♪ California's top casino and entertainment destination is now your California to Vegas connection. Play at Yamaha Resort and Casino at San Manuel to earn points, rewards, and complimentary experiences for the iconic Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. ♪ Two destinations, one loyalty card. Visit yamaha.com/palms to discover more. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

Today on the show, we're gonna talk about camping. (laughs) Years ago, when I was in the, briefly in the marketing and brand management consulting business, I learned something from a senior marketing consultant who said to me, "Joshua, don't ever put anything camping related in any kind of marketing thing that you do." He said, "Don't ever use pictures of camping.

Don't use pictures of families camping, et cetera." I said, "It's the kiss of death when it comes to marketing." Lots of people say they like camping, but in reality, nobody likes it. (laughs) So I never did. Now, I don't know if they were right. I assume they were right, but the RV industry is certainly healthy today, and the camping industry certainly seems fairly healthy.

And for me, camping is something that I've always enjoyed doing, which I'll tell you about in a while. And in this show, I'm gonna fulfill a long-awaited promise that I'll tell you why I believe a pop-up trailer or a pop-up tent camper is the ideal solution for family camping.

Now, you need to know what makes this such an important show is when I was younger, I promised myself I would never have a pop-up camper because I hated them. And I'll tell you why my opinion has changed since I've tried a number of different kinds of RVs. Bit of backstory wheel service is a good foundation for this as far as my own personal experience.

I grew up, when I was growing up, for our family vacations, we frequently took family vacations using a pop-up tent camper. My dad had bought, he said he'd paid $500 for this old piece of junk pop-up camper, and we took that thing all across the United States. We went from South Florida up as far north as Northern Maine.

I think we went to Canada one time, but I don't remember that trip. We went out to the West. We went to Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Montana, all over the country with a pop-up tent camper, both with the cheap one, and then later at a later time, we rented a pop-up tent camper to use as well on a camping trip that we took.

And so I grew up camping in a pop-up camper, and it was a wonderful way for my family and me to see the country. I saw my parents really tried to make sure, worked hard to make sure that they showed us the country, showed us what was available, so we just didn't live in one town and didn't have an idea of what the world contained.

They worked hard to do that, and I'm really grateful for them. Because of that, I have an intense emotional connection with the topic of camping. I have this intense affinity for almost anything campground-related, travel-related, et cetera. Even to this day, I love campgrounds. I like going across the country.

I like interstate highway. I like driving. I don't get tired of it. I have this intense emotional connection to camping. I should specify that I mean car camping, not backpacking out in the wilderness. I admire that, but I've never had the chance to do that kind of camping. So all of my experience has been car camping.

So because this is such an emotional issue for me, it's something that I have thought a lot about. When I was growing up, I did not like our pop-up camper, and I'll tell you why. The reason was that I didn't like putting the top up and down. We had an old pop-up that generally worked, except the handle that was easy to access to turn the crank, that crank was broken.

So we had to crank it at this very awkward place on the camper in order to pop the top up and down. The other thing I didn't like about it, it seemed like it was always getting wet inside. Now I understand that it was because I had old canvas, and the canvas would leak, and the beds would get wet.

And then what was worse is the girls and my parents got to sleep inside the pop-up camper, but the boys always slept in a tent out on the side, 'cause we were too many to comfortably fit in the pop-up camper. So we slept in the tent, and I'd always, I just remember waking up with a wet sleeping bag in the tent, so I didn't have great experiences.

And I would always look longingly in the campground at the big, fancy RVs, and I would just think how nice it would be if we had one of those. And we never had one of those. And so I said, I'm not gonna have a pop-up camper, I'm gonna have an RV.

So from the time before I was a teenager, I always thought about RVs, I always was obsessed with them, I looked into them, et cetera. And at this point, I've now owned two RVs. My first RV was a Class B road-trek van camper, which my wife and I really enjoyed in the time that we owned it, but then we outgrew it with the number of children that we had, we just couldn't fit in it anymore.

And I bought a travel trailer, and last year, my wife and I full-timed all around the United States for about six months, I think 13, 15,000 miles, something like that, all around the country, and we had a great time. And for that, I had bought a 30-foot travel trailer with a bunkhouse for the children, and we really enjoyed it.

But that process taught me a lot, because in owning the travel trailer, I learned some lessons that I don't think I would've been able to learn from someone else. I had to do it myself. And what I learned was, I didn't like having the travel trailer as much as I thought I would.

And I realized that I would rather have a different type of RV. Now, this is normal. Generally, you should know that most people who get into RVs usually go through a few different RVs until they figure out what they actually like. Some people try RVing and don't like it and get out.

Some people have to try a couple of different things, and some people start with a pop-up and wind up with a big motorhome, some people start with a motorhome and wind up with a truck camper. I mean, it's all over the place. So expect, if you've never done this, expect that you're probably gonna have to try a few different rigs until you figure out what you like.

And by the way, this is why you should be very careful financially along the way. I have, I guess technically I've owned three RVs, 'cause I also bought a truck camper. But so, yeah, I guess I should say that. I've owned three RVs. And along the way, I've been able to get into them and out of them without really losing any money.

In fact, I just recently finally sold the last pickup truck that I own from the recent, from all of my full-time RV days. And for context, I bought a van, then I bought a truck, then the truck got stolen, and I bought another truck, and I bought a camper, and then I bought a truck camper.

And then systematically I sold all those things. I just did my accounting, and I was able to come out of the whole saga. If I exclude the van, I was able to come out of the whole saga completely whole, where I didn't lose any money, even with all of the money that I spent on trucks and campers, et cetera.

