Like I mentioned several times over the last several months, I have been looking for a newer RV. I have a budget of around $58K which comes after months of thought about what I would be doing for the rest of my limited life. I know those of you under 50 probably can’t image it yet, but there will come a time when you realize you don’t have that many years left. I’m thinking that I probably have 10 years left of which I perhaps could travel in an RV for 8 years. Now this is all guess work of course, but hell, seems reasonable.
So because I also want to leave some of my limited funds to my kids, I didn’t want to completely decimate my retirement funds, so that budget figure was a target. I’d been saving so I had around $24K in my savings account and only had to withdraw $34K from my IRA funds to reach the $58K target. I’d been looking for a newer RV casually for 3-4 years, and seriously for over a year and I’ll tell ya, it’s boring as hell. Hours spent online researching. I pretty much knew what I wanted…when I saw it. My limited criterion was my newer rig would be diesel pusher, with 1 or 2 slides for extra room. Reasonable miles, a genset, a patio awning with the metal cover when closed, slides, and a half way decent bathroom. I was convinced I’d find that somewhere, sometime, but it was turning out to be tough. And I didn’t really want to have to fly somewhere to inspect something I’d found online.
And then, I came up here to Mesa, Arizona to look at the Coachmen Country Coach that I found on Craigslist and mentioned in my last posting. It didn’t work out, and as I traveled the 3 miles from where that coach was to my pre-selected RV park to spend the night, I was struck by the number and size of the RV dealers near to where the RV park was. I went ahead and paid for a week here at the park because it seemed like a great idea to browse around to at least get a feel of what type RV was available in my price range. I did have a list of preferred brands.
The day after I arrived and settled in, rode my bike east on the street and just a block away, visited the lot of a consignment dealer that just happened to have on display a couple of the brands I was interested in. I toured 3-4 RVs in my price range and was thinking how great it was that my first try at visiting a consignment dealer and they had some RVs I’d be comfortable living in. One of them was a ’02 Winnebago Journey. I was immediately struck by how it fit exactly what I was looking for. But it was a little old. I was looking for a ’06 or so. But it was really nice looking. Only had 70,000 miles too. Didn’t look like it had much use or abuse at all. But, I didn’t put any money down on it. I went home and over the next few hours, did my research. Soon discovered that that particular Journey had a good reputation, that it was their top of the line model, had a well respected Freightliner custom chassis, and on and on.
So the next day, I rode over there with my checkbook in hand, and arrived just as they were selling it to a younger couple. The husband had visited the day before, and brought his wife this time for her approval. Damnit. Sold. But, I hung in there, 3 days later that deal fell through. And after a road trip, a roof inspection, extending and retracting the slides a few times, and a few more walk throughs, I paid cash for my 2nd, and probably my last, RV.
And here it is while being prepped for delivery.
Lookie there, even has the basement cabinets that move out with the slide.
