“WHY do you wish those big rigs aren’t financed? Does it matter? I have seen some deluxe RVs go in the $350K range.”
I am well aware of wealth and am an active investor who happens to live in an area supported for the most part by an oil production. Free-market economies and the people who participate in them may discover limitations when debts are called in and cash flow stops. I am the child of a depression era businessman who told me all about it. And I still believe him.
Anything financed is problematic if you are called upon to pay in full. And I would think that would include RV’s.
Not to get into an argument with you;
Debts aren’t really “called in”. True, an RV loan is a personal, recourse loan. If a borrower stops paying on an RV loan, yes, the lender will repo the RV. But that is absolutely the last thing a lender wants on such a rapidly deteriorating asset. Provided the loan is somewhat seasoned, the lender repos the RV, the borrower, unless he has spent each and every dime he has, ends up with a $5K-$10K-$20K deficit and works out a payment plan and gradually pays it off over some amount of time. Or goes BK if its bad enough.
These “Great Depression” scenarios are in my view every bit as distorted as the “free credit forever” scenarios.
My folks, too, were children of the GD and lived in Detroit up until WW2. My Dad’s father emigrated from Russia and built 4 multifamily buildings. When the crash hit, there simply was no money for people to pay their rents. His tenants all just stopped paying rent, and he was foreclosed out of all those properties.
But my folks acquired the “depression” mentality when it came to money and investing. They were vicious savers, spending only upon the childrens’ education and extensive travel for themselves. Yet when they moved from NJ to CA in 1980, my brother (moved to CA 10 years earlier) begged them for years to buy some investment property, but my Dad would not, having “learned” the lesson from his Dad in 1930’s Detroit.
Needless to say, though they did perfectly fine, my Dad instead started a couple of goofball businesses which went approximately nowhere. He could have retired with an estate 10x the size of what he had with only a couple of modest rental properties.
Now an RV is not an investment, indeed is is a contra-investment. My point is only that one can get just as warped with an infinitely frugal mentality as with a spendthrift mentality.