A bumper-pull trailer can sway and bounce the tow vehicle more because to the lever angle between the pull point and the rear axle. A 5th wheel trailer doesn’t sway and bounce and it puts less strain on the tow vehicle frame. Also, you can put more weight directly over the rear axle.
Some 5th wheel hitches are removable. You can pull some pins and hoist it out of the bed.
A lot of 5th wheels are toy haulers and are extremely heavy. I’ve never seen a regular trailer that was equipped for ATVs and the like, but they may be out there. For luxury living, it’s hard to beat a big 5th wheel. Multiple slideouts and tons of room inside, unlike most trailers.
We’ve got a pop-up that we take out only 3 or 4 times a year - but one of those times is a 6 week stint across three campgrounds and 4 states. It’s totally worth it, even though, yeah, something always needs fixing. But that’s almost a feature - my husband loves to putter, but we live in an apartment in a city without a driveway or garage - his puttering opportunities at home are really minimal. So fixing stuff and playing house is something we both enjoy. Except for that damn lift cable. (Which needs total replacing after the splice job failed three times last summer.)
In our case, though, it’s less a replacement for hotel rooms and more a replacement for a tent. He’s got too many health conditions exacerbated by damp, cold, heat and a lack of electricity. Since we run First Aid, we have to be on site, and our camper lets us do that. I gave up tents for the man I love and a solid floor when it rains. 
How can it be that much? If you buy an expensive new Class A for 100k and only use it once a year then yeah it’ll cost you 10k each trip, but a used Class C is about 30k for one that is only a few years old.
Not to mention trailers which can be had for 10k or so.
We took a 5.2 metre (17’) Camper for 2.5 weeks in NZ and totally loved it.
A few thoughts on what made it attractive for us -
The vehicle we had would be VERY comfortable for a couple - and I would happily buy it for our family of four for holidays. Sometimes the convenience factor is more than just “how much would the equivalent cost”
One reason is the increased stability (due to a more forward center of gravity). It allows us to pull setups like this. I have pulled double trailers with a regular ball hitch like this, but it’s less stable, requires additional sway controllers, and you can’t have as much weight. The rig in the first picture is set up so that brakes are simultaneously applied to all 12 wheels, and with the 5th wheel stability it tracks as straight and easy as a car. Acceleration and gas mileage suffer though.
As to the OP’s question, we’re shopping for our sixth RV now. We’ve had two popups, one travel trailer, and two fifth wheels. We’ve considered motor homes (the “bus” referred to in the thread), but after renting them for a week at a time discovered we really didn’t like them. Too much rattling of the kitchen stuff while underway, and you have to tow something anyway (a small car usually). We figured having the truck+camper combo is cheaper, gives us a full-sized pickup to use for getting to my hunting camp and pulling our boat.
As far as usage, over the last 20 years we’ve averaged about 25 nights per year in the RV. 30+ when the kids were younger, but it dropped some as we got sucked into the highschool band parent vortex. Now that we’re free again (empty nesters) we’re looking for a larger, more plush RV suitable for old fogies. 
That’s certainly a high/worst case. But if you do all the math only the genuine road maven or truly stupid would buy any RV from a travel trailer up.
[ul]
[li]Figure purchase cost, which can hit $500k; see Alaska example above. $100k is borderline in my experience when Pop and Gram decide to see the USA. I’ve probably seen closer to an average of $200k, all in and ready to roll.[/li][li]Figure annual cost without driving a mile - registration/taxes, insurance, maintenance. Probably in the neighborhood of $1500-2000 without moving an inch.[/li][li]Figure per-mile cost: 7-10 mpg at $3.50-4.50, plus added maintenance costs.[/li][li]Figure campground costs for every night stopped.[/li][li]Factor in a realistic sales figure six or seven years later - likely in the 25% range.[/li][li]Factor in either loan costs or the value of the cash spent at 3-5% annually.[/li][li]Divide by the number of days used or trips taken. With a $200k unit used once a year for six years, $15k is probably on the low side.[/li][/ul]
You can scale the calculations to $5k travel trailers or $500k rock star RVs but unless you’re in the minority that really, really does get the thing out on the road frequently the per-use cost will likely shock you. The overall cost will remain the same and even for frequent use the total may be unexpected (and excessive, compared to renting cabins, hotel rooms, etc.)
You can also apply this thinking to snowmobiles, jet skis, road cruiser motorcycles (for occasional riders)… anything expensive and used selectively.
ReCU. Don’t leave home without it.
The first thing we plan to do when my husband retires is purchase a lightly used class C motor home and some land up north. We’ll probably sell our current place and most of our belongings and travel around the country and Canada, with some weeks during the summer spent building a small house on our land.
