What does your dream retirement look like?
For Bill and Donna Elliot, it was an once-in-a-lifetime trip in a motorhome… a voyage that had them zigzagging across the U.S. full-time for two years and 24,000 miles.
Bill, a retired architect, and Donna, who had worked in the legal field, were ready for a break after long successful careers. And they had a lot on their bucket list, like a NASCAR race in Indianapolis, Niagara Falls, Frank Lloyd Wright homes, and a baseball game in Pittsburgh.
They explain how they prepped for the trip… but also how they were able financially to make it work.
Listen in to find out…
Tips for transitioning from work to retirement
The role of an advisor in organizing your finances
Why now is the time to indulge in something you’ve always dreamed of
How to untangle yourself from your old day-to-day routine
And more…
Listen now…
Transcript:
John: This is John Curry. I’m sitting here today with April Schoen and a wonderful couple named Bill and Donna Elliott. In these podcasts, we’ve been working on the concept not just of financial planning for retirement but also other issues, such as healthcare, what you do with your time, recreation, travel, and Bill and Donna Elliott have done a fantastic job of making the transition from careers to truly enjoying retirement. And today, they’re willing to share their stories of what they’ve done and, in particular, what’s fascinating is that they bought a motor home and, I think, what? Two years, Bill? Donna? Was it two years’ travel?
Bill: Two years.
Donna: Um-hum.
John: Fantastic story, but first, I just want to thank you for joining us today and being willing to share your story. And, if you would, Donna, would you start? Tell our audience a little bit about who you are, what kind of work you did before you retired, and then, Bill, we’ll have you do the same.
Donna: Okay. I started out in the architectural field, writing specs. That’s how I met my husband, and then I moved into the legal field. I was a paralegal for a while, did independent contracting work while our daughter was growing up and on swim teams and had to be toted back and forth, and then I went to work for a single practitioner and did his books part time. So, I’d say the greater part of my career has been in the legal field.
John: Very good. Bill?
Bill: Okay, well, I was with the firm Elliott Marshall Innes, which now goes by EMI, located here in Tallahassee for almost 40 years. We did such things as the College of Medicine at FSU, Psychology Building at FSU, Life Sciences Building, College of Education, and a variety of other projects on the campus. I was involved with the Walton High School project over in Defuniak Springs.
John: I rode by that just Monday.
Bill: Did you?
John: I did.
Bill: Well, thank you for doing that.
John: I thought about you when I went by there.
Bill: It won some awards as some of these other projects did. Our firm tried to concentrate on high-level design projects, delivering a workable building for the building users. Most of our work was in the education field, whether it be K-12 or university level. We did do a good deal of military work. Eglin Air Force Base is a client of ours for, I think, 20, 25 years and we did, I don’t know, 50 or 80 buildings for them. I worked at Moody Air Force Base, Hurlburt Field, and a variety of other military installations. And that was pretty much my career.
John: Big contributions? The beauty of what you do in that line of work is that you can see tangible evidence of the work and the time you put in. It’s there. You drive past it; you see it.
Bill: Forever.
John: Forever.
Bill: And the building plaques that have our name on it is something that we’ve taken our children and grandchildren by to see what we did over the years, and it’s nice to leave that kind of impression on their minds in buildings that are going to serve children of the children that we’re talking about. So, really, a high degree of satisfaction there, having done things like that.
John: I learned from a mentor many years ago to look at my business the same way, that long after I’m dead and gone, people that I will never meet will benefit from the work that we have done at Team Curry, whether it be that individual who retired or the spouse, the child, the grandchildren, the great grandchildren, the charities that will benefit from the work we’ve done whether it be investments or the insurance world. And it’s the same with you. You drive by and you see it, and you say, “I had a part in that.”
Bill: Yeah, and it was part of a team effort. And when you use the word “team” for yours, your firm, that was the way we operated, too. There were so many people doing various things that contributed to it. It wasn’t a one-person show. You know, everybody in our office, and we usually had between 15 and 20 people, but they all contributed in some way to the project so everybody had a piece of it.
John: Right.
Bill: So, anyway…
John: Team effort.
Bill: Yeah.
John: Talk a little bit, Bill, about the transition because we’ve had several conversations over the years of we’re getting closer to retirement, a little bit of anxiety. Okay, can I really do it? Can I not do it? Talk a little bit about what you went through being a successful businessman, building a company as one of the founders, to this thing called retirement. Share a little bit of that.
