Joe, a lot of this depends on what "good weather" looks like for you. Mild winter but you love the snow? No winters, you hate icy roads?

Do you need big city amenities, if you live in a city of 50,000 are you going to get bored in six months and wish you were back in Chicago or New York? Would you rather have access to outdoor activities or art galleries? Is access to a great variety of ethic food a must? Are you looking for country living where you can shoot guns off your back deck in the nude?

That's a good observation.

"Good" in this context would mean relatively few days below 32°F or above 100°F, although the latter, of course, gets qualified relative to humidity. 100°F in the south-west is far preferable to 85° in the south-east.

I don't care for snow, but I also don't give a shit about surfing.


Nope. I'm surrounded by them now, and rarely use them.


I'm past the "oooh, I'm surrounded my museums and libraries and art galleries" stage of my life.


Nope. I cook for myself.


Not opposed to that, but also not something I think I'd really take advantage of much after the novelty wore off.

Oklahoma - Afganistan west. Icy winters, hot humid summers, and tornados almost year round. Not really close to anything worthwhile. A cultural and intellectual wasteland. Dallas is just Baja Oklahoma.
From what I have seen or your enthusiasm for RVing, Albuquerque or the Colorado front range from Colorado Springs to Ft.Collins gives you good access to recreation and decent airports.
Salt Lake City might fit your requirements.
If you can tolerate the winters, Madison Wisconsin or the western suburbs of Milwaukee.

Winters mostly above freezing and summers not too hot and not in the southeast just about puts you back in Southern California.

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Ok, that's damned funny.

I'm quite familiar with both DFW and Houston. Spent a lot of time in both places.

What I haven't done is look at the areas outside of the cities themselves.

No state income tax is nice.




Heh.

Yeah, climate is a picky one. Obviously take those preferences with a grain of salt. Winter in Oklahomastan isn't the same as winter in Chicago. It was -15°F here last weekend. Not "wind chill feels like -15°F" but a legit, actual -15°F. And that's normal for this time of year.

When you'd be traveling 50% of the time is that for day trip in/out or out for a week then back on the weekend? US or international? I'd narrow the field to the hub airports (CVG isn't at all like you remember). Trying to day travel for business while having to connect in between your origin/destination sucks. Week travel not so much. Otherwise, good luck in the search.

Yeah, hubs definitely preferred. And, good point, I'd forgotten that Delta pulled out from CVG. I haven't been back there since... 2006, I think?

I'm finding, for instance, that there are little towns 45 minutes north of DFW where you can buy an actual, real house for like $250k, property tax less than $5k a year, etc. That sort of thing tempts me. Also, corporate HQ is in Irving, TX. Never hurts to be near the throne.

It's hard to know exactly what the travel schedule would be. I'm guessing at 50%, it'll probably vary greatly. Definitely continental US only. And probably a mix of day trips, multi-week stays, and everything in between.


And, of course, this is all temporary. I'm still eyeballing retirement in 7 or 8 years. I wish to maximize savings between now and then. If I can do so while also enjoying a slightly higher standard of living, all the better.

Are you looking for this place to be your forever home? Or just until retirement? Are you planning on paying cash on the cheap house, or getting a mortgage? Somewhere with no income tax, and low property tax is probably what you want to maximize savings over the next few years.

Just until retirement. [edit]: Or, who knows... If the ongoing costs (taxes, mandatory utility hookups, etc) are low, I might hang onto it as a home-base. That's something which I've never factored into my calculations before.


Another hard-to-quantify factor is that living in a house with a driveway or side-yard capable of accommodating a 30' (overall) trailer would also save me about a year's work and ~ 20k on the tail-end as I prepare to check out. So that's a big plus.


That's a tough one...

The average historical return for the S&P 500 over the past 25 years has been about 7.9%. And today's spot rate for a 10 year fixed mortgage with zero points is about 6%. Not a big enough spread for me to feel like "Hey, free money!"

So I'd probably just pay cash. It's the conservative answer.

Long term you want to travel the US and maybe Canada/South America in your RV correct?

You will need a "base" state somewhere to get/keep a drivers license. I assume you are planing on putting the RV in a Montana LLC just to make plates and registration long term easy. Insurance will want a base address for initial coverage.

As for financing verse paying cash. You are right from the investment point of view, generally better to invest. But you are looking at a lower amount for a place then probably what any lender would say you can afford. Long term you will need that base. So finding a good base now, and if it is "cheap" and you have the liquid capital, paying cash is probably not a bad idea. Makes it easy long term as you just have to write 2 checks a year for insurance and property tax. Also knowing you have someplace that is yours is a good feeling to have.

I am biased and will tell you to move to Goose Creek SC. I am 25min from an airport. You can get a house for $200-$350k around me with no HOA. My property taxes are less then $1k a year, house insurance is about $1500, sewer is $44, water is less then $20, and power is reasonable. Property tax on cars is reasonably cheap, for ones older then 15 years it is about $15 a year. We also have no safety or emissions on vehicles. No idea how long term income tax is compared to other states. Weather wise you can put the top down on your NB on Christmas. In the summer as long as you got AC in the NB you will be fine. Hurricanes are a thing, but far less then FL and what you are used to.

DFW does have 2 major airports. The people in the small towns outside of the metroplex are genuinely friendly.

I would definitely rent for 6 months anywhere you go to ensure you really like the city and have chosen the right part of town. Realtor costs are coming and going, unfortunately.

