Hi Everyone. Well, after 15 years the RV-Dreams Community Forum is coming to an end. Since it began in August 2005, we've had 58 Million page views, 124,000 posts, and we've spent about $15,000 to keep this valuable resource for RVers free and open. But since we are now off the road and have settled down for the next chapter of our lives, we are taking the Forum down effective June 30, 2021. It has been a tough decision, but it is now time.
We want to thank all of our members for their participation and input over the years, and we want to especially thank those that have acted as Moderators for us during our amazing journey living and traveling in our RV and growing the RV-Dreams Family. We will be forever proud to have been founders of this Forum and to have been supported by such a wonderful community. Thank you all!!
We are in the process of preparing our house for sale, hope to start full timimg this spring. Our delima do we buy a new trailor or a used. My argument is that we dont want to need to pay for repairs on a tight budget. But there is a big difference in price and but we get what we want with all the bells and whistles with a new version. Please tell me your reasoning for buying what you did. I need to justify this to me and the boss.
We are in the process of preparing our house for sale, hope to start full timimg this spring. Our delima do we buy a new trailor or a used. My argument is that we dont want to need to pay for repairs on a tight budget. But there is a big difference in price and but we get what we want with all the bells and whistles with a new version. Please tell me your reasoning for buying what you did. I need to justify this to me and the boss.
Here's our story, Bob. Take it for what it cost you.
Jo Ann and I decided to buy some sort of low-cost RV as a learning vehicle in preparation for full-timing in 2015. Our money is pretty tight, and we probably don't have any business doing what we did, but we did it anyway. The original plan was to buy an inexpensive used rig. A price was agreed upon, and we started looking. A visit to Camping World and an hour of a salesman's time let us get a handle on depreciation. That reinforced our desire to buy used.
Several visits to various dealerships, and many hours on the Internet, got us to looking at a fairly small group of travel trailers. We went with them simply because we didn't want to trade vehicles, too, and the Mountaineer could pull anything we could afford. We were originally interested in the Scamp, Casita, and Egg Camper. I suggested that we add the mpg to the list, just to see what a somewhat larger trailer would be like.
We were still thinking "used" when we saw the mpg. Jo Ann pretty much fell in love with it right away, and I wasn't too far behind. We had looked at a Casita earlier in the week, and decided that that class of trailer was just too small for us. The only used trailers that were small enough for the Mercury and in our price were pretty plain boxes, and just didn't compare to the mpg. In addition, the Bighorn is pretty high on our list of full-time rigs, so this would give us some experience with the Heartland brands.
We learned that a new rig will depreciate about 25% in the first few years, another 50% in the next five, and then the depreciation curve will start to level out, although still going down. We also have been told that trading up in within the same company is somewhat cheaper (the dealer will give you a bit more for your trade-in), so we decided to go with the new mpg. Time will tell whether we did the right thing or not.
FWIW, we buy used cars, because of the depreciation issue. When we buy our full-time rig it will most likely be used, or possibly a year-old model still on the dealer's lot.
Good luck, and enjoy the searching. As others have said, the right rig will eventually say "buy me" to you.
