RPF0607-The_Only_3_Legitimate_Reasons_to_Buy_an_RV_that_I_can_come_up_with
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00:00:15.320 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with
00:00:18.320 | the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich
00:00:21.800 | and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:26.680 | Today, we're going to focus a little bit on that word insight.
00:00:30.320 | Specifically as it relates to the purchase of a recreational vehicle, an RV.
00:00:37.000 | We're in the middle of an asset protection series here on Radical Personal Finance.
00:00:41.160 | Just finished up homestead exemptions.
00:00:43.200 | We're next going to talk about retirement account exemptions, but in the middle of
00:00:47.240 | this asset protection series, I have a problem.
00:00:49.120 | The problem is half of my audience loves technical financial planning
00:00:52.600 | and half of my audience hates it.
00:00:54.720 | So I'm going to mix up that series with just a short discussion on RVs and today's
00:01:00.640 | show, the only three legitimate reasons to buy an RV, obviously that's a quite
00:01:05.160 | cocky statement, which I will expand on in a moment, but it's official.
00:01:09.440 | My wife and I have officially ended our own RV trip.
00:01:13.200 | We've been on the road for five months, traveled about 13,000 miles around the
00:01:17.760 | United States, essentially from one coast to the other, and in so doing, I have
00:01:23.600 | learned and analyzed quite a bit of the United States and quite a bit of this RV
00:01:28.840 | lifestyle.
00:01:29.520 | I will share more on some of the personal lessons learned on that trip in a separate
00:01:35.640 | episode at some point, probably here in the month of December.
00:01:39.080 | But today I want to talk about a show idea that has been on my head as I drive many
00:01:44.920 | thousands of miles, just looking and thinking and analyzing, and it is this.
00:01:49.040 | There are only three legitimate reasons that I can find to buy an RV.
00:01:53.960 | Now I will hasten to qualify that statement to say it's your money, your
00:01:59.080 | reasons, you do whatever you want.
00:02:00.680 | But these are just three reasons that make sense to me.
00:02:04.240 | And I think if you hear them and analyze your situation in light of them, you will
00:02:09.920 | probably make a better decision with regard to your potential purchase of an RV.
00:02:15.680 | Some people buy RVs and they're deeply happy with them.
00:02:19.280 | Some people buy RVs and they find it's one of the more expensive wastes of money
00:02:24.720 | that they have ever, well, frankly engaged in.
00:02:27.920 | And so let me explain to you three good reasons to have an RV.
00:02:32.760 | In a separate show, and I'll briefly mention at the end of the show, I'll give
00:02:36.640 | you an out, I'll give you a great compromise situation that I think will work
00:02:40.920 | ideally for many people who are looking for a solution to an RV, but are concerned
00:02:46.920 | about buying a big fancy one.
00:02:48.360 | So stay tuned for that towards the end.
00:02:49.920 | Number one, the number one legitimate reason for you to buy an RV is if you want
00:02:56.720 | to comfortably sleep and live in a place where there are few or no hotels, the
00:03:07.240 | number one reason for you to buy an RV is if you want to comfortably sleep, stay,
00:03:13.720 | and live where there are no hotels.
00:03:18.280 | I have become fully persuaded that hotel living is a tremendous bargain.
00:03:25.920 | The ability to just to rent a hotel room for one night or 20 nights, whatever you
00:03:30.600 | like is a tremendous bargain.
00:03:32.720 | And it is a much better bargain than buying an RV.
00:03:36.160 | Even if you are a cheap person like me, even if you are obsessive about trying to
00:03:43.560 | get the best deal and save money, hotels are a bargain.
00:03:47.720 | They are cheap.
00:03:48.960 | But there are a lot of places that you might like to be where there simply are no
00:03:57.080 | hotels.
00:03:59.240 | Perhaps the best example would be if you travel around the United States,
00:04:02.760 | especially in the Western United States, you will find many millions of acres of
00:04:10.560 | wild land where you are legally free to stay and hunt, take pictures, hike, climb,
00:04:23.080 | engage in whatever your version of outdoor recreation is.
00:04:27.760 | You're legally entitled to stay there, but there are no hotels there.
00:04:30.600 | Now, don't miss the fact that you don't need an RV to stay in those places.
00:04:36.480 | You can bring along a tent, you can roll out your bed, roll under the stars, you
00:04:42.080 | can sleep in your car.
00:04:43.240 | There are all kinds of things you can do that don't involve an RV, which is why I
00:04:46.400 | use the word comfortably.
00:04:48.760 | If you want to comfortably stay where there are no hotels, then an RV is a
00:04:56.000 | ticket that you will appreciate.
00:04:58.200 | You see this especially out in the Western United States.
00:05:01.280 | There is a big difference between the Eastern United States, the built up
00:05:04.920 | populous areas near the coast, and the Western United States, especially in
00:05:08.800 | terms of RV ownership.
00:05:10.320 | You can just see it as you drive down the road.
00:05:12.320 | If you go out into the country, especially in the country in the Western United
00:05:16.040 | States, it seems as though virtually everybody has an RV in their driveway.
00:05:22.160 | And that makes sense to me because there's so much land available where you
00:05:26.560 | can park, where you can recreate to your heart's content.
00:05:30.200 | And the RV brings a huge measure of comfort to that experience.
00:05:35.320 | The RV brings the ability to run a heater when it's cold, a nice propane
00:05:39.960 | heater, and keep yourself warm.
00:05:41.360 | It brings the ability to run an air conditioner when it's hot, a nice air
00:05:44.800 | conditioner, keep yourself cool.
00:05:46.400 | It runs the ability to have a nice comfortable bed with a comfortable
00:05:50.640 | mattress where you're not lying on the floor on some thermo rest
00:05:53.680 | thing with a rock poking through.
