New Beginnings

 Bon jour…

We are David & Bonnie Delino, and we've been living on planet Earth for quite a while now, both born in May of 1955.  The area where we’ve lived the longest, which is now our home base, is located in the very heart of Cajun country, which has some of the very best cuisine in America. C’est si bon! With that being said, for purposes of having an online identity, we felt it applicable to name ourselves the “Aging Cajuns!”

We have two married children, Dustin (Jenny) and Amber (Tommy Michel), twelve beautiful grandchildren, two of whom are now married, and in 2025, we became the great-grandparents of one sweet little Asian-Cajun!

A brief look into our past …

Throughout our forty-eight years of marriage, we were blessed with opportunities to work together as a minister and a secretary. We enjoy doing life together. We have been retired from the workforce for quite a while now, and for the past six years, we supplemented our Social Security income by sourcing and then selling a plethora of new and gently used items, some of which were very profitable, through our eBay store, which, as you might guess, has the profile name of “agingcajuns!”  We worked hard to make our store successful enough to live comfortably, all the while working it at our own pace.  To date, our store has over 2,800 positive reviews, over 600 followers, and we’ve sold over 7,000 items. 

Big milestone …

We both turned seventy years old in May of 2025, which prompted us to pause and reflect on our lives.  We pondered on the question of how we want to spend the rest of our golden years. At that point in time, we were starting to lose the drive and the willingness to hustle for the reselling business … we were both ready for something different.

But what?

In July of 2025, while on a vacation with our family, we were stopped at a red light on Dauphin Island, Alabama, and the vehicle that pulled up next to us was an RV.  While admiring this beautiful vehicle, one of us blurted out loud, “We can do that!”  BAM! A wild and crazy dream was born from that one short sentence … let's sell almost everything we own, buy an RV, and travel throughout our beautiful country! 

Can we really trade our precious “things” for amazing “experiences?”

After arriving back home from that trip, we continued to discuss that off-the-wall idea.  We started calculating the cost of uprooting our lives from a very comfortable place that we’ve only been living in for the past eleven years.

Are we willing to let go of so much?

Are we crazy?

How will our family handle the news?

          After months of talking, researching, and watching TONS of YouTube videos of people who are living this lifestyle … WE DECIDED TO GO FOR IT!

Making our dream a reality…

Last fall, we began having yard sales, and by springtime, we reduced our eBay store from almost 1,000 items to right around 60.  We did not want to close down our well-established eBay business, so we are taking our small inventory on the road with us. We plan to thrift throughout our travels, hoping to score items that have great sell-through rates and won’t take up much room in our small storage space.  We plan on blogging about our thrifting finds in addition to our traveling adventures.

 

Drastic changes had to happen …

Early on in the quest to start eliminating things, the first major thing to sell was our car, which relieved us of our second-largest debt. We really only needed one vehicle, and the one that we were left with was already paid for. Getting rid of that large financial obligation allowed us to start earning less from our eBay store as we began ending a lot of our listings. We continued having yard sales in the spring, and we sold, or gave away, a good portion of our non-essential belongings.  We then began the really deep purging process … more yard sales … gave stuff away … got the house ready to sell…sold the boat, guns, jewelry, furniture, appliances, and a whole lot of whatnots!  We did a lot of work to narrow down forty-eight years of memorabilia and, fortunately, we were able to store them at our daughter's home.

Amazingly, the house sold in two days.  Two days after we closed on the home, we bought a used 2016 Winnebago Minnie Winnie 31K.

 

Our new "we can do that" beginning began May 28, 2026.  We are only 2.5 weeks into our Aging Cajuns Adventures (or, how David’s younger sister likes to call it, “Seniors Gone Wild Extravaganza!”) and so far … we are loving it!

No more debt … we’re totally free!

No major upkeep to concern ourselves with … no grass to cut … no leaves to rake … no house to keep updated and clean … no yearly mortgage increase due to a homeowner’s insurance rate hike (downfall of living in hurricane territory) … and no more having to hustle day after day, getting up early on Saturdays trying to beat the early bird resellers just to source new items to list on eBay!  Now, we can do it for fun and to generate extra income to help pay for all the gas we’ll be buying!

What we’ve done is a huge and major life change, that’s for sure.

We are not regretting our choice.

No doubt, there are things that we will miss, like … a deep soaking bathtub, a king-size bed, more living space, a washer and dryer, getting to attend some of our grandchildren’s extracurricular activities, as well as some of their special events. That’s part of the trade-off that we considered in making this change.

How long will we do this?  Until we’ve had enough. Until then … we have so many places to explore and people to meet, and we can’t wait to share all those adventures with you.

Blessings…

Romans 8:28