Barbaraok

Best decision we ever made.  We had each had a life-threatening illness, want to enjoy how ever much time we have and do it when the body is still able to have a little 'get up and go' left in it. 

On 7/26/2018 at 2:19 PM, Off Our Rocker RV said:

Yes you can full-time travel in a RV on less than $2000 a month. We average around $1500 a month for expenses including campground fees, insurance, licensing, groceries, gasoline, entertainment, upgrades, maintenance and repairs, etc. This is for two adults, no pets in a small Class A motorhome and tow car. We track and post our expenses monthly on our website. 

I looked at your 6 month review and didn't notice any health care costs?   Also Long Term Care insurance?   

11 minutes ago, Ray,IN said:

Sorry, I jumped from one subject to another. I was thinking about my whole-house water filter at the CG hydrant, it has a clear bowl(my selection mistake) which promotes algae growth inside when exposed to sunlight, regardless of residual chlorine in the city water.

 

But if you are using city water from spigot, that isn’t going into your fresh water tank, is it.  Get the bowled covered, black tape if nothing else.

2 hours ago, Pat & Pete said:

Most likely the overall condition of this countries water supply . 

Use to be the creeks were fairly clean . Now they could probably be used for acid washing .

But municipal water systems are not creeks.  

4 hours ago, 2gypsies said:

Sounds like we're not the norm but in 16 years of full-timing and getting water from many different sources and not all municipalities, we never sanitized.  We drank and cooked from the tank.  Every so often we'd buy a new fresh water hose.  We did use good water filters though.

You aren’t that different from us.  Once we had to flush out.  Otherwise, we dump fresh water and fill with municipal water on a fairly regular basis and don’t sanitize.  We do dump water and refill when taking out of storage each spring, and then dump the desert water as soon as we get to the coast as the desert water is so high in TDS.  

Ray, how is the water in your fresh water tank being exposed to sunlight? 

Ray, are you using municple water to fill tank as needed all year long?

Welcome Aboard.  😁

Ray

I'm a chemist and wouldn't use it for our motorhome.  I see no need to add additional chloride to our daily intake.  And while the claim is that the triazine ring breaks down without any problem in the mouth/stomach, my biochemist husband calls that claim suspect at best because there are so many factors in each of us as to the pH of both mouth and stomach depending upon the different medications and disease processes we may have.   Others may disagree.     

It is so easy to just get a small bottle of bleach when needed and use and then make sure to always dump and refill regularly from municipal water systems.

Sodium Dichlor is dichloroisocyanuric acid.   It is designed to slowly release chlorine in swimming pools where sunshine causes regular hypochlorite to break down to fast to maintain effective free chlorine.  NOT designed for potable water use.   And no, I would not use it in our rig.

Barb

No it is not the same as bleach.  

and yes, I am a chemist.

But they can be renewed by mail.  All you need is to get one form notarized.  Instructions for out of state on the DPS website.

People wait until thirsty to drink, that is too late.  Need to drink on regular schedule 

When we first started fulltiming we also that that we would utilize a lot of state parks.  Turns out that can be down right expensive, especially with a motorhome, since a lot of states will charge extra per night for your tow car.  Plus with online reservation systems, most state parks are reserved for Thursday through Sundays from Memorial Day through Labor Day - - we just gave up on them.    We do like COE (Corps of Engineers) parks in the midwest and they can only be reserved 6 months out and tend to have more open spots that you can get into without reservations.   

As to why more than one membership, it is because every membership park will set aside a certain number of sites to be used by each affiliate system they belong to such as RPI, C2C, AOR, ROD.   So if C2C has 10 slots at park XYZ and you want to stay there during a certain time frame, those 10 sites may be booked.  However, AOR might also have 10 slots at the same park, but because it isn't as well know as C2C, it has fewer members and there might be a site available.   We go with ROD first because there is a $0/night fee with them, but they also are booked out first, and then C2C or AOR will almost always have a site for us, but at $10/night or so (most parks now add on a surcharge for 50 amp).    

Takes a little practice to get in a rhythm with membership parks, but if they are in areas where you will be going (PNW if full of them) then you can save a lot of money using them.   This week we are staying under AOR, it costs us $70 for a 50 amp pull through site with full hookups and a view of Mt. Baker.  This is the ONLY nightly fee we will pay until the middle of August, all the rest of our time will be under TT and ROD, as will most of September.   Works for us. 

