Mar

26

Motor HomeLunched today with a couple that owns an extra nice motor home. In the past they have made several nice trips in it. Today they commented that they have a upcoming trip to their son's home in Jacksonville, FL and will take the car instead. The motor home has a one hundred gallon tank and diesel fuel to fill it is $4.17 per gallon! They indicated they will use the motor home 'some' this Summer for 'shorter' trips. I am sure the motor home industry is hurting as a result of fuel costs.

Bill Rafter remarks:

I tried to short some WGO (Winnebago) recently and could not borrow the stock.

Ken Smith writes:

Motor homes are a common approach to living on the cheap. Not too cheap, though. One can own the vehicle but must rent space in a trailer park, pay for hookups to water, sewer, electricity, phone. KOA provides free wireless Internet, has beautiful grounds, swimming pool, small store on premises with dry food stocks.

A sizable population has always lived in trailer parks; KOA is not representative of such housing. I would stay at KOA for extended periods of time; could live there nicely for total living expense of $1000 a month. But I am not a bachelor — can't make this decision autocratically.

Can live on California Coast, near Smith River, Crescent City, beautiful setting. Just give up high living, settle down to quiet, simple life style. Ride around the area on your bicycle. Fish on the river, surf on the ocean.


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2 Comments so far

  1. steve leslie on March 26, 2008 10:34 am

    My neighbor across the street is an interesting case study in behavioral psychology. He reminds me of Joe Btfsplk the character in Lil Abner who was the world’s worst jinx. He walked around with a cloud above his head.

    In late 1998-1999 he decided to try his hand at trading stocks. He showed me his portfolio and I saw the typical names on his list. He had app $50,000 in such stocks as ebay, amazon and some dot.coms. I advised him against such exposure to high risk stocks. We revisited the discussion sometime later and he mentioned that he sold out his stocks at a sizable loss.

    His next venture was a 30 foot RV built in 1995 purchased it in Georgia. On his first trip, the roof leaked ( a common occurence in older motor homes) and had it repaired.

    Then a year later I notice a larger and more modern RV, this one is 36 feet with sliders on both sides. He said he traded in the smaller one and cashed in his IRA since it was not doing very well to purchase this one. Said he got a good deal on it.

    He retired two years ago from Kennedy Space Center and got a real estate license to supplement his retirement income and use the RV to travel. He and his wife are 65.

    Now he works at Sears selling hardware and I asked him about his travels. He said he can’t afford to travel because of the cost of fuel. I asked about selling it and he said that he would take a big loss by doing so plus he isn’t sure of the market for RV’s anyway. So it just sits on a lot.

    The unfortunate aspect of this story is I could fill journals with similar stories of others who do and have done the same or similar thing with RV’s,boats, and airplanes. I could wax on about those who bought high sold low, who purchased annuities and mutual funds and six months or a year later sold them out only find they had to pay a sizable cdsc(contingent deferred sales charge. I could write on the crisis in Florida real estate because of flippers and no doc borrowers, families who borrowed against the equity in their home and now are upside down. People who were sold ARMS and now realize that they are being reset at much higher rates.

    Lessons here?

    sl. Leery of get rich quick schemes.

  2. George Parkanyi on March 29, 2008 2:27 am

    I went on an RV trip for two weeks around the Gaspe Peninsula 18 years ago when my first son Ben was six months old. It was a lot of fun actually, although in Quebec City I was backing up in a parking lot and didn't notice this little (brand-new) subcompact behind me. I crushed its front. All that happened to the RV was a smudge on the bumper that I just wiped off with a cloth. (Sometimes big has its advantages.) If you guys ever get to see the fun Robin Williams movie "RV", I can relate. Cheers, George

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