When you live on the road, your home on wheels is your life. Being forced to replace a full-time RVing tow vehicle and/or RV at a moments notice changes everything.
How to Stay Debt-Free When Replacing a Full-time RVing Tow Vehicle
We love our 2006 Dodge RAM 2500 like it’s family member. That three-quarter ton trusty hunk of steel has taken us on some grand adventures and at just about 188,000 miles on the odometer, we’re looking forward to the day we register it with the Cummins Million Mile Club.
One of our park neighbors at FoY loved his truck too. It was a beautiful Ford diesel truck with a custom cargo build-out in back for his hunting dog training business. Then last week he was hit by a wrong-way driver near the RV park, and the truck was totaled. He, his wife and dogs were OK, but he’s being forced to get a replacement truck on the fly, outside of his domicile state. I felt terrible for him, and it got me thinking:
What if we had to replace our truck without warning? Could we do it? Would we be forced to get into a truck loan again? How would we really know what we can afford to buy for a full-time RVing tow vehicle?
Thankfully our financial hero Dave Ramsey, has answers. His website has an entire section about dealing with debt and automobiles. It features individual segments from his listener call-in radio show, with answers to the most common questions about financing, getting out of car loan debt, and how to know if you can afford that vehicle you have your heart set on. Here are just a few that would apply to anyone caught in a situation like our neighbor.
How Much Car?
Dave says it’s not wise to have more than half your gross income tied up vehicles.
Drive the Hoopty
Carrie and her husband paid off their last debt last week. The day she put the check in the mail, their car died. It isn’t fixable, and Carrie doesn’t know what to do now.
Zero Percent Is Low Down
Cindy asks what Dave thinks of zero percent car loans. Dave thinks of them the same way as every other kind of car loan, which is not good.
Like A Rock
Todd asks why Dave is against buying new cars if you have the cash. Dave explains that it’s because a new car goes down in value like a rock.
Why Bother With Full Coverage?
A Twitter listener asks why Dave recommends full-coverage auto insurance even when you have the cash to pay for repairs. Dave explains why it’s worth it.
Like I said earlier, I don’t even like thinking about having to get a replacement truck, so this is all I’m going to say on the matter. There. I did my research. Check all those questions off the list. I’m just glad that I found answers to guide us in the right direction if we ever needed to readdress this topic. Thanks, Dave!
Having our jeep die on a trip would be a real pain. We haven’t had a car payment for a while and don’t want one! I regard it just as transportation so driving an 8 year old car doesn’t bother me. I hope we drive it until we are done RVing.
Good for you, no car payments is the way to go! We feel the same way about our Dodge, gonna keep that thing till we can’t drive anymore.
I think you have me beat on mileage on an 06. I have a 3500 dually Cummins Dodge sitting in the driveway with 9990 miles on it. I’m dreading when the speedo goes to 10,000!! I’ll take photos of the speedo rolling to 10K miles.
Take care and safe travels.
Oooh sounds like a nice truck, Don. That new car aroma is wafting over here! Enjoy.