The dilettantes are starting to throw in the #vanlife towel

gizmotron said:

There are two reasons to be in your vehicle. One is that is what you like to do and the other is what you have to do.

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Thank you for that. Boiled it down to the basics.

Well Tony. I don’t have a recliner. I guess I better work on that.

Thanks Doug for sticking up for me.

There are people with all types of rigs here. Some are in their big Rvs. Some are in travel trailers, some in vans, some in cars and some in tents. I had a gal come thru recently and camp on my place who was on a bicycle. It’s all good. I will tell you though Tony that I know many, many nomads in vans with much more in the bank that you could imagine. You certainly can’t judge a person by what size rig they have as you will probably find out in time.

Most everyone that found their way here came to learn how to be able to cut corners. When I came here 100 years ago I had a ten foot little fiberglass egg. It might have been ten foot. I could move it around easily with a very small four wheeler. I was looking for ideas about storage because it really had none. Since I’m a cheapskate the thought of cheap RV living certainly appealed to me too. After trading around several times I’m now in a huge rig. It’s not new but it’s fancy. There were reasons to buy it of course. I’m the same old crippled fart I was when I was in a tiny camper.

You may see those big rigs in the desert but they are probably trying to live and save a few bucks too otherwise they would probably end up in a fancy RV resort and pay $100 a night to park on a slab.

Ouch! Guess I ruffled a few feathers. I thought I was merely responding to the thread about people who was considering throwing in the towel on van life. I joined this site after seeing's Bob's youtube years ago. Sorry if I offended anyone, just expressing my opinion. Have a nice day.

gizmotron said:

I can't think of a single reason to think that investment in a brick & mortar house with a mortgage will keep you in your old age.  You will spend so much on it after taxes that the same money invested in gold & silver would make your retirement years incredible.

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I agree with the idea that owning a house is a not a good investment; I own two and agree that they are money and time sinks.  I don't agree that gold and silver are good investments; they are better than nothing but the return on investment over a long period of time falls far below other options.  If you own gold mining financial items (stocks, ETFs or mutual funds), you own that and can compare it with other stock market investments.  (You might find that the return on investment of mining stocks disappoints but the details matter and some people probably bought low enough and sold high enough to do well.)  If you own physical gold and silver, you have  five hidden costs of gold unless you mined and quickly sold it yourself; storage costs, insurance, theft (by law enforcement using civil asset forfeiture), possibly poor tax treatment, gold coin scams, zero income, etc. can add up.  Each person must decide but this  Does it still pay to invest in gold?  might interest you.

Well with the price of fuel and the availability of cheap Airbnbs we have started using them when we make overnight trips going to town for supplies and doctor appointments. Much cheaper and easier to drive an economy car than a 1 ton truck. Many of the best places we have stayed at are owned by widowed older folks that own the house and have a small guest house, converted garage or storage building that they with their grown children maintain and rent out through Airbnb. Many have stated it has been a source of income that kept them from having to work a low paying job that most couldn't continue to any way due to health problems and allowed them to continue to live in their home as well as have something to pass along or in some cases pay for some of their children's needs as well. If you already own a house in a good location it seems it might be something to consider as they seem to be doing pretty well. It seems like if you want to travel and won't be using the house and you have a grown child willing to clean and manage it as it will become theirs one day, it might just work.

SLB_SA said:

 Each person must decide but this  Does it still pay to invest in gold?  might interest you.

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I agree that there are pitfalls to sitting on gold and silver. But just like houses that go up and down in value gold and silver have big swings too.  If you buy gold and just sit on it then all you have is a hedge against inflation. But if you sell it high and buy it low later you increase your pile.  People that do this with real-estate assets keep growing their wealth. The only thing in the way is taxes. It's swing trading on moving averages, like they do in the stock market.

I know how to beat the casinos. I can use the same moving averages concepts to beat the casinos. And I have set out to prove that point for the sake of being right and proving it.  By making many upward moves each week I can manufacture my own controlled upward swings. By increasing the size of my session bankrolls I can keep growing upward. And like a stock portfolio I don't have it all in one stock trade. 

