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My name is Joshua and I am your host. Yesterday on the show, I shared with you a little bit about our 2018 travel plans, which, in short, involve my loading up my family of me, my wife, our three young children and two dogs, and traveling around the United States for an undetermined amount of time, probably something like six months, maybe shorter, maybe longer, and taking an undetermined course so far that will involve beginning in Florida, winding up in the upper inland Northwest in the Mountain West to visit family, and then at some point probably meandering back to Florida.

Now, whether that looks like a circle or a zigzag, who knows? But in many ways, I thought you would enjoy hearing a little bit of background of my path to this, speaking practically of how to actually make this happen with regard to the rig. The rig, if you're not familiar, is what RVers love to call their vehicles, be it a motor home with a car on the back or a tow vehicle and a trailer.

That's commonly affectionately referred to as the rig. And RVers love to talk about the rig. They love to think about the rig. They love to plan about the rig. They love to shop for new rigs. I'm no exception. But today, I'll share with you a little bit about what I've done and the successes I've had and the mistakes that I have made.

I will do this now prior to the start of the show, sorry, start of the trip, so that you can have this as an anchor point. And then you'll be able to see in real time as I also learn how good my decisions were, what turned out to be wise, what turned out to be foolish, etc.

So a little teaser as we begin. I think I've made some good decisions along the way, but I've also made some bad decisions. And in fact, I've lost a substantial amount of money, as is common with RVs. That's a good place to start. If you're going to get involved in the world of RVing, you should be prepared to lose money.

Because similar to boats, RVs are an excellent vacuum for all of your disposable money. There is basically no limit as to how much money you could spend on RVs. Doubt me, just go and look at a million-dollar motorhome. Go to a show or something like that. You'll find them.

They're built on these giant bus chassis. They got generators on them that can practically run a city block. They are beautiful. They're also a million bucks. Most people who own an RV quickly find that it can consume as much as you want it to consume. And so this is a very dangerous area of consumption because how do you get into it and make a decent decision and not lose your shirt?

You should be prepared mentally for that reality. Here's what I think is the common life cycle of an RV and most people's approach to RVing. Many people will get excited about the idea of spending time in the great outdoors with their – usually children. Or today, it's increasingly common that singles and couples without children are choosing whether – as young adults, which is growing massively, or as retirees, will choose to travel the country in full time, as they say, in their RV.

But what frequently happens is you'll find a young couple with young children that will get excited about the idea of spending time in the great outdoors with their children. All RV literature involves beautiful mountain scenes, beautiful beach scenes, and it's just the picture of tranquility. And so many people get excited, go out and buy an RV.

Frequently, due to lack of knowledge, frequently people will start with a new one. And then they'll use it a lot for a family vacation the first year. They'll take it out in the summertime for a big three-week trip. They'll take it out perhaps on the Christmas vacation for a one- or two-week trip.

The next year, they'll repeat the same thing. But then the third year, instead of having time to do the Christmas trip, they want to go and fly to see family at Christmas. They leave the RV at home. The fourth year, something else comes up during the summer. One of the kids wants to go to summer camp instead of going on an RV trip.

And so instead of using it in the summer, then the RV sits at home. And that year, it sits there all year. And often by about the fourth or fifth or sixth year, the RV is used on average a week every couple or three years. Well, frequently at this point in time, the RV has lost so much value and depreciation that the owners can't stand the idea of selling it and recognizing that loss.

After all, they may have just finished making the payments on it. And so it sits in the backyard during year six, year seven, year eight, year nine. And they use it on occasion every now and then to take the kids out. But the kids are growing into high school and then they're graduating, moving off to college, and they don't want to spend time in the RV.

And it's not so fun for mom and dad without young children to really embrace it and enjoy it. So they lend it out to a family member here and there. But basically, it just sits. Finally, dad stops renewing the registration because it annoys him to pay the license plate every year.

It sits in the backyard for another two or three years. And then finally, mom says, can we get that thing out of here? And finally, dad goes ahead and lists it on Craigslist or mom lists it on Facebook. And then you start selling it. And that's the case. And so people lose a ton of money on RVs and don't use them.

That's what I think generally happens. So you better watch out for that eventuality because you can lose a ton of money. Now, I don't think it's necessary that you always lose a ton of money. But I think you would be well advised to move slowly. And I'll tell you a little bit of my successes because I've had some successes and some failures.

And hopefully, you can develop and build more successes in your life than failures. First thing is move slowly and recognize that you are going to get into expensive territory quickly. If you think that buying an RV will save you money, think again. It will be cheaper for you to do your family vacations and pay for hotel bills than it will be for you to own an RV.

Unless you're actually going to be in the RV for an extended period of time such as six months, a year. Other than that, the hotels are going to be cheaper. Campgrounds are wonderful and you don't need an RV to appreciate them. So if you're going to get an RV, you should get it not because it sounds like fun, but because it fills a need that you've decided is important to you or I guess a want that wouldn't be a need.

It fulfills a want that you've decided is important to you. For example, you enjoy fly fishing on the weekends and you love to go way back in the mountains and do fly fishing and photography. And you don't enjoy sleeping in a tent on the ground. Well, before you buy an RV, consider buying a cot.

But if you've decided you'd like to have some more comfort and you're going to buy a truck camper, then make sure that it's getting you something that you can't get otherwise. There aren't many hotels in the backcountry and so that's a good use case scenario. But if you're just thinking, "I'll load up my RV and we'll use that to travel across the country a thousand miles to go and visit grandma and grandpa," friend, you're making a bad financial move.

I promise you. RVs are expensive to buy. They're expensive to own. They're expensive to drive. They're expensive to tow. They're expensive all the way around. Now, a couple of thoughts in regards to your RV decisions. And I'm going to tell you where I've made mistakes in the past so that I can – and I'm going to tell you some financial scenarios here today of how we have gotten ourselves set up to go full-time on the road.

But one of the first decisions that you have to make is, "Do I want something that I can drive or do I want something that I'm going to tow?" And of course, this is the great challenge. How do you decide? Driving your RV where you have access from the driver's seat to the actual coach is a wonderful luxury experience.

