Buying an RV is an important decision and something the whole family needs to be involved in. An RV is also an investment, an investment in time and cost but you will not see a profit on an RV, well not in financial terms but it can have a huge payback in terms of satisfaction and enjoyment but if you just rush out and buy an RV without giving it a lot of thought then it could be, at best, an expensive waste of money, and an RV can be, at worst, a marriage breaker. I know as I have seen it happen.



When we were trading up to a larger and newer RV, my sister in law from Atlanta decided she was going to buy our old RV. The trouble was it was her idea and not a joint family decision. She had been on vacation with us a few times and liked the lifestyle, thought it would be great for her daughter to spend more time in the countryside but she never really considered if her husband wanted an RV. He was the type who would choose a sports car to drive without thinking of where his daughter was going to sit. He liked speed, acceleration and easy maneuvering, not something you tend to find with an RV. It lasted a few years with him being unhappy with all his vacations in the RV, he bumped into a few trucks and did some damage to the RV, (which I had to repair), and was just generally unhappy with the whole idea of having a vacation in an RV. It got to the stage of seriously damaging their marriage. What went wrong? Well my sister-in-law did not sit down and really think about an RVer's lifestyle.

Think about it, RVs can be small, they can be cramped compared to your house, RVs can be hard to drive and you can end up spending all your vacation just driving around. What she should have done is to rent an RV first to try things out. This way she could easily have seen if owning an RV was going to work.

So what do you look for when renting an RV.? Well I would think the most important is where it is at. Pick the area you would like to vacation in and they look for somewhere to rent one from. Think about how you are going to get there. Driving allows you to take more things with you than flying, so if you are flying then you may need to make sure that you rent an RV which comes fully equipped as some do not have things such as kitchen utensils in them or towels and so on, although many companies will supply these but sometimes they come at a price.

What about the size of your RV from small to large. I suppose this depends on what you want to achieve. If you are a family then you need a larger RV and so on. Just make sure that everything you need is available but remember this may mean extra rental cost. Do you want to tow a car behind your RV.? Some companies will let you, some will not and if you are in a hire car, does the hire company allow it to be towed behind an RV. Is the RV you want to rent capable of towing a large car or only a small car? These questions could go on but the best people to answer them are the RV rental company you are dealing with. They are the RV experts so ask them.

I could go on with information like this but it is just commonsense. Think about where you are going to vacation in your RV, think about how to get there, think about your RV in terms of size, think about the equipment you need for your RV, think about pets in the RV if you have a pet and think about who to rent your RV from. Get several quotes from RV rental companies and then compare them and read the fine detail to see what you get for the price and what extra you need to spend.

Once you have done all this pick a suitable RV to rent and a suitable company to rent your RV from and then just do it. Once you have tried renting an RV you will then have a much better idea if being an RV owner is for you and can then make the commitment to buy an RV Good luck and just enjoy it. I do.