An RV, a winery sale, and an early retirement bet

Kristen and Dan Koepke sold their Wisconsin winery, bought a $85,000 RV, and hit the road. They are part of a wave of Americans shifting into full-time mobile living after early retirement, a trend that strains personal budgets and tests assumptions about how much life on the road actually costs.

The couple had run their winery since 2013. A buyer approached them in 2023. The deal closed last September. Dan, 57, resigned from his senior director of information security job in May after five years at the company. Kristen, 44, handled accounting and staff at the winery and worked part-time at a gym. They had been saving with an eye on Dan retiring around his mid-50s, he said.

They flew to Rhode Island to pick up a 29-foot Class C toy hauler, a rare configuration in the U.S. that includes a garage for their motorcycles. The seller was a stranger. "Never met the guy before, just went to his house and with a check in hand to pick this up and drive it home," Kristen said.

The RV cost $85,000. They put another $2,900 into upgrades – a second solar panel, Starlink Mini for internet, and a better mattress. The solar setup lets them camp off-grid and run a coffee pot, lights, a television, and a computer without hookups, Dan said. He said the upgrades "mean we can comfortably camp at places without electricity."

Dan expected the transition to be easier than it was. He said driving the RV was less stressful than anticipated, even in wind, rain, and construction traffic on the trip back to Wisconsin. Kristen said the real shock was the pace of preparation: "From selling things to moving our few saved items to storage and even packing the RV," she said. It felt like a rush at the end.

They shed most of their belongings, making multiple runs to Goodwill. Dan said he is a minimalist, so the purge felt relieving.