To become a fulltimer

Roger tells me we have to blog regularly or people will lose interest and not come back to this site.  So he wants me to tell a little about preparing to become full timers.  

As many of you know I haven't been happy working for Vitas for at least 1 1/2 years and it gradually got worse.  I also found that I was having to do so much Medicare required administrative work that I was burning out.  It was clear they thought that I was paid too much and things were changing.  Roger had already decided that he is going to leave his practice by the time his lease runs out on his office in Oct. 2013.  He also wants to move out of California because our tax burden is way too high and he is convinced that Calif. is going to go broke.  So I started reading retirement books and blogs.  I searched the internet and we considered where we want to relocate.  In the meantime we decided to buy a new RV since our last one was 8 years old and we knew we were definitely going to travel more.  We bought the RV based on our ability to find a rig that met our requirements - a shower large enough for Roger to comfortably take a shower and more room in general.  We did a lot more researching for this one than we did for the previous 2.  We discovered that the Allegro brand is the highest rated Class A motorhome and we found a 37 foot (almost) Allegro Open Road gas RV.  I have been asked, "Why not a diesel pusher?"  Well, when we were RV shopping, we asked that question.  None of the salesman seemed to recommend them even though they would have made more money.  

Somewhere along the way I read an article about RV'ing full time.  I gingerly discussed the idea with Roger.  Work was becoming unbearable.  I decided to read books by fulltimer's.  Per our son, Chris, I became obsessed.  Well, I have read about every book out there about the full time life style at least twice.  But it gave me something positive to be focused on rather than all the negative emotions I was experiencing.  Oh, and I also joined about every RV club in existence...well 4 anyway.  Oops, it's 5.

My last day of work was the 10th of August and I haven't looked back.  Well, not much.  I have been asked what I am doing with all my free time.  I haven't had any.  It takes a lot of time getting rid of 20 years of junk that I haven't had time to touch for 20 years.  I got and filled a dumpster for that.  Bit by bit I'm getting the house ready to put on the market.  We've had to decide what we are going to take in the RV when we go full time.  We decided to use this year to iron out all the kinks in our RV.  We're leaving on August 30th to go to South Dakota to see if that's where we want to establish our domicile.  We might buy vacation rental property with the money we get from selling this house.  That would give us a place to put much of our furniture and stuff.  Much of the stuff we just have to get rid of.  I think we might have estate auctioneer come and set up the sale.  I'm just not a salesperson.  I just can't see myself doing yard sales and using Craigs List.

That's all for now.  My next chat will be to tell you about our RV.  I took pictures to inventory it for insurance purposes so I can use some of those to explain to those of you who can't understand how 2 people who have been living in 3800 sq. feet are going to be happy in about 300 sq. feet.