Bill: Well, fortunately, I had, I don’t know, probably a 15- or 20-year experience with knowing you and having trust and confidence in you. We sort of opened up our books and our life and showed you all the things that we treasured over the years and how we could go forward, and you sort of showed us the way with numbers and investments and things that would help us in our retirement years.
John: I would say that over the years of working with the two of you, you have focused on what you wanted to accomplish, but you were also willing at times when you didn’t agree on something to listen and learn and then make your own decisions. Because I would have to say that I thank you for the compliment there, but the truth is the two of you did the work. What we did at Team Curry is kind of coach and guide a little bit and educate you, but you had to make the tough decisions. And those decisions that you made along the way, way before you met me, put you in the position of where you were able to retire. But focus just a little bit on making the transition of walking out the door to buying that motor home and the two of you traveling. Because I want to hear some of the travel stories, and, April, I know there’s some stuff you want to add so jump in in a minute, too.
Bill: It was very easy for me. We had been looking at motor homes for probably the last eight or ten years as we’re going down the highway, looking and imagining what it would be like to do all that kind of thing. And then we finally did that. We had one motor home which was smaller than the one we ended up with, and that sort of was an education process there, that we knew what we did want, what we didn’t want, but I think it was an easier process for me. I think guys gravitate towards mechanical things and things that require some level of effort to make it work and so on. I think I got a lot of satisfaction out of that. Donna would enjoy the inside of the coach, but I would enjoy all the coach, the driving and the mechanical issues. So, it was an easy transition for me.
Donna: Well, I think the reason we picked Motor Home of Travel is because we both like to travel very much. We’ve been to a lot of different countries through our marriage, but with what is going on around the world, we decided that we were going to see the US of A and check out things on the bucket list here.
John: Very good.
Donna: So we thought we’d sell our house, because we didn’t want people to be responsible for checking on whether the lawn people came, and it was just easier to get rid of the house, get a coach, and become full-time RVers. And some people thought we were crazy. Some people thought we were very brave. Sometimes I think we were crazy and brave, so….
Bill: Some people thought we were stupid.
Donna: And some days we thought we were stupid, crazy.
Bill: We may have said it earlier, but we thought 30 states in a 15-month period. Of a two-year commitment to doing all this during just 15 months, we did 30 states. We did everything east of the Mississippi except two states. Then we did four or five west of the Mississippi. In our marriage, we’ve done 48 states, but in the coach only 30, and as Donna said, we did a lot of Europe. We did most every country in Europe. I’m glad we did them when we did and we don’t have to do those now.
John: Very good. What would you say to anyone listening to this who is not as easy to transition, that they are not sure what the next part of their life is when they, quote, quit working and retire? The second half of the game, I call it. What advice would you offer anyone who’s thinking, like, I really want to go do some things, but they need that little nudge to encourage them to do it? So, let’s suppose their finances are in order, but they’re just so tied to work that they can’t let go. What advice would you offer anyone who’s thinking that way?
Donna: I would say life is short. You don’t know when your last day is. This country is a beautiful country. There are so many things to see. Get out and do it while you can. One day, you won’t be able to.
Bill: Yeah, I second that.
John: Great advice. Great advice. April, anything on your mind you want to ask?
April: I was just thinking kind of along the same lines, is there anything y’all thought was too much trouble for you going from the responsibility of working and into retirement? We have a client we met with yesterday who’s going to be retiring at the end of March, yet she’s been a little apprehensive. What is this next stage of my life going to look like? And we hear that a lot. If there’s anything that you can say, like, Okay, I did struggle with this.
Donna: You will struggle. If both of you have worked your entire married life, which we did, some of us part time, and being together 24/7 in a very small environment, can, on occasion, become an issue. Not a problem, but an issue. We found out that, when we were traveling, going places, checking where we were going next had something to do to look forward to, we were much better than if we were just sitting around doing nothing, because he’s an A-type personality. I don’t mind sitting and reading, but after a while, you need to do something. So, it is… you have to get your mindset that there will be days when you’ll think, I made the wrong decision. But if you’ve got a plan of places that you want to go, things that you want to see, and keep your mindset that that’s where you’re going and what you’re going to do, you’ll make it through the once-in-a-while day that, you know, you go, Oh, I made a mistake. Why am I doing this?