I can't think of many better ways to travel than in a big, comfortable RV where you and all your passengers have access to comfortable seats, big panoramic windows, access to the kitchen, the refrigerator, the bathroom, all of those things without ever needing to stop. That's a wonderful way to travel.

But it does come with some downsides, notably, of course, safety. It's always a challenge to decide, "Should I go and sleep in the back while we're cruising down the road?" That leads to a very wonderful nap, but it also could lead to bodily injury or death in the case of accident.

And one of the major things with problems with RVs is they are generally not crash-rated. Unlike automobiles where there are federally mandated crash safety ratings and tests, RVs are exempt. Or like – I got mixed up on my words there. RVs are exempt from those ratings. And so basically an RV is a chassis, a metal chassis with a giant wooden box plastered over with a little bit of plastic or fiberglass.

And it has no structural safety rating. You can practically run a motorcycle right through most RVs as far as through the walls. So they're very unsafe if they actually get in an accident. For me, however, especially with young children, I really wanted to have the experience of having a motorhome.

Motorhome is the word usually applied to a drivable RV where you have access to the amenities in the back from the driver and passenger seat. And so the first RV that we bought was a 1993 Roadtrek camper van. Now a Roadtrek camper van is what's called a Type B RV.

It's a very small RV, 19 feet long. It's the standard length of a 15-passenger van. And the reason that we chose this is because I believe there's a huge benefit of being small. The smaller you can be when you own an RV, the better. It is more efficient to drive, to tow.

It opens up more places to you. When you're trying to drive a 45-foot bus, there just aren't that many places to park it. But when you're driving a 19-foot van, you can park it anywhere. And we chose that RV carefully because it had the amenities that we were looking for.

It had the beds that we were looking for. It had the seats that we were looking for. It was well-liked in the marketplace. And I was really, really pleased with that purchase. That particular purchase worked out really well. I bought it in 2000 and I guess it would have been '16, '15?

No. Anyway, I bought it a few years ago. I found it on Craigslist in Georgia. It was owned by a single owner, elderly retired couple, which can be good but can be dangerous, which I'll get to in a moment, the problems with RVs. But I paid $7,000 for it.

Drove it back from Georgia to South Florida. And total, during my time of ownership, I spent a total of $10,500 in it, including all the fees, a new set of tires all around, $1,000 on brand new Michelin tires all around, fixing a couple things that were wrong with it, all the registration, et cetera.

I was in it for $10,500. And all was said and done. The problem with that vehicle was two things. One, I did not calculate on where to put car seats at night. And this was a major error on my behalf. I had thought obsessively about the decision. I thought I was making the very best decision possible.

But although I had considered where to strap car seats during the daytime, I had not considered where to put car seats at night. And when you have, at that time, two children and now three, when you have these giant, no other adjectives are necessary, these giant car seats, they are very frustrating to deal with.

And of course, they're important for your children, or at least so we are told by those who claim to know. But they are very frustrating as far as where to put them. And they take up so much room that we just decided, you know what? This isn't going to work.

I was able to sell out of that thing. And I didn't lose my shirt. I sold it for a net of $10,000 when all was said and done. So in my time of ownership, I was out of pocket $500 on the deal, which I was pretty happy with. I had worked hard to put that deal together.

And I was pretty pleased with that. To own an RV for-- I think I owned it for eight months, something like that, maybe 10 months. To own an RV, to use it-- we took some nice trips in it. I enjoyed it. And only lose $500 is not bad, in my opinion.

That gave us the benefit of having the access. And that does lead, especially with small children, that does lead to a much better and easier traveling experience. To be able to get the kids down, to use the bathroom, to be able to give them a snack, to be able to have access from the front to the back makes a big, big difference in terms of the joy of traveling.

However, in using it, what my wife and I realized was we could probably solve it a different way. And when we decided that it was too small, given that we were adding a third child and we had no idea where to put the third car seat at night, we could have strapped the car seat in during the day, but we had no idea where to put it at night, we decided that we needed to go bigger.

And what I decided the best move was is to buy a full-size van and a travel trailer. Now, the benefits of a full-size van are a fewfold. One, there's plenty of places to strap car seats, of course. You can strap car seats in and have plenty of room. I also decided that if we just simply removed one of the seats in the full-size van, that leads to a fairly large cargo area.

And that we could – which is actually in the traveling space. And with that approach, we could actually bring in many of the benefits of an RV. For example, it's easy to have a cooler with food in it that's readily accessible. With a full-size van, there's enough room if I'm driving for my wife to get up and to help the children.

You can bring a small toddler potty that is available to the children so you don't have to stop so frequently to use the bathroom facilities. You get most of the benefits of an RV. So that's a big benefit in my mind. And we did that. We ended up buying a 15-passenger van.

And from the perspective of traveling, it worked just like I had imagined. I bought a 2001 Chevy 15-passenger van. We took out the front bench seat which led to a nice cargo area up front. We had nice seats to strap the car seats into. We could travel with a cooler, with a small potty.

It was really, really comfortable, really nice. The other benefit of traveling with a van and/or other tow vehicle is you can have your driving space and your living space. So you don't have to convert either one of them. If you have a tow vehicle and a trailer, all the car seats stay strapped in the tow vehicle all the time.

And then the trailer is just living space. You don't have to have it cluttered up with all of the detritus of child traveling. So that's a big, big benefit. Now, the other reason that we've got a van is because I believe there's a real value in the world of vans.

When you are deciding that you want to tow an RV, you have a few choices. They come down to basically a fifth-wheel trailer, a travel trailer, or something else, which there's tons of options of something else. A fifth-wheel trailer is that type of trailer where the actual hitch goes into the bed of a pickup truck.

They're big. They have that large, bulbous front nose, and they go into the bed of a pickup truck. Fifth-wheels are probably your best buy in the marketplace if you want to get maximum living space for minimum money. Look at fifth-wheels. Maximum living space, minimum money. You're probably going to go with a fifth-wheel.

