Kirk W

Generally speaking the answer is no. IRS topic 511 and also Pub. 463 are what you need to consult but like most such publications, it isn't all that easy to understand and you won't find anything that actually covers your situation. In general, to be a deductible expense, the travel must be away from your tax home and for business purposes only. If you vacation while there, the expense is not deductible. At present, very few federal tax returns are audited by a person but all of them are run through a software program that compares deductions take to what are considered norms for other people of similar circumstance. A friend who is an IRS investigator tells me that travel expenses are on of the most likely areas to trigger further investigation. I should add that my IRS friend used to say that you can claim anything you chose but the IRS determines if they will accept your claimed deductions. So what are the odds of getting audited? Very low. Less than 1% of all individual income tax returns filed for the 2020 tax year faced an audit, according to the most recent data available from the IRS. That means about 1 in 500 tax returns are audited each year, according to CBS news.

I answered the poll based on our time as fulltimers, even though things have changed and we are no longer RVing. Today there are any still working fulltimers but this group seems to remain mostly retired. I was fortunate to have worked for a company that had a great, early retirement plan and was able to retire permanently at the age of 57. We went fulltime, selling the house and all that we could not carry with us and we never looked back. Retiring that early, neither social security or 401k money were available so we began to do RV volunteer positions that supplied a full hookup site and usually some other amenities as part of our budget control. I was given a pension with a "bridge to social security" by so doing we were able to live reasonably well and travel on the money available. About 5 years into our fulltime we began to both draw social security and I lost the bridge part of my pension. In our 12 years of fulltime RVing we did not own any real property and liked it that way because it simplifies life. After 10 years we began to look at acquiring some sort of real estate to park on and in year 11 we did purchase in a co-op community that was similar to the Escapee co-ops but not part of that system. This is another question with no single answer. To be the best possible investment the real estate must be in the right location and circumstances. That is even more true if it has a home base since you might change your mind about where you wish to settle once you stop RVing. If you buy some raw land in an area that will soon be developed, or where they discover minerals, or some other trigger it will prove to be wonderful. On the other hand, if you buy property with a house and a natural disaster should happen, then not so much. We invested the proceeds from the sale of our house when we left it and then used that money to buy a home when we left the fulltime lifestyle. For us, the freedom from real property was part of what made life so great. It meant that we had no one place that had to return unless we chose to do so. We did have an annual doctor visit due to Pam's continuing prescription medicines, but we made those appointments at our conveience.

I think that quite a few of us here are members of the Escapee Facebook group.

GOLD NUGGET CHAPTER 24 Not in the Bay Area, but they are a lot closer than any others.

That is a good thing. I recently checked to see who is staff for the BOF groups and in the future you may want to add, attention: Wendy Stanwood Chapter/BoF Director

It is very difficult to pin down what an action has prevented, and that is true for any preventive maintenance. With wheel bearing there are many variables that can either extend or shorten the useful life of the grease inside. Heat is the enemy of most lubricants but there are many other factors. The probability of needing to do so every year is more of a guess than a fact. This is one of the choices that is much like the age that tires need to be replaced or your transmission serviced. None of those recommended times mean that something bad will happen immediately after that time, but only that it is pretty safe to say that bad things will not happen if the recommendation is adhered to.

Damn spell-check.

Did you get the tarp for bad weather?

I'm not sure exactly what you are asking, but there is very little difference in doing taxes as a fulltimer from those of a fixed residence, at the federal level. One of the main reasons that so many fulltimers move their domicile to TX, SD, or FL is the fact that none of them have any state income tax or any time in the state to qualify as a resident for tax purposes. Another important factor is that those 3 states accept a mail service address as your legal address, which very few states do. Are you planning to keep your current residence/domicile?

Welcome to the Escapee forums! I have done our taxes using a software program for so long that I really can't recommend any accountants. The past few years I have use Turbo Tax and found it pretty easy.

From Mesquite, TX. We had broken clouds so it was in and out but mostly visible for the period of totality. I too this one with my phone.

It sounds like she opened the door for some reason and the airpattern from the highway speed sucked it open with her hanging on to the door latch. Legal or not, riding in a travel trailer while moving down the highway is foolish and risky, to say nothing of opening the door at highway speeds. Just demonstrates that even doctors sometimes fail to use reasonable care. N.Y. Vehicle and Traffic Law 1228 – Riding in house coach trailers Current as of: 2023 No person shall drive a vehicle on a public highway while drawing a house coach trailer occupied by any person and no person shall occupy a house coach trailer while it is being drawn upon a public highway.

Published April 7, 2024, 1:55 p.m. ET

Without knowing for sure what the switch is, I will guess that it is the battery isolation switch and if I'm right it should be in the on position anytime that your RV is in use and off only when you store it. Based on the label on the switch, it is a Blue Sea Systems Battery Switch m-Series ON/OFF with Knob, part number 6006, and is a Single Circuit ON-OFF switch. The owner's manual for the trailer probably calls it a battery isolation switch.