Bill: I brought along a bunch of books, maybe, I don’t know, 23 inches worth of books that I have on a shelf that never came off the shelf. I don’t think I’ve finished a book on the whole trip. I always had things I had to do, you know, outside or inside or whatever, and Donna probably thought we were going somewhere. I never had time to read.
John: I would think with the work that both of you did, because you had to be so focused on numbers and dealing with people and calculations and all that, that this had to be a tremendous relief just to get away from that.
Donna: Yeah.
Bill: It was, but I still to this day have reflections of being in the office and what’s the next project, what’s the next proposal, what needs review, all the, you know, personnel things. I don’t want to say issues because we were so lucky and so blessed to have a staff who was with us into the double digits for most of them. Loved our staff and it was probably the greatest accomplishment of our whole firm history as far as I’m concerned. But I still have dreams that I’m at the office and these issues are still coming up. I can’t get those to go away. It’s not bad things. It’s not nightmares or whatever. It’s just remembering the daily struggles of all the little things that you had to do.
John: That may never go away. I’ve had the pleasure of being in this business… I’m in my 43rd year now, and I’ve heard so many people talk about retiring, and even though they don’t go to the office, they still have fond memories of it. They think about it, because… think about it, if you work for 30 or 40 years in a career, you don’t just turn that off. Most people can’t do that. Some can but very few people can.
April: My father retired six years ago and he tells me he still has dreams about work.
Bill: So I’m glad I’m very normal.
April: You’re very normal. That’s right.
John: So you’re normal. Well, I don’t know about that. I don’t know if you’re normal or not. Rephrase that one.
This is a great segue to talk about some of the things… you said a plan earlier. Talk to us a little bit about how did you decide to just get a motor home and start traveling? I know you talked about it, what places you want to go. Tell us how you went about building the plan as to where to go, because we’ve had the benefit of hearing this over the years, but it’s just been fascinating.
Bill: We have to have a place we can take our dog. Therefore, buy a motor home so you can take the dog with you.
John: That’s good.
Bill: It’s somewhat true. I mean, we would constantly have to have a dog sitter whenever we’d go to… I mean, you want to go to Hawaii or you want to go to California and you’re going to be gone two or three weeks. You have to have a dog sitter and they’re not always available.
Donna: Well, our breed of dog you can’t kennel. She would die. They’re very needy.
Bill: Lapdog.
Donna: Yes, so, you know, we start and then we figured out how much money we spent on puppy sitters, because then you have to feed them and….
Bill: And a motor coach is so much more economical.
John: So much more.
April: But, Donna, when you were first starting your trip you had a list of places you were first going to go? How long of a time period did you plan out initially?
Donna: Well, I was instructed to write to all the different states, like on the eastern, northeastern seaboard, because it was the fall when we started out, so we were going to see the leaves change. So I had to write to all the states and get all the magazines and all the information, and then we kind of plot it out. And then, our son-in-law is a craft beer connoisseur and they found out we were going from Maine or something over to New York and they said, “Oh, could you go by Vermont to this brewery and get us some beer?” And then Suzanne goes, “Oh, well, there’s a Cabot cheese thing.” “Oh, well, there’s a Ben and Jerry’s.”
Bill: Ben and Jerry’s.
Donna: So it just kind of evolved that, you know, you tell somebody where you were going and they’d go, “Oh, well, you’ve got to go here and see this, do this.”
Bill: Yeah, we did not have a finite route that we were going to go from here to here to here. We had things that we wanted to do, but we were constantly adding to it. And some of our… I meant to bring my map to show you where we went and the directions and so on. And it looks a little crazy but some of them were driven by activities that had dates attached to them. Like, we wanted to go to a NASCAR race at the Indianapolis….
Donna: Brickyard Park.
Bill: … the Brickyard Racetrack. Well, we had to be there on a certain day to do that. And we wanted to go to a baseball game in Pittsburgh and had to be there on a certain day to do that. So, a lot of our destinations were sort of driven by activities that we were trying to get to.
John: I do want to see that map. I bet there’s some zigzagging on there, too.
Bill: Oh, it’s all over it. If you look at it, it looks like we just threw spaghetti on the map.
Donna: Didn’t we do 24… 22, 24 thousand miles, something like that?
Bill: Yeah, yeah.
Donna: Yeah, there was a lot of zigzagging.
John: What are some of the places, the trips that you went to that stick out that are most memorable for you? Donna, let’s start with you.