What other memberships will you have.  Remember, C2C is an affiliate and you should really have more than one to ensure you get into parks that you want to stay in as you travel.  All affiliates have a certain number of sites at each park and when those are reserved you are out of luck, but with more than one membership you may be able to get in during the time frame you want.

If this is part of the negotiation for a membership at a home park, make the Deluxe part of the package.   We get by with the Classic, but we also have AOR and ROD which both have 2 week stays (as well as TT) so the C2C is usually our week out somewhere.   BTW, if the park you are interested in is a Classic only park, you still only get 1 week and it is 60 days out to reserve.  

Pack rat, in your planning remember to subtract Medicare Part B from your SS each month.  

3 hours ago, Kirk Wood said:

If you wait until you are near the time that you want to retire before you begin to prepare there are few who can do so comfortably. Both Barb & I made the decisions to work where there was a strong early retirement package as a part of the benefits. I'd bet also that just like me, she could have made a higher salary in other positions, but without the retirement benefits. If you begin to plan for retirement when you are 30 or before it isn't that difficult to do by way of job selection and savings. Every year that you wait to begin the plans to provide for an early retirement, the more difficult it will be to achieve that goal, whether the action is in job selection or in savings and financial planning. The best route is to do both. 

Agreed.  We had my folks as an example, so we started our retirement plan when I was 35. 😉 They retired early and though Dad’s health wasn’t great, it was good and he lived 17 yrs.  My FIL kept working, high stress job and dropped dead never getting to enjoy a retirement.

Zulu, where did you get your hypothetical income level from?   We would make sure to structure retirement income so that we would qualify for subsidies since we would know ahead of time what we would need for those three years until Medicare kicks in.

Again it comes back to planning.  We planned for years on early retirement, worked numbers every year, made decisions on purchases with eye towards how things would work with retirement in the future.   Since I had a whole year before my SS started, we had that amount in a saving account 3 years before we retired.    We knew in ‘93 when I had ovarian cancer surgery/chemo this is what we were going to do at 65, and when Dave had his stroke moved our time table up nand adjusted our plans.  All about planning.

I should also add that we CONSCIOUSLY made the move to Texas for our jobs there  (UT Tyler) because of their retirement package.   We had other offers from universities to consider, but the health care portion of the retirement package was the deciding factor in our going to UT Tyler; and the reason it was included was that UT had years before found that including health care coverage for their retirees was a good benefit to offer to get faculty from around the world to come to one of the UT campuses.

Zulu,

The answer to your question is YES.   Having once faced near death, the idea of waiting was not something we would do - - we know that we only have a finite time to enjoy retirement.   If it were today that might mean buying a less expensive DP in order to have funds to purchase heath care until Medicare kicked in.  

In our case we both had survived life threatening medical issues (ovarian cancer/stroke) and once you face the fact that you are that close to death, you want to make sure you get to enjoy what ever time you have left.   As it turned out, not only had Dave survived his stroke, but just before we retired we found out he had blockages in his coronary artery, so 6 days after retiring he had three stents (longest 2 1/2 inches) inserted to break up 5 blockages.  We have viewed all of our time on the road as a gift and I know that if he had kept working another 3 years he would have died before we got to retirement.   Retiring removed him from the stress and lengthen this life.   Not to mention being able to ENJOY all that fulltiming has to offer when we were healthy enough to get around.  12 years later, we have slowed down because our bodies are not as limber as they once were and other aliments are showing us that we are aging.   Had we waited until now, we would have missed out on so much.   

We retired early at 62/61 and have never regretted it.   We were lucky in that our previous employer included in our retirement benefits health coverage until Medicare kicked in at which time the insurance became our supplemental coverage.   One of the things we did not do at the time was touch our IRAs, which can be left to our kids, SS can not.  So now we take out our RMDs each year, but the IRAs keep growing and should we need extra beyond our SS and pension we have it available. 

5 hours ago, eddie1261 said:

Just so I know I am up to speed, this entire 3 page thread is about somebody concerned with getting local channels so you can see news about a city you don't live in anymore?

Wow....

You really need to critically read what was posted.  The thread is about SO much more than just local channels.  

 You keep mentioning truck.  Is the generator tied into your truck, not just your trailer/5th wheel?

Well that sure doesn't sound great.  Like everyone else, I was thinking about giving Escapees a try, but since we KNOW that Coachnet delivers as promised, I think we will stay with them next fall.   Yes, more expensive, but reliability is crucial when talking about road side assistance.