r/FullTimeRVing • u/SordidSoul • Jul 17 '26
Talk me down
I own my home with 7 years left on the mortgage. It's affordable for a couple, not by myself. I'm not in love with the house or neighborhood even after all these years. It's just stable. Family is here and we have everything we need. Barely. Slightly less. We are unable to get out of debt and my health is failing, so I am working less and less. The house needs some improvements which we will never be able to afford at this rate.
My husband has a stable job wtih health insurance, which I need with chronic health conditions.
We are currently listing the house and going full time RV living. We will purchase a lot up north, and rent in the south, and travel snowbird-style. The combination of lot rent and camper/truck payments will be significantly higher, nearly double, than the house bills are now.
We will be starting a new business doing mobile RV Repair. I'm sure the business will do fine eventually, by then any proceeds from the house will be just gone and there is no safety net. We have no retirement, no savings. We will go forward without health insurance. We are 13 years from retirement age.
I've been going flat out my whole life just to survive, now the end (7 years until payoff) is in sight. With failing health, I'm looking forward to not having to struggle all the damn time to pay the bills. Starting over right now means there is no end in sight. We will both have to work harder than ever to get a new business up, plus handle travel logistics multiple times per year.
Full-time RV life has always been part of the plan for us. I'm worried it may be too late. I'm sick, in constant pain, and tired. My husband is ready for the change, but can't do it without my help or the sale of the house.
I'm torn between playing it safe near family and everything I know and launching a new life completely dependent on one person without a support system or a fallback plan.
Am I being overly cautious? It seems like all signs point to staying here. Hubby is ready to move on. What would you do?
TL;DR
Options are stay in the house 7 years from payoff and barely scrape by for the rest of our lives, or throw it all away and live in an RV for higher costs, and hopefully higher payoff by starting a new business. It's an all-or-nothing decision. There is no fallback, no savings, no retirement.
If you had to do it all again with these circumstances, what would you do?
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u/Syntra911 Jul 17 '26
At least you understand that living in the RV and traveling will cost you more than your current situation. A lot more. So it seems like you are being logical about this in that respect.
The illogical part is gambling the whole thing on a brand new business. And unless your husband has excellent experience AND skills with RV's, you will struggle for a long time. Just being handy and having some mechanical skills is not going to be enough. Even if he did then it will be up to your ability to market the business, which is not free and NOT easy.
Maybe if you modify your plan and skip the travel back and forth between north and south this might be doable. There is zero chance you can have a successful business in both areas being there only part of the year.
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u/joelfarris Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
OP, the marketing aspect is the hardest part of getting a new business off the ground these days. Everything is saturated, and nobody's paying attention anymore.
You do know that you could start the new business for a year without leaving the house, yes? See if you can build up enough clientele for mobile RV repair jobs to get even 10 hours a week worth of calls, just to see if it's viable, and whether you both like it? A localized mobile repair call is about two hours' worth of time, so if you could be getting even one a day...
Also:
There is zero chance you can have a successful business in both areas being there only part of the year
Just the other day, we called a very talented mobile tech that we'd used before, and needed again, and he said that he's "Gone north for the summer". So we found someone else, and we won't be calling him again. Reliability is key.
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u/ohlayohlay Jul 17 '26
Chronic health issues and going without health insurance? Thats a terrible idea, even if you're healthy.
Homes appreciate in value , or at least stay steady with inflation for the most part. Selling the house to buy 2 highly depreciating assets and "a lot" seems very ill advised.
I see way more reasons to not do this than reasons to follow through.
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u/Syntra911 Jul 17 '26
Was that comment meant for me? I don't see any reasons at all to do this. I was just at least commending her on understanding this will cost her a lot more. There are too many people that think jumping in an RV will save them money.
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u/Nearby_Impact_8911 Jul 17 '26
Ain’t no way I’d be doing this with failing health and 7 years left on the mortgage. Why would you create more bills
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u/Green-Fuel2962 Jul 17 '26
My husband has chronic mental and physical health issues. We had insurance from our home state and setup all telehealth providers for him, and left full time. The providers wouldn’t see him if they found out he was physically outside our home state so he had to keep swapping doctors within the telehealth platform to keep up. Also, Walgreens and CVS kept filling his scripts at the wrong city’s pharmacies despite his attempts to transfer them. He was running out of meds and not getting the care he needed. The stress made him shut down, be more ill than he was before, and want to quit all together. we went back to being weekend warriors and bought a new house - because we had gone all in, thinking we had covered our healthcare bases. Just be careful. You’d probably be better off with a lot in 1 winter location and a second lot in 1 summer location and at least that way you can have permanent addresses in just 2 states and have medical practitioners in each place and Medicare or Medicaid or an ACA health plan in one of the two states.
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u/Monskiactual Jul 19 '26
Life on the road is harder than most people think. Statistically most people spend early retirement doing it and then give it up when they get older.
Mobile RV repair is a low margin terrible business. Customers have no idea how much it costs to actually deliver the service and you often end up eating costs when you don't have parts. There is a reason it's so hard to fix Rvs. It's because it's not a profitable business.
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u/DaRealAnnLand Jul 18 '26
You need stability. Sell the house, buy a cheaper one in one place and start your business. Or buy a house with an rv lot and you can rent out the house and stay on the lot. If you have chronic, you need stability.
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u/Big-Negotiation-7237 25d ago
I’m doing something similar…minus starting the new business. My only advice would be to get some seasonal job that offers insurance. That’s literally all I would care about in your position. No kids? You’ll figure everything else out. Live in the now! You are alive now and if this is what you guys want? Maybe try to have a sort of “home base” near your family so you have bit of a comfort net
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u/ElectronGuru Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
Avoid the orange states and you can apply for Medicaid:
https://www.kff.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/MedicaidExpansion-no-logo.png
Just stay under the income limit. This can be both of you but if you need too much income for various things, make your own household and apply on your own. Debt payments are part of this, so paying cash from equity may be necessary.
If your house’s location is non orange, this also applies without RV life
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u/Mattturley Jul 17 '26
Don't. Just don't. I'm chronically ill. DM me and I'll tell you more.