Saturday, August 1, 2020

8/1/20 Portable Homes?

    We spent the day yesterday driving around looking at a couple of options for Wife to live in for the upcoming year.  I was really hoping they would have called her from Del Valle after she did two rounds of interviews, but I guess that did not work out.  As she said, "it's ok, I still have a job."  The problem, as I said, was that my mom is deathly afraid of Wife bringing Covid-19 to my dad back home, as she said, "you have too many people coming and going in the house and the fact that there are so many cases in Austin..."  This means that at least for now, Wife has to find another place to lay her head down.  We started talking about buying an RV, Wife thought a mobile home might be better.  I said that this would give us a chance to go looking at both.
    After looking online and having an idea what we were looking for, we headed south on I-35 yesterday.  I don't know what was going on, but we encountered a total of six serious car accidents with police and fire engines responding to four of them, and the other two happening so fresh and close to us, the people were still in the cars as we passed by, it just seems like everyone was in a rush.
    Wife did not want to go to Crestview next to Cabela's, we have bought two RVs there and she is not impressed with them.  We bypassed them and kept going until our first stop over at the Palm Harbor lot in Kyle.  Wife likes the idea of setting up a mobile home and then keeping it there to rent to future teachers in the future.  I am not so crazy about the idea because it still puts the responsibility of the unit in our hands and from experience, renters suck.  But there we were, asking questions tot he sales guy.  He was friendly enough, but we didn't even make it out to see his inventory.  As he answered some initial questions of what our needs were, he said we would be looking at a monthly payment of between eight and nine hundred dollars.  I asked what about the units advertised for as low as $38,000?  He said there is still paying to run the electric, water and sewer, possibly a septic.  We don't have a piece of land, either, so that would be another expense.  He agreed that for our needs an RV might make more sense.
    We then drove to Camping World in New Braunfels, they have a bunch of units out there.  Right up front, they had a line of similar units from $18,995 to $28,995.  The cheapest one was just a bedroom, living kitchen room and a small bath in the corner.  The sofa and table could be turned into beds, but it looked cramped for us to use it for camping later.  The more expensive unit was actually pretty perfect, for me.  It had a room up front with the King bed and a door leading outside.  the middle was a kitchen/living room complete with a big screen TV and a fireplace below it.  The back had a bunk room with four possible beds, one could be a little dinette for two.  There was even an outside kitchen, and if I was buying one, this would have been my preference, to keep the boys and their noise separate.
    The biggest negative for the RVs is that we called the biggest RV site there between Crystal and La Pryor and the monthly rent is going for $400, the guy said included electricity, but still.  Add in the cost of the unit after about $3000 down and $350 a month or so and that would also be more than $700.  Hmm.  Neither of these solutions sounded great, financially.  Thank goodness for family.  To be cont....

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