Retired!!!

[Pa_5er]

Hello Everybody,
I FINALLY retired on December 18, 2023!!! DW has been retired for a few years and I have realized that the reason she was always smiling was that she was retired. Once we sell our house, we will be RVing full-time. Regardless, our first long trip will be to Kentucky in April to experience the Solar Eclipse with friends. After that, we're heading to GA to visit a friend and his family. Not sure where we go after that, but we are looking forward to it.

Over the last 6 years or so, we have been remodelling our 2001 3255RL and living vicariously through the posters and their travels. Thanks to you guys for the words of encouragement and sharing your experience, we have done everything by ourselves, including pulling out old carpeting and installing linoleum. We also have upgraded to 3 Battle Born 100ah batteries and an Aims Power 12 volt 3000 watt inverter charger. We hope to do a fair amount of boondocking. Thanks to all of you and hopefully we will meet along the way.

Tod & Laura

[MandK]

Congratulations on your retirement! Enjoy!

[Sparatacus]

Awesome, well let me be the one of the first to congrats you on your retirement, when I first retired it was a little hard because I told myself that I was supposed to be doing something, but I finally got it.

You are going to love it I sure do but I'm still working I work for my church as a Pastor but this job I do love it.

[Marilynd]

Congratulations on your retirement! Have fun making new memories!

[DutchmenSport]

Congrats on your retirement! I retired 2 years ago, the wife is still working full time, but is a "home office" permanently, so we have been free to travel anywhere as long as we have phone service for our internet hot spots.

The one thing I always wanted to do, but could not because I was working full time also (home office also), was to do camp hosting. Now that I'm retired, I've finally broken in. Camp hosting is a great way to get a rent free campsite in exchange for some work around the park. Each state park system has different expectations, and of course every private campground will have their own expectations. So, it's really important to have a clear understanding what's expected. But it is a great way to stay somewhere for an extended period at no cost, except for a little bit of work, the provide lots of off time. Plus, camp hosting keep (me..at least) from going stalk raving crazy being board while "she" is working. You might check into this, if you have some favorite locations you'd like to spend some time at. However, you do have to plan ahead of time for this. You just don't show up today and ask to be a camp host. Most of the time, the different parks are working out several months or even a year out. Others are desperate and you can get a position within a month or two. And every state (state park system) and every private campground has different expectations and different processes to get "hired" on.

Good luck in your retirement. I hope you have many and happy safe travels. Again, congrats!

[Foldbak]

Congrats! I'm not far behind you!

[Bourbon County]

Congratulations on your retirement! I pulled that string nearly 5 years ago and highly recommend it for all.

Where are you going for the eclipse viewing? We're going to pull to somewhere in the Elizabethtown, KY area for a few days prior to the eclipse to visit some old friends, then going to a KOA near Indy on Sunday for the eclipse on Monday. That KOA is really proud of having the the total blackout at their campground; I've paid less for oceanfront sites!

[mlh]

Yahoo! You are going to love it.
Lynwood

[jsb5717]

Congrats! We're both big fans of retirement, too. It's been 3 years but it didn't take long to get into a new mindset of NOT going to work.

You may have talked about your remodel in previous threads but I'm curious about the extent of your work to get it ready for full-timing. Have you replaced the tires? They should be 5 years old or less. How about the suspension and hangers? In addition to making it look good I would want to make sure it's ready for the road.

Again, congrats! Enjoy that freedom and the travels.

[Pa_5er]

Thanks to all of you for the congrats, etc. We will be viewing the eclipse at a friends house near Cadiz in the area known as the 'Land Between the Lakes'. We will be there with my friend and his family. I've known Jerry since second grade! We will be staying at his sister's house. So far, retirement is everything I had hoped it would be!

[mlh]

My wife and I have been to the Land Between the Lakes a couple of times. The first time the brochure said they had “bold headed eagles”. Yeah it was a long time ago.
It’s a nice area. Enjoy.
Lynwood

[Pa_5er]

We will be getting new tires before we hit the road. Our friend is a mechanic and owns his own garage. Trying to decided between Hankook, Carllisle, and Sailun. While getting the new tires, he will install new wheel bearings, brakes, and possibly the backing plates. I will have him check the hangars, too. We definitely want to make sure 'Freddie' is ready for the road. I have attached a photo of our battery bank and inverter charger. I also created a new album with pictures of the remodel. Unfortunately, I downloaded them out of order. The last photo should have the been the first, etc.
Thanks for the suggestions! Anymore would be greatly appreciated.
Seeing bald eagles is always a treat. We live in rural PA and occassionally see them.

[DutchmenSport]

Originally Posted by Bourbon County

... We're going to pull to somewhere in the Elizabethtown, KY area for a few days prior to the eclipse to visit some old friends, then going to a KOA near Indy on Sunday for the eclipse on Monday. That KOA is really proud of having the the total blackout at their campground; I've paid less for oceanfront sites!

Hey Bourbon, If you don't mind traveling up I-69 out of Indianapolis about 30 miles, you are welcome to pull into my drive way and hang out for the eclipse. We live near Anderson, Indiana, in the country, and (as the crow flies) about 2.5 miles off I-69. We are in direct alignment for the eclipse. I can throw you an electric line and make sure you have water. You can dump your tanks, we have a septic tank.

