Highlands Hammock State Park - Sebring Florida - Starlink Friendly Sites.

 Staying at Highlands Hammock State Park. I wanted to find all the potential campsites in Highlands Hammock State Park in Sebring Florida, that would support setting up Starlink with minimal Obstructions. Almost all of these sites listed would have some small obstructions but as long as you have the ability to move your Starlink Antenna you can maximize your connectivity. 

Here are the Sites that I looked at that had a location available that allows a fairly open view. 

Camp Host Site E

Site 3

Site 4

Site 5

Site 6

Site 14

Site 33

Site 35

Site 37

Site 38

Site 39

Site 40

Site 41

Site 42

Site 43

Site 51

Site 52

Site 76

Site 77

Site 78

Site 79

Site 84

Site 88

Site 91

Site 106

Site 110

Site 115

Site 116

Site 117

Site 118

Site 128

Site 129

Site 133

Site 136

Site 137

RV financing - The real deal or lack there of

 So I am not rich by any means but I pay my bills keep a decent Credit Score and know that I should wait to have a better score or wait to find that I have more money to do what I want with the maximum amount of flexibility. But as many people know you sometimes get anxious and I am no different. Additionally our reasons for RVing are because we want to travel now. The next thing is we plan to only keep our RV for 5-8 years. The reason for this is because of wear and tear, and new technology. This presents an issue with purchasing, that issue is we need a good deal and we need to ensure we are not majorly upside down when purchasing our RV. This then means we should probably take the following into consideration. 

1. Do not Buy New! The reason is depreciation happens immediately and in order to get back to true value of the RV will take about 5-8 years, which means we will be possibly upside down in a trade. so get one that already has experienced that depreciation and start with that and go down, then in 5-8 years you will be at a Good trade value, based on remaining loan balance. 
2. Do not buy OLD, buy only 1 year old model. 2 years old ONLY if it is lower than 5,000 miles. Also even 1 year old has to have 5,000 miles or lower. 
3. Buy quality!. there are some super expensive quality RV manufacturers out there and there are some very well known names in the industry. I am not going to the HIGHEND Million dollar models. Did I mention I am not Rich? But the two that are our targets are TIFFIN and NEW MAR. Each have good reviews and are known in the industry as a quality unit. I use this website to help find reviews. https://www.rvinsider.com/RV-Reviews 
4. Make sure financing is not outrageous, not super high interest and hopefully good terms. With this size of loan you should look at low interest, and shorter term if possible. Looking at a $250,000 loan here is what you will see
1. 250,000 at 6.24% at 240 months is a monthly payment of $1825.26
2. 250,000 at 6.24% at 180 months is a monthly payment of $2142.19
5. At this time in 2022 the RV industry is having its highest profits in the past 10 years and the markup on NEW RV's in the first quarter was 18%, on used was 20% so thinking of that an rv that is used and cost a certain amount take 20% off that and that is what they paid the previous owner for it. 
1. An RV listed at 250,000 was purchased (trade value given to the dealer) for $200,000 which means the dealer has a built in profit of $50,000 and that is before ANYTHING you do. 
6. KNOW the RV you are going to look at, know its countrywide value, know the features, know the original base prices, know the manufacturer. Knowing things will help you understand what it has, what it is worth and what you want. 
7. FIND YOUR OWN FINANCING. if you find your own financing then you are paying yourself. This also will help you when negotiating the deal. those "dealer Prep fees" or doc fees or whatever the other things are that are added on can be negotiated. 
8. WALK AWAY. The hardest thing to do is to walk away, but there will always be another RV, and another dealer. remember they WANT to sell to you and THEY have to make their numbers, dealers have Quotas and numbers they have to make, so when you are thinking in your head "its only $500", remember that is what is STOPPING THEM from making the deal at that point it is either YOU or them to give up the deal. If it is on them, YOU will find another, and so will they. WIN WHEN you can!
   
   

Our journey is in progress we are currently dealing on a 2021 Tiffin Allegro Red 340 38LL, with 2781miles. It has everything we need/want and is within our price range. we are working financing on our end and will know more in our next post. 

- We Drove it

- We opened and closed all the drawers, storage, slides, awnings, hood, everything.

- We researched it

- We worked out a Buy Order (a worksheet the dealer gives us), I will scan this in later and go through it because it is interesting to see the things listed....THE THINGS YOU SHOULDN'T PAY.

Research, Research, and more Research

 The main thing we have found is that it is imperative to do your due diligence to ensure you have as much information as you can get to make the right decisions. Here are some of the things we are considering. 