00:05:55.120 | It gives you the ability to have a shower, to have a bathroom, to have
00:05:58.720 | facilities where you can cook food and eat dinner together.
00:06:02.640 | And an RV solves those things beautifully.
00:06:04.840 | It brings comfort in a place where there are no hotels.
00:06:10.160 | Many people do like going out with a tent.
00:06:15.440 | Many people do like going out and cooking their food.
00:06:19.360 | But with the, you know, on the ground and the fire, but when you have an RV, you
00:06:25.280 | can live in those places, you can be comfortable in those places and since
00:06:31.080 | there are no hotels in those places, really, if you want that high level of
00:06:37.880 | comfort, an RV is your only solution.
00:06:41.160 | Now, remember that there are many types of RVs and the bigger your RV, the less
00:06:48.000 | off the beaten path you'll be able to go.
00:06:50.000 | But an RV works beautifully in that situation.
00:06:52.440 | There are other contexts as well.
00:06:54.320 | Perhaps you enjoy going to the races or you enjoy going to the
00:06:58.080 | football games and tailgating.
00:06:59.600 | RVs work wonderfully in those circumstances.
00:07:02.840 | You can show up the night before, get a good night's sleep, be
00:07:05.440 | parked on the inside track, be able to hang out all day with your buddies.
00:07:09.160 | When everyone else is fighting traffic, trying to leave, you're hanging out,
00:07:12.360 | cracking the top on another beer while you sit there and enjoy the rest of the
00:07:15.080 | day, and then you leave the next morning.
00:07:17.880 | Perhaps you like to go and race cars.
00:07:19.920 | Well, you can be comfortable in your RV while you are at the track.
00:07:25.680 | Perhaps you ride in the rodeo.
00:07:28.120 | Well, you can stay comfortably in your RV, care for your horses
00:07:32.400 | while you're there at the event.
00:07:34.000 | And so these are places where there are no hotels on the racetrack.
00:07:38.400 | There are no hotels in the rodeo grounds, but your RV can be there and
00:07:43.120 | you can be quite comfortable there.
00:07:46.080 | So if your travel goals or your lifestyle goals involve your traveling in places
00:07:51.720 | where there are no hotels, and if you want to comfortably stay in those places, an
00:07:57.600 | RV is a wonderful way for you to do that.
00:08:01.960 | Legitimate reason number two for you to consider buying an RV is if you want to
00:08:07.320 | travel for a significantly extended period and you want to have your stuff settled
00:08:13.680 | around you so that you're not moving here and moving there.
00:08:16.600 | Now, I believe that travel period needs to be significant,
00:08:21.840 | needs to be quite extended.
00:08:24.000 | If you want to go on a two week family vacation to the national parks, I
00:08:27.600 | recommend, if you want to stay at an RV, rent an RV.
00:08:31.240 | It will be a better move for you to rent your RV than it will be for you to buy
00:08:36.440 | that.
00:08:36.600 | And my observation is that people get it.
00:08:37.960 | All every place I've been, you will see tons and tons of rental RVs.
00:08:43.200 | I went to Grand Canyon National Park and there are dozens.
00:08:46.360 | And the campground that's there for RVs, the big campground, there are dozens and
00:08:54.280 | dozens of rental RVs out there.
00:08:56.760 | So people get this.
00:08:58.360 | But you can rent a great RV and have a great trip if you want to do that for a
00:09:03.760 | short period of time.
00:09:04.520 | And that is definitely financially the best move.
00:09:07.040 | But if you want to travel for an extended period of time, I'm thinking months if
00:09:12.480 | not years, months if not years, then buying an RV is going to be a good
00:09:18.680 | solution for you.
00:09:19.600 | I would caution you, however, don't first jump to the idea of RVing thinking that
00:09:26.880 | that's the only way for you to travel for an extended period of time.
00:09:30.720 | RVing is not the only way for you to travel for an extended period of time.
00:09:36.160 | I go back to hotels and lodges and short term house rentals.
00:09:41.120 | There are so many places available that you can stay, that you can travel for a
00:09:45.920 | very long time, years, without ever buying an RV.
00:09:50.800 | And it might be the case that in your family situation, that's your best move.
00:09:55.960 | I went through this conversation with a friend of mine who, he and his wife are
00:10:00.720 | snowbirds.
00:10:01.400 | They don't enjoy being in the snow in the winter, so they like to fly south.
00:10:05.680 | And they thought about buying an RV and traveling in an RV.
00:10:08.360 | But ultimately, their decision was simply to travel in their car and to stay in
00:10:13.120 | hotels along the way.
00:10:14.280 | Now, if you have a spry and active middle-aged couple who is able to drive a
00:10:22.080 | small SUV around, they can fit all their things in an SUV without any problem.
00:10:26.840 | They can drive an SUV, they can stay in hotels, and by not traveling frenetically,
00:10:31.800 | by staying in a hotel at least for a few days at a time, if not weeks, if they're
00:10:35.360 | in a nice location, they can enjoy enough slowness of travel to really get a lot out
00:10:41.680 | of their trip.
00:10:42.160 | And by not having a big rig that you have to drive around, you can get a high gas
00:10:47.280 | mileage.
00:10:47.640 | I mean, just simply do the math on this.
00:10:49.600 | Consider the simple fuel cost of dragging around an RV with you.
00:10:55.440 | So pretend for a moment that you didn't have to buy an RV.
00:10:59.240 | Pretend for a moment that most of the ones that most people buy cost at minimum
00:11:04.760 | $30,000 for a travel trailer, up to many hundreds of thousands of dollars for a
00:11:09.840 | nice, enjoyable RV.
