Retirement, being the first of the Baby Boomers in a TM

First point is why a TM is so important to us. We have kids in Ohio, Michigan, and Los Angeles and we live in Florida. I do not know how to visit them economically other than camping and since they are so spread out, the TM provides the necessary room along with decent gas mileage. Summer, we will make a big trip north from Florida living 2 months in our TM. Winter we make at least a 3 month trip from Tampa to Los Angeles. Last year, we pulled our TM between 15-20K miles. Doing that in a Class A would be much more expensive with the price of gas. Also looking at the depreciation on a Class A alone would eat our pocket book up. We bought an older TM and the cost of running it is really low except for when you bend an axle a few weeks ago. $2K expense.

Also, I might add a idea for anyone thinking of retirement. I own 3 houses in Sun City Center. They were purchased when I was a real estate agent in 2000. I took a hit on them like everyone else, but now they have come back to what I paid for them. Through this decline, the rental market picked up and I was able to make them cover their expenses through this cycle. We live in one of them and rent it out to snowbirds in Jan, Feb. March + a few weeks. When we rent it out to snowbirds, it pays for all the expenses of owing the house for the year, taxes, insurance, payments (even though it is paid for), HOA, Home Warranty, Repairs, everything and also puts a few bucks in our pocket. We are then able to move back in for 9 months of the year and do our travel in our TM as much as we want. This is a 55+ community where the demand for rentals in the snowbird market is really big. We have a rental agent that takes cares of the property including renting it and the cost is 1/2 month of the rent for the year. Rent is $1700 per month on short term rental furnished.

With the TM and the gas mileage we get with it and by renting our house out while we are gone, we virtually travel for free. We have a golf cart storage next to the house and we put all our personal junk in it while we are gone in the winter.

I have looked at everything I can find, and have not found anything that gives us the living space with the MPG of the TM. With driving as many miles as we do pulling the TM and being able to unhook it, it has really worked out well for our needs.

Hope this is appropriate for the TM site, but it might give some ideas to those thinking of retirement and wanting to keep the expenses down. I am certain, this can be done in any part of the country as long as there is a big snowbird market. Instead of the southeast, wife wants to be in the southwest with the kids are for the winter. We also have friends in Sun City Center that we do not want to leave. Also in the summer, we can take off north for a few months to get away from the heat and spend time with the northern kids. We do not want to move in with the kids when we visit them and this gives our own privacy as well as a vehicle to run around in. We have used Thousand Trails extensively in this endeavor.

I also might note, it has taken some adjustment to live in a tight space for the months we have, but we made it work. Again, we will do the same thing next year with the trips already planned. We will continue this as long as our health holds up.

We also found out that with the TM, some parks were concern when we said pop up, but once they found out there was no canvas and self-contained, no problem. We finally got away for the term pop up and just said trailer.

I will also be writing a thread of summary of our 5 month out trip and maybe tricks that might help out others.

Hope this helps someone. John