I doubt we’d even consider an RV if we lived in the suburbs or city. I can imagine what a pain it is to deal with remote storage. Renting one wouldn’t be an option, since most rental firms disallow pets, and we plan to travel a lot, so the investment would make sense for us.
I think the mistake some people make is in buying something huge and believing they can also keep all of their home-based toys. They end up either unable to afford traveling or in foreclosure because they couldn’t pay for it all.
Yes, used is definitely the way to go for your first. We paid $1000 for our pop-up, and this year invested $250 in a canopy to put over it (because it really needs recanvasing, but we can’t afford that; plus I like the shade the canopy provides.) We’ve put maybe another $200 in random bolts and 2X4’s and a replacement exterior light and other little fix up hardware for it over three years. Registration is $15 a year. Insurance is covered under our renter’s insurance (which is $18 a month we’d be paying anyway).
Our Kia’s gas mileage is barely affected by pulling it. We end up with city mpgs on the highways, is all. I can live with that.
There are RV’s, and then there are RV’s. I drool at the self leveling rigs with multiple slide outs and air conditioners and satellite TV and actual dining room tables and chairs inside…but I’m not in that market, and I know it! And really, I don’t want to be. I like that my camper is almost a tent, and I can hear the birds singing in the morning and watch they tiny feet on the canvas over my bed.
If you are willing to trade one life for the other, that’s an entirely different ballgame. You do indeed need to choose what to spend your limited (even if they’re large, they’re still limited) post-employment funds on.
OTOH… having no fixed home location can have its downsides. What if one or both of you get sick - not a cold, not necessarily Big C, but something that needs three months of downtime and care? (Mono, Lyme, broken leg, hip replacement, etc.)
OTGH… I am vehemently opposed to the notion of living one life until an arbitrary date and then taking a right-angle turn; uncounted millions of “retirees” have found their dream life to be nothing of the kind. If you get out on the road and discover three months of it is all you can really take… do you have a plan B?
There is no question that RVs have a place, and it sounds like you found one. RENTING them as needed - size, capabilities, etc. chosen to match needs - is a great idea.
Buying a one-size-fits-the-next-ten-years and expecting it to be cheaper and more convenient than just traveling, staying and eating at first-class rates… probably not.
We do intend to trade one life for another, and we’re not doing it in ignorance of what it involves. We will have a home base, as we will own land, and eventually a home, up north. (We also might buy a small condo in a small town, but that’s still undecided.) If one of us becomes ill before our house is finished, we can always park on our land or rent an apartment temporarily.
We’ve made acute-angle turns in our lives many times. Most people do, y’know. At one point I went from living in my mother’s home and being supported by her to living elsewhere and supporting myself. My husband went from his childhood home to a military base and then to Asia, and many years later he moved back to the States and re-entered civilian life. We moved from the city to the country.
Is there some reason you think making a major transition at retirement is particularly inadvisable, or do you recommend against following one’s dream at any age?
It sounds like you have both the planning and the chops to make your plans work; kudos to you.
Without taking too much space in this thread for what’s a side issue, I dislike almost everything about the traditional notion of retirement, especially the core notion that you do X until some specific date late in life, then turn and do Y for the rest of your life.
For one thing, too many people put off a Y that might be deeply fulfilling for too long while working at an X that eats their soul, and until they are too old to really enjoy Y.
For another, people frequently put too much hope and faith on Y, using it to sustain them during shitty working years, and find out it’s not nearly as tasty when they get there - spending a whole retirement fishing or playing golf or walking in the woods or picking Florida seashells turns out to be just a tad underwhelming, and within a year they are bored… but often stuck with their condo or RV or whatever.
Too many retirees also relocate - breaking decades of family and community ties at a time when they become more important than ever. They end up isolated, lonely, and often drifting psychologically.
And too many people just retire too late - just in time to start getting tired, sick, even terminally ill. So much for the golden life you worked 40 years as an accountant for. And FAR too many retire with a lot less wealth than they will need… because they spent it on useless, horribly expensive toys like RVs, snowmobiles, jet skis, pro-grade golf clubs, etc. that never returned a fraction of their value. Do the math above and then work the other half of the equation: how much did that $100k motor home cost in retirement funds? The multiplier can be staggering.
So lots of this thread is about getting an RV as a golden-age treat… and the reality is somewhere between disappointing and a Stephen King novel.
If those of you who are planning to buy a large rig can stand a few suggestions:
*Limit the amount of bells and whistles you get. Slide-outs are nice, but can be a maintenance issue.
*If you can live with, say, a 35’ bus instead of a 42’ bus, I recommend that you do so. Those huge bastards are a problem on back roads. We went from a 21’ to a 27’ for very good reasons. But since we retired and moved to Oregon, we’ve downsized to a Class B that is under 20’. Of course, we’re not living in it.