And if you are willing to drive a pickup truck, then this fifth-wheel option is probably one of your best, most comfortable options to tow and to drive. Fifth-wheel trailers tow really well. They are more maneuverable. They're just all around a really good option, a really good way to tow a trailer.

One of the downsides is many fifth-wheels are so incredibly large, they're just hard to deal with. If you buy a 40-foot fifth-wheel trailer, that thing will not fit in the majority. You won't get it into national parks. You won't get it into most state parks. Basically, you're going to be confined to an RV resort with pull-through campsites.

For some people, that's appropriate. In my mind, that's not appropriate. I want to be nimble. And so we set as our maximum desired length something about 30 feet. If you're 30 feet or under, then you can pretty much get into most campgrounds. Not all, but most campgrounds. And you can get into many sites.

There will always be sites that you can't get into at most campgrounds. But you can get into most. You can find small fifth-wheel trailers. So don't let a desire to have a small trailer dissuade you from shopping for fifth-wheels. But they're harder to find than big, big ones. We didn't want a fifth-wheel.

And the reason I didn't want a fifth-wheel is I didn't want to get a pickup truck. Pickup trucks, in my mind, are useful for some people. But I didn't want to have one. I say this as someone who now has one, which I'll explain. Problems with pickup trucks is, number one, they're very limited seating.

About the biggest you can get from a factory is a crew cab with six seats. We have three children, two dogs. We don't fit all that well in a crew cab pickup truck. And by getting a crew cab pickup truck, that automatically limits us to only being able to travel with our family.

That, in my mind, is not ideal. And so I really wanted to have a big, full-size van with more seat capacity so we could travel with friends. What's the point of having a camper if you can't load up three or four or five of your friends as well and go and use them?

That's pretty much how I look at it. So I didn't want to have a pickup truck for that reason. Another reason I want to have a pickup truck is pickup trucks are really not so useful from the capacity of load carrying. I never understand this obsession among tradespeople with pickup trucks, to have these trucks that you've got to put all kinds of special boxes in to protect your tools.

They're inefficient. They're poorly organized. They don't do a good job of protecting your tools. Most people are better off with a minivan, a full-size van, or an SUV. So I didn't really want to own a pickup truck. They just aren't very good. And then the final thing is pickup trucks are expensive.

Because pickup trucks are in such high demand by men who want to drive them and look cool because they want to present the macho pickup image, they're very expensive. It's hard to find a good deal, especially when you start looking at big pickup trucks. Now, in my analysis, many of these problems were well-solved with a full-size van.

And I think the full-size van option is a really good way to get more for your money. The full-size van gives the benefits of that comfortable traveling that I described. Full-size vans have great cargo capacity, especially if you get the big 15-passenger one, great cargo capacity. And they're cheap.

There's not much of a demand for full-size vans. If you were to go – let's say you have a large family. If you were to go, you can buy a full-size – sorry, you can go and buy a minivan, a loaded-out minivan. And you could load one out to be $40,000 to $45,000.

You can go and you can buy a full-size van and you can load it out as best you can. And it'll come in below $35,000. You can get them under $30,000. Now, that's because they're more commercial in focus and so they're not going to have all of the amenities.

I still love minivans. Minivans are wonderful. And my wife refuses to drive a full-size van unless we actually needed one. So we're in the world of minivans. I think they are truly wonderful. But especially if you want to tow, I think there's a real deal in the world of full-size vans.

Because traditionally full-size vans are built on a truck chassis, this makes them have poorer road manners than something like a minivan, which is built with unibody construction. But they have towing capacity, rated as high as about 10,000 pounds. The highest one is the Chevy full-size vans. Those are rated for 10,000 pounds.

The various iterations of the Ford vans, whether it's 12-passenger or 15-passenger, makes a big difference. But those will get you in the range of 7,000 to 8,000 pounds, which is a sizable trailer. The Nissan NV full-size vans are rated for up to almost 10,000 pounds. Those are a good deal in the tow world.

And then the various other more modern Euro-style vans have less towing capacity, but it's still decent. You can get a great tow vehicle in a full-size van, and that was what I decided to do. I wanted a Chevy for the heaviest towing capacity. And so I bought one. I bought a 2001 Chevy.

Now, in the Chevy vans, there were three engine options that are available. There are two gas engines, and -- or there were four engine options, but there were three that are rated for the highest with towing. There is an 8.1-liter V8, which is a giant 500-cubic-inch gas engine, which gets about 13 miles per gallon whether you're driving empty or whether you're towing a trailer.

But it has a ton of power. It's also very hard to find. But I was looking for one. I also was looking at a diesel. And at those iterations of the Chevy vans, some of the older ones, they came with a 6.2-liter diesel, which was the old GM diesel.

Not super powerful, but adequate. I was looking for one of those. They also came with a 6-liter gas engine, which is the venerable Chevy 350 small block engine, which is one of the world's most popular engines and a good engine. They used to put it in the Corvette. It's powerful.

The one that I wound up finding had the 6-liter gas engine. And I felt like it would be sufficient -- sorry, the 5.7-liter gas engine, the 350. So I felt like the 5.7 would be sufficient, and I was happy with the deal. I found the van on Craigslist up in Gainesville.

The van was, all things considered, in really good shape. There were some obvious cosmetic flaws, but it was in good shape, in nicer interior shape than many other vans of the similar vintage. And vans of the age that I was looking at, which is a 2001, were probably worth in the marketplace around $3,000 to $3,500.

I was able to buy this particular one for $2,300. So I was pretty happy with my deal. And I was pretty happy that I had enough room that if it didn't work -- because my concern was if that engine, the 5.7-liter engine, couldn't pull the trailer that I was planning to get, then I needed to sell it out and not lose my shirt.

So at $2,300, I felt safe. I felt I could at least turn around and sell this thing for $3,000, and I would be in good shape. I did an extensive test drive on the vehicle. I wound up having a long 45-minute test drive. It had been owned by a transportation company.