Donna: Well, mine is the Clydesdales. I had always wanted to go see the Clydesdales. So we ended up… didn’t know you had to have advance reservations, and here we pull on this little narrow road, our coach, and the girl comes out and she said, “Do you have tickets? Our tour just ended and the next one isn’t for two hours.” And we went, “No, we didn’t know you had to have tickets.” So she guided us in. She said, “That’s no problem. Come here, we’ll get you tickets.” So, we had an hour and a half of the two of us with about 10 to 15 Clydesdales, just ourselves.
John: This is the Budweiser Clydesdales you’re talking about?
Donna: Yes, at their breeding farm, which is in the middle of nowhere. But it was just such a beautiful day and these horses are so terrific when they’re running in the pastures and coming up. I enjoyed that.
I enjoyed… I was a little petrified… but I enjoyed going out on the little plastic… not plastic… whatever the platform is at the Sears Tower and you walk straight down? I made fun of the girl, too, in front of me because she didn’t want to go out on it. Ahh, piece of cake. And I got up there and I went, This is not a piece of cake. So I enjoyed that. And I enjoyed Niagara Falls. I had been there when I was a little girl but hadn’t been back, and he had never been. So we went, and we went to the Canadian side; we went to the American side.
Bill: Saw it in daylight and saw it from the boat.
Donna: Saw it at night and saw a girl… we didn’t see her fall over, but we saw the aftermath of what happens when you fall down the Falls. But that was fun. You asked me one day… I’ll tell you one place you asked me another day, I mean, we saw things that I don’t think we’d ever get to see had we not done this.
April: So once in a lifetime trip, right?
Donna: It really is. Yeah. I can’t really say that, you know, like tomorrow I may say being in Bar Harbor with the fall leaves was the best thing, going to Ben and Jerry’s was the best things, so it’s just a terrific way to see the country.
Bill: We went to Lambeau Field and did a tour of their stadium and we were just dumbfounded with what a terrific job they do there. You know, they’re all stockholders in the Green Bay Packers. This is the citizens. They own, I guess you have to have a share of stock to get a seat or whatever. So, they take great pride in their stadium and they put on tours, and these stockholders and stuff, I guess they’re probably the guides and someone to show you through, but they took us through the sky boxes, you know, where the corporations have seats overlooking the field. They took us down to walk through the tunnel where the players come out. They played the music like the opening of a game and then the crowd roaring like that, and you could get your picture taken in front of the goalposts. Then we went up to… they have very nice restaurant/bar kind of thing. You could eat inside or outside and a special beer that probably was served at the stadium, their own, I think it was named after Curly Lambeau or something like that.
Donna: And cheese curds.
Bill: And cheese curds. We got introduced to cheese curds which we’d always heard about but had never tasted, and they were gorgeous. They were just fabulous. And they had the best beer and the best cheese curds we had anywhere along the route, because we started eating cheese curds. They were all measured against how good they were at Lambeau Field. But it was a beautiful stadium, and then the way they… the effort that they put in to make sure you enjoyed it was really stunning.
Donna: They’re a reasonable price, too, and when we were in Pittsburgh, you had to call a number and they only did tours certain times on certain days. They made it so difficult but, yet, you go to Lambeau. Every hour they’ve got one of three different kinds of tours that you can go on, so they really want you to see their field. You know, it was super.
John: While you were at Lambeau Field, did you go to their museum? The Green Bay Packers museum?
Donna: We did not do that.
John: That’s an awesome experience.
Donna: Well, that’s what we heard, but we were on a sort of a short leash that day.
John: My son and I went to a ballgame there…
Donna: Oh, did you?
John: … in December of 2000, and… I’m sorry, 1999, and then the people who treated us came here to watch…
Donna: Oh, wow, okay.
John: … the FSU/Florida game in 2000, and we had all the trucks out there because of the election, but my son, just two nights ago, we were having dinner and he’s 34 years old now. He was telling me about his memories of us going there…
Donna: Of going there?
John: … going to that ballgame.
Bill: Yeah, they’ll never fade from ours. And you know, some of the places that we went were architecturally… where there were things that I wanted to see, because I had always, you know, seen in magazines and heard about so we went to Frank Lloyd Wright’s residence in Wisconsin, so we go to see his residence there. And we had already seen the one… Taliesin West out in Phoenix. Phoenix, I think it was.
Donna: Um-hum, um-hum.
Bill: That was a great thing. And we got to go to Falling Water outside of Pittsburgh, which is another one of his famous, famous structures.
Donna: Some beautiful chapels, too, in Arkansas...
