During the 8 1/2 months on the road last year, we were often joking about full time RVing. “Wouldn’t it be…”, “What if…”, “what would the pros and cons be” and back and forth it went.
We knew that we could still run our business from the road. As long as there was WiFi and internet connectivity of some sort, we could survive to afford traveling.
We read enough blogs, follow enough “full timers” on social media and receive more than our fair share of RV related email tips to at least make an educated guess on what it would be like.
We spent a lot of time thinking what we could save if we did not have the monthly mortgage, HOA fee, taxes, insurance payments. Paying for something for 12 months and only using it for maybe 3-4 months every year? How much less expensive would it be?
In true German fashion of debating all the pros and cons and disecting everything until the bitter end, we figured “yes, it would be less expensive” and “of course we can do it”, but still, “could we”, “should we”, “what would it mean”?
We planned our 2018 trip, where we wanted to spent time in the West – New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, all the National Parks out West. And spending time to see them. Not days, but rather weeks, as we need to work 6 – 8 hours a day and still want to enjoy and see where we travel. Experiences we had made last year, where we needed to stop in certain places twice to see it at least once for real and not drive through because we were too busy.
But it would mean a long trip to get there – St. Augustine, FL where we live is a good 2,000+ miles from where we wanted to visit.
Considering the weather north of New Mexico, that would leave us with a window of a few months to see what we wanted to see. OK, so we would need 3-4 years for the West and West Coast….
And then one day the realtor who sold us the condo asked whether she could show our condo to a couple from NY who looked at our condominiums but could not find anything they liked. Low and behold not 1 week later they asked if they could make an offer. We looked at each other and thought “kismet”. Maybe the man upstairs was trying to tell us something.
We hesitated for a week, as it was going to be a big step. But no risk, no reward and so we sold the condo.
That was when the hard part started. We have read enough blogs where people sold everything, others had put items in storage and regretted it. We sat down and tried to figure out what it would cost to replace what we had after say 3-4 years. If it was more than what the storage costs, then that is where it would go – irreplaceable German and Chinese Cabinetry was going into storage, family heirlooms as well, needed items (based on available space) would go with us, easily replaceable items would get donated.
Running your own business produces a lot of paperwork. We checked with our accountant and he advised the IRS would be fine with digital paperwork and we only needed to keep the past 3 years on file. But what do you do with the personal papers, school records, birth certificates, records upon records….
Having Microsoft Office 365 with 1 TB of “free” cloud storage would allow us to place it right there. Weeks and weeks of scanning followed, we ended up scanning everything “just in case”, so we would always have it with us on an external hard drive with a copy in the cloud.
Every item was looked at with the question of RV, storage or donation. In the end it drove us nuts, but became a simple question, if you do not know – donate. Somebody will have a use for it. In our case we donated the majority to the homeless shelter, and equal parts to the Betty Griffin Center for abused women and several other charities.
We then proceeded to book a local campground for the week before closing until 3 weeks later, giving us time to settle before closing
– are there any more items we need from storage? Items we cannot do without?
– make sure after closing that we did not have too much “on board”, items we should add it to the storage and
– have our familiar surroundings for a short time before heading out.
So now, here we are, the shredding company did their job, the local charities are happy – at least they told us so every time we stopped by and dropped off more items -, the neighbors sad to see us leave, the moving company happy they can bill us for the unforseeable future, and we do not know what to expect.
Based on blogs we follow and where we are told the RV crowd is getting bigger by the day, we have booked the next 6 months in advance and set reminders to keep on doing so.
Off into uncertainty…….