I don't think that saving greenbacks is safe now. The only thing that might be safe for the near future is things that you need. Like a food stash for instance. I know this is sort of a survivalist mentality. But I've never seen the government print so much money before.

Thank goodness it isn’t for everybody... also thank goodness for the folks that embrace it and contribute in their own ways. I barely know anyone. But for the most part there are some pretty incredible people here in this circle. We all have strengths and weaknesses. In such case it is best we’re not all the same, if that makes one ounce of sense.

For me, and my husband when he was alive, we got our kids thru college and then set to saving for retirement.

Paid off the small house I had bought before his time with me, lived frugally and saved.

My house has more than doubled in value in 36 years, is a home base for me and financial cushion should I need it before I die.

Staying in it and paying it off allowed us to save to have a life in retirement.

Many different ways to full or part time travel, and as long is one is not harming others that is okay.

IMHO.

NctryBen said:

Thank goodness it isn’t for everybody... also thank goodness for the folks that embrace it and contribute in their own ways. I barely know anyone. But for the most part there are some pretty incredible people here in this circle. We all have strengths and weaknesses. In such case it is best we’re not all the same, if that makes one ounce of sense.

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course it makes sense. it would definitely be a boring world if we were all the same...

Houses are just like gold. You buy them during a a downturn selloff and you sell them during a seller's market like it is right now in places. I was a developer a while back. I remember when a building bubble burst long before the predatory mortgage crisis and the over the counter derivatives debacle made it a banking nightmare. Builders would buy a brand new BMW and give it away with the sell of their new homes. They did not want to get stuck for a few years with high interest rate construction loans. That worked for about 6 weeks. When it crashes it almost always does it rapidly. That's the nature of houses. People that keep their houses for 30 or 40 years are not speculating on anything going up or down. It's a hedge against inflation to them, just like long term gold can be.

Just like a $30,000 house in the 60's can now sell for $300,000 today. A car costs ten times as much now too. But, this is important. You don't have to water or mow the lawn with a bag of gold.

gizmotron said:

But, this is important. You don't have to water or mow the lawn with a bag of gold.

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But have you tried watering your bag of gold?

Well, yes, of course. I piss on it daily because it's so puny, the bag of gold.

Bob's latest video includes a Mark Twain quote. Here are a few more at this Youtube link:

jimindenver said:

I think people lost sight of the roots of this whole van dwelling concept. It's not choice, it's necessity.

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On one level you are absolutely spot on... yet.. I am making a choice. My home is under contract to be sold. If I stay I will lose it as my income is such that I cannot maintain Mort/Ins/Taxes on my social security.. so I am choosing to go RV.... I could choose to buy a small mobile home in some shitty Trailer park, and sit their and rot out until they find my corpse... but I am choosing to be a vagrant .. I am choosing to be a modern gypsy, and the scorn and hate that goes with that choice... but then also the freedom from the financial pressures of the rat race treadmill.... So while I am making a choice, aI am also forced to choose between the above two, or give up and be truly hopeless...

..I have been prepping for this for 15 months, researching, reading posts, watching videos, learning about furnaces, heaters, batteries, and all things mobile homing ... You could say I am forced into this lifestyle due to financial situations, but I made it a choice......

How we all made it here should not be a point of any of us judging the others on why they are here and what their lifestyle is... this makes us like the Jones down the street ...

There is more than money to being a Gypsy... I am a loner ( and a loaner/ look up KIVA) I prefer my own company over that of others, and yet I am gregarious... call it a oil and water mix developed as a survival mechanism....  I don;t fit in the world  that is what the American culture has become..

Homeless is a state of physical being as judged by those with against those without.  I am not homeless. Yet I am not a part of this nation, in the eyes of this nation or the States and towns I may travel through....  

Life should be more simple, and now that I am "old" and have started collecting instead of paying in, I can shed the crap laid on us to participate in this rat race that feed money to the rich...

