The first thing I did after that seminal dinner with Jett was sit down and think of ways to leave cheaply (meaning: within the limits of our Social Security income, more or less). The sum of our expected SS benefits, if we both waited until age 66 as the government so strongly encouraged us to do (and did I detect some pleading too?) was just over $4,000 per month. Some $48,000 per year, gross. For some, this would seem patently adequate. But Jett and I were accustomed to a much higher income – over $150,000 per year. Could we survive on a third of our current income?
Not without making some drastic lifestyle changes, for sure. It was obvious that we could not continue to live in our current house – a very nice 4 bedroom, 1.5 bath Colonial in a nice neighborhood in Medford, MA. The monthly payments were over $2,500 – $30,000 per year. We would have to live elsewhere.
(BTW, if you are interested in a nice house in Medford, MA, email me: sparky@ourwanderyears.com.)
Ok, we couldn’t live in our house. We couldn’t really afford a permanent move to Mexico. We didn’t really want to just downsize and live like hermits in a condo in MA, eating soup and watching TV all day. We wanted to enjoy our retirements. We wanted adventure!
The answer struck me immediately: hit the road. Jett and I have exactly one week of RV experience, renting a 32-foot Class A motorhome last year to park at the edge of Lucas Pond in Northwood, NH. Jett’s sister has a summer cottage on this beautiful pond and we love to visit there. But when the grandkids are along – two perfect children (just ask Jett) ages 11 and 6 – there is just not enough room for everyone. Rather than camp out in a backyard tent, we decided to splurge and rent the motorhome. Jett was impressed that I managed to navigate the narrow roads without scratching it (though I did have a sense of what it must be like to drive a cruise ship through the Panama Canal), 50 miles each way. The RV turned out to be a lot of fun and a wonderful way to live for a week. We enjoyed it very much.
So why not do it fulltime?
Well, one week does not a fulltimer make. Taking an RV on the road with all of your worldly possessions is a different proposition than loading up a few suitcases and living for a week as if it was a motel on wheels. Still, it was a concept worth investigating.
So I researched the cost of RVs. I researched the cost of campgrounds. I made lists of the ongoing expenses that we would have. I took a stab at the cost of individual health insurance. The result, which I rushed to tell Jett, was that we could live in an RV, on the road fulltime, for about $3,000 per month. Maybe $3,500.
Never mind that my budget estimates were as bad as Congress’. My conclusion was that this was feasible!
So with 1 week and 100 miles of RV experience, I decided that we could do it fulltime. Was I a dreamer or an idiot? Time will tell.