And so all of the markers of it being a good deal were there. It was in good mechanical shape, had 190,000 miles, but it had been cared for. Most of those miles had come within the last year because it had been run -- owned by this transportation company that had run it constantly.

But it was in good shape, I thought. And here's where we get into the problems of the mistake where I wound up losing my shirt. I bought the van, and I drove it home, and it was fine. It drove fine. But it didn't have a ton of power. So I took it to the mechanic, and the first thing we did was I said, "This van's going to be great." I had him fix a couple of cosmetic things that wanted to be done, some window latches.

And we had a good overall inspection. I went ahead and started fixing things, fixed the brakes, fixed up a couple things that weren't strictly necessary. Remember, I'm getting this thing ready to go across the country for six months. And so I needed it to be in good shape when I head out.

And I had the room. I figured, "Okay, this will be a good vehicle." We took it on a couple of trips, just the van. And then eventually, I bought the trailer. And I found that this van basically couldn't pull this trailer. I'll get to the trailer that we chose in a moment.

This marked a problem. So I took the van to the mechanic, and we found out that the engine had significant power issues. Here's a little tip for you that I learned. Number one, as I'm sure you know, it's good for you to have a mechanical inspection if you're buying a used vehicle, especially if you're not a mechanic.

And I'm not. I had promised myself that I'd always get a mechanical inspection when I bought a used vehicle a number of years ago when I made a bad deal on a car. And yet on this one, I felt like I was okay. I'd done an extensive test drive.

There were no obvious signs of problems. The price was low enough. I was pretty safe. Worst thing that could happen is buy it for $2,300 and sell it for $1,000 scrap if it were truly scrap, which it wasn't. So I felt pretty safe. But what I learned is a little trick.

When you go to test drive a vehicle, one of the things that you need to do is turn the key on and look to see, before you start the vehicle, look to see if the check engine light comes on. You want to see the check engine light come on when you turn the key on.

Then after you start the vehicle, you want to see the check engine light go off. Now, I had neglected to bring my scanner with me to scan the engine for codes. Rookie mistake. And I didn't know this little trick. Rookie mistake. What I found out was many times when a vehicle is having consistent problems, an unethical person, an unethical seller, will remove the check engine light from the dashboard.

This means that it doesn't show up as being on, which means you don't know that the engine is throwing error codes. And so I learned that the way that you avoid this is you need to see that thing come on when you turn the key on. If it doesn't come on when you turn the key on, you know that there's a problem with the bulb or the light.

Now let's move to the trailer. With regard to trailer, I mentioned there's fifth wheels and there are travel trailers. Travel trailer is the type of trailer that hooks up to your bumper or to the hitch at the back. And it's big and it's square, but it just hooks up down below.

And this works great with a van. I think travel trailers, if you don't need maximum space, are your absolute best deal in terms of dollars. They are so cheap. Now they're cheap because they're mostly junk. Most RVs, with a few exceptions of very high-end, well-made RV brands, most RVs are junk.

And you should just know that going in. It's balsa wood stapled together with a little bit of fabric. They don't last. They're not well-built. They look shiny for a little bit so they can sell them quickly, but they're basically junk. But if you can buy one with working equipment that'll at least hold together, it should do what you need it to.

And in the used marketplace, the travel trailers are a great deal. In my mind, the best deals come at about 10 years old. Because if you think back to that common life cycle of an RV when people are buying them, and you have a new owner that goes and gets one when their children are eight years old and six years old, well, they start looking to sell it when their children are 18 and 16 after it sat in the backyard for a couple of years.

That's common. That's basically the life cycle. And by then, they've depreciated from about $30,000 new down to a lot less. Now, for our family, we were looking for a bunkhouse model. A bunkhouse model is – well, it's a model that has bunks in it. And so there is a particular bunkhouse model that when you start looking at layouts, you'll find that RV layouts tend to be fairly standard.

There are only so many ways that you could fit in a few beds, a kitchen, a bathroom, a table, and a couch. There are only so many variations of this. So they're pretty standardized at some point. We were looking for a bunkhouse model that has four bunks in the rear of the coach.

And that was what we – what was appropriate for us, so four bunks in the rear, bedroom up front, living area in the middle. And we wanted something big enough that we'd be comfortable to live in for an extended period of time. When you're buying an RV, you need to buy it for your intended application because it's all a study of tradeoffs.

If you have a giant RV, it can be so comfortable for you to fit in but you can't – sorry, for you to live in but you can't fit it anywhere. You can buy a tiny little pull-behind teardrop trailer or a tiny little trailer with a rooftop tent on it.

You can hook it up to your Jeep and go out in the mountains. That you can get anywhere but it's not so comfortable to live in. And so everything is a matter of sacrifices. You're just simply choosing what style of travel is important to you, which is why you should probably go slow and be very careful and not commit to a brand-new RV before you've actually tried something.

Some people think they need all the space and they recognize actually we're comfortable with smaller space. Some people think they're comfortable with smaller space and they wind up upgrading. So it's frequent that RV buyers will have to go through a couple of rigs before they figure out what they actually want and what they're actually going to use.

In our case, we settled on about a 30-foot travel trailer. It's the best number of compromises for what we were planning, which was an extended six-month trip around the country. That gives you enough living space inside so that on multiple rainy days, you have a place for the children to play.

It gives you sleeping space where you can close off the children, you can close off the bedrooms and have a place for children to take naps inside in the air conditioning, go to bed, enough of a space for mom and dad to actually be in the vehicle. And when you're traveling for an extended period of time, it's a benefit to actually be able to be in the vehicle.

I'm going camping for a few weeks. Anybody can go camping for a few weeks and can live outside in the elements, even dealing with bad weather. If you're on a short vacation trip and you get bad weather, you just change your plans and go book a hotel room or suck it up and embrace it as a character-building exercise.

But when you're living on the road for six months, that's tough. And especially given that my intention is to work on the road, I felt like it'd be a mild form of spousal abuse to load up my wife with three small children and two dogs and say, "Here, you hang out in this tent while I go and sit in an internet cafe and record radical personal finance." That seems like a mild form of spousal abuse and I don't think that would quite work.

