154
What's the worst financial decision you've ever made?
(lemmy.world)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2026
154 points (98.7% liked)
Ask Lemmy
41580 readers
1648 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !uspolitics@lemmy.world
7) No Hit-and-Run questions.
Please don't delete your post for no apparent reason. If you plan on deleting a question later, say so in the post, or if you feel that you have a good reason to remove it, message a mod beforehand. It's not fair to the ones who took their time to answer, and it's not in the spirit of the community.
8) No Bots.
Posts or comments from bots, LLM's, AIs, Neural Networks, Transformers, or Marvin the Paranoid Android are not welcome in AskLemmy. Real humans only please.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Buying an RV.
elaborate so i can scare my partner out of this lofty distant future idea
They're worse than boats. If anything breaks on an RV, and it will, it's really hard to get parts for them, and good luck finding an RV mechanic when it's "in season." Back when I had an RV, some kids outside were playing catch and ended up breaking one of my windows, and it took 3 months and countless calls with the manufacturer to get a new window. If you live in colder climates, you have to winterize your RV every year. They leak, and require constant maintenance. And if one of the tires blows out? It could total your RV.
Rent one if you must, but do not buy one.
It only works if you are your own RV mechanic. Windows are easy to swap yourself.
That said I agree; big cost that depreciates and costs you a ton per mile towed. Especially with today’s gas prices.
To add to what boaratio mentioned: My experience is living in one while traveling for work for a few years (and I rebuilt mine to improve it over the stock configuration and knew how to fix it myself.)
They're more expensive to stay in than motels in many areas. Every time you drive somewhere it's an earthquake and something is breaking. They're either too hot or too cold due to no insulation, maintenance is terrible (and they require a ton), driving them around is terrible, staying in them is also terrible. They shake in the wind, are loud in the rain (I like that part tbh), are incredibly delicate for a road vehicle so anything touching them that wouldn't bother a car will damage them somehow.
Why all this? Labor is the largest cost for an RV, and they already have that as cheap as possible (I heard one is built every 24 hours on most lines), so the only way to save money is by going as cheap as possible on materials as well.
I watched a vlog from someone who RVed full-time and this was my largest takeaway. They have a lot of things breaking.
I think that a big factor is going to be that the volume sold just isn't that large. Fixing engineering problems is gonna be a fixed cost, independent of the number of units you sell, so a vehicle manufacturer that sells tons of units can do a lot more of that.
Yeah thats a good one.