Be Flexible

Do not wear yourself out to get rich;

do not trust your own cleverness. Proverbs 23:4

My wife calls herself a “Murphy” girl. She lives by the adage the “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”. She has saved us from car accidents, missed flights, and even spilled coffee. I tend to be a logistics person. “Plan your work and work you plan” I have gotten us through road trips, cruises, and daily life with barely an extra decision to be made.

With retirement approaching in a 3 years, we are planning to use our freedom to explore the diverse terrain and people of the United States. The plan was to purchase a smaller trailer and leave from the northeast and blaze a trail to the midwest and perhaps make it to Alaska. We are planning on spending up to a year on the road.

After watching many hours of RV videos and visiting RV shows and dealers, we were getting very close to making a purchase. I started focusing in on a truck to pull the trailer as we continued to visit dealers each weekend. I decided that our trailer would be no more than 6000 pounds empty so that I could stay with a full size pickup. We drove a few bigger trucks but they were noisy and uncomfortable. In June of 2016, we were about to leave a dealer’s lot after not finding any trucks that fit, when from around the corner we spied a 2013 F150 Lariat pull into a space near our car. I commented to the sales guy, “Now there is a truck we could go for.” Turns out that the truck had just been returned from a lease, completed certification and ready for sale. 30 minutes later, the deal was done and we had our truck.

Having completed phase one of our”see America” plan we knew exactly the limitations of our truck so this eliminated a wide variety of campers we no longer had to add to the decision making. The truck had the 6 cylinder ecoboost turbo, which gave us a towing capacity of roughly 10,000 pounds. This gave us a limitation of a trailer of about 25 feet. We wanted to keep it closer to 20 feet. We had narrowed it down to the Winnebago Minnie 2200 SS which was a little longer than we wanted (26 feet) but had a floor plan that we really liked. We even got as far as pricing and negotiating but could not pull the trigger just yet. We decided that the Fall would put us in a better buying position.

We continued to periodically stop at RV dealers through the summer, but nothing could sway us from the Winnie. Then in November we pulled into our local RV dealers lot for what must have been the fourth time in as many months to look around. In our beginning searches we looked at everything. $200,000 Class A motorhomes, super cool Class B vans, Class C motorhomes, 45 foot Fifth wheels, and even some cool A frame pop-ups. So today we saw a few Class C’s on the lot that we had not checked out, so we stopped in, said hello to the salesman who pretended to recognize us, and headed over to visualize our next adventure. The first unit was a little older, a lot of wear and tear, had a good layout, but was overall not impressive. The next unit was the Sunseeker. The outside looked brand new, storage areas were spotless, nice generator, outside shower, ladder to the roof. Roof was perfect, engine area spotless as well. As we went to go inside the salesperson pointed out the outside kitchen. Really. He opened up the hatch revealing a mid-sized refrigerator, sink, cabinets, and a TV. Wow pretty cool. In the storage area next to the outside kitchen was a gas grill that connected to an LP port. All this was covered by the 18 foot electric awning. The Winnie was fading, but this unit would be out of our price range. So for more dreaming we went inside. The steps into the coach (that’s what they call campers with motors) were not fold out but built right into the camper, another cool idea. When we reached the third step and started looking around the dream we had so well thought out began to shift. We had rented a Class C when the kids were little and spent a week visiting and touring with them. It was a great time and the whole family still remembers it like it was a long time ago.

All of a sudden we began seeing how we could include the children and grandchildren in our adventure. We could all travel together in the same vehicle, play games, chat and share meals. There would be extra drivers, and someone could actually take a nap if they wanted to. There was tons of storage, a great bedroom with another tv., a bathroom that was split making it very roomy. The galley was in the middle, there was a couch, and a dining area for four. We could not find a ding or flaw with any component. Wow, this thing is in great condition and could handle six to seven people easily. “What do you think? I like it, it would be cool to share some more camping trips with the kids. We still have three years to go before our big trip, maybe we could get this and do some local camping in preparation for the longer trip?” The salesperson said the price was firm as it was on consignment, but we made an offer that he was a least willing to share with the owner. They met us on their half of the middle and I was freaking out as the commitment of spending that much money was about to become a reality. I took a deep breath and we talked it over some more and decided to call one of my sons to come down to the dealership and talk us off the cliff we were on. He arrived and we showed him the motorhome. We sent the salesperson away and talked some more. “I don’t see anything wrong with it, it looks great and the price is a little on the high side of fair market value, but I think you guys should get it.” What? What about thinking about it for a week or two? My last resource of wisdom had sided with making the purchase. Since we had agreed on price, we began to talk about financing. We have outstanding credit, but we weren’t sure how the purchased of the truck would affect us getting another big loan. The salesperson said we could get up to 20 years and a rate as low as 4 percent. Really? Let’s go for that deal and see what happens. He said it would take a couple of days, and that the finance manager would be in touch. I was glad to finally leave with just making a sales agreement and not have closed the deal. There was still hope. A couple of days later the finance manager called and set everything is all set, when can you come down and close? I asked about the loan agreement and he reported that they have never made a loan for 4 percent and the best he could do was 6.5 percent. It is only 30-40 dollars more per month. Yeah but at 20 years it’s over $20,000. I had my out! If they could not get the percent down under 5 the deal was off. A couple of emails a few days later and thier best offer was slightly over 5 percent. I had won a couple of battles but they were winning the war. We talked it over again and long story finally coming to an end, we closed the deal.

A week later we picked up the RV. The technician went over and ran every system. Lights, hot and cold water, holding tanks, furnace, air conditioning, slides, Tvs, vents, fans, tires, air ride system, entertainment system, GPS, and generator. Everything worked as it should. We were feeling pretty good about our purchase. I drove it the 15 minutes to our home while Diane followed. For a week or so I was taken aback every time I looked out the window and saw this 30 foot motorhome in my driveway.

By the way, anyone interested in buying an F150?