This resource was indeed started as a way for the homeless to gain power over their lives, and realize that they may have a choice....

Giving up... I have faced that decision over and over... in this country, you wither jump on the treadmill and run with the rest of the rats, or you get tossed off the machine and cast aside... facing the horrific reality of this it can be hard not to give up.. this resource is about hope and instilling the confidence in people that they can live a good life outside the rat race....

..and now.. the site has become.. a thing.. a success even... this can be a lifestyle that involves personal choice as it is more than being about homeless, but also extolling the virtues of living as a nomad, making it about what you do and how you live, not about what you have and how you succeed in the rat race.

The site has evolved.

JJsimonds said:

..and now.. the site has become.. a thing.. a success even... 
...The site has evolved.

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I was already highly experienced in RVing. I already knew that it was an escape from the usual treadmill and a way to have a great life living in an RV and traveling two or three weeks at a time to different membership parks. At a point both before and after that I had hit bottom and moved out in my car in winter. I got past that. That was purely need to survive. Later I built my own popup RV and joined Thousand Trails. They burned me on one of their $5,000+ memberships. I had a few friends in that grouping that also got burned. But they were warned in time and went Boondocking in Blyth.  I was not and my home built rig was banned from the parks. So I ripped the top off of it and turned it into camping equipment trailer and started tent camping in the membership parks. Then TTN decided to take 3 week stays away from full members tent camping and shorten it to 1 week stays. So I was paying $5000 for something I could get for $500 a year. And I was forced to move every week.

I had heard of boondocking from friends that went down to Quartzite every winter. It was camping in your RV without hookups. OK, no winter swimming pools, no internet connection, dial-up phone line back then. I had not tried it.  I wanted a rig that I could just pull in somewhere, set the breaks, and go right to sleep if I wanted to. My home made popup took 90 minutes to set up and tear down. That was getting very old. I dreamed of a simpler way to go. There was no way for me to purchase a fully self contained Class B RV.  I didn't want to buy a  new tow vehicle and trailer.

Then I saw 'Nomadland.' That started me watching Bob Wells' videos on YouTube. And now I'm in the middle of my own van build that started in July. It's all going to happen. I'm building my own Class B with a full kitchen outside in back, the likes of Teardrop Trailer builders.  Now there is a solution that does not seem to have caught on in the Nomads world yet. Those lightweight little things can be towed by just about any car. I almost went that route. I was towing 1,000lbs with my brand new Toyota Corolla.  You can build a Teardrop trailer out of foamboard and cover it with Poor Man's Fiberglass. It has a place to sleep, and a full kitchen in back to cook with. It's a full step up from tenting.

I live in a RV because I chose to, I had a Sticks and bricks home and sold it, I never really considered a Van to life in, I wanted to be as close to a home as I can get. I don't plan on ever going back to a stick and bricks house again.

I spent enough time in the Army that I can live very easy with less. Right now I am working because I want to not because I have to. I am staying in an RV park in Houston and driving a school bus so I can justify paying the lot rent. My SS will start next month and I will be in really good shape and plan to hit the road next summer and live out my days on the road.

This is not the kind of live for everybody, but for me I can handle it. The biggest problem with traveling I haver found is someplace where I can stay for free and dump tanks for free. Yes I'm cheap, but I have found quite a few places to dump and stuff. I have a Good Sam card and it allows me to dump at Camping World for free and stay the night.

For me the hardest part is planning ahead.

Denial.The river in the middle east.Nobody here would be living in a van if someone handed them a million dollars.Nobody.

1shemp said:

Denial.The river in the middle east.Nobody here would be living in a van if someone handed them a million dollars.Nobody.

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you have an interesting talent there...knowing what others would do.. have you considered getting into religion?

I have many talents.Living in denial is not one of them.Face the situation you are in and accept the facts.Only then can one determine the way forward.

1shemp said:

Denial.The river in the middle east.Nobody here would be living in a van if someone handed them a million dollars.Nobody.

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I would and very comfortably.