Bill: Yeah.
Donna: … with beautiful settings in the woods.
Bill: We went to Branson, of course, and got to the shows and stuff there.
John: Right.
Bill: That’s kind of a neat place to go. We had always heard about it, and I don’t know that I need to go back but we did enjoy the shows we went to and being there. We went through Chicago on the river and saw, you know, a lot of the architecture there. Went through the distilleries in Louisville, Kentucky. They’ve got a regular whiskey trail or something.
John: Bourbon Trail.
Bill: Bourbon Trail.
John: Did you go on the Bourbon Trail?
Bill: We did a part of it.
Donna: Did part of it.
John: I’m jealous that you didn’t take me with you.
Bill: What was the distillery that we went to?
Donna: Jim Beam.
Bill: Yeah, Jim Beam. We’re not whiskey drinkers but we just wanted to have…
Donna: We’re redneck beer drinkers.
Bill: … the experience of been there/done that, seeing that kind of stuff. We went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Went to the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee. Milwaukee was a great city, beautiful waterfront. They had a great art museum there.
Donna: Went to the… in Kansas City… the mint.
Bill: Yeah. What did you get for the kids there?
Donna: Shredded… oh, well, I gave them shredded money and then also they had bars of soap and there was a real bill inside, either a one, a five, a ten, a twenty, or fifty, but you couldn’t tell until you used up the soap…
Bill: Or…
Donna: … or as the boys did, they just scraped…
John: Gimme the money. That’s a new definition….
Donna: Yeah, show me the money.
John: That’s funny. That’s a new version though.
Donna: But that’s funny because you actually got to actually live… I mean, you pull down on this machine so you could feel how heavy a gold bar is. I mean, you see these in the movies and you think, Ahh, I know they’re sort of heavy. They are really heavy. So that was very… the tour was very interesting there.
John: Did you bring home any samples of the gold?
Donna: No, they wouldn’t let any go, and they only let you have one bag of shredded money per person. I wanted two so I could give one to a grandchild and I could keep one, and Bill goes, “Yeah, they have cameras around here, Elliott.”
John: That’s right, because of jail, go to jail.
Donna: Yeah.
John: What other trips did you take that are memorable? It’s exciting just sitting here watching you and just seeing your passion.
Donna: Well, we went to the cornfields of Iowa just row after row after row of cornfields, but let me tell you, you have never had corn until you have fresh-picked cooked corn. I mean, cook it the day they pick it. It was to die for, so that was fun. And what else do you…
Bill: You mean trips outside of the RV experience? Or…
John: Anywhere, but especially on this adventure you did with the RV...
Donna: This two-year adventure.
John: … but any trips.
Bill: Upper Michigan. I don’t know if we…
Donna: Oh, no, we didn’t talk about that. But that was beautiful.
Bill: It was a real surprise because I was really…. We had some friends who were up there and wanted us to come visit up in Harbor Springs, which is north of Petoskey, which is on the northwesternmost part of the… what they call a Michigan Mitten. And the beauty of going up the center of it was the cornfields and the green trees and things like that, and then you get to the coast and they’ve got these outrageous views that are just fantastic and…
Donna: And the flowers, a wall of flowers.
Bill: … quaint little houses for bed and breakfasts and things like that. Wonderful beer, food, and then you get up to the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on northern Michigan and the rock… It’s like real sheer cliffs, but the colors of the rock are unbelievable. And what was the island that we went around?
Donna: I can’t remember.
Bill: Yeah, I can’t either. Anyway, we went on a…
Donna: A rubber boat.
Bill: … rubber boat with a jet engine or something…
Donna: Yeah, that was fun. You’re going to get wet, I’ll tell you.
Bill: … into the rocks…
Donna: In the cave area, yeah.
Bill: … the cave area and look up…
Donna: And see all the different colors, yeah.
Bill: … colors. I’ll show you some of that on my phone there. I’ve got some pictures of it. They were almost just indescribable.
Donna: Yeah, they had a big cruise boat that you could go on and just kind of cruise by. Well, we took the little rubber raft-like thing. The guy goes, “Be ready to get wet.” And we did, but it was the most fun.
John: Did you feel like kids again?
Donna: Yes, we did, yes, yes. And then we went up to the upper peninsular so we’re now UPers…
Bill: Yeah, U-P, UPers.