00:11:11.400 | So when I was traveling with a diesel pickup truck and a travel trailer, I can
00:11:16.800 | get about 10, basically I always get 10 miles per gallon.
00:11:19.400 | Whenever I'm towing, I get 10 miles per gallon.
00:11:21.120 | Now, we traveled a lot and you do not have to travel as much.
00:11:25.600 | You don't have to drive as much.
00:11:26.880 | Gas, the amount of diesel fuel you put in your truck is directly correlated to how
00:11:31.520 | much you travel.
00:11:32.600 | But for our purposes, we traveled a lot.
00:11:35.040 | And so let's, let me show you how the math works out.
00:11:37.240 | We traveled about 13,000 miles on our recent five month trip.
00:11:42.440 | And I want to, at the risk of wearing you out, repeat for the fourth time, we
00:11:47.760 | traveled a lot.
00:11:48.600 | This is generally by every experienced traveler.
00:11:51.720 | The normal course of action is when you start traveling, you move a lot.
00:11:55.880 | And then over time, people start to slow down.
00:11:57.880 | We didn't want to travel as much as we did, but in order for us to get what we
00:12:01.000 | wanted out of our trip, we did travel a lot.
00:12:03.120 | You don't have to move as much.
00:12:04.720 | You could spend five months and drive a thousand miles.
00:12:06.680 | We moved a lot.
00:12:07.720 | So 13,000 miles at 10 miles per gallon, that comes out to 1,300 gallons of diesel
00:12:14.960 | fuel.
00:12:15.240 | So if you assume we spent that we did, we use 1,300 gallons of diesel fuel.
00:12:21.080 | And if we assume an average right now of about $3 and 20 cents a gallon for diesel,
00:12:25.920 | I'll have to go in.
00:12:27.600 | I need to go and compute my own average since then, but I would say it's probably
00:12:31.400 | somewhere just north of $3.
00:12:32.840 | So $3 and 20 cents per gallon of diesel, which if you're traveling in another
00:12:37.680 | place, it's a lot more expensive.
00:12:39.160 | Thankfully in the United States, it's cheaper than Canada or Europe.
00:12:42.440 | So 1,300 times $3 and 20 cents comes out to be $4,160 in fuel costs.
00:12:50.000 | Obviously we're ignoring motor oil.
00:12:53.320 | We're ignoring tire wear and tear.
00:12:54.960 | This is just simply fuel.
00:12:56.800 | $4,160 of fuel.
00:13:00.240 | Now, if my wife and I were traveling or perhaps even with our children, and if we
00:13:04.200 | could travel in a fuel efficient car, let's go to the best example.
00:13:06.760 | We drive a Prius.
00:13:07.720 | I could comfortably travel the United States and I have in a Prius.
00:13:11.840 | And the wonderful thing about that is you, if you're slowed down and you're not
00:13:15.160 | knowing 75, you could do 65 or seven, you can get 50 miles a gallon on the
00:13:18.640 | highway in a modern Prius.
00:13:20.520 | Let's just use that.
00:13:21.800 | 13,000 miles divided by 50 miles per gallon comes out to a total fuel of only
00:13:27.040 | fuel cost of only 260 gallons instead of 1,300 gallons for the diesel pickup truck.
00:13:34.160 | 260 gallons of regular unleaded, which would be, let's just say $2 and 35 cents
00:13:40.480 | on a national average right now, instead of $3 and 20 cents for diesel fuel comes
00:13:46.160 | out to $611 of fuel for the same 13,000 miles of driving.
00:13:52.520 | Remember driving the diesel pickup truck, dragging a trailer, getting 10 miles per
00:13:56.960 | gallon because you're dragging a big trailer is $4,160 of diesel fuel.
00:14:02.240 | Whereas the Prius is $611 of gasoline.
00:14:07.320 | Well, run the difference between 4,160 and 611 and you wind up with $3,549 of
00:14:16.120 | savings that's available to you.
00:14:18.000 | $3,549 of fuel savings by you're not driving a big truck with a big trailer.
00:14:26.440 | If we divide that into the same five month time period that we were traveling,
00:14:31.360 | divide that into 150 nights, 30 days per month times five months, just
00:14:36.400 | assume you're 150 night trip.
00:14:37.960 | Then even in that situation, you have an extra $23 and a half per day.
00:14:43.480 | Let's call it $24 per day.
00:14:45.760 | That's available to you.
00:14:48.040 | If you're not driving a big RV.
00:14:50.200 | 10 miles per gallon in RV is a good planning perspective to use.
00:14:57.760 | If you're buying a larger class A or large car class C, you're
00:15:02.160 | going to get closer to eight.
00:15:03.360 | Some of the big, big ones, you're going to get six or seven.
00:15:05.800 | If you're depending on how fast you're going.
00:15:08.240 | So somewhere between six and 10 is a good thing to choose.
00:15:11.520 | There are nice RVs, generally smaller, a class B, a van camper, especially
00:15:17.080 | one with a modern diesel engine that you can get closer to 15 or 16 or sometimes
00:15:23.040 | 18, but in that general, you're going to be spending in excess of a
00:15:26.240 | hundred thousand dollars for those rigs.
00:15:27.800 | And so now you're going to be dealing with a much different price perspective.
00:15:30.520 | So the point is you could add $25 a day to your daily budget by
00:15:35.320 | not dragging around a giant camper.
00:15:39.920 | So if you added $25 per day, and you just said, instead of spending this
00:15:44.480 | $25 per day on simply fuel, I'm going to spend it on hotel stays.
00:15:50.320 | You change the makeup of your budget.
00:15:53.680 | Now I'm understating the expenses of traveling around with an RV and I'm, I'm
00:15:58.280 | specifically ignoring so far RV systems maintenance, all I'm saying is fuel.