So I wanted to make sure that we had a big enough vehicle. And so I was shopping in this range of 30-foot bunkhouse travel trailers in about the 30-foot range. In the choice of an RV, if you don't need all those things, consider going smaller. Now, I mentioned there are basically three kinds of towable travel trailers.

There's fifth wheels, there's travel trailers, and then there's other. There are a bazillion options of others, pop-up campers, A-frames, teardrops, all kinds of interesting iterations. They're really neat. And if you can get by with smaller, go with smaller. But we decided to choose a larger travel trailer. The first time I hooked up the travel trailer to the van, because I bought the van first, I knew I had a problem.

Because the van was struggling. First time I got it out on the open road after having some things fixed up on it, fixing up the brakes and the trailer controllers and all that, I knew we had a serious problem because I couldn't get the thing over 50 miles an hour on flat ground.

That's a major problem when you're planning to drive over the mountains. If you can't get it 50 miles an hour on the flat ground, I mean, that's 10-mile-an-hour stuff going up the mountains, which is just simply not safe and not fun. So we continued working on it, and we tried everything.

I tried-- we fixed all the stuff that needed to be fixed. And still, end of the story, the van couldn't pull it. And I sank a ton of money into that van. Some of those things related to the inability to pull this big trailer. It should have been pullable.

I don't fully know why it couldn't pull it, because we got the engine running through extensive-- replaced all the stuff, and the mechanic went through it and fixed it all. Good mechanic, very knowledgeable, works with me on a lot of stuff. We got it running as well as it could, but it still couldn't do it.

Now, I think it was probably partly a gearing issue. The gears were too high to effectively pull the trailer. Part of it was also that it was not-- when towing a trailer, it's not just weight. It's also drag with how big the front of the trailer is, and this particular trailer is big.

It presents a lot of drag. But the van, even after all the fixing, just wouldn't work. And so I decided I had to change, and I decided to cut my losses, get rid of the van. It's possible that if I'd swapped out the gears, or if I'd tuned up the-- if I'd added some aftermarket accessories to the engine, then we could have gotten it to work.

But I had already put so much money into it that I was really hurting and just wanted to cut my losses and run, decided that I didn't have any more stomach for it. So I made some serious mistakes with getting that van and fixing it up. And the mistakes that I made was I didn't-- I started with some of the-- I assumed it would work based upon my research.

All of the numbers said it should have worked. I knew my weight ratings. I knew my tow ratings. And on paper, it should have been fine. But on paper is different than in real life. So I made some mistakes. I didn't catch the engine problems, which were the serious problems first.

And so I spent money fixing up the little things early that probably didn't have to be fixed so quickly. Example is the window latches were messed up. I bought it knowing that the window latches were broken. I thought it would be an easy fix. Well, it wound up actually costing a couple hundred dollars to have the window latches fixed up because I had another piece of metal.

And I just-- I thought it would be simpler than it was. And so I had all those little things fixed first. I was $2,300 in, $1,000 up front to have all the little things fixed because I thought this will work great. Then we got into the trailer stuff. And one of the things that I learned was that I wound up blowing out the trailer brake controller because there was a short on the trailer.

And we wound up putting another hundreds of dollars into the thing. And then we got into the engine problems. And it was another few thousand bucks. But by the end of it, I was into the thing for over $6,000, somewhere-- I forget the exact number, but something like $6,500, which was a real problem.

When I went from, I was tickled pink with my deal originally. I thought I was so brilliant. I thought I had bought this great deal. I had found my inefficient market. I was so pleased with myself. And now here I am woefully upside down, losing money and losing my job.

Upside down, losing money on a vehicle that would never get out of it again. There was no-- and all those improvements were not the kind of improvements that were actually going to work. It gets you resale value. Yes, they're valuable improvements. But they're not the kind of improvements that get you resale value.

I thought through afresh, very seriously, whether or not it's the best course of action to buy at older vehicles when I dealt with this van. I'll tell you how I came out of it in just a-- well, I'll tell you how I came of it now. I decided to sell the van.

I was able to sell the van. I sold it for $4,000, which means that I lost a couple thousand bucks on the van, which was very frustrating. I hate to lose money. But I was able to-- my market research was correct. I made a bad decision with this particular vehicle.

But my market research was correct. Because if I hadn't put all that money into it-- I bought it $2,300, sold it for $4,000-- I was safe in the deal. But I still wound up losing a couple thousand bucks. I like to buy older vehicles because you don't lose so much money in depreciation.

Depreciation is, in many ways, unavoidable, especially when a vehicle is at its middle range of life, newer and middle range of life. But when you get to older, cheaper vehicles, you wind up with depreciation being less of a factor. The flip side is with older vehicles, you have mechanical problems that can suck up more money.

My observation and experience is that this is less of a problem than it once was. If you were to go back 30 years and look and say, I've got this older vehicle. Should I keep it? You probably shouldn't. You probably would have been better served 30, 40 years ago to go buy a new car every 10 years.

But today, there have been such dramatic improvements in manufacturing quality and in longevity of so many parts. Cars are just better made. And it's wonderful because I've had great experience with most of my older vehicles. Very rarely do I have to budget for repairs that are not just normal maintenance items.

A new vehicle goes through tires just like an old vehicle goes through tires. A new vehicle goes through brakes just like an old vehicle goes through brakes. Those aren't the kind of repairs that were once so common. Now, there are, of course, older things that do need to be fixed.

But I'd rather deal with a new starter here and there or a new alternator than know that I'm going to lose $3,000 this year on my $20,000 vehicle. Depreciation is such a problem from a financial perspective that I think it's best to avoid it as much as possible. Now, on this particular deal, I really question that because some of my problems would have been avoided on this van by just buying a newer vehicle.

Well, I still am not going to go and buy a brand new vehicle at this point. But I do have to factor those in. Simple things like the wiring on the van was all messed up. And this wound up being an expensive fix that I didn't know. The tail lights were working when I bought the van.

