I'm glad to see that others are following Dave's advice to Financial Freedom.  Our daughter works for Dave as one of his event planners, she gets to fly with a team and coordinate the live events.  Anyway, what would Dave say?  Well, I can't speak for Dave but he would most likely advise us to purchase a used unit rather than a new one in order to minimize the depreciation.  There are a lot of slightly use rigs out there that can be purchased at very reasonable prices.  So, you might ask, "What did you do?"  We bought new, of course. 

Two things to keep in mind when transitioning into this fulltime lifestyle is to be debt free and have a reasonable financial plan to get you through to the end.  Note that I said reasonable, whenever I use those financial planners that most investment companies provide online it turns out that I would have to work until six years after I'm dead just to accumulate enough wealth to cover for inflation, projected medical costs, the increase in cost of tea in China, etc.  So we just have to make a reasonable plan and move on.  As my dear wife said to me, "If we had waited until we had enough money to have kids, we wouldn't have any."  Any what, kids or money - well we had kids so we have no money!  But we are debt free and we are fulltiming and we're loving it.  There definately is more to life than money.

God bless you as you make the transition.

Darrell   

Well said, Fred.

Jim

Hi Donna,

Well, others have expressed many of the thoughts that I would have shared.

However, I'm not so sure Dave Ramsey would say:
 
"DEPRECIATION.. why would you want to sell your home for an RV that will depreciate".

Dave's goal for everyone is financial "peace".  And the biggest part of that is freedom from debt.

Let's look at Dave's Baby Steps to Financial Peace:

1. Immediately save $1,000 to start an Emergency Fund
2. Pay off all debt, except the house, using the Debt Snowball plan*
3. Save 3 - 6 months of expenses in a savings account
4. Invest 15% of household income in Roth IRAs and pre-tax retirement accounts
5. College funding for children
6. Pay off home early
7. Invest in mutual funds and real estate to build wealth and give something back.

Steps 1 - 3 are things everyone can do with effort and discipline.

Step 4 can be done if steps 1 - 3 are complete, but most people try to do this before they even get to step 2 and most of the time they don't get to that 15% figure because their funds are tied up paying on debt.  Regardless, the goal of Step 4 is to plan for retirement and start socking away large sums so you have enough to enjoy the retirement years.

Step 5 is so the kids can get an education without being strapped by student loan payments when they get out into the real world.

Step 6 is the final step to freedom from debt and breaking that last chain in the "borrower is slave to the lender" prison.

Step 7 is where the wealth building really begins.

So, if you need to build wealth and IF the house is paid off, Dave might question the wisdom of selling an appreciating house to buy a depreciating RV.

However, if there is still a mortgage on the house, Dave just might be all for selling the house, paying off a mortgage, buying an RV to better help you live within your means, and investing whatever house proceeds and extra income is left over.

Remember, full-timing can be a way to avoid the necessity to build more wealth in the "fun" years so Step 7 might not be quite as important.  That's a big reason we have taken on this lifestyle.

The prior posts here are excellent.  And as long as you are debt free, have "financial peace", and are happy, I don't think Dave would get too hung up on the tradeoffs. 

By the way, many of Dave's books and products are on sale for $10 each through today, Sept 3, on his website:
 http://www.daveramsey.com/shop/


* - Debt Snowball plan
Many people say to pay off your highest interest rate debt first.  However, Dave takes a different approach.  When paying off debt, psychologically you need quick "wins" to build momentum.

So you list your debts from smallest to largest based soley on total balance due.  You make minimum payments on everything except your smallest debt, debt one.  Then you attack that small debt with a vengeance scraping up whatever money you can (maybe sacrificing a luxury or even working a side job) to pay it off as quickly as possible.  Then you attack the next smallest debt applying the payments you were making on the first debt to debt two.  When debt two is paid off, you attack the third smallest debt with the payments you were making on the first two.  And you keep going until only the mortgage is left.  That's the debt snowball and it works!