00:16:03.920 | That ignores the fact that a diesel pickup truck will usually use somewhere
00:16:08.480 | between 12 and 15 quarts of oil.
00:16:11.000 | If you have a more modern one, you can make it five or 6,000
00:16:14.400 | miles before an oil change.
00:16:15.720 | Um, for my truck, it's 3000 miles.
00:16:18.320 | I'm ignoring the cost of tires.
00:16:22.800 | I'm ignoring other repairs.
00:16:25.640 | When you're pulling heavy stuff, you're making your vehicle work.
00:16:28.920 | You're going to have more repairs on, on the systems of your vehicle than driving
00:16:32.840 | around in a Toyota Prius or an SUV or whatever it is that you choose to drive.
00:16:37.880 | So with my friend who travels as a snowbird, what they've done, they
00:16:42.160 | travel all across the country.
00:16:43.520 | They just simply travel in an SUV and they bring along their bicycles.
00:16:48.480 | They've got their stuff with them.
00:16:49.560 | They got plenty of stuff and they stay in hotels and you can do that very comfortably.
00:16:54.920 | And you should seriously consider doing that.
00:16:57.520 | Now, if you want to travel for an extended period of time, months, and if you want
00:17:04.720 | to have your things settled with you, especially things like having children,
00:17:09.080 | my wife and I have young children.
00:17:11.560 | Hotels work fine.
00:17:13.480 | They can work fine to sleep in with young children.
00:17:16.360 | But if you're traveling a lot of miles, it is very nice to be able to pull into a
00:17:21.080 | rest area and put them in their beds.
00:17:23.040 | It is very freeing to have those facilities with you.
00:17:27.680 | So consider, will you actually be traveling for an extended period of time?
00:17:33.880 | And do your personal circumstances make it such that you'd like to have your
00:17:38.800 | things packed up, put away?
00:17:40.920 | You don't want to be taking a suitcase in and out of a hotel, et cetera.
00:17:44.560 | Don't jump too fast at saying, "Oh, I just don't want to stay in hotels."
00:17:51.240 | If you are willing to stay in hotels, there are a lot of places that you can go
00:17:56.640 | that you will not be able to get your RV.
00:17:59.760 | Taking your RV into downtown New York City is incredibly stressful.
00:18:05.400 | Much easier for you to simply get a hotel and enjoy the city experience.
00:18:10.200 | Now you can do both.
00:18:11.080 | You can leave your RV outside of the city and you can go into the
00:18:13.680 | city and get a place to stay.
00:18:15.160 | The point is just consider it.
00:18:17.000 | Between number one and number two, I think you'll probably have enough to be able to
00:18:24.760 | make a decision about whether an RV is right for you.
00:18:28.640 | If there are hotels available in most of the places where you wish to be, and if
00:18:34.320 | you don't mind not having all your stuff set up in your living room all the time,
00:18:39.080 | give serious thought to not choosing an RV.
00:18:42.640 | Give serious thought to doing vacation rentals.
00:18:45.440 | Give serious thought to traveling in a car.
00:18:47.680 | Give serious thought to not having an RV because you can do away with a whole lot
00:18:52.440 | of expense, a whole lot of stress, a whole lot of hassle by not having an RV.
00:18:58.240 | But on the other hand, if you want to stay in places where there aren't hotels and
00:19:01.760 | you'd like to have your things around you because you're working full time on the
00:19:04.960 | road, you're traveling for six months or a year and you've got small children and
00:19:09.680 | you're working, you want to be in places where there just simply aren't hotel
00:19:12.920 | facilities and you can't imagine sleeping on the ground, an RV is a perfect tool for
00:19:19.240 | you to have.
00:19:19.840 | Which brings me to number three.
00:19:22.600 | Number three.
00:19:24.000 | My number three legitimate reason to have an RV is if you'd like to have a backup
00:19:29.040 | plan, a bug out plan in case you need to move your family and maintain the
00:19:34.240 | integrity of your family unit and your life circumstances, an RV works wonderfully
00:19:39.800 | for that.
00:19:40.680 | The past weeks we've seen, of course, the horror of the California wildfires, seen
00:19:46.440 | many thousands of families have their homes destroyed, had their lives disrupted.
00:19:50.840 | Many people die.
00:19:52.080 | When you're in a situation like that, you need a bug out plan.
00:19:55.360 | You got to plan to get out.
00:19:57.240 | Now, the circumstances of that fire is that the fire arose so fast, especially the
00:20:02.080 | campfire, which is one of the worst.
00:20:03.680 | The fire arose so fast, there wasn't a lot of time for pre-planning.
00:20:09.440 | If there's a fire coming over the hill, hopefully you've got your fire plan in
00:20:12.680 | place and you know it's a couple of days away.
00:20:14.320 | Hopefully you've got everything packed up and you're ready to leave.
00:20:17.200 | Well, my understanding of the campfire is that it was birthed or lit basically in
00:20:22.600 | the morning and then it spread immediately.
00:20:24.120 | So there was very little time of preparation, but an RV can work well, as
00:20:29.440 | long as you're not stuck in traffic and on little roads, an RV can work well as a
00:20:33.040 | good way for you to get your family out of an area, but I don't think it's the
00:20:36.400 | best for that.
00:20:37.200 | Usually you'd want to be more nimble.
00:20:38.880 | Where an RV works well is if you need a backup plan for your family to live in.
00:20:44.000 | I consider the most likely threat that most people will face in their life is
00:20:50.400 | economic disruption in their personal life.
00:20:53.480 | That economic disruption can come in the form of a simple job loss for an
00:20:58.760 | individual person.
00:20:59.640 | That economic disruption can come in the form of a collapsing local economy.
00:21:03.880 | Think Detroit, Michigan.
