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We used to rent a 2 BR condo for 4.5 months, for $2500 (total), very close to the beach in Alabama. You have to do some looking and negotiating. Alabama's high season is summer, not winter.
We've met couples who rent places in Carolina beach communities during the winter off season.
During the summer they rent apartments at UMD in Duluth.
They spend the other 5 or 6 months traveling, visiting friends and relatives, or at their homes with the less than ideal weather.
Friends from Minnesota and Alaska own mobile homes in Yuma, AZ. It's affordable and they enjoy pot luck dinners and socializing over the winter while everyone is shoveling snow back home.
My B-I-L has an Aunt and Uncle from Pennsylvania who are Snowbirds to Florida each Winter. They drive their RV to Orlando, stay in an RV Park for the Winter, and both work part-time at Disney World. During the Summer months they head back to PA and manage a Camp Ground.
They have to carefully monitor the days they spend in each State. I don't know if they use Florida as their permanent address and must spend a minimum of 6-months there to maintain FL residency for beneficial income taxes, or if they continue to use PA as their permanent address.
I never wanted to be a snowbird. Yeah, I'm one of those strange individuals who actually like winter. My husband, on the hand hates it. So, he takes me kicking and screaming every winter to Puerto Rico where we stay with his sister. People have told me that I should have my head examined because I would rather spend winter in New England than in the tropics.
BTW, you could buy a cheap place in Puerto Rico that you can stay for the winter. We used to have a place down there that we bought REAL cheap. We just sold it this past March.
It is not cheap to live in an RV - that's a myth. Things break easily and constant repairs are normal.
Nothing is absolute. I know folks that live a stunningly miserly existence in their RVs, and do it extraordinarily cheaply. I have met people that blow through well over a 100K a year on their fancy motorcoach and related costs, and only use the thing a few times.
I have had RVs for two decades and traveled well over 200K miles in them. There are ways to do it smart, and ways to ruin yourself financially. I do 90% of all maintenance and repairs myself, spending a tiny fraction of what it would cost to have things done "professionally". The other issue is depreciation. RVs are about the stupidest thing you could possibly buy, and new ones are the worst. Unless you are happy with a real rolling wreck for a few grand, the best deal is understanding the sweet spot of a particular RV type, as in when it is still in good to excellent condition, but has seen horrendous depreciation on somebody else's dime. Our current motorhome was seven years old when we bought it, was drive 4000 miles a year, and lived in a custom pole barn when not in use. We bought it for 40% of what the original owner paid. Functionally it was much more reliable than new ones that friends had spent 3-4X more for, and they lost more in depreciation than we paid for ours, in their first two years of ownership.
After snowbirding in rural central Florida, for six years, we bought a campsite. The campground is set up under Fl. condo association laws. The site was under $20K and monthly fees run under $140. This includes everything but your electric bill and a very small real estate tax. Nothing like having a heated Olympic pool, screaming fast wifi, 100+ channels of cable, and a whole lot of other good stuff, for an annual cost that is less that you can rent the cheapest winter campsite for, anywhere in the region.
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