I came out completely whole. If I include the van, that was my big mistake, was my big 15-passenger van that I bought. Then I lost about $2,000 total on a total of three vehicles and two RVs. So you can do it, and I would encourage you, be careful on your way through.

Be careful when you buy, and go in slow, prepare to take your time, don't spend money you can't afford to lose, et cetera. Stay out of the new place, although actually that's a subject for a different day. I'm not as opposed to new RVs as I once was. I wasn't sure if I would get out healthy from all of my different deals, but thankfully I was able to get out of them without losing a bunch of money.

So you're gonna have to try a few different things, and my idea in this show is to help you to learn from my experience as to why I think that a pop-up trailer is the ideal solution for most families in their camping endeavors. Everything in RVing is a matter of trade-offs.

We are in kind of a golden age of RV choices where there are so many wonderful designs. You can find something that will fit anything you're looking for, but these are all a matter of trade-offs. They're a matter of comfort compared to convenience, and size, and cost, and just tons of trade-offs.

So you're gonna gain certain things and give up certain things, and you're gonna have to judge what's important to you based upon your goals. For clarity, I would not choose a pop-up for full-time living. I would not choose it for that, and that's why I did not choose one.

You need to be able to be indoors more comfortably if you're full-timing on the road or taking extended trips. Pop-ups, I don't think, are good for that. But I do think that a pop-up is the ideal solution for what I'd call normal family use of a camper. And what I'm saying is, two to three to four weeks per year, family vacations in national parks, covering the country, touring around, a few weekends here and there, I think a pop-up is an ideal solution for that.

Let me explain why. So what's the problem with camping? Well, let's assume that you would like to have a bit more comfort and a bit less hassle than you can get with tent camping out of your car. Tent camping is the easiest way to get into camping. It's the cheapest way, and it's very, very flexible.

And tent camping is, in many ways, the best solution if you're going to be off of the beaten path. For example, if you wanna just drive out into the desert and camp out in the middle of the desert, a tent is a great way to do it. You got a four-wheel drive vehicle, you toss a tent in the back, you drive out in the desert, you set up your tent, you're good to go.

A tent is certainly the best solution for somebody who's gonna backpack into a place where there are no roads and get off the beaten path. That is what tent camping is great at. But if you are doing car camping, going to state parks, national parks, et cetera, tent camping isn't great in the United States in that context.

My biggest frustration with tent camping in that context is that it's dirty. Everything is dirty. All the campgrounds, usually there's just dirt all around, which they can't help it. There's a lot of wear and tear. If you're up in a beautiful mountain meadow, you can put your tent down on a nice lush green meadow and you won't get dirty.

But when you go into your local state park, there's gonna be dirt all around and you track it in and out of the tent and it gets in your bedding and it gets on everything and your kids get filthy, et cetera. It's just dirty. Tent camping is a hassle because you're on the ground and that mountain meadow works really well with your thermo rest spread across it.

But when you're in the little piddly tent pad that's covered with gravel at your local state park, you're tearing up your tent, terribly uncomfortable for you. You gotta put down all this extra stuff to make it comfortable and it's just a pain. And then tent camping generally means that you gotta, in addition to a tent, if you're actually gonna be out there for anything more than sleeping, you're probably gonna set up other stuff.

You're gonna set up some kind of tarp or canopy so that you can have some place to cook under. You're gonna set up a table. You're gonna set up a kitchen. You're gonna set up all this gear. And that stuff takes time. It takes time to set it up, takes time to haul it.

It's just kind of a hassle. So let's assume that you wanna be a bit more comfort and a bit less hassle than you can get with tent camping. You wanna be out of the dirt. You wanna be off the ground. You wanna be able to be out of the elements, out of the heat, out of the cold, out of the rain with a little bit of comfort.

And then you'd like to be able to have a faster and simpler setup of your camp and a faster and simpler teardown of your camp. You don't wanna set up a tent, then set up a tarp, set up a table, set up a stove, and do all those things a little bit faster.

Let's assume also that you're more than two people because if you're only one or two people, I think your best bet there is to be very flexible and enjoy your small size. I think truck campers are a wonderful way to go. The small, hard-sided trailers, the little fiberglass egg trailers type of thing, or very small travel trailers are great if you're two people.

But if you're more than that, it becomes a little bit more challenging. Where do the beds go? And then again, I'm tailoring this for a US-American context. So assume you want something a little bit better than that, but then assume that you don't really wanna go up to the big options because yes, you could get a tent, but you were gonna assume you're not gonna go ahead and go for a big luxury motorhome, a $100,000 RV of some kind.

So you're looking for something in the middle. Well, basically you'll look at, in that scenario, look at something like a travel trailer, a medium-sized travel trailer, a large travel trailer, 20 feet, 25 feet, 30 feet, something like that. Or you can consider something like a pop-up camper. Here are my arguments in favor of your considering a pop-up camper.

A pop-up tent camper has all of the basic infrastructure that you need to have adequate comfort. It solves all of those basic things that are uncomfortable about a tent. In your pop-up camper, you can have a comfortable bed. You can use a residential mattress, you can have a foam mattress, whatever you like, but you have a large residential bed that you can put nice covers on.

It can be comfortable, it can be beautiful, et cetera. And one of the great things about a pop-up tent camper is there are lots of beds, lots of bed space. You can fit many children into a pop-up tent camper. So you could solve that problem of being up off the ground for your sleeping and out of the dirt, which is hugely important.

