I thought I had it all planned out. We would come back from Alaska, and find our perfect used travel trailer. But instead, we endured an RV shopping horror story that ended when we reluctantly walked into a Lazy Days RV dealer back in Colorado.

The used RV marketplace is flooded with rigs. But buyer beware!

I thought it would be easy to find a 24-to-26-foot trailer to tow behind our Project M. But we had some very specific requirements to make sure the trailer didn’t exceed our Dodge’s GVWR. And during our search we were reminded that all that glitters is not gold.

You know all those people who bought RVs during the pandemic? Well, they haven’t been great about maintenance. Rig after rig, state after state, we looked at so many neglected and overpriced trailers. Our goal was a pre-pandemic rig built between 2015 and 2019. And we had a cash budget that we didn’t want to exceed. But nothing that fit our specs, or our price range, was worth buying.

The stress of not having our next home, living out of the Project M, and paying for hotels got to be too much. We started looking at new trailers. And we found some nice ones, but none of them in our cash price range felt solid enough for full-timing. Maybe we were being picky, but nothing came close to the shiny new 2024 Arctic Fox 25R that called out to us from that showroom floor.

Once step inside the 25R and we knew we were home. Our RV shopping horror story was over.

Unfortunately the shiny new rig calling our name was nowhere near our cash budget. However, right now RV dealers are very negotiable with last year’s models. And after serious haggling with the sales guy, we knocked about $20k off the list price. Today, we are at home in our third Arctic Fox.

Northwood builds a solid RV that gives a great return on investment. This we know, after having owned a 2008 24-5 and a 2010 27-5B. We beat the heck out of those rigs, took great care of them, and both held up with the rigors of full-time living. This one won’t be any different. These rigs hold up if you are good about maintenance.

The Arctic Fox 25R floor plan is a great size for us, inside and out.

The design gives us loads more storage and floor space than our last one, even though it’s a bit shorter.

The only bummer? We aren’t debt-free anymore.

I hate writing and admitting that! It took me a while to shake that dirty feeling of being a “slave to the lender” as Dave Ramsey always says. I still believe that buying new vehicles is stupid. And maybe we’re idiots. But sometimes you just gotta do stupid things to save your sanity. Knowing that Northwood RVs hold their value better than most makes me feel a little better. I’ll keep that in mind each month as we tackle this new debt in an aggressive two-year payment plan we set up in our YNAB budget.

As for now, I’ll just enjoy every minute of being inside a beautiful rig that we feel really good about!