00:21:10.160 | That economic disruption can come in the form of a regional calamity.
00:21:14.360 | Think Hurricane Katrina devastating the Gulf Coast.
00:21:18.000 | That economic disruption could come in terms of a regional or national economic
00:21:24.120 | crisis of some kind.
00:21:25.320 | Think Argentina.
00:21:26.920 | Think Venezuela.
00:21:28.720 | Think Egypt after the Arab Spring.
00:21:31.640 | These types of regional crises that a family can face.
00:21:35.280 | So whether it's on a small scale or a larger scale, the most important thing to
00:21:40.240 | have in that circumstance is the ability to leave the place where things are bad
00:21:45.040 | and go to a place where things are better.
00:21:47.480 | Again, the best solution for you to keep your family unit intact in those
00:21:53.600 | circumstances is to leave the place where things are bad and go to a place where
00:21:58.760 | things are better.
00:22:00.240 | Now, most short-term disasters, wildfire, hurricane, et cetera, most short-term
00:22:05.800 | things don't necessarily destroy a local economy.
00:22:09.520 | And so most people can just simply load up their car, go a few hundred miles away,
00:22:13.880 | stay in a hotel for a few days.
00:22:15.360 | Once the floodwaters of Houston recede, you can go back to Houston to shovel out
00:22:19.280 | your house and rebuild your life.
00:22:20.600 | But there are problems that are so widespread and that attack a region where
00:22:27.360 | coming back, at least in the short term, is just not, doesn't work.
00:22:30.880 | That can happen because your profession is no longer needed.
00:22:35.080 | You're a coal miner in West Virginia.
00:22:37.280 | Well, you should leave.
00:22:38.320 | Or you build cars in Detroit, you should leave.
00:22:42.600 | Or you live in Flint, Michigan and the waters, leave.
00:22:47.320 | So whether that's a regional thing or whether it's a regional thing that just
00:22:52.320 | simply just so devastates the infrastructure, again, New Orleans, where
00:22:56.400 | thousands of people leave and are never coming back.
00:22:58.640 | So in those circumstances, you want the ability to pack up your family and go
00:23:03.640 | from where things are bad to where things are better.
00:23:05.720 | In a country like the United States, where you have such massive borders and you have
00:23:10.080 | such economic diversity across the country, one of your best ways to do that is just
00:23:14.360 | simply go to a different state.
00:23:15.600 | An RV works very well as a backup plan in that kind of scenario.
00:23:22.400 | This is one of the concepts that I was curious about prior to going on the road
00:23:25.640 | that I wanted to prove and see what's it actually like.
00:23:27.600 | But if you buy the right kind of RV, ours is a bunkhouse model.
00:23:31.120 | We have bunks for all of our children to close the door.
00:23:33.240 | Even though it's small, you can have all your things.
00:23:36.320 | You can have self-contained systems and you can move in comfort from
00:23:40.400 | one place to another place.
00:23:42.560 | And by having your own roof over your head, you can often go to a place where
00:23:47.920 | the jobs are good, but the housing market is tight.
00:23:50.840 | Think North Dakota and the oil boom.
00:23:53.800 | There was no housing anywhere.
00:23:55.800 | So if you could provide your own housing, though, you could get a great job.
00:23:58.480 | And if you have the ability to put your own roof over your head, you can slide in.
00:24:03.360 | If you're in an economic disaster, you've run out of money, you've been
00:24:05.600 | foreclosed out of your house, you've had to leave, you dropped the keys on the
00:24:09.080 | front door and you've just said, we're going to pack it.
00:24:11.240 | We have a garage sale for all of our furniture.
00:24:13.120 | We load up the RV.
00:24:14.320 | We're going to move from Georgia to Kansas and we're going to start fresh.
00:24:18.800 | But we're going to go where the jobs are good.
00:24:20.440 | We're going to go where the economy is good.
00:24:22.560 | Well, in an RV, you can relatively easily find a place to park it.
00:24:27.040 | You can rent somebody's driveway from them for a few hundred dollars a month.
00:24:32.040 | You can stay in a campground.
00:24:34.160 | You can stay in an RV park and you can reset your life.
00:24:38.040 | You can have low expenses to keep a roof over your family's head and reasonable
00:24:42.120 | comfort while you then save up the money that you need for a first, first month,
00:24:46.360 | last month in security deposit on a rental house, or you can save up money
00:24:49.960 | to buy a place, et cetera.
00:24:51.640 | So it can be a good economic transition plan.
00:24:54.320 | I know most people don't probably don't think about that, but fatherhood
00:24:59.280 | has changed me in that regard.
00:25:01.400 | When I was single, I was incredibly flexible.
00:25:05.720 | And if you're a single person, you don't need a big RV as a backup plan.
00:25:09.720 | You can go live in one if you want to, but you can sleep in your car.
00:25:12.400 | You can crash on a friend's couch, et cetera.
00:25:14.400 | Uh, but being the father of many young children and having all of the
00:25:20.560 | associated responsibilities, it would be a little bit hard for me and my family
00:25:24.680 | to say to people, even well-meaning, nice people, Hey, listen, can we
00:25:29.040 | come and stay on your couch?
00:25:30.600 | We would basically take over and completely disrupt their household.
00:25:33.800 | But it's a lot easier for me to say to somebody, Hey, listen, can we park in
00:25:37.560 | your backyard or can we park in your back acreage for a couple of months
00:25:41.200 | while we transition, we're having some troubles and we're trying to get started.
00:25:44.280 | And so being a father who, who has the responsibility to provide for many
00:25:49.280 | helpless people, it's changed the appreciation that I have for being able
00:25:55.000 | to do that.