Much better deals on the west and southwest side of the DFW area than north of big D. Plus it’s convenient to both ECR and MSR/Cresson. Six is very correct - I grew up in south central Illinois rural country and the smaller towns outside of Dallas and Fort Worth are very easy, friendly places to live and work.

My company opened a new location in Bowie, TX to service DFW last year. I have been doing sales in and around DFW for several days at a time on several occasions with a group of coworkers. Everyone talked about how strangers were "Texas friendly" (local term) to us all, whether they were interested in our business or not.

There are some "dry" counties if you get too far into the sticks, along with well-established families perpetuating an occasional extra or missing chromosome. If the genetic pot doesn't get stirred for a hundred years due to difficult geography and sparse population, things happen. See also rural Oklahoma.

I saw some pretty lakes and what might be reasonable lakefront or lake view properties around Eagle Mountain Lake and Lake Bridgeport, if that floats your boat. They are not too far from the airports and something to look at other than dirt. I haven't been to the other lakes and attractions around the area and haven't looked at prices.

Shopping for a new vehicle when you can barely walk is a real pain.

Very interesting. 5 acres and a mansion for $550k...

I really don't need that, tempting though it may seem. But, yea, north of the DFW metro area seems like a decent region.

Still no idea whether this will actually happen.


I actually came in here to share an amusing news article:

NEW YORK (PIX11) – A New Jersey animal shelter is offering a light-hearted way to get over your ex this upcoming Valentine’s Day.

The Homeward Bound Pet Adoption Center will name a feral cat after your ex, and then neuter or spay them for a $50 donation. In a promotional poster for the event, the shelter said, “Because some things shouldn’t breed.”

The cat will then be released as part of the shelter’s trap-neuter-return program. The program helps control the feral cat population by stopping the breeding cycle, according to the shelter.





EDIT: Also, I just realized something.

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Still in a holding pattern about the above thing. But a new, totally unrelated question:


Assume you've been invited on a trip to Machu Picchu by a friend. We go way back. I owe him a ton. He is in his 70s, it's been on his bucket-list forever, his wife has finally gotten to the point where she's just not up to long-distance travel anymore but is pushing him to do it, and he's like "Well, you and I used to travel together 20 years ago for work, what say we split the costs of this trip?"



I'm not asking for moral guidance here, I'm all in on that.

Like, I have no problem walking the streets of Managua at night, but I am a total chickenshit about doing the same in west Harlem. Because I have what I feel is a decent sense of perspective for those places.

I just have zero fucking idea about southern Peru.


He's the kind of guy who usually sticks to the curated tours when on round-the-world cruises. And he knows that I'm typically a "let's go totally off-grid and maybe die in a canyon" kind of vacationer.

So, very much an odd-couple here. It was different 20 years ago when the company was paying for everything, and the biggest challenge to life and limb which we faced was which bar to stop at on the way back to the hotel.



Anyone have experience going off-leash in that part of South America?

I am obviously going to say yes, but I'd really like to have a "... but we have to do X" up my sleeve. Without getting us both into actual trouble.

It was nice knowing you, Joe.

I spend about half a year each year in Peru. I am here(Santiago de Surco) now. I have made a couple of trips to Machu Picchu over the years and have found it to be very enjoyable.

You need to fly from Lima to Cusco and take the train to Aquas Calientas which is the town by Machu Picchu.

The Venezuelans have caused problems in Peru in recent years, but the government has started cracking down and deporting them. At this point the only areas of concern would be the center cities.

When I drive in Lima at night, I take the same caution as in NYC.

Sounds like a great trip. My 80 year old Cuban buddy has floated the same idea. Not sure he's as up to it as he thinks.

When I was in my late 20s, in 2011, I did a little-researched, solo 1 week trip to Peru using airline-employee flight passes. Mostly the goal was to see Machu Picchu and Cuzco, but I took buses and trains out of Lima, and have spent a few days in that city as well. I also travelled a little further along Lake Titicaca and into Bolivia, which I also highly recommend, especially if you can do a home stay with locals in a place like Isla del Sol, which I understand is organized in cooperation with the Peruvian tourist board. The Bolivian town of Copacabana had a spectacular inn/hotel/not-sure-what-to-call-it that was so affordable that I almost felt guilty.

Of the two dozen or so countries I've been to for work and leisure, this was my favourite trip ever. At least at the time, the "Gringo Trail" was so well-established that young American and European girls felt safe doing it by themselves, and although I was well aware that I was hardly going off the beaten path, it still felt special. Yes, the locals will want to sell you shit with annoying-enough frequency that vendors sell T-shirts emblazoned with the words, "No gracias," but I found Peruvians to be generally friendly and pleasant and their happiness living in simplicity was a charming contrast to how things are back home. In Lima I did feel that one had to be on guard a bit, and in fact someone did swipe my phone in an internet café a couple of hours before I was due on my flight home. I noticed, chased after him, and he sheepishly handed it back to me. At one point, a Peruvian girl I was travelling with also pointed out that locals around us were commenting with a bit too much interest about the watch I was wearing - a modest $150 Wenger. The posh neighbourhood of Miraflores is kind of cool to see, with its mall overlooking the ocean.

If it's still how it was then, I highly recommend the trip. Do probably skip the 10ish hour bus ride from Lima to Cuzco, though. While the bus was reasonably priced and luxurious even back then - air-conditioned, WiFi, and hot meal - it's overnight, so you see nothing, and if you could, you'd see that the terrain is a little risky. Doing it again, I'd do the 60 minute plane ride instead.


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