Donna: … yeah, UPers, but the wildflowers on the side, both sides of the road… pinks, blues, yellows, whites… were just fabulous and then we went in to see…
Bill: A moose…
Donna: Oh, huh?
Bill: Saw the moose…
Donna: We did see a moose…
Bill: … on the side of the road.
Donna: … on the side of the road, so I made him slam on the brakes so I could get out and photograph.
Bill: Which is real easy to do with a coach.
Donna: And we went in to Lake Michigan and found some Petoskey stones that are supposedly something really unique that they named them after Petoskey, but they have these little indents on their very…
Bill: What looks like a coral-looking thing…
Donna: Yeah.
Bill: … but then in a smooth stone.
Donna: Yeah, on a smooth stone from the glaciers coming down. So, we found… we actually… I thought, Boy, we’re going in the lake. And the lake was very warm. I would have thought it would have been very, very cold. And we took a three and a half-hour ferry ride to Isle Royale, one of the national parks, three and a half there and three and a half back. And that was interesting. There were supposed to be 1500 moose on the island. Did not see a moose. Saw some…
Bill: Evidence of moose.
Donna: … evidence of moose, and so then, we’re leaving the UP and it’s sort of a dreary day and we’re driving down the road, and Bill goes, “There’s a moose.”
“Oh, my God, stop, stop.” So, we have heard that, if they pick their head up, you want to get out of there. Well, a car… I was back to where the towed was, snapping photos and a car zipped and did a 180 and pulled over right in front of him. Well, he picked his head up and I thought, I’m going back in the coach now. You could tell it was a moose on my photos, so we did get to see a moose.
John: That is so cool.
Donna: So that was fun.
Bill: And the towed is the towed car.
Donna: Yes, I’m sorry.
John: Okay, good. Thanks for clarifying that. That was good.
Here’s my takeaway from this. Not only did you get in the motorhome and you drive places, but you got out and you did things. So it wasn’t like a rush tour, I just got to go to these 38 states, or whatever. You actually spent time, enjoyed yourselves…
Donna: Yes.
John: … got to know each other better, and you took in our great country.
Donna: We did… or the east side of it. We had been on so many tours out West that we said, well, we had done this two-year commitment and we didn’t want to do stuff we’d already been. There were a few parks in the Southwest that we hadn’t been to, but just with... You know, we said, well, it’s been two years. We’ve missed so much of our grandkids, so we decided we would grow up and settle down and enjoy grandchildren now.
Bill: So, we’ve got grandchildren in Charlotte. We’ve got two there, we’ve got two in Black Mountain, North Carolina, and then we’ve got one at the University of Tennessee.
Donna: One in Black Mountain. I mean that’s her summer home and she’s going to college at UT.
Bill: So they’re all in a sort of a beeline right across North Carolina to Tennessee, so you just hopscotch across the state to see them all.
John: That’s a good segue to my… what I think is the last question unless there’s something else that pops up. What’s next for Donna and Bill Elliott?
Bill: Uhhhh….
Donna: Ta-dahhh.
John: You’re still young and full of energy, so what are you going to do?
Donna: Well, we have purchased a lot in South Carolina five minutes from the Culver’s with cheese curds and 45 minutes from our children, so we’re not too close to them. So, we’re going to have a house built in a 55-plus community that we got to spend two nights there, met some lovely people there, so I don’t think we’re going to become permanents. I think we… one of the ladies that we met at the Monday evening dinner showed us her calendar for February and there was one day that she didn’t have something to do.
April: Okay.
Donna: So I don’t think we’re going to be a burden on our children. They may get upset because we don’t have enough time for them, so that’s our next stage.
John: As you were talking, Bill just handed me his phone with this picture, and you’ve got this big old piece of cheese on top of your head, and I have one of those at home also. Or my son does.
Donna: He wouldn’t let me buy that, so I have the little drink one.
John: He wouldn’t buy you that?
Donna: No. Did he show you him with the cheese head on?
John: No, he didn’t show me that one.
Bill: I don’t have that picture.
April: Convenient.
John: That is so cool. That is so cool.
Bill: I took pictures as we were going across the country of signs that I just thought were funny.
John: You sent me some of those, yes.
Bill: And I’ve probably got 60 or 80 of them that I’m going to try to put some sort of a little show together of just those signs, sort of, here’s what we saw across the country.
April: A great coffee table book.
John: Yes.
Donna: Yeah.
John: I tell you, it’ll be something else, too. How about pulling that together and let’s do another interview, a podcast, and share some of those, because some of those have got to be hilarious. You sent some to me that I thought were real funny and were very enjoyable.