In a pop-up tent camper, you have all of the basic cooking gear ready to go. You have a propane stove, usually. You have a sink with a water tank, which is very convenient. And then usually you have a fridge of some kind, whether it's DC electricity or propane or a combination of the two.

So you have your basic cooking gear ready to go. That makes a big difference because it's much faster for you just to set up a kitchen and have everything in cabinets than it is to haul the cooler out of the car and set up the stove on the table and then figure out how to get it under the canopy.

It's just all there. You have privacy for using a toilet, things like that. It's one of the frustrations of a tent. Yeah, you could bring along a cassette toilet and set it up in the tent, but you have a little bit more privacy in a pop-up camper. Not as much privacy as in a nice hard-sided camper, but you have adequate privacy.

You have a built-in electrical system. You have a battery power. You have a converter that can charge the batteries and you can plug it in. You have lights. Very importantly, in a pop-up camper, you can have an air conditioner, which for those of us who live in hot places, an air conditioner makes a huge difference in your ability to use your camper.

So you can have an AC for the hot days, and that AC is usually easily able to be run on a small generator, which can be very easily taken with you. And/or you have a small propane heater, often built into the camper. So you're adequate to cover yourself when it's cold.

Or if you don't have something built in, you are in an enclosed space that's small enough, has a little bit better insulation than most tents, so you can just use some kind of portable heater inside of the camper. So a pop-up camper offers all of the basic amenities. There's very little difference in terms of the way that the systems of a pop-up camper work versus a large half-million dollar motorhome.

All the systems basically work the same. The motorhome has a heater, and it has ducting down into the bays underneath, and it's got maybe two thermostats or something like that, but at the end of the day, it's just got a heater. The motorhome has a couple of air conditioners, but they're about the same as the air conditioners on your pop-up camper.

The motorhome has a generator that's built in, and it might be a diesel, but you're a little generator that you can just grab out of the back of your car and put by the back and plug it in, it'll work great. Basically, all the systems work the same. They're just slightly fancier and shinier in the half-million dollar motorhome.

So a pop-up camper offers a massive upgrade in convenience and comfort over tent camping, but yet it's not extreme like some of the bigger ones are. It's a massive improvement. It's a big, big step up. So you'll probably get better buy-in from your family members. It'll be a little bit easier for me.

It's a lot easier on my wife. Instead of making her do everything in the dirt and just hassle, having facilities is really useful. And the pop-up camper has very usable space. It doesn't have a lot of interior space. That's a major downside of a pop-up camper, but the interior space that it does have is very useful.

It's useful for beds, et cetera. Not great to hang out in, pretty small, but it has lots of bed space, and it gets you out of the weather when you need to. Other big, big benefits of a pop-up camper though. A pop-up camper is easy to tow, probably with the vehicle that you have.

And when you're towing, so boys, you're needing to buy another vehicle, a special vehicle, and it's not as tiring to have it. When I bought a travel trailer, I bought a travel trailer, and then I bought a big one-ton 15-passenger van to pull it with. And the numbers on the paper should have been that my travel trailer should have been able to be pulled by the van that I had.

The numbers all worked in terms of the tow rating. Now, I'm still not exactly sure what happened, why it didn't work, but my van, I couldn't get the travel trailer over 50 miles an hour, even with the engine running flat out. It may have been a problem with the van.

It may have been a problem that I just bought the wrong engine, but it was a big one-ton van with a big Chevy 350 V8. It should have been able to do it, but it couldn't. And so it could have certainly pulled a pop-up camper, but I had to upgrade the whole tow vehicle and buy a big diesel pickup truck to pull this big trailer around.

One of the things about a big vehicle that I underestimated before I had one is that it's very tiring to drive a big vehicle. Now, perhaps you wouldn't be so silly as to underestimate that, but I was surprised by that. I love big vehicles. I enjoy driving big trucks.

I'm very comfortable driving big trucks. I've driven big trucks. I've been driving trailers my whole life. I was the 15-year-old who was out backing trailers up around my parents' house every which way so that I could become a very skillful trailer backer. I wanted to make sure that I knew I would never embarrass myself, and so I would know how to do it.

I've driven big trucks my whole life and been very comfortable with it. But even so, I have to concede that driving a big vehicle is not nearly as comfortable as driving a smaller one. In the time, one of the things I really wanted when I bought the Class B van camper that we owned for a time is I really wanted something that would be comfortable for me to drive to conferences.

I like to go to conferences. I find them very useful. Go for four days, go out to Texas, or go up to Georgia, or something like that. And so I thought, "This will be great. "I'll have this Class B. "It's super simple and nimble, "and I'll drive it to Texas, "and that way I don't have to bother with the hotel.

"I can just camp along the way. "It'll just be me traveling." It'll be really wonderful. It was work. I very, I did use it a couple of times, but it was big. It was thirsty, and it was work to drive it. And I got to the point where I realized that even though I had this nice RV, and I had all the stuff in it, I had all the amenities, it was an RV, a comfortable bed, I would just as soon either just stay in the hotel, drive a car, or fly and stay in the hotel like normal people do, or just stay in my minivan.

More comfortable and easier to drive, and if I'm gonna go 1,000 miles, it's just a lot less work and a lot cheaper to drive a minivan than to drive this Class B RV. Similar thing happened with the travel trailer. I dragged the travel trailer all across the country, 15,000 miles, and I'm very comfortable, grew to become very comfortable driving it.

