Final accounting...

When we talked about getting a larger trailer and truck I was optimistically thinking we would spend $40,000 out of pocket (after selling off the Hideout and Tacoma).  Yesterday we sold the Tacoma and could calculate the final out of pocket cost....it ended up being $42,000.  So I was very close in my estimation.  While we did finance both the new truck and trailer from both dealerships we will be paying them both off this month from the proceeds of the sales as well as drawing from our savings. 

We ended up selling the Tacoma to a dealership after using Kelley Blue Book to get the range of values for trade-in/cash/private party sale.  It appeared our range was approximately $21,500-$26,500.  While we were very fortunate with the sale of the Hideout we didn't want the hassle of finding a buyer for the Tacoma.  We thought if we could get $24,000 we would be happy.  We ended up with $23,800 after visiting three dealerships (Kelley Blue Book was $23,600, 1st dealership was $22,000, second matched KBB, and final dealership went to $23,800).  The second two dealerships were concerned about buying a manual transmission - they were unsure if they would be able to sell it.  So...if you are keeping track that means we got $37,400 for the sale of the Hideout and Tacoma.  That is a return of 70% of our combined original purchase price (with sales tax). 

So....here are some take aways...if you are thinking about embarking on a full-time RV life, you want to buy new, and if you are a family of two I would say that you could find a truck for around $30,000 and a trailer for around $20,000 and be really comfortable.  If you are a family of four (with two members growing at some ungodly pace) then you need about $45,000 for a truck and $35,000 for a trailer.  I am sure there are deals to be had in the used market.  In terms of new, I feel that we have been very frugal in terms of finding the most economical truck and trailer in the classes/sizes we were exploring.  We have limited handyman skills and even less time to devote to projects, so we did not want to buy anything that needed to be fixed or worked on.  But the family that bought our Hideout got a good deal and won't need to work on anything - so there must be other deals out there, they just take time to find.  With that said, I have seen/heard of people living in all sorts of refurbished trailers. 
From our original rig to our current we paid 60% more and we have 60% more living space in the trailer and 200% more payload in the truck.  If you are going to start from scratch, I highly recommend buying the trailer first and then fitting the truck to the trailer instead of being limited by the truck.  However, if you already have a truck and want to use it (like we did with the Tacoma) then by all means do what you have to do to get out on the road!