judatt

Hi Bill. We appreciate your advice and may yet decide to take the plunge. However, I'm retiring from a job where I traveled a good bit and have a good bit of benefits stored up for use in retirement - several hundred thousand airline miles (mostly on Delta); several hundred thousand Hilton points and tens of thousands in other hotel chains; and I have several free days and executive status with National Car rental. This allows me to get some good rates and I've already checked into renting a car for a week in Florida and for a month in south Texas on this first trip. Now that we've bought the motor home we don't plan to use the hotel points or airline miles here in the USA - we have some overseas trips we want to make and will use them for those trips. More than you want to know but we have our first retirement trip already planned. I have been to Sydney a couple of times on business trips and my wife wasn't able to go with me so she has always wanted to go to Australia. Next fall we are flying to Singapore (using miles) getting on a cruise ship and going through Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand. Be on the ship almost a month and then fly home from Sydney. We'll stay a few days in Singapore before the cruise and a few days after the cruise in Sydney and both times we will use points to get free hotels. All that business travel needs to have some benefit! Frankly, after a pretty intense job (CFO) for the past many years I'm looking forward to just finding some beautiful spots in our great country and doing almost nothing for awhile. David

Greetings, everyone. We acquired our Newmar Mountain Aire 4523 yesterday. Still trying to get a lot of things sorted out. I am retiring Dec 4 so have about 3 weeks of work left and we plan to leave on Dec 7 on our first trip. We have made the decision not to tow a vehicle on this first trip. Decided we just need to get used to driving the 45' MH and when we return in mid-Feb we will get the toad ready to go. We have a 2014 Buick Enclave FWD. We have thought we would use it as our toad. I went to the local RV Dealer and they said we could indeed use the Enclave. They quoted me about $4,500 ($3100 parts and $1400 labor) to get it ready to tow. Does this sound reasonable? Would I be better off to get another vehicle to tow? We really like the Enclave but if it would be simpler to tow another vehicle, we might consider acquiring another model. By the way, we had already decided to join FMCA so when we acquired the MH yesterday, I called this morning and we are now officially 5 year members of FMCA. We have really appreciated the good input we have received on these forums. Thanks, everyone. David

We have several quotes - all higher than I thought they would be but a couple are better than the others ($2500 + range). A couple of others are outrageous ($6000 range). Still have a few more to come in.

Greetings! We are buying our first motor home next week. Have the unit picked out and am now finalizing details. One of those is insurance. I have what appears to be a decent quote from Blue Sky which includes Blue Sky Motor Club for an additional $52 per year. Is Blue Sky Motor Club a similar service to the 3 you have mentioned? Anyone have any input on this company (Blue Sky) and the BS Motor Club? Thanks. David

Thanks for the invitation Herman. We may want to do that some day. However, Dec 4 is my last day of work. I have an appointment with our HR department at 1 that afternoon to do all the paperwork and then after 29 years with the same company, I'll be retired. So, I think we better pass on the Rally but will certainly look forward to future events. By the way, since you are a Texan can you recommend a place to stay for the month of January in South Texas? We are thinking near Corpus Christi but certainly not tied to that area - just want someplace warm! Thanks again. David

If we were keeping our house I wouldn't even consider an LLC. We already have a buyer for our house and the LLC will purchase the MH once we consummate the transaction. We have no other ties to Virginia and will be full timing. There is a big difference between avoiding taxes and evading taxes. One is a smart way to preserve your resources. The other is illegal, unethical and just wrong. I'd never evade taxes but my career as a CPA is all about minimizing taxes in every possible legal way for not just me but clients as well.