We'll be home in April. If you want to save a few bucks, my "campground" is 100% free! We live in the country and have easy in, easy out (back in though) space in our drive way (200+ feet long). I have a 30 amp RV hook-up and a 50 amp RV hook up. We're plugged into the 50, but if you back in, I could easily get you on the dedicated 30 amp with no problems. For an overnight, or even 2 nights, you are completely welcome to visit us.

Ping me on private message if interested.

Good luck!

[Gonefishing]

Retirement it’s great. Enjoy it be happy do what you want when you want.

[Sparatacus]

You are so right Gonefishing, you know we work all of our lives and we don't know how much longer we are going to be on this God-green earth and I agree enjoy life.

[brycesteiner]

That looks like a good power setup. I'll be looking into something like that too. thnakks for posting!

[newowneroldmontana]

I don't mean to be a downer, but I want to chime in with a word of caution, regarding your plans to sell your house and hit the road full-time. I would urge you to keep your house instead of selling it, if at all possible, unless you have a rock-solid back-up plan B, C, and D for where you're going to live, if circumstances change and you can't full-time anymore due to health or financial reasons, or if you can't full-time anymore because there's no longer anyplace you can reliably afford to park your rig.

(Camping and pickup trucks have always been for the common man, but "campgrounds" are increasingly becoming pricey, swanky "RV parks" that won't even allow a rig as old as yours to stay long-term--and new RVs and the trucks to tow them with are becoming ridiculously expensive. If your rig or your truck craps out, you'll have to get new ones. And more zoning laws, building codes, and city ordinances are being put in place every day, all over the country, too, to keep people from living in RVs, even on their own property.)

Also, since there are two of you, one of you is probably going to die before the other. Make sure you have a plan for how, and where, whoever is left will be able to live.

[brycesteiner]

Good points

[DutchmenSport]

newowneroldmontana makes some excellent points. I didn't want to go down that road I made in my previous post, but I suppose since the can of worms is opened, I'll add my 2 cents.... maybe not so much about full timing, but about "retiring" and simply "living".

First, retirement takes a lot of planning and hopefully you have done so, so that you are "somewhat" adequately financially stable for the rest of your lives.

When I announced my retirement, someone asked me, "When do you know you have enough money to actually retire." It is a good question and one that each person has to answer for themselves. But my response back to him was this: "You never have ENOUGH money to retire. You have to learn to make do with what you have."

In preparation for retirement, my quest started about 10 years before the big event. My wife and I did some pretty creative financial planning that included cashing out my 401K.... not once, but twice. Why? Because when the "BIG" day came, we wanted no debt! If you do not have any debt, you can actually live pretty comfortable on a modest retirement, social security income, if you play your cards yet. Again, the secret is, be 100% out of debt.

The second thing is, you really have to do the math to figure out where is your best social security break even point. What I mean by that is, if you add up everything you paid into SS and everything your company sponsored contribution paid into SS, how many years and months will it be before you get all of that back with monthly payments.

Those numbers change drastically if you take retirement at 62.5, 65 (plus), or at 70 years of age. The other thing is, not knowing what the future holds, if you take retirement at 62.5, you will be limited to the amount of money you can continue to earn outside of social security. If you earn more than (around) $24,000, anything over that, you are docked on your SS.

However, if you wait till your full retirement benefit (between 65 plus and 70), two things happen: 1) you can continue working and earn as much as you want and still receive your full SS payments, or you can wait till age 70 and every month you delay taking SS, up to the age of 70, your monthly payment amount will increase... meaning, instead of getting .... lets say, $1000 every month by starting SS at 65, opposed to getting $1005 if you wait till 65 and 1 month, or $1100 at 66 and 2 months.

These are examples, not real figures, but you get the idea. So, you have to take all these variables and crunch the numbers ... which is not an easy task and then figure out where is that break-even point. If you live longer than the break even point, then you are a winner. If you die before that break even point ... well ... Social Security wins and keeps everything you'll never get.

So, do 2 things....
1) get out of debt before the big day.
2) crunch the numbers for the maximum age you need to be to start drawing social security.

Do that, you'll be fine ... just remember .... you really NEVER have enough money, you have to make do with what you've got.

[Pa_5er]

Hello everybody,

We really appreciate the comments and concerns. We are virtually debt free. Between my 401(k), our IRAs, and some work camping and boondocking, we hope to be able to do most of everything we have wanted to do in retirement. We have the deed for the house. There will always be unforeseen emergencies and expenses, but hopefully they will be few and far between.

During our travels, we hope to find an area that we like and would find comfortable to live out the rest of our lives. One thing is certain, neither of us want to endure another Clearfield County, PA winter. This year we have been below zero for 4 days or so and have had a least a foot of snow on the ground. Will selling the house be the worst or the best thing?? It's a crapshoot.

Thank you for the reminders of what to get done on the camper before we hit the road. I had forgotten about some of them. Please keep them coming. Maybe we will see you on the road!

Tod