I grew up camping a lot. We were amongst the elite poors, in that we used to vacation 15 minutes away at French Creek State Park in PA. We’d drive there, my dad would set up the tent, and we’d have a lot of fun over the next few days or so. There was a lake there we would fish in, and my dad had a row boat there that we went out on. Lots of camp cooking on the stove. Tons of playing cards and listening to the radio on those picnic tables. The campfires were best, however.

At some point around 1984 or so, my mom finished her accouting degree and we made like the Jeffersons and moved on up to motels. I can never forget 6 years in a row of the Sea Shell Motel in Chincoteague, VA. The first time I recall ever staying at a HOTEL was the Adams Mark Hotel in Philly when I was playing in the world Open of Chess. By now my mom had her CPA and we could scrimp and pay for a fancy hotel.

But all of the above evades the RV. We never had one. I always wanted one. My aunt and uncle had one, and they went with my cousins and my grandparents to Muddy Run down by Lancaster a lot. That place gave some memories. One year I was the guest of my cousin Kevin, and their RV was right by the water. I remember just sitting there looking at it. My grandparents had a pop up, and I stayed in that a few times. But the RV you could pull? Always wanted the idea of taking the hotel with me. Now – the cost of hotels are crazy!!! While I can afford them, I’d prefer not to pay the ransom.

My hesitation

The entire time since I was a kid I wanted an RV, but I never even had a vehicle that could pull it. I now have a V8 5.7 Ram 1500 from 2018 with low mileage. I have been seeing YouTube videos where these guys are hauling decent sized campers with them. I think the one video the guy had a 32′ camper, the other was a 25′. With this, I have been worried about a few things:

  1. Can my RAM 1500 pull things sufficiently? What about taking it in the mountains – will those inclines blow out my engine and transmission?
  2. Stopping. I’ve never hauled anything, so the idea of taking this thing on the highway at 65 and a car way in front of me slams on the brakes…uh oh!
  3. Backing into spots. I’ve had a ton of experience with my tractor mower pulling a cart when I was in my teens and backing in with it, but this is different. Many of the RV spots I had seen at campgrounds had these people backing in.
  4. Getting to a destination. I tend to spend a lot of my vacation time visiting the in-laws. Long story short, the way I know how to get there has low overpasses on the Southern State parkway. I had literally 2 days ago saw they sell GPS for RVs, so you can get to a destination that has no low overhangs. That was a major issue I had with buying these.
  5. Costs. My brother had a massive one years ago, and parked it full time at a camp ground in the poconos. It was like a $22,000 camper, then he would pay to have it there for 6 months, then pay to have it stored. The flip side is buying one (financed at 8%), then when you drive it anywhere, you are dealing with 8-9mpg gas costs, then potentially $100-$125 per night at the RV park. Then, there may be modifications I need to make to my RAM to pull something (suspension, etc). Maybe additional cameras?
  6. The wife – Don’t know how many of you reading this have a spouse, but she isn’t on board with the woods. I love the woods. As a happy medium, I would like to use this camping on the beach on Long Island when we see her parents. So this is always in the back of my head. She wants a patio. To me, home improvement costs and labor are VERY expensive right now. The RV place near me has TONS of 2022 inventory at MASSIVE reductions in price. Might be a really good time to buy this.

Additional notes…

My wife went to college here, then moved back home for a few years, then eventually moved down. When she moved down, it was a 4.5 hour drive to see them. We now have a family of 4+ dog and trying to stay there is cramped. Additionally, trying to get a hotel room on the outskirts of the Hamptons is damn near impossible and the cost is outrageous. So a good deal of our “week long” vacations are up there. However, with our 3 year old full time here and the 14 year old part time here, I want to be able to do a lot of regional 3 and 4 day mini vacations, if you will. Where I am in York, PA – it’s about 2 hours SW to DC, and 3 hours to the east coast (Jersey shore, NYC), and 3.5 hours to Rehoboth Beach Delaware or Ocean City, MD. So there’s a LOT we can do in this region. To the northeast, the outskirts of the poconos take 2-2.5 hours to get to, with the far reaches of it about 3.5 hours away.

