😀 Frugal Scholar remarks on the adventures of a new-to-her (and me) blogger at I am the working poor. The articulate and interesting IATWP blogs sporadically, apparently whenever she can break loose a few minutes from what sounds like a very hard-working life. She and her DH have succeeded in paying off their debts and even built up a small emergency fund on the proceeds of low-income jobs.
Most recently, though, she reports that they made a big-ticket impulse buy: purchased an RV from some guy to whom the DH delivered a pizza. They’ve been coveting an RV for months, possibly years, but been unable to swing it before this.
To pay for it, they used one of those “checks” emitted by credit-card companies. By way of luring them back into debt, their credit-card issuer sent them a fistful of blank checks that, if used, would nail them into a one-year no-interest loan.
They figure they’ll be able to pay off the amount in 11 months. Hope so. It’s clear they understand this as a loan, but she doesn’t say whether they realize that typical one-year no-interest deals sock you with a whole year’s interest if you don’t pay in full by the end of the year; after that, a hefty monthly interest fee begins to accrue.
Lordie! So much can happen in 11 months! Car accident, pregnancy, illness, job loss…{gasp!} Maybe I’m too much of a pessimist. But as I’ve noted before, the basis of frugality is pessimism. One saves for a rainy day because one believes it will rain. A lot.
SDXB and I once bought an RV.
Holy mackerel! Talk about a hole in the ground into which to pour money!!! We finally unloaded it, after months of unsuccessfully trying to sell it through the local Truck Trader, to a friend who used it as a rolling condo while he passed some months editing an Albuquerque newspaper (no joke: he lived in the paper’s parking lot); then spent lengthy periods living out of it during trips to Mexico and as a campground manager in US national parks. For him, it was a good deal. For us…not so much.
RVs are probably worth the money if you like to hang out in campgrounds—they don’t work well for off-road car camping, because they tend to torque on dirt roads that are poorly maintained or drop into gullies. SDXB and I were really not into crowded campgrounds. He preferred to go off by himself in the forest or desert. The idea of going camping is to find peace and quiet, not to move into a rolling apartment house with as much or more noise and people in your face as you have at home.
That’s not true of everyone, obviously. We met many folks who truly loved the campground experience. In Arizona, there’s an entire subculture of RVers, people who come here and spend eight months in commercial campgrounds during the winter and then pack up and drive to cooler climes for the summer. And while we were on the road, we did stay in some places where I could imagine lingering for quite awhile.
Sometimes I think it would be great fun to unload my house, buy an RV, toss some jeans, boots, a jacket, a six-pack of Corona, and the dog into it, and take off permanently.
But realistically…don’t think so. As if I didn’t have enough work to do!
🙂
We have them here, those vagabond RV people.
We call them Snow-Birds.
There is a big RV park on the south end of town that I have to pass on my way home. The drivers of these condos on wheels put their RV into neutral when they are half mile away and coast all the way to the entrance to the RV park.
Frustrating when I’m behind one of these leviathans, as you can’t see around them to pass until you stick your nose out there and see how lucky you are.
I’m not an RV person. Wouldn’t live in one and wouldn’t travel in one and yes they are parked all over town with For Sale signs on them.
Mrs. 101 and I went window-shopping for an RV a few months ago. Mostly we were looking into renting one, but as long as we were there, we looked around. Probably the most interesting thing the salesman let on is that people financed these things for twelve (twelve!!) years. Looking at how shoddily they were built, I’d be surprised if they held together that long.
@ 101 Centavos: Are they still outrageously expensive to rent?
Ex-DH and I had some friends who rented an RV for a lark. The price was breathtaking! They could afford it — they were both antitrust lawyers. On just one corporate lawyer’s income, though, we sure couldn’t.
The couple I met at the Mayo said they’d been RVing for 20 years. They didn’t say, though, whether they’d had the same one all that time. I asked them which was more work, a house or an RV. He said, “Well, I don’t have to mow the lawn or paint anymore….” And she said “An RV!” LOL! We didn’t get any further, because just about the time this potentially interesting subject came up, they called one of us in.