But the trailer brake controller wasn't working. It was shorted out from the trailer. And so we had to put in a new trailer brake controller. But in doing that, we found out that the wiring in the back of the lights had all messed up. And to undo that and bring it back to factory settings was a significant hassle and significant expense.

By the time you work through all that, that's a problem that an older vehicle had that a newer vehicle wouldn't. So the lessons I learned, I still think I was right about the value of an older full-size van. And I commend it to you if you're looking for a tow vehicle.

An old full-size van is good. I was right. If we'd had a smaller trailer, and I actually thought about getting rid of the trailer, buying a pop-up, went through all the variations, thought about buying just a smaller trailer, and wound up deciding no because we really liked the van.

The travel experience was great. We decided no, we'll go ahead and swap out the tow vehicle. I was right about those things on a full-size van. I just wasn't careful enough in my buy. Lesson learned. Now about replacement. What did I replace it with? I sold the vehicle and I decided to replace it with a pickup truck.

I don't like pickup trucks. And it's not that I don't like them. I think they're fun to drive. I like to feel all big and tough when I drive a big pickup truck. But practically speaking, it annoys me how inefficient they are and how unnecessary they are for most applications.

I'd rather use something that's a little bit more efficient. But in this case, probably I was feeling a little bit burnt by my issues with the full-size van and I decided to go ahead and drop the plan of a van and go to a pickup truck. I don't think that's necessary.

If I had been willing to upgrade my budget from under $5,000 to something in the range of $15,000, a great tow vehicle that's available is something like the full-size Chevy van with a Duramax diesel. Chevy has very limited numbers of these, but you can find them in the used market.

You can get this full-size 15-passenger-size van with a Chevy Duramax diesel. 10,000 pounds of tow rating, powerful diesel engine. It's detuned a tiny bit from the pickup trucks because of the less effective cooling that you get with a van versus a pickup truck. But it's very effective and a great tow vehicle.

I just wasn't willing to spend $15,000. In general, it's my operating philosophy that I don't want to have more than about 10% of my annual income tied up in stuff that loses value, which is all the toys of life, cars, boats, RVs, et cetera. I really want to keep close to that 10% number.

Now, that's an arbitrary, hardcore, tightwad number. 50% number is perfectly fine. If you can keep under 50% of your annual income in this stuff, I think it could be perfectly fine. But I think the results, especially early in life, your financial results over your lifetime will be maximized if you keep that spending number very, very low.

If your annual income is $100,000 and you own only $10,000 of stuff that's losing in depreciation, that means that you're losing only about, let's say, 15% a year. You're losing only $1,500 a year in depreciation. So follow my math. You're earning $100,000 a year, but you only own about $10,000 of cars, boats, that kind of trailers, toys.

You're only losing $1,500 a year in depreciation. If you earn $100,000 a year and you do what many people do, which is buy in excess of $100,000 worth of stuff, it would not be at all unusual for somebody with $100,000 annual income to have a $40,000 pickup truck, a $30,000 SUV, and a $30,000 travel trailer.

Well, in that case, if you're losing 15% per year, you're losing $15,000 per year in the value of your stuff. It's hard to get ahead when you're losing $15,000 a year and an annual income of only $100,000. So I like to keep things close to that 10% number to minimize the depreciation expense in my life.

And I've had pretty good success. Frequently, in buying vehicles that are older, I've been able to get into a vehicle and get out of it with very little depreciation loss. My first car, paid two grand for it, put 130,000 miles on it, sold it for $1,100 with not very many non-maintenance item mechanical repairs.

I just told you about the first RV that I owned. $7,000 purchase price, $3,500 into it with all repairs, all improvements, got out of it at $10,000. That really helps when you're in the early phases of your wealth-building career as a young person. Down the road, once your wealth is more substantial, you can start to make different choices without harming things.

But early on, you've got to be very, very careful with this stuff. So what about the world of pickup trucks? Recognizing that I'm trying to shop in the lower end of the market, but I'm trying to find something that'll do the job, we face a challenge. The great thing is there are lots of large pickup trucks available, especially in the United States.

There are so many big pickup trucks available, you can find a deal. Let me walk through some of the constraints. First, I need a crew cab. This automatically limits the number of vehicles that are available. Still an abundant population, but because I need a crew cab, I can't get quite as good of a deal.

If you just needed something that was capable of towing a travel trailer and you can get by with an extended cab, you can get deals left and right. So I needed a crew cab. Number two is the question that comes down to what kind of engine, gas or diesel.

In the past, I think this was a no-brainer in terms of diesel. If you were to go back 15 years, diesel cost less than gasoline. Diesel engines lasted longer than gasoline. Diesel engines were not that much more expensive to buy than gasoline. And so in short, this was basically a no-brainer.

Today, I think all of that is different. Today, based upon the improved fuel standards that happened about 10 years ago, where now in the United States, it can only sell ultra low sulfur diesel fuel, because of these changes in fuel standards, diesel generally costs more than regular gasoline. Diesels get slightly better fuel mileage than gas engines, but it's not as big of a change as it used to be, especially when you start to factor in the higher fuel costs of diesel.

Diesels do get better gas mileage, but not substantially so. With regard to power generation, the power generation of diesels has gone through the roof. From every one of the three major manufacturers in the United States, you can buy a diesel engine that would basically put out 1,000 pounds of torque.

That's double, more than double what you would get 15 years ago. And that's tremendous. The tow ratings have gone from maximum of 10, 12, 15,000 pounds to 35, 37,000 pounds, I think, with the Ram, something like that. It's huge numbers. But so is gasoline engines. And gasoline engines are much cheaper to buy than a diesel engine.

They weigh less, so you get greater cargo capacity, which could be helpful if you're planning on something like a truck camper. And most people just simply aren't going to put the numbers on a diesel engine of miles where you actually need the longevity of a diesel engine. Most gasoline engines, I'm convinced, really can go a million miles just like older diesel engines can.