It was no big deal. I'm good at driving it. I'm good at backing it, et cetera. But when I had it, I never took it on any short-term trips, but it was such a hassle to hook the thing up and to deal with where am I gonna park it, et cetera, I didn't think I would ever use it for a short-term trip.

It wasn't the kind of thing where I would use it for a quick weekend getaway. Just too much of a hassle. I wouldn't wanna drag it to North Carolina. North Carolina's not that far away, but it would just be a hassle for me to drag it to North Carolina.

So I underestimated that. It's tiring and annoying to have to deal with a big vehicle. Even if you're kind of that little boy like I am, or I love driving big vehicles, I like having 'em, it's tiring and annoying. A pop-up camper is very, very easy to tow. Because of the way that it's situated, where it's very low, it's usually hidden behind the vehicle, you can see over it, it's short, it's not long, saying the same thing again, short, not long, it's easy to tow, it's easy to park, it's easy to get in and around.

You hardly know it's there. If you're driving a normal pickup truck, or a van, or something like that, it's the kind of trailer where it just doesn't bother you. It's like driving a little 12 or 15 foot landscaping trailer around. It's light, you don't even care. You can keep it hooked up all the time, it doesn't matter.

A lot easier to tow, and that's a huge advantage, because it means there's a good chance you're more likely to use it. With a pop-up camper, when I've driven across with a pop-up camper, and I have camped in them as an adult, borrowed friends and relatives, it's not at all intimidating or annoying to drag it three states away.

Whereas a large travel trailer is, even if you're well equipped for it. A pop-up camper is easy to drive around in cities and at attractions, which is very useful, and it's easy to back into a campsite. One of the things I did not like about a pop-up camper was, when I was younger, was I didn't like how long it took to set the thing up.

You had to put the top up, you had to pick the cabinets up, I always just thought, this is a real pain. I want just a hard-sided camper that I could just pull in and be ready to go. Then I had a hard-sided camper that I could just pull in, and what I found out was, there's a whole bunch of setup time needed for that, too.

You have to get it backed in. And even if you are a very skillful trailer backer, as I am, even if you're that, even if you're skillful, it takes time to back a big trailer into a small campsite. It takes time to get it all situated exactly how you want it so there's room for the slide to come out.

It takes time to get it level and to figure out exactly how to get it level so that it's gonna work well. And then, once you set it up, you still gotta put your stabilizers down, you gotta unhook this big weight distribution hitch that comes with all these extra levers and chains and such that you gotta deal with.

Then you gotta put the slides out, you gotta get everything just so, so it takes time to set up the travel trailer. It's not as simple as you just pull in and you're there. That's a benefit in favor of motorhomes with the self-leveling jacks, but that's more on the higher end.

If you're shopping in that market, you're not gonna want a pop-up camper. But you do have to do a few extra things with a pop-up camper. You've gotta put the top up, you gotta slide the beds out, you gotta brace everything. But I would bet you that I could do it faster with a pop-up camper.

I never had the chance to put it side by side, but I bet you I could have a pop-up camper ready to go faster than a travel trailer, just because of the ease of getting it backed in and getting it set right where you want it. Then, even the frustration of putting things up, really, what's the difference between cranking up the top on a pop-up tent camper versus putting a slide out or putting two or three slides out?

You still gotta sit there and wait for it, and you can buy pop-up campers that have an electric motor, or you can just use something as simple as the electric motor in your drill and put them up. Which brings me to some of the bigger, more important benefits of a pop-up camper.

My number one reason why I would want to have a pop-up camper out instead of a travel trailer is that a pop-up camper is easy to store inside and undercover. It's easy to store in your garage, or in a shed, or in a carport. It's so small, it's easy to store, and that makes a huge, huge difference.

Because you can store it inside easily and inexpensively, that means you can keep it out of the sun. You can keep it out of the rain. You can keep it out of the cold. And that will make your RV last longer. The biggest enemy of a travel trailer, especially when you're unlikely to use it very much, as most families are, more than a few weeks a year, is it's just gonna sit outside, and for, let's say you use it four weeks a year, 48 weeks of the year it's gonna sit outside and rot, and four weeks of the year you're gonna use it.

But you're only gonna be able to use it for a short time because you're gonna get annoyed at driving around with a rotten camper. The sun beats on the roof and degrades the rubber and degrades the seals, and then a little bit of water gets in and it starts rotting the walls, and pretty next thing you know you've got something delaminating here, or delaminating there.

Now does it have to be that way? Certainly not. Maybe you have a barn you can stick it in, or maybe you build a shed on the side of your house to put it in. I think you should do that if you're gonna buy a big camper. But drive around anywhere and you'll see that most campers stay outside, getting beat on by the sun and getting beat on by the rain, et cetera.

And then once something starts, you get a little bit of mold or it starts to rot, then it gets frustrating to you and you don't like it all that much and it gets beat up. Whereas if you can keep something inside, you can stop the rubber from deteriorating on the roof, you can stop it from delaminating, you know that no water's getting into it 'cause it's in your garage, and you know that no water is likely to get into it 'cause all the seals are not getting as degraded.

Now because of that, you can keep it around for years and years and it's probably gonna stay in great shape. If you go and look at a 15-year-old travel trailer that sat out in the sun for 15 years, you don't wanna own the thing. But if you go and look at a 15-year-old pop-up camper that's been garage kept, it'll look great, it'll look nice.

And yes, there's still gonna be maintenance involved, you're still gonna wanna refresh the seals and put a little goop on it here and there, but that's normal and it's gonna be in great shape. Your tires are gonna last longer, everything's gonna last longer if you can keep it inside.

