Moving forward

I guess I should spend more time updating this blog. Since my last post, we also visited the RV show in North Carolina (while visiting dear daughter as well).  Still planning on the 5th wheel; possibly even a toy hauler 5th wheel.  As of now, the plan of action is to do whatever we need to get the house ready for market.  Once we go to closing and have the $ in our hands, we will live in a short term apt. or long term hotel while seriously searching for our new RV home.

So now all the research has been done and our course has been set.  Now it's time to turn on the engine and move forward.  Which we are doing now.  We started with the first room of the house: the dining room by removing all the junk from drawers and painting.  We will be selling the extra sofa bed (someone's coming over the weekend to pick it up) and will be putting the huge file cabinet for sale tomorrow.  We are emptying the fish tank and are trying to sell that as well.  We see now how emotional this can be, especially items of sentimental value (like kid's "art") that have no sale value and just take up space.

We have also just (almost) made the decision to take the pool down.  In any event, we know we have to sell the house as it's too large for the 2 of us and too expensive (and pain in the neck) to upkeep.  There's still a (very small) chance we'll land up renting a townhouse apartment, but since we've been talking about retiring to an RV for 25 years, we will keep that dream in front of us.  It's just getting a little scary now that we're starting to take action.

Narrowed down the choices

We went to the RV show in Atlantic City today. We went in with the notion that we were looking at Class A or C's, but left being very sure it'll be a fifth wheeler.  I think the Class A's, which are really customized buses, are ugly and too big and the C's are much too small to live in full time.  Although the 5th wheel needs to be hitched (i.e. your living room is not behind the driver's seat), I think the floor plans were actually much more liveable.  We narrowed it down to a few manufacturers.

Next step now is getting the house prepped for sale.  When we actually do this will be dependent on how long that takes.  I just hope we can get as much as we need.

The Start of "The Next Chapter"

We are ready to begin planning for the next chapter in our lives -- early retirement. M retired from ATT 8 years ago, although we are only 53 now (well, I still have 2 more weeks!). We are now empty nesters and there is too much house for us, besides which it is getting too expensive.

What should we do when we sell the house? It's too expensive to live here in NJ and our darling daughter lives in NC. We were thinking of renting a townhouse down there, but remembered a very long term dream we've had -- retiring to an RV. Well... we did some figuring and realized this doesn't have to be a fantasy at all. It is, in fact, very doable, especially if we take M's pension, and we both work to supplement it. His independent contractor work can easily be found anywhere in the country, and I can do administrative temp work, also anywhere USA.

So... we are meeting with a realtor within the next week or 2 to assess the worth of our house, and how much of an investment we'll need to fix it up (and what we'd get back in value). We are attending an RV show tomorrow and have already been doing lots of research on being "full timers" (people who live in motor homes full time). I know there are plenty of RV blogs, but hey, what's another one?