1. Is it even something that is doable? 

2. What will we miss? (Family, Friends, Stability, a house)

3. Can we afford it?

4. Work, ongoing finance?

5. Size of RV.

6. Affordability of RV.

7. What will we take with us?

8. What to do with our vehicles?

9. What to do with the things we want to Keep?

Right now we are in the stages of "decluttering" going through our house and seeing what we have, seeing those things that we have had in drawers and been storing because someday we will lose weight, or someday we may want to have it. 

We then are making the decision to Sell, Donate or Give away those things we feel are not things we need to keep, or we want to spend money monthly to store. 

Then our vehicles, We have 4 Vehicles. Which of them do we keep and which do we sell? We have a motorcycle, a Golf Cart, and a Boat. Do we sell all of these?

The other thing we are in the middle of is Selling the Motorcycle. I tried to go to Harley-Davidson and as much as they say "we want to buy your motorcycle" they really want to buy it for pennies on the dollar, the exact same model, year and more miles are listed at about $10-$15K higher, so yes they do want to buy your motorcycle for as cheap as possible. Your best bet is to sell it outright. 

We rented a Storage unit to keep the things we want to keep. Our plan is to keep things, and then if we think at some point we need it then we will write it down and then when back in town we will get it out of storage. But we plan to do a 6 month assessment of the things we have in storage to see what else we didn't miss and may be able to get rid of. 

We have been researching RV's and this has been the hardest part. We started by just looking and liking certain models and then we found so many and all the floorplans kinda became similar so we decided to make a NEED, WANT, and DON'T WANT list. This allowed us to really target the things we should focus on when looking. 

NEED are things we have to have. 

WANT are things that if they have or do not have it is not mandatory. If they have it then that is a PLUS.

DON'T WANT are things we would consider a no go for our new home. 

I will publish this list soon but they are specific to what we want and your list may be different. 

Lastly get our house ready to be sold. making sure everything is in order and decluttered and ready to be on the market. 

Qur hope is that we have almost everything in line and answers to our many questions before our house sells. but if it sells right away, then we may be scrambling a little. 

until then it is Research Research Research.

Is it something that is doable? (FULL TIME RVing)

 So, over the past month we have travelled to Flagler beach and Key West on a Trip that was very fun, costly and exhausting. However we love travelling and the places we went were places we had wanted to go for a while. 

We started the planning for this trip the first of the year and for Memorial Day we had a Reserved Spot at Beverly Beach Camptown. A place that is located RIGHT on the Atlantic Ocean just North of Flagler Beach and about 30 miles south of St. Augustine. St. Augustine is by far one of our favorite cities in Florida and I highly recommend it. 

Then after we stayed there we left and headed Straight to Key West, actually Stock Island but its close enough to be confused by non-locals. We stayed at Boyd's Campground.

 Each of these places were on the water and very pricey for a 7 night stay averaged about $183/night. Expensive but while we were there we found that we may have cheaper options and were able to look around and plan for next time. But back to this story. It is about the two of us in our 50's are travelling around Florida.

Here is how it started, when we met later in life we had 3 dogs, we tent camped and loved it, actually both of us have always loved camping, as I was in the Military and was kind of a professional camper (however austere the conditions may have been). My Wife grew up the daughter of a Park Ranger, who lived in multiple Florida State Parks. So it has been a calling for many years and as you get older....you see how life can trap you into mortgages, collecting things and the need to put down roots.

This is great for growing up, however now we are both empty nesters and we have come to a point where the Grand Kids are older and love to camp with us and we have decided it might be time to think about going full time. 

We have a very nice cottage type Florida Home, on the water, our boat on a Boat lift and we enjoy boating and doing the other things that our neighborhood has to offer. we also frequently travel as we have a Travel Trailer and it is used regularly. Our next two Trips are to Sebring, Florida (Highlands Hammock State park) and then to Florida Caverns State Park in Northern Florida. 

However because of our last trip we were missing the location we left down in Key West and got the bug to maybe move there. So we started looking at property. This was not necessarily a HUGE Shock but the prices are just outside of our budget and of course we have a lot of constraints and it makes for even a harder time to find something. 

With that information in hand, since we are in Florida already we also decided to look at houses near us, and again the prices are so high that it is again not that great of an option to get into a huge mortgage for 30 years on something that we wouldn't be able to retire on. 

So we decided to explore our options and so we contacted our Realtor and decided to get a rough estimate on what our house would go for with the market being so good. We are currently waiting on the information from her, and once we have that we may be able to think about a House or the other option we have is going FULL TIME RVing.