Because you can keep it inside and because it'll last longer, you'll feel less frustrated about it depreciating, about it just collapsing in value. These things are not cheap. You know, a new travel trailer, you can get them new for $20,000 to $30,000 depending on what size range you're dealing in.

I'm thinking about a 30-foot trailer, something like that, $25,000, you can find a new one. But as soon as you keep it for a year or two, it's down to 15, there goes 10 grand, and then they just keep going down from there. And so if you care about money and you care about value, you're probably not gonna wanna have an RV sitting in your backyard just getting rotten and destroying any value that there is in it.

So if you can keep it under cover, you're gonna have less frustration about keeping it around, even if it's just for a rare use. That to me is a huge, huge benefit. When you can keep something inside, if you'll properly service everything, then it should work when you go to use it, unlike keeping it outside when it's rotting and stuff's just falling apart due to non-use.

I don't know how to emphasize it any more than I did. As far as I'm concerned, that is one of the number one benefits of a pop-up camper. Yes, the benefits of it being light and nimble are also significant, but being able to store it inside means it's not going to be falling apart.

That's tremendous. Pop-up campers are simple, and this is really wonderful. Because when you own an RV, basically you have a cheaply built, usually, cheaply built wooden shell with a little bit of wallpaper slapped up inside and a little bit of aluminum slapped up outside. That's not that big of a deal.

Yes, it can get water in there and it can start rotting on you, but your issues are probably gonna be the systems inside. One of the great things about a pop-up camper is it doesn't have some of the systems that otherwise can break, and the systems that it does have are simple enough that you'll probably feel confident just to swap 'em out yourself.

One of the things I like about a pop-up camper is you can avoid the whole need for a blackwater tank. You can just simply use a cassette toilet instead of a blackwater tank, which totally changes your relationship with RV parks when you don't have to constantly find a place to dump your black tanks.

Pop-up campers can have a heater, but it's simple enough. You can pull it in and pull it out. It's just very, very simple. And I actually, if I were buying one today, I would be happy to buy one where only a couple of the systems are built in. I think it's nice to have a sink that has a 12-volt pump run to a water tank.

I think that's useful. I don't care that much about the stove system. A stove, a little propane stove, is just as easy to set up as one that's built in. That's not a big deal. A cassette toilet is really great. Beyond that, a few electronics, great, but I don't mind bringing in and just adding the type of solar generator, like a Yeti type of thing that you see where a power station, where there's a lithium battery in it with some AC plugs and some DC plugs, add some lighting.

That stuff can all be dealt with pretty simply. And so because pop-up campers are simple, you can fix them when you need to. You can just throw the old stuff away and put something in portable. These days, I just as soon choose the portable option. Think of it like this.

How happy are you if you, in 2005, bought the top-of-the-line navigation system in your car versus today, the navigation system that's in your cell phone? A lot easier just to have your cell phone and plop it there and use that to navigate. For this audience, you would appreciate that the economics of a pop-up truck camper are fantastic.

They are cheap to buy, even if you buy one new. Now, in the used market, you can get them for $3,000 to $5,000 in very workable shape used all day long. I'm not opposed these days to buying new RVs. I think there's a place for that. I don't think you should do it unless you're really sure that you're gonna have it for a long time because when you buy a new RV, you'll never get out of it without losing a good amount of depreciation.

But if you can buy one for $3,000 to $5,000, that's just not that much money, a good tent. If you wanna bid out of the world of Walmart tents, a good tent can frequently be $1,000, a good family tent. $3,000 to have a tent on wheels is not that big of a deal.

A lot of times, in my experience, you can find a great deal on a pop-up and it's likely to be in better shape than a travel trailer of its same vintage because of what I said about the weather. The travel trailer may have been stored outside, whereas the pop-up camper is likely to have been stored inside.

That's a tremendous benefit. So they're cheap to buy. Even if you buy them new, they're not that expensive. Huge benefit, it's cheap to add on to whatever else you already have. This may be a bigger deal for some people than others. If you already have a big one-ton diesel truck that you use for work anyway, and you just run across a travel trailer, that's fine.

Grab the travel trailer, you'll enjoy it. But most people have to think ahead. Most people have a small SUV or a car or something like that. Well, you often underestimate the cost of the whole thing. You go out and start looking at campers and you forget the fact that you're gonna wanna upgrade the car.

And you look at the tow rating on your medium-sized SUV, and it says it can handle 8,000 pounds. But by the time you go down to the dealership and you buy an RV that has a dry weight of 7,995 pounds, and the salesman says, "Yeah, you can do it.

"Your SUV is rated for that." And then all of a sudden you hook it up and then you fill it up and then you put stuff in it. Then you feel like you're destroying the transmission on your SUV and you don't wanna do that. Next thing you know, you got a new truck out there.

It's a hassle. Pop-up camper usually doesn't need that. It's cheap to add on to whatever else you already have. The vast majority of SUVs and trucks and vans can pull a pop-up camper. Now, you can get some really big and heavy pop-up campers that would not be able to be pulled with a minivan.

A minivan usually rated for about 3,500 pounds of towing, but you can find small pop-up campers that it can handle. Most mid-size SUVs, most half-ton pickup trucks, you can always find these things and they can do it. There's no need for a new truck. There's no need for a big diesel engine.

And that's worth it. That's worth a lot. So it's cheap to just add it on to whatever else you already have. And the biggest thing, again, is the low profile of towing. It's not all about weight. A lot of it has to do with wind resistance. How tall is that trailer?