00:25:55.520 | And when you look at economic disruption that people face, when they lose their
00:25:58.680 | job, lose their house, have a medical emergency, et cetera, if you can keep
00:26:02.480 | your family together and you're not dispersed, you're not, you know, if I
00:26:06.120 | had to send my wife to her parents and so-and-so is taking care of the kids
00:26:09.120 | and I'm off working in another country, this does not do well for family life.
00:26:13.000 | I've worked with so many people who've been in that situation.
00:26:15.240 | You know, they go to another country to work.
00:26:16.920 | It doesn't do well.
00:26:17.680 | I'm not doing it.
00:26:19.040 | I'm taking my family with me.
00:26:20.120 | And an RV is a great way to do that.
00:26:22.400 | Especially if you live in a large country like the United States or, or, or
00:26:26.880 | many places, if you live in the European union, where you can travel among many
00:26:30.440 | different countries, if you live in a place where you can move substantially
00:26:34.200 | change your geography, the RV is a good backup plan.
00:26:37.360 | Now, the cool thing about it, if you put those three things together, if you, all
00:26:42.720 | three of them apply to you, I think you can be totally happy and satisfied with
00:26:47.080 | the purchase of an RV.
00:26:48.600 | If you enjoy staying in the places where there are no hotels, you love to go out
00:26:53.480 | and, and, and travel up a forest service road and stay at a little forest service
00:26:57.960 | campground for free at the top of a mountain.
00:26:59.600 | There's no hotels out there.
00:27:00.840 | If you enjoy being out there for a week and you like to be able to stay out there
00:27:06.520 | and sleep well and have your family together and watch your kids play in the
00:27:09.880 | woods and, and, and ride your four wheelers and do all that kind of thing.
00:27:13.440 | And if you like the idea of having a backup plan, in case your house gets burned
00:27:17.800 | down or blown down, well, in that situation, then the RV is a wonderful thing to have.
00:27:23.800 | And you can buy one relatively inexpensively.
00:27:27.360 | You can keep one with relatively little hassle, and it'd be
00:27:30.880 | a tremendous benefit for you.
00:27:33.240 | You'll be happy because when all three of those things are together, you'll
00:27:37.080 | be so satisfied with the RV purchase.
00:27:39.240 | I love the RV purchase that we made because it has allowed us to comfortably
00:27:45.840 | stay where there are no hotels, to enjoy some really peak experiences that I
00:27:50.880 | never could have enjoyed if we were stuck to staying where we could purchase
00:27:55.480 | accommodation, it's allowed us to travel for a very extended period of time.
00:28:00.160 | And to have all of our things settled.
00:28:02.800 | And I love having that backup plan as a way for my place for my family to live
00:28:08.080 | that's mobile, that we could move our entire household from one region of the
00:28:11.560 | country to another region of the country.
00:28:13.640 | If we needed to.
00:28:14.600 | If those three things are together, you can make a very, very satisfying RV purchase.
00:28:21.840 | But on the other hand, I think that if those three things are questionable,
00:28:25.040 | you're probably not going to be happy buying an RV.
00:28:27.120 | First, if you're just going to travel places where there are hotels, don't get an RV.
00:28:34.280 | If you're going to travel places where there's lots of lodging options
00:28:38.360 | available, don't get an RV.
00:28:40.120 | If you're going to travel for short periods of time, two week family vacation,
00:28:44.080 | you're thinking that an RV is going to be a great solution for you.
00:28:46.600 | I don't think it is because what happens, you spend just as much time in that
00:28:51.280 | circumstance, you spend just as much time loading up your pack, more time loading
00:28:56.280 | up and preparing your RV for a two week trip, getting all the stuff out of your
00:29:00.080 | house, putting it in the RV.
00:29:01.280 | And then when you get home two weeks later, you got to get all the stuff out,
00:29:03.680 | put it away.
00:29:04.320 | It's very stressful because you don't know what you need.
00:29:06.120 | You're not leaving the RV packed all the time.
00:29:08.080 | It's just a lot of hassle.
00:29:09.400 | Better off for you just to say, we're going to just throw some clothes in the bag.
00:29:13.120 | And go, we're going to eat out.
00:29:15.040 | We're going to stay at a hotel.
00:29:16.160 | It's going to be great.
00:29:16.960 | You'll have less stress than you will dealing with an RV.
00:29:20.520 | If you're only going for a short period of time, my wife and I found this when we
00:29:23.960 | had wonderful invitations from people to stay in places, but just even though we
00:29:27.680 | could take the RV to a, um, somebody's house and they said here, stay in the
00:29:32.080 | house and we enjoyed staying in the house.
00:29:34.400 | It was so much work for us to unload the RV, figure out what we needed in the
00:29:38.520 | house, the clothes, the toys, the food, you know, the, the, the equipment to take
00:29:42.640 | it all in the house, set up in the house for however long we're going to be there.
00:29:46.120 | A few days, few weeks.
00:29:47.280 | And then at the end of it, to clean up the house and put all the
00:29:49.560 | stuff back in every RV, we came to the point where we just rather just stay in
00:29:52.400 | the RV and the same thing applies in that vacation standpoint, you spend days
00:29:57.480 | preparing and then a few days on the trip and then days cleaning up.
00:30:01.960 | And then finally, if you don't care about having a backup plan or a bug out plan,
00:30:08.320 | or if your bug out plan involves you traveling to a different country on an
00:30:11.120 | airplane or jumping on your boat or something like that, many situations
00:30:15.960 | in RV wouldn't actually work.
00:30:17.080 | Again, if I were fleeing from a fire, if it's coming in, you want to be in a nimble
00:30:20.640 | car, you don't want to be dragging around a giant trailer.
00:30:22.640 | So those are the kinds of things that, that if those don't apply to you, I
00:30:27.560 | recommend you stay away from an RV.