*Class C motor homes are NOT designed for permanent living, for the most part. Moisture is your enemy in any RV, but the appliances and other equipment in a Class C are not designed for long-term use and abuse. We spent five months in ours after retirement, which was great. Full time: never.
*Make sure you buy a model with a back-flush setup for the black water tank. After six years of using our previous RV, the toilet tank was encrusted with dried fecal matter that was impossible to remove. We don’t use the shitter in our new one for anything but liquid. Campgrounds have toilets, so use them whenever possible for heavier chores.
*Do your research before buying. There are plenty of websites and fora for RV-ers, including the Good Sam website. Some RVs are just trouble from the get-go. Also, I don’t recommend buying a used rig that is more than about 3 years old unless you have it thoroughly checked out first. Go with new, if at all possible.
My friend’s parents live on an old farm, and stored all kinds of caravans in one of their large barns. They were there for years and years, nobody ever came to pick them up. I think most of them had long since stopped paying. When they started building their dream house across the road they tried contacting them again, but nobody responded and they just ended up selling them for the parts.
They must’ve had at least ten, and then a few of those small trailer fold-out types. Nobody ever came back for them!
If you see one of those “U-Store” operations, look at the RV’s and the dirt that has piled up under the wheels, the sun-bleached paint on one side but not the other.
I’d love to prop toothpicks under their wheels and come back in 5 years and see how many were still there.
One place I used had a 80’s vintage class B (passenger van) that looked like it might be worth $500 - the spot was renting for $100/month. Incredible.
We bought a fold-out Trailmanor in 2006 after tent camping for a number of years. We used it for about 70-80 nights a year for 2 years using our regular SUV as a tow vehicle. We traded it in for a 28’ Airstream in 2008 after trading the SUV for a diesel Silverado. We used that combo for three years at the same rate until I retired in 2011. We then lived in the Streamer for a year after selling the “big house”. We now have a little beachy shack that we use 25% of the time and the rest of the time we are “Streaming” down the road.
It seems a lot of folk jump in feet first without trying the water. :dubious:
Valid points. That is why you buy used and avoid the high end models.
You can also rent a class C motorhome for a grand a week or so.
My dad has a travel trailer he only spent about 10k on. I assume he goes camping about 30 days a year now that he is retired. If you assume the resale value is 4k in 10 years, that is 6k depreciation for 300 days camping, or $20 a day. The campsite itself is about $20+ a day. The cost to get it to/from the campsite maybe $200 a year (if several multi day trips to a campsite an hour away from parents house). Plus registration/taxes/fees, etc.
Factor all that in and it works out to $50-60 a day doing it extremely cheap and using it 1/12 of the year (instead of just 1 week a year). That is still pretty steep IMO, my rent is a lot less than that.
It’s different strokes for different folks.
I wouldn’t mind dropping $30-$50k on a mid sized used bus or similar (and good examples can be had in New Zealand for this price)
For me, two things that I think need stressing…
The family also loved that they had the “space in back” to read, watch TV, spread out during the more boring parts of the drive - this was a very different experience to being “confined and cramped” in a car (even a large car doesn’t compare)
I know this is an old thread, but thought I would relate a story from one of my former coworkers.
Her and her husband bought a Jayco Greyhawk RV in 2017. Brand new. I’m not sure how much they paid for it, but a Google search says the starting price was $103K.
They used it during the summers, I believe. I know they rented an indoor and climate controlled facility for winter storage. Am guessing that wasn’t cheap.
She retired in 2021, but we still email each other on occasion just to touch base. I emailed her a few days ago, and in the email I asked about their RV. She emailed back today. Here is her reply:
We ended up selling our RV during the pandemic.
We had it for over four years and took a ton of great trips, but it had a string maintenance issues one after the last and John (her husband - not his real name) started dreading using it, anticipating it breaking down with some expensive repair while we’d be on a trip, which was usually the case. It was really hard to get repairs done too when you’re in the boondocks, plus it required a lot of routine maintenance. We (okay, credit given to John) had to start the generator ever two weeks plus we were paying a lot for indoor storage. So, while the girls and I were having fun on our camping trips, John started to feel like the RV owned him and it was no longer fun for him. It was only fair to sell it since he was no longer on “vacation” when we used it. It reminded me of what you said about owning a log home. Sounds great but the maintenance is not worth it. The good story is that we sold it for only a few thousand less than what we paid for it since everyone was wanting an RV during the pandemic. Overall it was a great experience. John still has PTSD when we drive by RV sales places though and gives me a look like “don’t even THINK about it!” Ha.