I have been looking for raw land to build a house on with a group of people, but may have to put a pin in that for now. I want to continue to try and put together a partnership group – but the market is so overbought with part time rentals right now, I can’t even seem to form a group at the moment because of how expensive everything is. I still want to do this, but will start to work in RE investment groups.

The pros of buying an RV….

Anytime you do a list like this, look hard in the mirror. Do you just want THINGS or is there a PURPOSE behind the THINGS?

  • 3-4 day mini vacations with the family. Due to COVID restrictions, I got very comfy at home. I adapted well to being a homebody. But as my smallest one grows up, I want to take him on a lot of adventures his holder brother went on.
  • Camping brings back incredibly fond memories for me. At 47, by dad has been gone now 18 years, my mom 3.5. These types of memories I had by the camp fire I want to bring back, and make new ones for my children.
  • Cost benefit of hotels. To buy one of these is a serious financial commitment. Let’s say $250 per month for 12 months is $3,000. Each time you go to a campground may be $75 a night around me or $125 for a more premium one. Then you have the fuel cost addition, storage costs, etc. To put this into perspective, trying to get an AirBNB by my in-laws is around $3,000 a week. Costs are ludicrous today.
  • Bug out. I’m not a SERIOUS prepper, but I am a bit of a risk planner. There’s an outside low probability of uprisings coming to a broken city near you as the debt crisis lingers. With the rule of law somewhat broken, it is emboldening thieves and angry people to steal from others. We saw riots in the summer of 2020 all over the place. What’s to say these riots couldn’t go to more affluent suburbs? It would be nice to be able to pack up, and quickly go off grid some places. Paying this RV cost to have is a form of shelter insurance.
  • Ability to eat meals with you, rather than going out to eat all the time. If you are staying in hotels, even a family of four “cheap” meal today at McDonald’s is $35-$40. Dinners out can be perhaps $100-$150, depending on the local tourist trap you go to. It can be very appealing cost-wise to do campfire hot dogs, cheeseburgers, steaks, etc over the fire. You can even prep/freeze food to use.
  • Many of the higher end RV parks have a lot of amenities for the kids. A pool is a big one. Someday I may want to get a pool, but these costs are also astronomical. Playgrounds. Arcades. Fishing. Hiking. Boating. All of this is close walking distance from the RV. I would often get into fights with my mom. She was pushing me to take my oldest to Disney World years ago. You are looking at $10-$15k to take a 6 year old there. You get the pictures, and they barely remember the trip. I’d prefer to drive an RV there and avoid costs of flying. Stay at an RV park 30-45 mins away. Avoid jacked up park food costs, when possible. I am a practical person – I don’t care much how the people down the block view me. I did in my 20s. Not now. This pragmatic approach I feel makes it much more beneficial to have an RV over flights/hotel rooms.

The cons of buying an RV…

  • Convenience of hotels is far superior than driving with a hotel room attached to your truck.
  • Risk of break down in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps AAA or the like would need to be purchased?
  • Cost benefit might be weak if you don’t travel much. As stated, a single week in an AirBNB near where the in-laws live is an entire year’s worth of costs. As the in-laws are now in their 70s, it also makes sense to me to be able to go there on a moment’s notice and stay for a period of time where I could telework if need be from there in my own room.
  • The hassle of driving the RV – I’m not a long hauler, and this presents a lot of consternation.
  • The wife may never want to use it. It’s ok – I can take my boys on a weekend camping getaway when the wife goes to be with her friends on a trip. I am also ok being solo and parking it in a place where I can camp/fish all weekend.
  • Repairs/maintenance costs. Buying new helps with this for warranties.
  • Being alone. Most of my camping adventures as a kid dealt with other families. I am concerned just going out and about might not be the same experience I had as a kid.
  • Security. Wondering how people just don’t drive up to these things and drive away with them.
  • Understanding everything. I like the idea of Air Conditioning. This means you need a hookup. I don’t understand the water/sewage stuff. These people are pros, and I fear making horrible mistakes. Meaning, I need to spend a month on YouTube to understand this.
  • Unknown costs. For example, I buy it, and then later find out I need better suspension in my truck which may cost $3,000. Maybe my gearing ratio is too low for the weight of the trailer. What I have seen “so far” on YouTube is a lot of people going “trust me, it works”.
  • Weight unknowns. My truck is rated to pull x. But how much is dry weight. How much is extras? I know water is about 8 pounds per gallon. I guess food weight, camping gear, bikes, etc need to be counted. Does the weight I have in my truck with people count? Lots of “experts” except this is hard to see anything from the manufacturers.

