How to finance the lifestyle

[sealab2021]

Greetings. I’m moving from a sailboat to a town house now seriously considering a class C RV. Specifically a Mercedes 2017 with low miles for about 75k. It’s beautiful simplicity in my opinion, not too small and not too big. What are the known problems and years for these models? I am very mechanically inclined and I can fix almost anything under the sun. I’m 35, so somewhat young compared to most of the people here. The class c RV is cheaper than my mortgage and I’m tempted to cash out of my townhouse and run for the hills in my neat new to me RV. I have a sailboat that I will probably sell as marinas are getting monopolized by corporate marinas. It’s a sad day for sailors, marinas have more restrictions and are getting more expensive every year.
looking for advice on financing and places to live and tips on how to make the most of my potential new purchase. Looking at moving to Florida, somewhere near the water. I really love the Jupiter FL or anywhere north of that area.

also for some background I worked in the Florida keys at Fiesta Key when it was owned by Keys Caribbean. I believe they are owned by someone else now. I had a lot of fun and would love to live in a place like that again.

Thanks

dan

 

[Retired]

I think you first have to decide if you plan on being a nomad or staying put.

If you stay put or put few miles on your rig, the diesel is an unneeded extra expense. You would be better off spending the diesel upgrade cost on a gasser and increasing square footage.

50k buys a really nice used coach with many years of life left.

As a sailor, you are no stranger to doing regular maintenance and dealing with the unexpected causalities that shipboard life throws at you. Making the transition to a MH should be easy for you.

Your townhouse will appreciate while your MH depreciates. Is that important to you? Can you keep the townhouse and use it as a rental/investment property?

 

[sealab2021]

Well I would like to travel around Florida and visit parks and visit neighborhoods to potentially settle down. I’m thinking space coast, St. Petersburg maybe Tampa. Looking forward to visiting state parks. My parents have a new 29’ forest river toy hauler, they spent 33k on a slightly used 4x4 truck that they haul it with. Not really my style. I would rather tow a smaller vehicle. The cost and depreciation doesn’t concern me much as on the road I can make my wage plus $100 per day tax free per diem. I could keep the house as it’s in a great area and appreciating rapidly, however it always needs TLC and I’m not sure if I want the trouble. I invest heavily in retirement accounts every year and I try to keep things simple. I’m certainly not broke but I have several options going forward. Maybe I can find a property in Florida with RV hookups already installed.

hind sight is 20/20, I know what it takes to maintain a house and pay property taxes. A lot of times I just need less stuff to worry about. Depreciation is at the bottom of the list as someone once told me “it gets more smiles per gallon”, I find that philosophy succinct.even though they were referring to a lifted ridiculous Jeep. I would plan to pay the Mercedes off and live debt free, invest all surplus money in index ETFS and individual stocks. That’s the idea anyways.

 

[Kevin D Pem]

welcome

 

[TJ&LadyDi]

We have had a Mercedes Sprinter-based Class C (2013 Forest River Solera) and liked it very much. It was trouble-free and towed a 2014 Honda CR-V just fine. The only drawback was that it got to feeling a little small on extended trips, but then there were two of us and our two dogs aboard.

I think the Sprinter diesel platform is solid and, quite honestly, if I was ever in the market for a smaller coach again, that’s where I would go.

TJ

 

[sealab2021]

Good to know, thank you.

 

[AbdRahim]

Welcome.

 

[sealab2021]

Thank you

 

[FL-JOE]

I'm guessing living full time for an extended time could be doable in such a small RV for some folks, I wouldn't be one of them. Our "living" goods we load on our RV (food, clothing, dishes, cookware, tools, cleaning solutions, lawn chairs, etc.) weigh approximately 3,000 pounds. Even though you may travel by yourself you would still have a sizeable amount of clothing on board unless you want to visit a laundry facility every 3 or 4 days.

If it was me I would be looking at a 24 to 28' TT with at least 2 slides and pulling it with a 3/4 ton PU. This would still allow you to get into 90% of State and County parks. Set that TT up with a good generator and some solar and you could even camp free on public lands out west much of the time. All this could be purchased for much less than that little Class C diesel.