Toyota did a campaign with one of their 5.7 liter gas engines of a guy who worked in Louisiana delivering parts to the oil industry. And he put a million miles on the thing over the course of seven or eight years. And it was perfectly adequate. In my family, we've put, let's see, 330,000 miles on one gasoline engine on the car before it was sold, but 330,000 miles on another gasoline engine.

So I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a gasoline engine that's maintained why it can't have the longevity that a diesel engine is known for. As far as operating costs, diesel engines have had a huge jump in operating costs, especially in the modern era for a couple of reasons.

One, diesels simply cost more because they're bigger and more powerful. Diesel engines are always going to have two batteries instead of one. When you replace one battery, you've got to replace two generally. Diesel engines are going to hold more oil than gasoline engines do. Now, with the modern emission standards, now you have an entirely separate set of fluids for the diesel exhaust fluid, which is urea that goes in the scrubber in the exhaust system to clean the thing out.

And because of all these increased emission standards, in order to meet the emission standards, diesel engines now cost thousands and thousands of dollars more. If you get under a modern 2017, 2018 Super Duty or 2018 Chevy, the exhaust system on the thing, if you have to replace it, it's going to be three to four grand.

It's really tough to consider wanting to own one of those things when it's out of warranty. So the point of this is to give those of you who've considered this analysis the idea that I think that you can get by in most situations and are better off in most situations buying a gas engine in a pickup truck.

Unless you need to tow a heavy trailer over the mountains all the time. If you're a weekend warrior, you can tow a heavy trailer over the mountains with a gas engine. But if you're going to tow a heavy trailer over the mountains all the time, you're going to want a diesel.

That's where the diesel really does shine. Or if you're going to put a bazillion miles on the thing, you want a diesel for pooling. And so finally, in this case, I said, you know what? That's what I'm going to be doing with the diesel engine is I'm going to be pulling a heavy trailer over the mountains all the time.

I'll go ahead and buy a diesel. I'll look for a diesel. One of the benefits of diesel is because it's well liked in the marketplace among normal people. I don't think it should be as well liked as it is, but that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what I think.

What matters is what the market says. They are expensive to buy, but they do hold their value, which means that although you may pay more, you're probably not going to lose as much. Gasoline engines are great because you can buy them cheap, but they're not going to keep their value like a diesel does, at least in today's market.

So let's talk about the diesel marketplace. And I'm getting very granular here, but I hope it just shows you my method of analysis. I needed a crew cab. That was requirement. In looking at the crew cabs among the – and I needed towing capacity, which rules out all light and medium duty trucks.

I need a heavy duty three-quarter ton or one ton vehicle. In looking at the crew cabs, I wrote off all of the older Dodge crew cabs because they had this weird tiny little crew cab where it was a four-door crew cab, but the back seat was very, very small.

And I need space for my dogs. So I – although the Cummins, I enjoy driving the Cummins. It's a great vehicle. It's well loved, very long-lived. For my purposes, I needed the bigger cab. Now Dodge came out with bigger cabs. Today, they have the normal size crew cab and they have this massive quad cab, which is super comfortable and I'd love to own one.

But I didn't – it wasn't in the price range that I wanted to spend. I didn't want to spend 15 to 20 grand on a pickup truck. I wanted to spend something like five to eight. So given that range, I couldn't find a Dodge. I wrote off Dodge, which leaves Chevy and Ford.

Now Chevy, since they came out with the Duramax diesel, has done a pretty good job. It's a good engine and a good vehicle to buy. It's relatively simple. They dumped their old 6.2-liter GM diesel. They brought in the Duramax diesel, the Allison transmission. This is a good option for towing, well-liked, pretty reliable, pretty good.

There aren't as many on the road as there are Fords, but they're pretty good. When you look at Fords, you run into an interesting situation. I'll get a little bit into the weeds because this should tell you how you need to shop, I think. You have the older Fords, mid-'90s and later, the old-style, more boxy Fords.

These older diesel Fords had a 7.3-liter diesel engine in them, which was a very solid engine. But there are a couple of problems with these older ones. Number one, the old diesel engine had a mechanical fuel pump, which really didn't produce that much power. So although it was a good engine and long-lived, it didn't produce that much power.

Which, in my situation, I decided I needed some bigger power. The other problem with these older Fords is that parts are becoming scarce. Frequently, if you need to buy a wiring harness, you got electrical problems. It's hard to find. So they are, in my mind, not a good buy.

They're expensive to buy because they have this well-loved 7.3-liter diesel, but it's not much value. So I wrote off the pre-'99 Fords. In '99, Ford redesigned their truck, and they came out with the Super Duty series. And they came out with a series of diesel engines. Ford has, since 1999, they started with a 7.3-liter diesel.

Then they moved to a 6-liter, a 6.4, and now there's a 6.7. 6.7 seems to be a fairly well-designed engine, but it's too new for me to buy at the price that I wanted to spend. The 6.4 was a terrible engine, basically, which basically people bought a diesel that wound up being only 100,000-mile diesel.

And if you drive a 6.4, get rid of it, because all of the mechanical indications seem to be the thing is just a ticking time bomb. Very expensive to fix. They're not a good engine. So I didn't want a 6.4, which left two other engines, the 6.0 and the 7.3.

Now here's where I'll get a little bit nitty-gritty. The post-99.73, I think it was from '99 to '03, was more powerful than the pre-'99 because they worked out some – they swapped out the fuel pump system. And that other engine can be built up and it can be – have the power increased.

The stock form should be fine for most people, but the power can be increased pretty easily with some aftermarket work. I mean, you put propane and nitrous into it, you can get it to 1,000 pounds of torque and still have pretty decent longevity with it if you want to run it with propane and nitrous.

And you can get there simpler. You can get to 500 a lot simpler. The problem with the 7.3s is they are big, they're loud, and they're well-loved. So they cost a lot of money in the secondary market. They were advertised from the factory basically as a million-mile motor and everyone knows that.

And so they're very much desired. In – what was it, '04, I think? Ford swapped out the 7.3 with a new 6.0-liter diesel. They did this so that they could start to meet the new emission standards for diesels. One of the biggest problems with the 7.3 is it pollutes like you wouldn't believe.