I must say that I forgot about your being Canadian, so I imagine that you have no choice but to return home or at least to Canada for part of the year. In some ways I suppose we US full-timers are a little bit spoiled? My point is that while we do have some who convince themselves that they have seen everything, one would need to be pretty narrow in view to do that. I too agree with the quote that you list, but I don't buy the statement that one can see everything that interests them in 2 years, unless they have very narrow interests. You have seen far more of Canada than we did and that's one of the reasons that I consider our list to remain pretty long. Don't let anyone convince you that the factory tours are a waste of your time. Most of them don't take a lot of time and there are hundreds of very different products to see made. We saw things as varied as store brand cookies to wooden baskets being made, as well as a lot of other things. Since you are in Canada, check out the Chocolate Museum in St. Stephens, NB. To get back to the frustrating part of full-time for us, it was that it had to end after only 12 years.

That's not much time to see the country. For our first five years or so, our list of places that we wanted to see grew faster than the list of places we had been. Even when we left the fulltime life after 12 years, that list was still very long and over the years since we have been a lot of new places but the list is so long that we realize that we will never run out of things & places in the world that we haven't been to yet. There are 63 national parks, 133 national monuments, and 76 national historic sites. The NPS manages a total of 429 properties. And that doesn't address the many state parks and historic sites, some of which are just as extraordinary as the best of the National Parks. We hardly scratched the surface of the free factory tours and some of the best museums in the country are private ones. Places like the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in WY, Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Detroit, the Pioneer Village in NE, the National Museum of the Pacific War in TX, are just a few of the many such places that are privately operated sites that should be visited.

The one from Camco states: About this item Stainless steel quarter-turn pressure seated shut-off valves Features easy-grip valve handles and hose connection Easy to use and durable Solid brass housing CSA low lead content certified. Complies with California's AB1953 and Vermont Act 193 Low Lead Laws Fit type: Universal Fit

You will travel through the area of the biggest wildfire in TX history(March 2024) when you pass through Canadian, TX. A lot of what you could see will depend on how hard line you are about staying on US83. Liberal KS has the official home of Dorthey from Wizard of Oz. If you enjoy visiting small town America you will pass through some interesting ones. Probably the area with most to offer along that route would be North Platte, NE, which will also be the largest city on the route. I have been in most of the towns along that road and some of them many times but very few of them were ever my destination on a trip.

If you go with a brass one, they won't have much, if any lead at all. I went with one of them a lot of years ago, as I have with pretty much all of my water fittings for either potable water or out in the garden. Like Chalkie, I really didn't do that so much for lead as to stop buying replacements, over and over. I actually have a spare one that I found left behind by a previous occupant of an RV site. I also use a brass elbow where the water hose connects to the side of the RV. Camco has one and I'd expect to find it in many RV supply stores. Amazon has several of them.

It is going to be interesting to observe the eclipse and also the after effects. We are thinking that perhaps we too should stock up on a few things. We live in a gated community so shouldn't have any traffic problems and each of the areas of the community are doing something for the big event. There are places that we can see part of I30 and it has traffic problems in this area already due to the construction on I635 and the interchange so it wouldn't take much to make that worse.

From what I've heard, the concern is the traffic situation in the event of a major emergency event. Lou showed me some pictures of traffic in rural WY after the one that are bumper to bumper traffic leaving out where there is little activity. In areas that have traffic problems every rush hour it has the potential to for disaster should some unrelated major event take place. I know that some law enforcement agencies are concerned about the possibility of a terrorist action. I spoke with an ambulance team and they were stationing units all around the Dallas County area, just in case. The latest weather prediction for Monday here is partly cloudy & sunny.

If you don't mind, would you share the names of BOF's no longer active? If a group falls apart and nobody bothers to let the SKP office know, how are they to know? The SKP's take no roll in any of the groups beyond listing them and responding when asked. Escapees depend on volunteers and members for much of what happens and usually only get directly involved if there is a financial need to do so.

Never been to that one but we did stay in Clinton State park several years ago.

If it were me, I'd take I-10 through El Paso and then to 190 to 377 to 84 into Waco. It has been several years but when we last traveled that way it was our route. There are several very nice side trips available along any of those routes if you are not in any hurry.

Start by signing into the Escapee Members Website and if you put your mouse on the Community tab it will open a long list of subjects and on that list is BOF's and if you click on it you will then get an alphabetical list of the current active groups. The group, "Line Dancers Unite" in about the center of that page and it has an active link for more information. I just looked at it and unfortunately, the link takes you to an RV Village site that no longer exists. My best suggestion would be to contact the business office to see if they will put you in touch with the BOF coordinator or someone from the BOF. Member Services: 936-327-8873 Email: clubbusiness@escapees.com