We’re about to run out of time here. Is there any closing thoughts that you’d like to share with people that have been listening to your story that might be sitting there going, Wow, I want to do some of that, but I’m not so sure. Just anything that’s on your mind that you would share.
Donna: If you talk to people that do RV, you will know that this is what you should do. People are very friendly in the parks. They love what they’re doing. They’ll answer your questions if you have any hesitation about it, but I just say life is short. Go for it. Don’t think about, Am I going to have a good time? You’ll have a good time. Just don’t worry about it, but do it. Do it while you can.
Bill: We had no bad experiences in the parks with, you know, strange people or of people hounding you or bothering you or whatever. If you saw somebody and exchanged glances and it looks like they want to talk, you can talk, but we’ve never had anybody banging on our door asking for a cup of sugar or anything like that. And we didn’t see any of the RV experiences that you see on the RV show with… what’s the dead comedian?
John: Oh, John Candy?
Bill: No.
Donna: No, the little funny guy, short.
Bill: Well, the RV movie, you know, with exploding toilet systems and things like that.
John: You had none of that.
Bill: We never saw any of those.
John: I know when I had my mother along I didn’t travel as much as you did, but every time I would go to an RV park, if you opened your hood because you’re checking the oil, somebody would come over and say, “Do you have a problem?” And would be helpful, so I would agree with you, Donna, that people are just very friendly. They want to help any way they can. And you meet some very nice people, some very nice people, that it’s a good way to travel in retirement.
Bill: We went to a seminar, which you’ve probably touched on this… We went to a seminar and the guy said, “You know, you don’t need to bring your big Craftsman toolbox that has 19 drawers in it and every tool imaginable and stuff that on your coach and add 200 pounds to tote down the road.” He says, “Wherever you go,” like you just said, “open your hood and there’s going to be five guys in there that have every tool imaginable, you don’t have to carry it because you can borrow it.” And I never had the need to do that, but I saw other people that had to do it and that was really kind of true. But if you get a chance if you’re going to do this, take in some of the educational seminars on RVing, and we went to one that was a real good one that…
Donna: Oh, Lazy Days?
Bill: … Lazy Days in Tampa offered seminars, I think, daily if not on weekends, and they have a driving school where they put you in a coach and let you drive after they’ve educated you on all the things that you should know about. And then there’s a huge RV show in Tampa every January or February….
Donna: But they have them other places, too, that would be good to go to before you….
Bill: … with every vendor imaginable, selling everything that you could possibly use on a coach, you know, in great volumes, so if you go there and you can’t find what you’re looking for…
Donna: And they have classes at this RV thing…
Bill: … and those are very helpful…
Donna: … to help you decide do you want a fifth wheel, do you want a Class A, do you want a Class C, and give you things to think about and talk about. Just don’t run out and buy the first thing on the lot that you see that you like. Think about, I’m going to be living in this, or, you know, is this going to suit my needs? Is it big enough? You know, can it pull a car? Gas versus diesel. There’s a lot to think of so think about it, spend some time going to different places, looking around before you jump in, because I think that’s what we did on the first one. We bought one, it wasn’t big enough.
Bill: Because we didn’t know what we were doing.
Donna: Yeah, so we had it a week.
John: I remember that conversation very well. I remember us talking about that. But I think that’s great advice. No matter what you’re doing, whether it be travel, your financial planning, your retirement planning, get educated. In fact, I remember you folks coming to one of our seminars many, many years ago.
Donna: Yeah.
John: And you’ve always had a desire to learn and grow and get educated before you make decisions, and that’s good advice.
Thank you so much for being with us today. This has been… I’ve learned some things that I didn’t even know about. And I’ve heard a lot of these stories that you shared with us. And thank you so much for joining April and me….
Bill: We went to your seminar for the food, but that food was excellent.
John: But I’m sorry we didn’t have any cheese curds for you.
Donna: Well, good. We didn’t know about them then, so you’re safe.
John: So now I’m in trouble. Anytime I serve something now, you’re going to be measuring me to cheese curds?
Donna: Yes, I am, yes, I am.
John: I’ll remember that. I’ll remember that. Thanks again for being with us and….
Donna: Thank you.
John: April, anything you want to wrap up with?
April: We’re good. That was wonderful.
John: Very good. Goodbye, folks.
Donna: Bye.
Bill: Bye.
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