Greetings everyone. Thanks to your great input we have made some decisions. First, we have an appointment next Wednesday at a Cummins diesel shop to run our prospective motor home through all the diagnostics. It's $240 which seems very reasonable to me. Assuming that goes well we plan to buy the 2008 Newmar Mountain Aire. First decision, we are paying cash. That has something to do with the second decision which is to form a Montana LLC and have that entity buy the unit. We have been in contact with the Bennett Law Office and are getting that process going. We seriously considered just going with South Dakota but would have had to pay 4% tax which we won't with the LLC. Still looking for insurance but are narrowing that down as well. If anyone wants to throw us some cautions please feel free. Thanks again for all your good input so far. It's great when a community with common interests can come together. David

Greetings, everyone. We think we have found our unit. We finally were able to look at it today and we love everything about it. It's a 2008 Newmar Mountain Aire with 41,000 miles on it. It looks new inside and out. We have asked the owners to take it in for an inspection of all the moving parts and if that all checks out we will buy the MH. Now the requests for input from those of you with experience. First, I had said to myself that if we could get 4% money we would finance it. We should be able to earn 4% on our savings so if we could get 4% we'd do that - if not we'd just pay cash. I have a proposal of 4.4% for 180 months and another one from another company for a similar rate but they also proposed 3.9% for 60 months. Payments are hefty but we could do it so am inclined to give that one a try. Any thoughts? Insurance is another question??? We have used USAA for several years and are very happy with them. I went to their website and they said they offer MH insurance. I started filling out the form and at the bottom of the page it said we use Progressive for our MH insurance. I went ahead and filled out the form and it came back about $3,000 a year for excellent coverage. Could save about $300 by reducing coverage. I thought I had heard you should be able to get insurance for $1 - 2 thousand. I used $200,000 as the value of the unit. Any suggestions as to the best company for insurance??? Finally, a question about registration. We have been thinking about where might be the best place to register the MH. We have lived in Virginia the past 23 years but don't have real ties here. We have thought about Tennessee, Florida and Texas - all of which we have some ties to and all of which have no state income taxes. We don't think we want to go the LLC Montana route???? and are somewhat inclined to just register it in Virginia but would like to hear ideas from others. For what it's worth our daughter and her family are planning to buy our house here in Virginia but won't put theirs on the market until spring so we will be homeowners here in Virginia until probably April. We plan to take several extended trips between now and then but won't officially cut our ties with Virginia until we sell our house to our daughter next spring. That's enough for now. We really appreciate all the good info that you have given us so far and look forward to hearing your input on these issues. Thank you for all your encouragement so far. David and Judy

Thanks, everyone. We thought the rental idea was a good one. However, we read several of the posts here and they make good sense to us so I think we are going to forego the rental idea. We couldn't get one that is close to what we are looking at buying without paying big bucks so we just decided to put that money on the coach we are going to buy. Thanks again everyone! David

That would be helpful, wouldn't it. We are in Richmond, VA and would like to rent someplace close to here if possible. Our local dealer is McGeorge RV and they have indicated they don't rent (although there is a sign up that says rentals they indicate they don't rent anymore). Thanks. David

Greetings, everyone. Thanks for your great advice on another thread - great input. Several people have recommended renting a MH prior to purchase. My local dealer is huge - but they don't rent. In fact, they go so far as to say just go ahead and buy. I'm taking that with the proverbial grain of salt as I know they want to make a sale - not necessarily just rent me one for a few days. So, my question - does anyone have any good recommendations where I can rent a class A similar to what we are looking at. How long is long enough to help us make a good decision - 1 week? 2 weeks? Also, any idea what renting a MH should cost. I'm assuming a daily/weekly charge plus mileage? Thanks for your input. David

