Living In Our RV For Two Months!

So now we've been living in our travel trailer for two months. We sold our house, and we sold Most everything that we owned. I quit work the week before Christmas, this way I could the be available to sell our household items. I used two apps One was called "let go" and the other one "offer up". Between the two, I was able to sell most everything. These apps were free. Now you could get premium advertising if you want to, but I sold most everything through the free ads. The garage was a real challenge, it was just packed full of stuff. So I rented a dumpster from a company called "Bin there dump that". So we dumped a lot of stuff. We moved into the trailer January 4th. And we still have too much stuff. The back of the truck was full of stuff and including the back seat. I have been slowly sorting through it consolidating down. I built additional storage inside the trailer by building steps for the two sides of the bed so the dog could get in-and-out. Inside the steps, I created more storage space. We bought a new bed to replace the Rv bed because RV bed was terrible. We bought a Novaform memory foam mattress. It is a 14" thick mattress, and so that is way taller than the original mattress. That's why I had to build the steps. If you are gonna live in an RV full time you need a comfortable bed, RV beds are just not going to cut it.




So we are still Sitting here in Manitou Springs. That is giving us time to continue to consolidate down and to continue to organize our things better. It's also giving us an opportunity to pay down our bills and get our taxes taken care of so all our financial things are in order before we start to travel. I'm trying to preserve as much cash from the sale of the house but we have to get rid of the credit card bills. The amount of interest that we pay each and every month is crazy. what a waste of money! I have paid off about half our credit cards so far. I started off by paying all the small balances first and have been slowly working up to the cards with the higher balance. I did it that way so it felt like we are accomplishing more. We had way too many credit cards which made it very difficult to keep track of it all. As I pay off these cards it will reduce our future monthly bill Obligations.

watch My Video "two Months Living In the RV Full-Time"

I can't wait to start traveling. We should be able to hit the road end of April. The first trip will be to South Dakota that's where we are going to domicile. First order of business will be to get new drivers licenses. I already have a PMB in South Dakota. A personal mailbox becomes your legal address.We signed up with America's mailbox because they offer a lot of services. I'm currently working with them to register my car. They will mail me my plates. It's definitely nice to have someone in South Dakota to do the legwork for you. Once the car is registered in South Dakota I can get auto insurance in South Dakota. Auto insurance is way cheaper there.

 If you decide to sign up with America's mailbox please use me as a Referral. Tell them Syd Robinson #9435 sent you. You will get a $25 Gift card good at 15,000 restaurants around the country www.americasmailbox.com




Cathy's already collecting her social security retirement and mine begins this month. Between the two of us, we will have a decent monthly income. Fortunately, Social Security is not our only resource. even though we retired early we can still make extra income through various work opportunities. We won't lose any benefits as long as we keep our earned income below $17,020 each. As long as we continue to make some extra money we should be able to do pretty much what we want. I plan on trying to keep as much money in our retirement funds as possible by not using them. It will be good to continue to allow the retirement funds to grow until age 70. At that time you have to start withdrawing money from your funds or you will be penalized.



While we continue to prepare to travel I will continue to keep you updated with these blog posts. So until next time happy camping!


PS: Check out my youtube channel! RV Tips And Trips!





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Preparing to retire into an RV part 3: Money and Social Security

How much money are we gonna need each month to live in our RV? Where is the money going to come from? Well, the main source of income is going to come from our social security. Even though we are retiring early you can start to collect your social security benefits at age 62. You can apply for your benefits at age 61 and 9 months old. Both my wife and I will be collecting our social security benefits each month which gives us a nice steady income. Will it be enough to cover the expenses of what we want to do? You are allowed to supplement your income with work and earn up to $16920 a year each without penalty.

Only actual wages earned are counted. Unearned income does not count against your social security retirement benefits. So we could do some odd work here and there as we travel. Perhaps run a small eBay business from our RV. Other sources of income will be coming from affiliate links.

We won't have the expense of a mortgage anymore along with associated bills for it.Still do have a truck payment and a trailer payment though. It still ends up being less than a mortgage payment and no utilities. In 2017 income earned prior to your 62nd birthday is not counted against your benefits.

