Plenty of Retirees Sell Everything for an RV and Park It Within Two Years. One Reason Comes Up Every Time
Selling everything for a life on the road sounds like freedom, but one specific and very ordinary medical appointment keeps sending full-time RVers back home for good, and most couples never see it coming until their rig is already parked.
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A common retirement plan is to sell the house and travel full-time in an RV. Many people in their 60s picture exactly that, and many make it work. Others return to a fixed home, and health care is a frequently cited reason. Here’s what full-time RV life really costs, and why the doctor question so often ends the trip.
Health Care Often Decides When Rigs Get Parked
Medicare comes in two main types. Original Medicare is the government plan, and it covers you nationwide with any provider that takes Medicare. Medicare Advantage plans are run by private insurance companies.
They use networks, and their coverage is usually limited to the plan’s area, except for emergencies. For an RVer, that area is tied to a home county they might see once a year.
The trouble usually starts with something ordinary, like a bad knee that needs a specialist, a heart follow-up, or a scan. The emergency room visit gets covered on the road. Then physical therapy, checkups, and specialist visits all point back to a network several states away.
So people drive home for appointments, or they stay parked near the doctor. Either way, the rig stops moving.
Original Medicare fixes the network problem, but you pay for that freedom. Part B costs $202.90 a month and has a $283 deductible. A hospital stay starts with a $1,736 Part A deductible. For a couple, Part B alone runs about $4,870 a year.
Most travelers add a Medigap supplement to fill Medicare’s cost-sharing gaps, plus a separate drug plan, and Medigap prices depend on your home state. If your joint income tops $218,000, an income surcharge called IRMAA raises each premium.
Rig, Fuel, House and a Legal Home State
A guide from Camping World (NYSE:CWH) says an RV takes its biggest value drop when you drive it off the lot, and losses stay steep for the first several years. Selling after two years means absorbing the steepest part of that depreciation. Campground fees, repairs, and insurance vary widely by region and rig type, so get real quotes before you buy.
Fuel is easier to pin down. Regular gas averages $4.27 a gallon, up from $2.779 in January. That’s about a 54% jump, which adds up for a large rig that uses more fuel.
Then there’s the house you sold. National home prices, per the Case-Shiller index, sit at 336.7, about 2.6% above last October’s reading. Anyone buying back in two years pays whatever prices have gained in the meantime, plus closing costs again.
You also need a legal home state, called a domicile, for taxes, voting, vehicle registration, and insurance. The Escapees RV Club calls it “the place to where you permanently live and during temporary absences, the place where you intend to permanently return.”
Texas, Florida, and South Dakota are popular picks, and all three rank 1 on individual income tax because they don’t have one. Establishing domicile takes more than a mailbox. If your old state argues you never left, Escapees warns you may owe back taxes, plus penalties and interest, and insurance companies can deny claims.
Running the Numbers
The average U.S. household spent $78,535 in 2024. That’s a fair benchmark once you add in fuel, campsites, repairs, and Medigap. After the 3.6% COLA, an aged couple both collecting Social Security averages $3,355 a month, or $40,260 a year. That leaves a gap of $38,275.
Covering it at a 4% withdrawal rate takes about $957,000. At 3.5%, which makes more sense for a 62-year-old planning for 30-plus years, it takes about $1.09 million. Whatever you pay for the rig comes out of that pool.
Other factors also lead people to stop. Driving hours and setup get harder with age. People miss family and get lonely. And sometimes one partner loves the life more than the other.
How to Test It Without Selling the House
Rent an RV for a long trip first. Better yet, rent out the house for a year and keep the option to move back. Buying used lets the first owner absorb the steepest depreciation.
Put it all together, and the plan needs about $960,000 to $1.1 million invested, on top of what both spouses draw from Social Security at 3.5% to 4%, with Original Medicare plus Medigap and a domicile you can actually maintain.
That withdrawal figure itself is worth a second look (we laid out the case against leaning on the 4% rule, and what to run instead, in a free report). Before you sell the house, answer one question: where will you go when you need the same specialist three months in a row?
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David Beren has been a Flywheel Publishing contributor since 2022. Writing for 24/7 Wall St. since 2023, David loves to write about topics of all shapes and sizes. As a technology expert, David focuses heavily on consumer electronics brands, automobiles, and general technology. He has previously written for LifeWire, formerly About.com. As a part-time freelance writer, David’s “day job” has been working on and leading social media for multiple Fortune 100 brands. David loves the flexibility of this field and its ability to reach customers exactly where they like to spend their time. Additionally, David previously published his own blog, TmoNews.com, which reached 3 million readers in its first year. In addition to freelance and social media work, David loves to spend time with his family and children and relive the glory days of video game consoles by playing any retro game console he can get his hands on.