It is so dirty of an engine. It's just – it's very dirty. And so they had to improve on that. And so Ford released a 6-liter diesel engine. It's a good engine, but they rushed it to market. And especially in the early years, they missed a number of important design flaws without getting into the specifics of it and the studs and the bolts and all that.

They made some problems. And the 6.0s started to have serious problems. You could find them and you could fix them. Today, all of those problems with the 6-liter are basically known and are fixable. But it's hard to know what you're getting into. And so because of this, when you start shopping 6-liters, you'll find that frequently they're cheaper.

And they're cheaper because people don't want them. I think there is a potential buy opportunity here. If you're willing to spend something in the range of 15 grand on a diesel pickup truck, I think there's a good buy option to buy an older 6-liter, something like an '04 or an '05, and to make sure to have it properly bulletproofed.

And I think you get a good truck. You get more modern suspension components than the older early 2000s Ford. You get more modern suspension components. But you do away with a lot of the problems of the later ones where you don't have to deal with the emission systems. You don't have to deal with the 6.4 and the 6.7 on all the emission systems that cost so much money.

You don't have to deal with that. You just have a good, more modern diesel engine that does a good job, has great power ratings. And if you can fix those things, I think that there is an opportunity there. I didn't want to spend that much money on a diesel truck.

So I was back shopping in the 7.3. So to wrap this saga up, I decided to buy a 7.3 crew cab. Beyond that, I was relatively ambivalent about whatever other options. My preference would be crew cab long bed. My theory is if you're going to drive an 18-foot vehicle, why not drive a 20-foot vehicle?

It really doesn't make that much of a difference, but I'd rather have the extra cargo capacity. And two-wheel drive, four-wheel drive, didn't really care. I just definitely don't want something that's been lifted or has been done that, because that ruins your longevity when people lift the trucks. So I really wanted something that would be – as long as it had a 7.3-liter diesel, was in good mechanical shape and a crew cab, I was happy.

I wound up finding one. I found a – it was a 2000 F-250 crew cab, two-wheel drive. It was family-owned throughout its entire history. Had it inspected, and I'm happy with it. It wound up being a two-wheel drive, which I'm happy with. It lowers the cost from a four-wheel drive.

I don't need four-wheel drive. It'll hurt the resale a little bit because many people do want the four-wheel drive, but I bought it cheaper anyway, and it saves – it's cheaper to operate a two-wheel drive. One less axle to fill with oil, one less transfer case to deal with, better fuel economy because it's two-wheel drive.

You don't have the drag of the four-wheel drive system, et cetera. And actually, higher towing and cargo ratings because of the less weight of a two-wheel drive truck. So I got the truck. The truck does fine. I towed it up to the trailer. I've got the trailer, a 30-foot travel trailer with a bunkhouse.

One note I forgot to say is when you're shopping for trailers, one of the things I think you want to stay away from is you want to avoid buying a trailer that has not been recently used. One of the biggest problems that novice RV buyers face is they buy an older trailer, and they say, "Oh, it hasn't been used, and so it'll be great." The problem is RVs, like boats and like cars, if they're not used, they rot.

All the little rubber bits rot. All the little plastic bits rot. They rot. And those are the things that are expensive to fix. Better to buy one that's been used than one that hasn't been used recently. Now, you don't want to buy one that's been abused, but you do want one that's used.

And so when I was shopping the RV marketplace, I found tons of these things. But you look at the tag. The tag hasn't been registered in three years. The tires clearly haven't moved. And you've got so many maintenance items to get the thing just roadworthy, repacking the bearings, fixing all the stuff, new tires all around, et cetera.

And that doesn't involve even getting into the appliances, which in an RV are really what you're buying. The body is relatively insignificant if you're buying older RVs. Yes, you want to watch out for body problems and rotting roofs and rotting floors. But in many ways, those things are not going to be as big of a deal.

But if your refrigerator doesn't work because it sat there and hasn't been used for the last four years, you've got a problem. So I'm sharing these numbers to tell you just simply that you don't have to spend $50,000 on a rig. I think total, if I add up the new diesel truck and the trailer, I'm into this thing for, what, $15,000 between the two of them, something like that, $15,000, $16,000 between the two of them.

It's likely that I will lose some money when I sell, which of course, you can't-- I don't think. You can always hope to make money on every deal. I know some people who can make money on every deal. But I haven't chosen to dedicate the time to that at this point.

But I'm into the whole thing for about $15,000. I think we've got a solid, serviceable, reliable rig that should get us around the country for six months. Both of the vehicles are near terminal value, where it's hard to imagine them going a lot lower. The RV could lose a couple thousand bucks in value if my kids beat it up and it just becomes ugly.

The truck could lose another thousand, couple thousand bucks in value if I put a lot of miles on it. But we should be good. I think we'll be good. Now, the big unknowns, of course, are going to be if we wind up finding some unexpected expensive repairs-- new transmission on the road, break an axle on the trailer.

I broke an axle on one of my trailers one time. That was a pain. It's things like that that are really unknown. But we'll see. That's the saga of the RV trip. That's the saga of it. I will share with you along the way. If I make more mistakes, I'll let you know.

I'll let you know what those mistakes were. If I did a good job with analysis, you can listen to this here, and you'll see what you find down the road. But that is the story of putting together a truck and a trailer with the goal of going around the United States for an extended trip for about six months, maybe more, maybe less.

Since I haven't done a trip like this before, that's the best I can hope for. You do, as with most things in life, you do your very best to prepare. You do as much research as you know how to do. And then you pull the trigger. Sometimes you win.

Sometimes you learn. But sitting still doesn't help. Hope to see you out on the road. Listen to yesterday's show, if you haven't, about all the things I'd love to hear from you. If you have a great idea of somebody you'd like me to visit, some place you'd like me to see, somebody doing cool work, if you'd like to host us, if you'd like to come to a seminar on the road, if you'd just like to meet up with us while we're out traveling, we'd love to hear from you.

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