You could tow a fairly heavy trailer. And once you get it going, as long as you don't have a ton of wind resistance, you can drive it pretty fast. But if you have a big, tall trailer that sticks up high above your vehicle, that wind resistance does a lot of damage to your driveline.

Cheap to add on to the things that you already have. Big benefit of pop-up camper, it's cheap to pull. You have a radically cheaper fuel cost because of that low profile of, low towing profile versus a large, big box. It's much cheaper to pull. And that's probably useful. It means you'll use it more.

It makes it easier to drive, like I said earlier, but it also makes it cheaper to drive. It's frustrating to think about heading across the country at eight miles per gallon. But if you take an average vehicle, and I'm guessing here, it's a little bit of educated guessing, but I have never taken a medium-sized SUV and towed a pop-up camper across the country.

But here's what I'm gonna guess. Your medium-sized SUV might get you, say, 22 miles per gallon without towing anything on the highway. Maybe 25, depending on what SUV we're talking about here. 20 to 25. You'll probably lose five miles per gallon towing a pop-up camper. But going to 15, from 20 to 15, or 25 to 18, is not as difficult as going from 22 to 10, like you get with a big travel trailer, or going from 22 to seven, like you get with a big fifth wheel, or going from 25 to six, like you get with a big Class A motorhome.

That's a big deal with regard to the economy, the economics of the thing. Pop-up camper can be cheap to fix. Need to fix the roof? Well, it's at waist level. It's not that big. You can look at it and feel pretty confident about going and getting a cock gun and putting goop on the roof, or redoing the rubber.

It's not as intimidating as being 13 feet off the ground with this big, huge thing, with all this stuff sticking through the roof, where you don't know if you can do it or not. You can do it. Heater goes bad, pull it out, say, we'll just use a Mr.

Buddy heater next time. We don't need to replace it. That's a little different when then your heater goes bad on your big 30 foot trailer, and you need the ducks to come out in the front room and in the back room. Well, now all of a sudden you're into it for a $400 new heater.

Hot water heater goes, I could go on and on. Bad fridge? Nah, you know what? We don't need a propane fridge. Let's just toss in one of these 12 volt refrigerators and add another battery. Simple, cheap to fix, simple. Big benefit of a pop-up camper, it's cheap to camp in.

You fit in the smaller spots, which can save you money. You fit into more of your friend's driveways. You can go visit more friends, unlike when you have a big giant thing and there's nowhere to park it. You can drag a pop-up camper off-road or into less developed areas much more easily than you can with a big trailer.

Out West in the Western United States, there is so much wonderful BLM land, government land all over the place that you can camp on without paying, but it's hard to get a big trailer there a lot of times. Little trailer can make it down a little rutted road, pull into beautiful clearing and set up for free.

Much easier than a big trailer. Pop-up camper is cheap to keep. Probably there's no need for storage fees. This is a big deal. Many times people buy a travel trailer, they park it in their yard, then all of a sudden code enforcement's knocking on the door or the homeowners association is knocking on the door and they say, "You can't keep that big trailer.

"Here, it's not allowed. "It's gotta be back behind the house "or it can't be here. "We don't allow these in the HOA." So then now you gotta take it to a storage location and now you're paying a monthly rental fee for the storage location to keep it at a storage lot.

So now you're into a thing for thousands or thousands of dollars per year just for a parking space. Pop-up camper may be able to fit inside of your garage, thus avoiding the problems with the homeowners association. You can stash it more easily at a friend's house or a relative's house than a big giant camper where there's just no place for it.

And then, again, because you can keep it inside, it's cheap to keep because it's not being destroyed by the weather and you're not so worried about it just falling apart on you. And then pop-up campers are, the economics are great because they're inexpensive enough that if you wanna buy one new so you can get exactly what you want, all the options you want, have it all in perfect condition, you can justify buying one new, using it for a while, and then you can just go ahead and keep it for decades as a just-in-case plan.

There's really not that much that can go wrong on them. And if you can keep them inside, then they can stay in much better shape. So for all these reasons, the economics of a pop-up camper are great. Again, cheap to buy, cheap to add on to the equipment, the vehicles that you already have.

They're cheap to pool, they're cheap to fix, they're cheap to camp, they're cheap to keep, and they're inexpensive enough that if you just wanna buy them new, that's fine. Now, where does a pop-up camper not shine? Well, there are some important things. Number one, they are not awesome in the rain.

It's a pain to put them up and down when it's wet, and you've gotta make sure they dry them out. In that way, they're like a tent. It's not awesome to go tent camping in the rain, and it's not awesome to go pop-up camping in the rain. It's not awesome to hang out in a pop-up camper for multiple days in bad weather, such as rain.

You're not gonna have the same experience that you'll have in a larger camper in bad weather. Now, in general, this isn't a problem. In general, for most trips, most just short-term vacations, weekend here and there, usually you wanna be outside, around the campfire, and you wanna be just embracing the weather, whatever it is.

That's very different than full-timing. In full-timing, if you hit in bad weather, you need to be able to be productive, you need to be comfortable, you want that nice recliner, and you want your fireplace popping, and that recliner with your feet up, and whatever you've got on your satellite TV.

But if you're full-timing, that stuff's important. But most people aren't full-timing, and you don't need all that comfort. If it's raining and you're away for the weekend, go home early. You can just quit. So that's a big place they're not awesome. It's adequate to get out of the rain for a day or two if you need to.