Beginning in 2018 any income you receive that year prior to your 62nd birthday is counted against your annual allowable earned income. Any earned income over $16920 reduces your benefit by $1 for every $2 earned.Earned income is income derived from a job or self-employment. Unearned income is things like investments, withdrawals from 401k’s, and interest income.So if you earned 26920 from a job for the year it would reduce your benefits  $5000.Even if that happens you really don't lose that money. Because it may increase your monthly payments later when you reach full retirement age.Even though you're getting reduced benefits because you retired early I feel that it's still worth it over the long haul because you're not giving up that much.I calculated the difference in income from early retirement and full retirement age over a 20 year period, And it only amounted to a $12000 difference for me.So I might as well take the early retirement and if we choose to work here and there and end up making more money than we are supposed to you still don't lose any benefits overall.

You can make as much unearned income as you want it will not affect your benefits.  But of course, you may increase your tax obligations.

My plan is to keep our income in the 15% Federal tax bracket. There is a huge jump when you go over. The next bracket is 25%. We, unfortunately, don’t know what the 2018 tax brackets will look like. When the tax laws change I will adjust our income targets.

We are banking on selling our house and paying off debt. If we do that, our cost of living will be rather small. The freedom of being debt free will certainly reduce a lot of stress. Who knows, maybe we will live longer as well. Our quality of life will definitely improve. To be able to travel as we wish will be a wonderful feeling, I'm sure.

The downsizing has begun. Next item to research is Health insurance. That’s for another article, till then, Happy Camping!

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Preparing to retire early and Travel in the RV full time

This is the first article in a series of preparing for full-time RV life.

Well, retiring at 62 is that really early? Who the heck wants to wait until 70 to retire, I want to have fun and enjoyment now while I can.

I'm sure Thomas, our miniature dachshund, will enjoy having us full-time.

To live full-time in the RV means we would need to sell the house and get rid of almost everything that we own so we can scale down to live in the trailer.  We are scaling back from a 2600 sq. ft home to a 30 ft travel trailer. Do we keep some of our furniture and put it in storage in case we decide to come off the road? Is it worth it paying for storage? Then we need to apply for social security retirement money. What do we do about health care for me because I would only be 62?  Should I chance not having health insurance and hope I don't get sick? Maybe I should establish residency in a state that has lower health care costs. What about voting? Where do I get mail? What about income tax and sales tax, drivers licenses, auto registration, auto insurance? What state has the best deal overall?

Do we use the money from the sale of the house to pay off bills or do we try and conserve the cash and pay down the bills as we go? Both my wife and I will be collecting Social Security benefits early, but she's closer to the full retirement age than I am. So we will have income from Social Security and perhaps we can make some extra money while on the road to help supplement it.

So the plan is, after taking care of all these miscellaneous items, to travel in our current travel trailer for one year. If we decide that we like it then we will upgrade to a 5th wheel. The trailer is set up with 300 Watts of solar panels on the roof so we should have plenty of power while boondocking. We also have a 1000 Watt pure sine wave inverter to run all the electronics. The plan is to boondock for five or six days at a time and then one day at an RV park. That should help reduce our living expenses quite a bit. Certainly not having a mortgage payment and utility bills anymore will save a lot of money each month. It's certainly a lot of things to consider and to prepare for.

So the smaller items, we will try and sell on eBay and then the rest of stuff try and sell in yard sales. We will have to do a couple yard sales until it is all gone.

So in preparation for all this, we purchased a new truck that has better towing capabilities than our previous one.  We had a Chevrolet Silverado 1500 truck and now we have a Chevy Silverado one-ton truck.  I decided to go with the gas 3500 because I can't justify the cost increase for the diesel.  Also, only 50% of the gas stations across the country carry diesel so it's a lot more convenient using a gas truck.

We switched our cell phone carriers from Sprint to Verizon because Verizon has much better coverage which will be important when we start traveling. Having unlimited internet access will be important because we watch a lot of YouTube, Hulu, and Vudu.

I'm sure this is going to be a lot of fun but it's also kind of scary.

Our preparations begin now. They say you need to have a date set to commit to, or it may never happen, so we need to have all tasks completed by June 2018. The clock is running! I will write updates as we plan and discover new ideas on how to do this.

If you have any thoughts or ideas that will help as we move forward, please feel free to comment.

Watch for my next article on why I decided on the truck that we bought.

Until next time, happy camping!

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