00:30:29.680 | Now, can you live cheaply in an RV?
00:30:32.760 | Yes, you can.
00:30:34.480 | Can you do it cheap?
00:30:36.560 | Yes.
00:30:38.480 | There are people who use RVs to massive economic benefit.
00:30:42.080 | I always enjoy seeing the people who, they love to go and snow ski country.
00:30:46.880 | And they just take their RV and every weekend they go and stay in the parking
00:30:51.040 | lot of the ski lodge and then hit the fresh powder on Saturday morning.
00:30:54.800 | The reason you can do that most of the time is because many ski resorts are
00:30:58.920 | leased or placed on national forest land.
00:31:01.200 | And so the technically the parking lot is national forest land.
00:31:04.160 | So you can take your RV and you can stay in a, uh, in the, in the parking lot and
00:31:08.960 | stay there and then go and ski and you can save yourself a few hundred dollars a
00:31:11.760 | night on that hotel lodging.
00:31:13.560 | And you can avoid a lot of the traffic getting out there to the slopes.
00:31:16.720 | So there are many ways to do it.
00:31:18.480 | And you don't have to spend a lot of money in an RV.
00:31:21.200 | I met many just broke people living in an RV full time.
00:31:26.720 | But if you are going to maintain a certain standard of comfort, especially
00:31:32.560 | if you're providing for others, if you're going to maintain a middle-class
00:31:35.200 | lifestyle, RVs are not cheap.
00:31:38.080 | When the equipment breaks, it's expensive.
00:31:40.880 | If you're a single, you can do it cheap.
00:31:44.320 | You don't care.
00:31:44.840 | You can, you can put stuff together, but if you're just going to maintain kind
00:31:48.120 | of middle-class standards, it's hard to do it cheap.
00:31:51.800 | Now there is, I believe an ideal solution for you.
00:31:59.200 | If you are trying to put these three things together, but it's not a slam
00:32:05.920 | dunk for you, for example, you like to stay where there are no hotels, but
00:32:09.400 | you're not going to do it for a long period of time, or you don't want to do
00:32:11.760 | it all the time.
00:32:12.360 | And the solution is the pop-up camper, which I will create an entirely separate
00:32:18.240 | show to try to sell you on the idea of a pop-up camper.
00:32:21.840 | But here's what you should know in preparation for that show.
00:32:24.160 | I grew up camping in a pop-up camper and I hated it.
00:32:28.840 | And I promised myself that I would never have a pop-up camper.
00:32:33.240 | I told my wife for years, how much I disliked pop-up tent campers, and I
00:32:38.760 | never wanted to have a pop-up tent camper.
00:32:41.160 | Today, I would be thoroughly happy to have a pop-up tent camper.
00:32:46.200 | And I'm going to recommend to you in a separate episode that your next RV or
00:32:51.640 | your only RV should be a pop-up tent camper.
00:32:55.600 | And I'll explain how the pop-up tent camper satisfies all of these
00:33:00.680 | things in a really ideal way.
00:33:02.960 | It gives a good balance here that I think for most people is far
00:33:07.160 | more compelling than they think.
00:33:08.360 | Now it won't work for long-term travel where you're living in it.
00:33:12.680 | But for most of the ways that most US Americans own and use RVs, a pop-up tent
00:33:18.240 | camper really will be an ideal solution.
00:33:21.400 | I'll save that one for a separate show.
00:33:24.960 | Now as I close today's show and wrap it up, I want to take just a moment and
00:33:28.880 | talk to you about one of the biggest questions that people ask about
00:33:32.400 | while traveling is health care.
00:33:34.840 | How do you obtain for yourself appropriate health care on the road?
00:33:37.920 | And I'm doing this as an ad for Samaritan Ministries, and I'll explain
00:33:41.880 | how and why it works in a moment.
00:33:43.880 | I've done many series of shows on health care sharing ministries.
00:33:48.240 | If you're unfamiliar with them, a health care sharing ministry is a
00:33:52.720 | religious organization and/or an ideological organization, which
00:33:57.360 | specifically involves the ability of members of that organization to share
00:34:02.600 | their expenses with one another.
00:34:04.400 | These organizations are not health insurance.
00:34:06.920 | There is no legal contract between you and a health insurance company, but they
00:34:12.440 | do function in some way similar to health insurance, whereas you incur medical
00:34:16.760 | expenses, those medical expenses can, may, probably will be, legally or not
00:34:22.920 | guaranteed to be, but probably will be paid for and shared among your fellow
00:34:27.240 | members.
00:34:27.640 | There are a variety of these out there.
00:34:28.880 | I've done shows on a number of them, and they range from, and the reason I point
00:34:35.080 | out religious ideology and ideology being important is there has to be an
00:34:38.920 | ideological component to them.
00:34:40.640 | Most of these are Christian organizations, although the brand of Christianity will
00:34:45.360 | vary depending on the company.
00:34:49.720 | So you'll have a very kind of loose, general things like liberty, what they
00:34:55.360 | call liberty health sharing, where we affirm that God is about liberty kind of
00:34:59.680 | thing, just this very vague theological convictions to the one that my family and
00:35:04.400 | I use, which is called Samaritan Ministries, which is extremely
00:35:07.640 | conservative, Trinitarian, Protestant doctrine, et cetera.
00:35:11.520 | Though I think you can join if you're not Protestant as well, if you're Orthodox
00:35:14.640 | or Catholic.
00:35:15.240 | So the point is that these organizations really work wonderfully.
00:35:20.000 | And when traveling, one of the things that I have most enjoyed about a healthcare
00:35:24.400 | sharing ministry is it works the way that health things should work.