Why now?

I have a fire pit in my back yard. The appeal I have with the poconos with the guys every year is sitting by the camp fire with a beer or the like and relaxing. Yes, having a 3 year old doesn’t exactly spell relaxing, but inventory at these places right now is piled up, and deals of the century appear to be there. Buying something like this, perhaps trying a few test runs with local camp grounds, and using it more when he’s 5-6 would be appealing to me. My brother in the last few years moved to Nebraska with his husband, and I can’t afford 4 plane tickets and a hotel for a stay out there. However, it does seem appealing to drive out there with an RV, stay at a local park, and visit with them and the in-laws for a week or so. This might not be in the near term plans, but the optionality is there.

With a lot of remote/TW kinds of things today, I also like the idea of being able to be somewhere, put in half days TW to keep the office running, then spend the rest of the day with the family in a regional area at a camp ground. With a mobile Starlink today, working via something like this – or using a campground’s WiFi might not be a big deal.

But TODAY, the impetus is the deep discount on 2022 models. Some of these have like $20k off the price, and seems these need to move ASAP to get 2023 models on the lot. Like buying gold and silver at lows – for an EVENTUAL day the prices would rise, seeing a deeply discounted item like this has an allure to me. Squirrel away the asset to use next year, or the year after.

It is POSSIBLE 3-5 years down the line I have my mountain retreat built, and this would be the place I go a lot on weekends. That day is not today, and I like the mobility option with the kids to take them to places.

Boondocking – adventuring out

Another appeal to me is being able to be in the middle of nowhere and pull off and sleep. While this isn’t legal on a highway, my friends went for what seems to be 2 years on an RV trip around the country. I’m not a “sight seeing guy”. For example, I don’t ever need to go to the arch of St. Louis. Don’t give a shit. Sorry. But for me, I’m finding the appeal is to be in a certain beautiful setting. Take that in with my eyes. My friends who sold a ton of their properties and then managed their business on the road – I’m going to use some of their pictures here. The ones without them in lol. They had a lot of pictures with them boondocking. Just tremendous.

What I feel might then be of interest – is to understand how the refrigerator stays on? When you are driving 16 hours to a location, does the fridge stay cool? What kinds of batteries are there, and how do they stay charged? Do many of these have a generator built in, or does that jack up the costs? Solar panels to charge a battery? When boondocking, what about gray water (I assume that’s the bad stuff). Do you take clean water with you? How do you source it – a garden hose? Anyway, I feel these are some skills I need to learn.

(Photo credits – April/Justin Crossley) – check out April’s site here and her YouTube channel here. OK. I need to have a dinner with them and pick their brains on this stuff.

Conclusion

While I have research to do, I can see a really bad stock market accident happening in the next month. I’m short up to my eyeballs on things that are supremely overstretched and could come crashing back down to earth. It is very, very possible if this setup goes well, I get the RV and the wife gets the patio/deck – in cash – and we are both happy.

I think RV life isn’t for everyone. If you grew up in hotel living, this probably isn’t for you. I grew up camping in tents until about the age of 12 and was in cub scouts right before Boy Scouts (Webelos). I didn’t pay much attention to the religion badges, and that was a thing then. Would have loved to complete Boy Scouts. Always had an interest in the outdoors. Fishing was a HUGE passion growing up. So if you like hotel room service, probably not for you.

But I feel that today, there is definitely a cost/benefit to me to buy my hotel room and drag it around with me rather than flying places (expensive plane tickets), staying in hotel rooms (overpriced), renting a car (dear GOD), and buying all food out (have you eaten out lately?). It stands to reason there’s a risk here that after 3-5 years it would have not be used as much as I’d like. In that case, I’d take a hair cut on selling it. But, if I’m aready buying at a discounted price, and get 5 years of usage out of it, my cost for those 5 years could be substantial.

I need to do more homework – but I’m posting here for any of you RV experts. Any great YT follows? Blog follows? Campground listing services with amenities? Sources on boondocking?