It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. –Seneca
I swear, it felt like we had been in Wichita, KS for well over a month, but it ended up only being 3 weeks. It’s crazy to think about all that changed in those three weeks. It didn’t take us long to figure out the Lance was just not going to work, and it took us even less time to find the perfect solution. We bought a new 5th wheel along with a truck to pull it and all that worked out wonderfully, but we still had the Jeep and Lance trailer to dispose of. We were only scheduled to be in Wichita for 2 weeks so once we purchased our new setup, the very next very pressing challenge was what to do with the old setup?
A widely accepted quasi-rule based on the Triple Constraint of Project Management is that every project contains three constraints: good, fast, and cheap. When starting a new project, only two of those constraints true. You can get it good and fast, but it ain’t gonna be cheap. Or you could get it fast and cheap, but it ain’t gonna be good.
Selling our practically new, fully loaded and very expensive trailer was similar to the triple constraint. We had this high quality product (good), but we didn’t have a lot of time so we had to sell (fast), and that meant it would cost us more money. If we had more time to sell, we likely would’ve recouped more of our investment, but since we didn’t…we took a HUGE hit when it came to selling. We sold our fully loaded 2018 Lance 1985 travel trailer at a soul-shattering loss to Wichita RV. All of this was a bummer, but it made for some humbling lessons:
- Never EVER buy a brand new RV! Let someone else take that 50% first year depreciation hit.
- It’s really hard to offload large purchases when you don’t have time to stick around or storage to wait out the process.
Hey but selling our Lance to Wichita RV wasn’t a complete loss… we walked away with several of these lovely pens! 🙄
Moving In
We purchased our truck and 5th wheel from Scott and Deb who were gracious enough to help us through the process every step of the way. In a sheer stroke of luck, the spot right next to ours was open for a single day (the only spot open) and on a horribly hot day, Scott drove the 5th wheel out to us we began the process of transferring everything from the Lance to the Reflection. The whole process took longer than I had expected, and in the end I had to admire that sheer amount of stuff that could be packed into our little lance.
So Worth It
Despite the craziness and stress that inevitably settles when large sums of money are at stake, I have to say I’m absolutely ecstatic about the nomadic lifestyle and feel truly blessed to have the opportunity to do something like this. A massive ball of stress left with the Lance and the Jeep.