00:35:29.600 | In this way, when my wife and I, if we need to consult a doctor or a care
00:35:34.960 | provider or something like that, we just simply go and choose one.
00:35:38.920 | And as we've traveled across the country, it's been easy for us to choose one
00:35:43.360 | anywhere of any brand or any variety that's worked for us.
00:35:48.400 | And then when we're done with that medical service, we just
00:35:53.880 | simply pay the medical provider.
00:35:56.240 | Just take $20 bills or a hundred dollar bills, the case may be out of my wallet,
00:36:00.120 | and I pay them for their service.
00:36:01.920 | And in that payment, I'm able to get a very reasonable price.
00:36:05.640 | I understand that healthcare generally costs a lot, but when you start pulling
00:36:10.920 | physical paper money out of your pocket, you can get a lot of health providers to
00:36:14.360 | do a lot of things for a lot cheaper price.
00:36:16.320 | And then when we're done with it, whenever we're done with that event, I
00:36:22.400 | just take those bills, I submit them to Samaritan Ministries for reimbursement.
00:36:27.160 | They share it and I get checks in the mail.
00:36:29.840 | And it is wonderful.
00:36:31.840 | I don't have to worry about networks.
00:36:33.600 | I don't have to worry about preferred providers.
00:36:35.800 | I don't have to worry about any of those things.
00:36:38.200 | I just simply go, get service, pay for it, and then later am reimbursed.
00:36:43.880 | Healthcare sharing is a wonderful solution.
00:36:49.000 | It's not perfect.
00:36:49.960 | Go back and listen to the long series of shows that I have done on it.
00:36:52.600 | It has disadvantages.
00:36:54.000 | It's not for everyone.
00:36:55.240 | It's certainly not for everyone.
00:36:57.080 | If you can't find a company that will be, that you can affirm their ideological
00:37:01.560 | statements or statement of faith.
00:37:02.960 | If you can't find a company that, that has the coverage that you need or your
00:37:08.040 | concerned about extreme scenarios, then it's not for everyone.
00:37:11.880 | You need to be very, very careful.
00:37:13.880 | But if you're looking for a healthcare solution, health, something that works
00:37:18.840 | similar to health insurance, if you're looking for a solution, at least check
00:37:22.840 | out the Healthcare Sharing Ministries.
00:37:24.320 | Cause I'll tell you, as we have traveled, we have loved our
00:37:27.440 | experience with Samaritan Ministries.
00:37:29.840 | Go and check it out on Samaritan Ministries website.
00:37:32.400 | Go and check it out the past episodes of the show.
00:37:34.720 | If you find that Samaritan Ministries specifically or Healthcare Sharing
00:37:39.760 | Ministry in general is helpful for you, if you wind up signing up, just let
00:37:43.520 | them know that Joshua Sheets sent you.
00:37:45.440 | Now specifically, let me explain.
00:37:47.480 | Samaritan Ministries doesn't pay me money to advertise for them, but they do
00:37:51.360 | have a referral program where if you refer clients to them, they discount your next
00:37:58.320 | bill, and so from time to time I have listeners of the show who will sign up
00:38:02.600 | for Samaritan Ministries, and every time that a listener of the show signs up,
00:38:07.240 | then my next month's bill is discounted.
00:38:09.840 | Usually my bill is about $500 a month based upon the plan that we're
00:38:13.120 | on for my family and our needs.
00:38:14.560 | But then sometimes it comes in and it's 300, sometimes it comes in and it's $100
00:38:18.720 | a month because listeners sign up, and when you're signing up for Samaritan
00:38:21.400 | Ministries, you mention to them, "Hey, Joshua Sheets sent me."
00:38:24.000 | They say, "Look me up," and then they discount my bill.
00:38:26.280 | Here's the cool thing.
00:38:27.240 | That's also available to you.
00:38:28.840 | So I'm not using any super special podcast advertising program.
00:38:32.280 | They're not paying me money for this ad I'm doing for them right now.
00:38:34.720 | I'm just doing it to lower my monthly expense because if you sign up,
00:38:38.640 | then I get a discount.
00:38:40.320 | I think it's $100 or $150 that discounts my bill when any one of you sign up.
00:38:45.680 | But then you can do the same thing.
00:38:47.120 | So after you sign up, if one of your friends signs up, they mention your name
00:38:51.880 | and you can have access to the same program.
00:38:53.640 | That's of course very helpful to you and to me, which is why I do
00:38:58.400 | these ads from time to time.
00:38:59.520 | Go and check out Healthcare Sharing Ministries.
00:39:01.920 | Do your research.
00:39:02.760 | They might be right for you.
00:39:03.800 | At some point, I intend to create an entire course on Healthcare Sharing
00:39:07.480 | Ministries that'll answer your questions.
00:39:09.040 | I'll sell it to you just so that you can understand the pros and cons,
00:39:13.160 | how they work, et cetera.
00:39:14.120 | They're not for everyone, but go and check out the different options.
00:39:16.320 | Did a series of shows and check out Samaritan Ministries.
00:39:18.920 | If you can affirm their statements of faith and et cetera, their very kind
00:39:24.120 | of strict rules, if you can affirm the things that are excluded from care,
00:39:27.480 | very important that you understand what those things are.
00:39:29.760 | The things that Samaritan Ministries excludes from care are
00:39:32.200 | very offensive to some people.
00:39:33.600 | They're very welcome to other people.
00:39:35.760 | So you read those things carefully, but if you find that they're right,
00:39:39.080 | that it's a good solution for your family, just let them know Joshua
00:39:41.320 | Sheets sent you and my future lower to non-existent bill will thank you.
00:39:45.520 | Or at least I'll thank you when I receive that bill.
00:39:47.280 | Be back with you very soon.
00:39:49.240 | Thank you for listening.
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