Sign Me Up!!

Could you live here? I could (don't know about Laura).

An Hour To Save Your Life?

I'm beating a dead horse here, but for those of you that will invest an hour watching this lecture, you can avoid reading the book(s). And you need to read the books!

The Economics of Owning the Airstream

I go down to Washington State tomorrow to hand the keys to our Airstream over to the new owners.

As I was out for a walk today I started to calculate in my head whether the investment was worth it over these last seven years. Although there's no way to put a dollar value on the enjoyment we got out of the trailer, there is a way to rationalize the rest.

Here's a "back of the envelope" calculation on what it's cost:

• Initial cost was $41,000 and I'm selling it for $30,000 = $11,000
• Insurance and maintenance: Approximately $1500/year =  $10,500
• Plus I could have made money with the initial investment - let's say 3% conservatively = $9000
• Storage costs about $70/month averaged over the time = $6300
• So I had the trailer for about 7.5 years, and spent about 300 nights in it.

Just looking at the initial numbers, $11,000 for 300 nights works out to $37/night - not too bad!

But when you factor in everything else, it's $36,800 spread over those same 300 nights (and 300 nights is a bit optimistic, but we did live in the thing for 6 months) it works out to $123/night.

When you factor in the average $30/night we spent at campgrounds (sometimes more, sometimes less) when staying in the trailer, it's now $153/night.

I'll have to remind myself of this post next time I'm looking to buy an RV.....