A few of you may know our plans to ER in 2015 and travel around the USA in a custom built expedition vehicle pulling our sailboat.
We definitely are going to sell our house and most possessions but I am having second thoughts about getting rid of our vast collection of woodworking and metalworking tools. I do not mean a small amount...we have about 20 years of tools.
Can you think of a cost effective way we could keep this stuff? I was toying with the idea of buying a small plot of land and putting a steel workshop on it, or trying to find something similar already built (probably cheaper). Another idea would be to find a small house on a couple of acres cheap, put a steel outbuilding on it and rent out the house while we are traveling the USA, keeping our tools and such in the outbuilding. If (big if?) we were able to find good tenants we would then have some protection from trespassing.
The downside to owning something is of course real estate taxes and insurance (both for theft and liability). Plus the money tied up in the something is not working for us generating income (except maybe for the rental idea).
We love building things and may decide after a few years that we want to get back it. It would be a shame to have sold off $60,000 worth of tools only to buy them back a few years later...
If we did decide to buy something, would it be better to buy it around here (kind of high cost area near Seattle) or possibly in the location we plan to call home for tax and healthcare purposes (Florida)? Obviously if we bought in Florida I would have to move all of our stuff across the country, but it might end up being cheaper on purchase price and taxes long term.