Thought I would start this to continue a thought I had while responding to another post...

I have been truly poor twice  in my life.    Once as a child of two very young parents and once again as the young mother of children.  In both cases it was hard and often scary, but some of the best times in my life came from finding a way to do more with less.  As a young child I didn't feel the loss of not having expensive toys.  Spent hours playing outside and hanging out in my favorite tree.  As a young mother it was harder...with the constant pressure of keeping us fed it was harder to be positive..and yet some of my most creative parenting moments were born from finding a way to keep two little kids entertained and fed with next to no money to work with.  Eventually as many people do we worked our way out of it.  We made more money, became more stable, and ultimately obtained my personal dream of being a home owner.  Those were good years and provide the stability we needed to grow personally and financially.  But then something tipped.  I started to travel more and more for work.  Life became more and more about the work and money (which for the first time was abundant) became an easy short cut to saving time.  I stopped hand making Halloween costumes and bought them  instead, we ate out more rather than having family dinners together, presents became cash instead of a thoughtfully picked out item...etc.  One day you wake up and realize you don't have to worry about every nickel anymore and you have finally achieved "success", but in our case something was missing.  We tried to fill it with taking those vacations we could never afford when we were younger.  And we loved it, but then back to "real" life and those feelings faded.  The more we made the more we had to trade and finally...although it seemed impossible when we were young and broke...what we had to trade was not worth the security we had....mainly because the security was a trap.  We see people every day who had reached success and then  have it stripped away...either by a health issue or being downsized.  They are thrown backwards and unless they are very well prepared and lucky have to start over.  One thing became clear to us...WE DON"T WANT THAT!!!! 

So we started looking around..and I found Howard and Linda and Lee found a couple named Nina and Paul.  We read about their lives and saw a different way. their lives were simple, they were frugal, but also so amazingly rich in many things we had lost along the way.  It was so very very appealing...especially because it could be done...should be done on our terms.  For the first time in our lives we could make decisions based on what we wanted as a couple..and we wanted to strip it down and get back to the basics...in our relationship and in our life.  

Thanks to everyone here for supporting that dream.  God bless.

Trace

Trace: That is an awesome post! I think you have put into words what a lot of people feel but just can't put their finger on it. Right now, while not wealthy, we are more financially healthy than ever before but........... This makes me realize how lucky someone is to realize this before it is too late to make a change.

Well said, Trace.

Along those lines, I remember a chance meeting of a man and his daughter in, of all places, the waiting room of an automobile dealership's service department.  As he and I conversed, he confessed that he was going to move back to Oklahoma.  I asked him where he lived, and he replied that they lived in California.  So, to continue the conversation and to glean a wealth of knowledge from this man, I then asked why he was moving back to Oklahoma.

He replied that life was just so much simpler in Oklahoma and people cared more about the person and the personality of people and not the "mantle."  I asked him to explain that because it confused me.  He then said that where he lived in California, even a casual conversation with others generally heard the question, "How much do you make?"  Apparently out there, like a mantle on a fireplace to show off treasures, the question was asked to determine the "worth" of a person.  I was especially gratified that his daughter, whom I would guess was about 12 or 13 seemed to agree with her dad.

One thing about the RV lifestyle, there's not a lot to put on the "mantle," so one puts out their personality, which is a lot richer than things.

Terry

Nice!  You captured why I started looking for a MH. 

Very nice post Trace.

I liked what Howard said at one of his rally's:  We are all equals at the sani dump!

When we started out we bought a 1996 Carriage 532RKS 5th wheel for $7000, add another 800 for a slider hitch in our short bed truck, and put new tires on it. It wasn't the prettiest on the outside, but it was decent. We did a long October vacation in it 16 days or so, and decided that yes we could live in it fulltime if that the only choice we had. We were in a position though to upgrade if we wanted to. So we started shopping. We didn't have to have a 5th wheel, we didn't have to have this CarriLite, its just how the plan worked. Alie is retired from nursing, and I am "retired"from the real work world, but have to have some income. So we are currently Gate Guards in Texas for the winter. Not a hard job, not completely easy, but different for us. We plan on doing this yearly to pay for the traveling the rest of the year.