It's adequate. Not awesome, but adequate. Better than a tent, at least, because you're not in the mud, you're not in the water. But that is an important downside of pop-up campers. Pop-up campers do take time to set up and tear down. There is a little bit of extra time.

You do have to crank the top up and down, and you do have to put the cabinets up. And so it does take a little bit of extra time, and there are occasions in which that extra time can be annoying, like going to the grocery store and getting groceries.

Well, are we really gonna put the top up on the trailer and put all this stuff away? Big trailer, it's easy. You pop the door open, you go in, put stuff in the fridge, and get back in the car. Though that can be annoying. And then I would say one of the biggest downsides of a pop-up camper is you really can't comfortably, at least I've never seen anybody do it, you really can't boondock at just a side of the highway rest stop or a Walmart parking lot.

One of the things that I love about fixed RVs is that ability just to pull over, climb in your bed, and go to sleep. You can find a safe place to park where you're not gonna get hassled by somebody telling you to move on. You can be as comfortable anywhere as you are anywhere else.

And I actually really like it. I like pulling into the rest stop on the highway and sleeping. I like the Walmart parking lot scene. I enjoy that stuff. It makes me feel, I don't know, fun. It makes me feel cool to be able to be there. And it's fun when you have your whole home with you that you can just, you wake up in the morning, you look out the window, and you say, where are we today?

Now, when I was younger, that was my number one reason why I wanted an RV. And I especially was interested in the economics of it. The idea that by just staying at the side of the highway rest stop, you could avoid having to pay for a night's accommodation. That can be a big deal.

It's hard to find, even at just a bad hotel in the United States, most places, it's hard to find one for cheaper than 70, 80 bucks. And a lot of times those ones, you don't really wanna take your shoes off, you don't really wanna touch, it's kinda questionable. So usually you're at 100 bucks to get kind of a moderate rate hotel or more.

And the RV can save you that money. But it can also save you money on things like food. For example, when you have a fixed RV, it's fairly easy to say, hey, it's lunchtime, and you pull over into the rest stop or pull over into a parking lot. You've got all your food ready to go, made up there.

That's a big deal for me, and I really like that. And I really would be loathe to give it up. Especially when full-timing, it's huge. But for family vacations, I think that it's worth giving that up. I think it's worth it. At this point in time, for the family vacation model of travel, I would just happily pay for a hotel for the night, and happily pay for a restaurant meal, if necessary, while moving fast across the country, instead of worrying about being able to sleep at a Walmart, just get the hotel.

And the reason is, all those maintenance items, when you own an RV, really is where your big money goes out. Remember when I had to fix the generator on my motorhome, and it was 1,000 bucks. And I had worked on it myself, I had diagnosed it, I had downloaded the stuff off.

1,000 was too much, it was $700, something like that. I had downloaded all the manuals, I had troubleshot everything, I had corresponded, I had tried to do it myself, and finally I just came to the point where it wasn't working right, and I had to just get it done by the professional.

700 bucks to service the generator. And I was really annoyed, because when you have to deal with maintenance items and things like that, that's money you can never get out of the deal. When you go to sell it, nobody gives you an extra $700 because you had generator service.

That's just the cost of doing business, cost of having one of the things. And when you start comparing $700 here, and $600 there, and $800 there, all of a sudden you can buy a lot of hotel rooms for that money. Now is it economical to full-time in an RV and be able to save money while traveling hard across the country?

Absolutely, if you're full-timing. But for the family vacation model, nah, no way. There's no way you come out ahead. The hotel is a cheaper deal. So in summary, for a family that wants to be able to get out into the woods, park, get out in the woods, or national parks, state parks, et cetera, with a bit more comfort than a tent, but who doesn't need luxury, then I think a pop-up camper is ideal.

It's best paired, in my opinion, with something like a big full-size van if you have one of those. But whatever you have is fine. It's an ideal compromise. If it's me, if I move back to the United States in the future, it's what I'll buy. I'll buy a full-size van and a pop-up camper.

I'd buy a used one. I can't bring myself to buy one new, but I would shop the new market, you never know. But I would buy a full-size van and a pop-up camper. Now would I like to have a motorhome? I'd love one if you give it to me.

But unless I'm full-timing, it's hard to see how I could stomach the fuel bill to cover the distances that I would enjoy covering. Going across the country at six or eight miles per gallon gets pretty old. And so just the economy of being able to travel freely, and it means it gets used more.

Fifth wheel, same thing. For full-timing, fifth wheel would be awesome. Is there a weekend here or there to tow that big old thing and deal with it? It's just a pain. And again, I'd have to keep a big diesel pickup truck around at eight, 10 miles per gallon. Travel trailer, fine.

But basically the same problem as a fifth wheel. It's a hassle, like I described earlier. What about a small travel trailer? Well, for me, I don't really fit well in a small travel trailer. Shoulders are too big, too tall, et cetera. And there are not enough beds for my family.

Usually two people fit well in the small travel trailers, and I don't see the point. The bathrooms are uncomfortable. They're too small. I don't want to use the shower. I don't use the TV. So why do I need that stuff? So when I was younger, I promised myself I would never have a pop-up.

But at this point in time, I've decided that a pop-up is right for me. It really is. Now, I would be remiss if I didn't close this show with an email that I got from a listener back when I mentioned this. I guess this was seven months ago now, where a listener heard me and wrote this email in.