The Landon's said: "Good luck in your search and also take a look at the Tiffin line." Thank you for your informative message, Jack and Sheralyn. Thought I would let you know as we did our research we narrowed it down to Tiffin and Newmar. In fact, I would say that Tiffin was probably our choice until we actually visited dealerships. In that process, Newmar began to come out on top and maybe for the wrong reasons but they were important reasons to us. First, you need to know that I know nothing - absolutely nothing - about maintenance. I believe in maintenance of vehicles and probably do more than most people but I don't personally do it. I have a local guy that I take our vehicles to and he keeps them in excellent condition. So, for our MH we would plan to have all the maintenance done at our local dealer. When we walked into our local dealer that sells Newmar's we were warmly greeted. They have a huge service department and in fact had several units and several people there that were having their units serviced. All seemed to be happy. They had a customer lounge with lots of drinks and snacks and it actually had a lady in there greeting people and offering to help. The restrooms were immaculately clean. Then we got with our salesman. He spent time talking with us about what we were thinking and how we planned to use our MH. He then showed us several units and we spent a good bit of time with each unit. We went in expecting to spend 15 minutes or so getting some information and ended up spending 4 hours there and left feeling as if we were much better informed. At the end of the 4 hours I told him that based on our original research I still felt like I needed to look at a Tiffin. So, I looked and sure enough there is a dealer just north of us that sells Tiffin's. We went to the dealership and walked in and no one greeted us. We only saw 3 people in the entire dealership and all seemed to be employees. No one was there looking or having their MH serviced. In fact, I'm not sure how big their service department was - I saw an awning and a bay but no one was there and no vehicles seemed to be there. I asked if we could look at a Tiffin and he said sure - we have 2 out there and they are open. He went out with us but then pretty much left us alone - no explanations of anything. Frankly, I'm not sure he knew anything about them. So we were left on our own to explore which in some ways I tend to like but in this case I want to know about how things work because I don't know anything. Fortunately, I had just spent 4 hours the day before with the Newmar guy so I did know a few things to look for. After visiting both places, I feel confident the Tiffin is a great product. However, considering the entire experience, I feel like for us the Newmar would be the better MH. Maybe these are all the wrong reasons but they are important to us. Setting all the dealership experiences aside, the two brands are pretty similar in many respects and the Comfort Drive on the Newmar is a big selling point for us. Although, I'll admit we didn't drive the Tiffin and probably should have. Thanks again for your great input. Look forward to further conversation. David

Greetings, everyone. We have been lurking here at FMCA for a little while as we have been doing research on buying a MH. Short background - my wife retired as a nurse (RN) 8 years ago. I'm a CPA and will be retiring on Dec 4 after almost 30 years with the same company. She has been traveling with me (about 125 nights a year) since she retired and we really like spending time together after 42 years of marriage. Looking forward to spending full time together in just about 6 weeks. We are both 63 and live in VA. We have been to our local dealer a few times and really like everyone we have met there including the sales guy we are dealing with. It's only about 3 miles from our home. We think we have narrowed it down to a couple of MH's. They are both Newmars - one is a gasser the other a DP. In reading these boards it seems the recommendation is for newbie's to buy a gently used gasser to get into the lifestyle and see what you like and don't like and then move up to the coach you will have for an extended period. I think that is good advice but I'm a little concerned since I know nothing - absolutely nothing - about mechanics and maintenance. Ask me about numbers and I can talk all day but I don't even check the oil on our vehicles. I do make sure they get regular maintenance at our local place but I don't do anything myself other than drive it over to the shop. So, I'm more inclined to go new. Also, we really like our local dealership and tend to want to go new with them. We drove both units today - first time driving a MH. We had been in a few but never drove one. Here is our initial reaction: Ventana LE 4044 (DP) - Quiet and drove like a dream. Engine noise almost nonexistent. Coach seemed very solid and we loved the ride. Comfort Drive was great. Canyon Star 3953 (gasser) - As we expected, the gasser had more engine noise. What we didn't expect was that the body seemed to creak/squeak much more than the DP. It was "noisy" but not so much that we wouldn't consider it. In short - we loved the DP but it is also right at $50k more expensive for basically 11" more length. Both are within the budget we have set - the DP is under by a little and the gasser by a substantial amount. This is getting long but I have faith in your experience and have really appreciated everyone's willingness to share their experience with us newbies. Look forward to hearing from you. Thanks. David and Judy p.s. You might ask how we found FMCA? Several years ago we met a couple who if I remember correctly he was president of FMCA. I'm originally from Oklahoma and he had signed my CPA certificate when he was on the state board of public accounting. Small world.