February 8, 2015

Plan B

Plan B is sometimes considered a bad thing.  In our case Plan B is going to get us into an RV sooner than we first expected.  So, for us, Plan B is awesome.

Background -> In order for us to live full time on the road we will need to sell our house so we can afford to buy a large truck and 5th wheel.  There are some very real concerns with this plan.  What if business isn't as good as we thought it would be while we travel the country?  What if we can't service our customers in a timely manner?  Would we be able to attract new clients?  What if we don't like living in such close quarters?  Where would we live if we didn't have a house anymore? 

After weeks of dreaming/thinking/talking we've come up with a solution that we believe will work for us.   

Here's what our Plan B looks like:

Step 1 is to get out of our rented shop building.  Working from the house will save us a bunch of money every month.  We'll concentrate on getting new clients when we're not servicing our existing clients.

Step 2 is to buy a smaller travel trailer which we can tow behind our Suburban.  We'll take it out for weekend or week long trips while servicing local clients.  We'll be able to start locally and grow from there.  We'll keep our house for this step and return as needed.

Step 3 is to keep growing our clientele list.  We'd like to have a calendar full of appointments.  We estimate that if we can make 8-10 service calls per week that we would have enough work to keep us in the black.

Plan B has heightened our anticipation for getting on the road.  We've spent a few days at a couple of local RV dealerships and walked through some nice trailers.  We have to keep weight in mind.  The Suburban has a tow capacity of 7300 pounds.  We want to keep our overall loaded weight about 1000-1200 pounds under that so we're looking at trailers with a dry weight between 5000-5500 pounds.  

We've done our research and know the ranking of several brands .  Northwood, located in Oregon, manufactures travel trailers, 5th wheels, light weight trailers, truck campers and toy haulers.  Their line of travel trailers is rated #2 in the 'above average' category.  In our researching we discovered that a local dealership is one of their distributors.  We went and visited the dealership.  To our surprise we found a trailer that we think will serve us well for the interim between part-time RV travel and full-time RV living.
 
Here's a few photos of the trailer we hope to purchase in the upcoming months when step 2 takes place.

floor plan of Nash's 24M
passenger's side from front
driver's side from front
the bathroom is just inside the rear door
view when stepping into the trailer
a dinette is across from the couch
the queen size bed is located at the front of the trailer
there's a separate door to the bedroom and plenty of storage for two people
view from the bedroom
March 12-15 there will be a large RV Show at the Cal Expo fairgrounds featuring several local dealerships and their inventory.  It's a good time to walk through and tour hundreds of RV's in one spot.  We'll definitely be viewing other RV's to see if we find something that tickles our fancy more than this one. 

6 comments:

  1. Plan B for Brilliant!! I love that you can get out there sooner and build the business at the same time. The trailer looks pretty sweet with that must-have of a walk around bed! We're soooo excited for you guys!!

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    1. We're over-the-edge excited too!! We've been on-line researching/comparing/wishing and can't wait to see more of the lite weight category trailers in a few weeks. Whatever we buy there will definitely be a few must-have items.

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  2. It's going to be hard to wait for the perfect time to go fulltime! We have a plan B that puts us out on the road years earlier. Waiting might make more since if we continue to think like we always have - that being logically with all kinds of safety built into the plan. My wife and I are starting to think in terms of lets do it while we are physically able, we can always go back to regular jobs.

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    1. Thanks for stopping by Mark.
      Since Ron and I are self-employed we don't have a retirement income. We'll need to work on the road to make it all happen. We have a mobile business which helps, but you never know what may happen. With our Plan B we'll start off slowly with the RV lifestyle and build into full time and selling our house.
      Yes, get out there while you still can!

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  3. Wow, great! Are you leaving sooner or still next June?

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    1. Honestly, we have to see how the part time RVing works out and if we can still earn a decent living. We'd both like to leave earlier though. Our fingers are crossed-we have the itch!!

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