $50/night sometimes. Offset with free sites.
Full-timers insurance plus health insurance plus auto insurance is our major expense per month.
I do all trailer maintenance and we get 2006 truck maintenance done on sched with GM mechanics -- zero breakdowns in 85K miles is worthwhile.
We average 10K towing miles plus another 3K truck miles annually at 11-12 mpg regular gas.
Groceries might be a little higher because we cannot capitalize on sales items as well, no big pantry to stow three mayonnaises or Kens salad dressings when on sale. But we waste almost nothing, use it before it spoils.
Eat out less than we did when working, and we didnt eat out much then, just work lunches sometimes.
No DISH but we do have XM radio in truck and trailer ($10/mo total)
Propane is about $15-20/mo, cooking and water heater mostly, sometimes catalytic or furnace.
Quit paying for golf, returned to tennis. Much less expensive and more satisfying for me.

Two things higher than when we livedin the house:
We go on airstream caravans, makes for higher expenses, more dining out, more attractions than we would have done, more driving condensed into period. But we like the guided tour of an area, we like the camarderie and friendships gained or renewed.
We fly to family home for holidays.

Debbie is math girl but I'll go out on a limb here -- our monthly average expense is $4K. Less driving, less insurance, fewer caravans, and we could trim this. But it suits us and we, so far, can maintain it.

Jim and Debbie
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Old 05-11-2012, 07:48 AM   #56
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Good for you, DreamStreamr!

Sounds like you are living your dream. It actually is possible to camp for $20 a night or less, most of the time. Many people are surprised when I tell them that.

Everything doesn't have to have 5 point hook-ups, or even 3 or 2 point hookups. We admit to liking electricity , but do just fine without it for days at a time when the opportunity presents itself. We do indulge in more expensive stays when the mood strikes us for cable TV, laundry and paved sites , and try to do that through Passport America whenever possible, which keeps costs down.

We eat breakfast or lunch out a couple of times a week, best value for your $, prepare all other meals ourselves.

We live and travel very comfortably for up to 12 weeks at a time, @ $1200-$1500 per month for all expenses.

Life is good.

Spend less, do more.


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Old 05-14-2012, 02:08 PM   #57
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Thank You "Foiled Again" for starting this thread. My husband and I are Newbies to Airstreaming and are approaching retirement age. I have often wondered what fulltiming was like or even halftiming! I have read other articles and posts on the subject but most people seem to be afraid of actually giving out real numbers! It has been interesting and enlightening that so many people on the Airstream forum have been so open and forthcoming. Thank You, I say! Of course, I have to wait for our elderly cats, age 16 and 13, to pass on before we could consider traveling more than a few weeks at a time, but in the meantime I love the research. Thanks to everybody for the input! Happy Traveling.
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Old 05-14-2012, 03:51 PM   #58
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Extended Travel/Vacations

In the last year we've started taking extended trips rather than simply long weekend camping trips. We're not full-timing so our data may not be entirely on target with Paula's initial post. Our spending for 30+ day trips has been in the $70 - $100 per day range. We take some effort to keep it on the low end when possible by finding overnight spots for $20 or less, cooking more of our food and spending time on walking trails versus attractions that have an entry fee. But these trips are vacations so we eat out more than somebody that might be full-timing and we travel more than somebody that stays put for several nights or weeks.

The $70 - $100 includes all expenses associated with that particular trip - fuel, food, groceries, propane, etc. - anything we buy during that time (or before/after that time) that pertains to that trip.

What's not included is medical insurance and any other expenses related to our bricks & mortar residence.

Lucius
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Old 05-14-2012, 04:10 PM   #59
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This is going to vary so much from person-to-person. It all depends on how you live and budget in your stick-house life and how you live and budget in your full-timing life.

We've been on the road for eight months.

We lived in one of the most expensive places to live in the country, with a mortgage to match (even for our small townhome). When we decided to full-time, we fully financed a brand new truck (0% APR!) and also partially financed the Airstream. So we consider our the total of our car+truck+campground payments our new "mortgage", and though the new "mortgage" is less than the old, it's not even close to 50% less. It's stil quite a savings, however. I know a lot of people travel in fully-paid-off TVs and trailers, so there's a huge savings there for them! Also, we tend to boondock less and stay in more full-ammenity-type parks — mostly for the electric and Wifi I need for my job (I do web design and development), so others could theoretically spend A LOT less on campgrounds than we do.

Gas: If we were to compare what we spend on gas now to what we spent, say, three years ago, when both of us had long commutes, we spend less now. The truck guzzles it more, but even though we're exploring the entire country, we're putting in far less miles than when we both commuted to work every day. About three years ago, I started working from home and we bought Prius—less commute and better mileage. Now we spend more on gas than we did in that phase of our life.

Food: We spend more on this on the road. Factors:
•*No more Costco — no room to carry stuff that big!
• When you're in a new place all of the time, you don't always know where the good food and values are, so you tend to just buy food where you can, and can't plan the shopping as well.
• I'm a foodie, so every time we hit a new spot I find about ten restaurants that I just have to try. At home, we enjoyed eating out semi-regularly, but here, all the new shiny restaurants at every turn are just too tempting. We eat out a lot.

Communitcations/Internet: Because of my work and the necessity to have reliable internet, I have two 3G cards from different carriers, which totals about $120/mo —*more than internet at home. But we don't have cable, a land line, etc. But, we do have XM Radio, OnStar, Netflix Streaming and Hulu plus, so it's probably near a wash.
We have the same cell phone plans we did before

No electric bill. We've spent an average of about $40/mo on propane since we've started, but it's also been cold for about 80% of time we've been on the road, and we really prefer the furnace to the electric methods of heating, so we used it a lot, and we expect that to go way down for the next several months.

Miscellaneous shopping: has gone way down! There just isn't room to just get "stuff" you want without having to get rid of stuff you have, so it makes purchasing decisions a lot more critical.
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Old 05-14-2012, 09:11 PM   #60
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I lived in our 34' AS for five years and worked 3.5 hours from home. Then I thought a condo on that end of the state was a better idea - wrong! Were lucky enough to sell it after six months and move back to the AS. Have been retired and living in a stick built for 1.5 years and just bought an Argosy (picking up this week) to go back to RVing. Life is much more simple and much less expensive.
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