This is a long-time listener of the show. Hey, Josh, I wanted to write about halfway into the travel trailer episode and push back on you a little bit. When I heard you were going to recommend a pop-up, I almost drove into the ditch. Not really. In our evolution of camping, we went from a tent to a pop-up, back to a tent, and then to an 18-foot travel trailer with bunks for the kids.

I would never recommend a pop-up or buy another one. We bought ours new. All the used ones smelled like mildew, which should have been a red flag. Also, we planned on keeping it long enough so the depreciation didn't hurt so much. It was $12,000. We kept it for three years and traveled several thousand miles in it, probably five to eight weeks a year camping.

There are plenty of downsides to a pop-up. In the humid south, unless you can keep it in a dehumidified garage, it will mildew and smell. It's uncomfortable at temperature extremes. It's a pain to set up or take down in the rain. You can't pull over during a trip and send the kids to the bathroom, or access the fridge, or prepare a meal.

It's hard to pull over at a rest stop and sleep because it's so much work to put it up or down. Unless we stopped in a campground for the night, we would often just get a hotel while on the road for long trips. I think the perfect solution is the trailer we have now.

It is 19 feet, weighs 3,400 pounds, so you don't need a diesel to pull it. Gas is a little cheaper. We've slept three adults and two kids for a week with one kid on the floor. It has bunk beds and a table that makes a queen. It has a full fridge and freezer, which the pop-up didn't have.

It also has a stand-up separate shower with toilet that has fresh, gray, and black waste tanks. Pop-up doesn't have that, microwave. It is so very simple to set up and take down. Basically, just pull over and hop in if you need to use the bathroom or make a meal or sleep for the night.

It really is like being at home. I'd go back to a tent before a pop-up again. As for use, we use ours at least three times a year to visit family and stay in their yards as the house is full, including two weeks every year in Tennessee. We also take several three-night trips to the beach.

Just got back from St. Augustine and a week or so in the mountains. It's very comfortable at temperature extremes. One of the best things, as I'm sure you know, is being about to load up the fridge and freezer at home. Turn it on, have food supplies, and we get to the campground.

You can't do that in a pop-up. We paid $16,500 for our travel trailer. It was one year old and used twice. We haven't had, what, one maintenance problem in over a year. I just had to replace the converter and buy a new battery as the factory-installed one didn't bring the battery up to enough volts.

I upgraded to a Group 31 AGM so we can boondock a little more. One downside to a smaller camper is that the waste tanks are smaller. We can only last about three days with normal use for a family of four. I think a small travel trailer, something like our Riverside Retro, a Scamp, or a Casita, would be the perfect choice.

Plus, if you ever do need to bug out, it's much easier in a small travel trailer than a pop-up. So, still watching, Housing says, "Please don't recommend a pop-up. "It's the worst purchase we made. "I'd rather spend $400 on two really good sleeping pads "like we have and stay in a tent.

"Maybe different for others, "but I've never heard anyone who's owned one "for three to five years say great things about them." So, that was Brandon, who lives in South Carolina. You have to consider your own situation. And this may be unique. I do concede that if you can get away with a small travel trailer, that there are benefits to it.

And if I were two people, I certainly would do that. One of the big benefits I would point out about a pop-up, though, it does have more bed space. And with the size of my family, that's important, is to figure out where do you put all the beds. And I did the bunkhouse model.

I had the big bunkhouse, and it was super comfortable, but it had all of those downsides that I mentioned to you. I do think it is important to be able to store it out of the weather. And in that case, you would treat it like a tent. And I think that would solve that basic problem.

As to being uncomfortable in temperature extremes, yes, I think it can be, but it's more comfortable than a tent. So, you can run the air conditioner, simple to do. If you are considering purchasing an RV of some kind, what I would recommend that you do, as with almost anything else, is rent.

Rent some different options and try them out. It's fairly easy in most places to rent a pop-up camper. You should be able to find one. We took a rental pop-up camper from Florida to the Grand Canyon one time, and it worked fine. So, you can rent one, try it out that way.

Rent a few different travel trailers, and rent a big motorhome, if you're thinking about going that direction. There's been such a proliferation in the rental marketplace that now you can find almost anything to rent. Don't think that it's expensive to rent a camper and you'll just save money by buying one.

You will not. It's not expensive to rent a camper. It is much cheaper than buying one. You won't know today, if you've never owned one, you won't know all the little expenses that add up, but it's cheaper to rent it, which is probably why you should rent it anyway.

You should just dispense with buying it. In the long run. Usually there you get into just how many nights you're actually gonna use it, and then availability, et cetera. But renting is a wonderful option. I will fully concede the point about pop-up campers not being able just to get in and have a meal.

And that is one thing that's lovely about a fixed trailer, fixed motorhome, et cetera. That's all I've got to say on the subject. I hope that was a good, useful thing for you to consider. Try it for yourself. Just always be careful. I will tell you, it is possible, many people lose a lot of money on RVs, and because of that, you have an opportunity.

If you're careful and if you're patient, and if you take your time, you can do okay. But you need to be prepared that whatever you buy, it is not an investment. It is purely an expense, and you're gonna come out of it with less money in your pocket than you have going in.

So make sure you can afford that. Have a great day. With Kroger Brand products from Ralph's, you can make all your favorite things this holiday season because Kroger Brand's proven quality products come at exceptionally low prices. And with a money-back quality guarantee, every dish is sure to be a favorite.

♪ These are a few of my favorite things ♪ Whether you shop delivery, pickup, or in-store, Kroger Brand has all your favorite things. Ralph's, fresh for everyone. (upbeat music)