HaleyI’m working my way through answering some basics about our upcoming RV trip, namely, the what, when, where, why and how questions I know you’re asking yourself. Don’t worry, I asked myself the same things.
When my husband James mentioned the idea of taking a year-long RV trip, I knew this was something we’d have to plan. After all, there are so many details to think through, so many things that have tied us down.
Before I could confidently disclose our trip publicly, I funneled my excitement into a quest for minimalism, reading every blog and article I could find to learn not just how to pare down all our stuff, but how to shift my mindset so that stuff was no longer a priority. We donated bags and bags of clothing to a local thrift store, and I also gave a ton of stuff to a friend who held a yard sale fundraiser. Even with these loads of belongings gone, we still have so much to purge before moving into a 400-square-foot (or less) RV.
A couple months after our decision to work toward this RV trip, an opportunity arose for James to sell his CrossFit gym. His business was one of the bigger pieces of the puzzle that we weren’t quite sure what to do with, so when the sale went through at the end of 2015, a huge weight was lifted (pun intended!).
Now, the biggest remaining obstacle that will impact when we hit the road is the selling of our home, which we will have inhabited for three years come spring. We have a few house projects we want to tackle this winter, then we plan to put the house on the market in early spring. From there, it’s hard to say how long it will take to sell. It could be a couple weeks or a couple months, and however long it takes, we have to be prepared.
Once we hit the road, we’ll have roughly a year. I was under the impression that we have a year to reinvest any profits from our home before being taxed on capital gains. But the more I research, the more I’m finding that the law has changed and so long as we’ve lived in our home two years and aren’t profiting more than $500,000 (not even close!), we won’t be taxed. Does anyone know the details?
But regardless of the tax law, our oldest son James Michael is due to start kindergarten in August 2017. So we will need to come back to settle down before his first school year begins.
The timing of everything has worked out perfectly thus far, but we still have a long few months to go before we hit the road.
[…] working my way through answering some basics about our upcoming RV trip, namely, the what, when, where, why and how questions I know you’re asking yourself. Don’t worry, I asked myself the […]
[…] working my way through answering some basics about our upcoming RV trip, namely, the what, when, where, why and how questions I know you’re asking yourself. Don’t worry, I asked myself the […]
If you’re having the time of your lives (which I predict 🙂 ) then I’d worry about returning no sooner than 6th grade (junior high) or high school at the latest. I worries so much about things when my 3 kids were growing up, that I later realize I didn’t need to worry so much. Just offering you encouragement not to worry about racing back unless you want to. 🙂
Thank you! Yes I have heard other people say the same thing so I appreciate the encouragement. I do think we all–especially the kids–will have the times of our lives.
My husband and I hit the road as full-time RV’ers with a 4 year old and a newborn, and loved it! We bought an old 27′ travel trailer and pulled it with a Lincoln Continental. When we moved from place to place, we usually got on the road early and the kids slept for the first few hours. When they woke up and started to get restless, we would stop at a rest stop and cook breakfast, then hit the road again for a few hours before stopping for the day about noon or so. We originally planned on doing it for a year, but at the end of the year we emptied our storage unit, selling, giving away or trashing everything that we couldn’t take with us. We ended up RV’ing for 8 years, before my husband’s health got too bad to travel.
Your mindset needs to be that the RV is your kitchen, bedroom and bathroom and where ever you are parked is your living room. We traveled from fishing hole to fishing hole, going north in the summer and south in the winter. If we liked where we were, we stayed longer and if not, we hooked up and left. We ended up spending 3 winters in Mexico, and both the kids went to school there the last two years, becoming fluent in Spanish because no English was spoken (my husband and I were never fluent Spanish speakers). The rest of the time we home schooled when the kids were old enough.
We did this years ago, no cell phones or access to Internet. Our two biggest problems were getting our mail (my mother acted as contact point) and banking. Both of these are much easier now! My kids are now grown and my husband died, but these are precious memories that I will have forever.
Wow 8 years! You must have loved it! Yes we will also have to be strategic about driving time. I was thinking planning around early nap time and only going a couple hours at a time if possible. We don’t know exactly what to expect but we are so excited!