I should not have bought a minivan

[Goshawk]

Looking at the blog for today is a good way to develop a different perspective about a minivan lifestyle

http://www.cheaprvliving.com/blog/converting-a-kia-sedona-minivan-for-travel-and-living/

 

[ascii_man]

For a forum which is supposedly about freedom and being true to oneself, there sure is a lot of encouragement to stick with a recent impulsive decision.

If he'd asked "should I sell my paid-off house of 35 years where I raised my children?", people would be shouting "get rid of that anchor". But trading a Honda he's owned about 3 weeks is somehow integral to his identity forever now. Weird.

 

[Goshawk]

think its more about not doing changes too quickly.

USE IT UP
WEAR IT OUT
MAKE IT DO
OR DO WITHOUT

old New England mantra, or maybe just a cheap living mantra

 

[ascii_man]

Some family will be thrilled to find a nice Honda minivan and USE IT UP.

Thunder Dan is following the Psycho-Cybernetics concepts that a missile doesn't go directly to its target, but zig zags and makes course corrections along the way and "you are not your mistakes", and the Silicon Valley mantra of "rapid iteration".

It's a Honda he just bought, not a spouse or family member.

 

[GotSmart]

Finding the best combination of amenities , space, reliability, stealth, economy is always going to be a trade off. Make a discussion matrix and give weight to each factor. What you cone out with is the best for you and not anyone else. Would say there are at least five and up to ten independent factors in deciding a mobile living platform.

:huh:

My head hurts.  Cones, matrix, 

Find a platform, sit in it, and look at things.     Sometimes it helps to clear your head.

 

[Thunder Dan]

Finding the best combination of amenities , space, reliability, stealth, economy is always going to be a trade off. Make a discussion matrix and give weight to each factor. What you cone out with is the best for you and not anyone else. Would say there are at least five and up to ten independent factors in deciding a mobile living platform.

Definitely a very good way to approach it.

Your answer has me curious, though. Do you work in mathematics or data science or a similar field?

 

[Goshawk]

Engineering. Weighted decision matrix is a method to come to a conclusion. Versus just random giving into the last thing you looked at.

Am looking at pickup trucks in 2500 size with eight foot bed. Then put a camper insert in the back. Storage fee while I use the truck is $50 a month. Gives a lot of flexibility in configuration. Sure it's small and not stealthy. But it is adaptable and cheaper to tow or separate and get work done on it.

 

[LeeRevell]

For a forum which is supposedly about freedom and being true to oneself, there sure is a lot of encouragement to stick with a recent impulsive decision.

If he'd asked "should I sell my paid-off house of 35 years where I raised my children?", people would be shouting "get rid of that anchor".  But trading a Honda he's owned about 3 weeks is somehow integral to his identity forever now.  Weird.

Odd, I get exactly the opposite vibe.  Most are suggesting consideration of pros and cons, and deciding on the best fit for what is needed.

 

[GotSmart]

For a forum which is supposedly about freedom and being true to oneself, there sure is a lot of encouragement to stick with a recent impulsive decision.

If he'd asked "should I sell my paid-off house of 35 years where I raised my children?", people would be shouting "get rid of that anchor".  But trading a Honda he's owned about 3 weeks is somehow integral to his identity forever now.  Weird.

:huh: :s  I don't see that at all.  

People are talking about what worked for them.

I for one cant wait to get a larger platform.

 

[minimotos95]

Everything I need fits in my minivan with ease and I for the most part do live in it rather than out of it but everyone has different needs. Now I do have my roof loaded down with luxuries, toys and junk along with a motorcycle that has no way of fitting in or on the van while it still being livable. Everything that's a need and I use atleast once a week fits in the van, actually it all fits in a backpack.

If you climb in the van, look at it and think that there's no way your stuff you need for daily life will fit in there I think you are on the right track going bigger. Before I moved into my van I thought "hey, I could live in here" and there was a period where my van was so full of junk I barely had room to take my shoes off and lay down.
Those older Hondas should be pretty easy to sell or trade for a full size v8 van because of the fuel economy.

 

[Konaexpress]

Ummm......a missile is not a bullet so yes, they can zigzag a bit. More if the target is farther off, I know this first hand.  Not sure where these ideas are coming from with such authority.

Dan- if you think you made a bad decision, then sell it. If you can be "okay" with it for now, use it for a bit until you really know what you want.

John

 

[ascii_man]

Ummm......a missile is not a bullet so yes, they can zigzag a bit. More if the target is farther off, I know this first hand.  Not sure where these ideas are coming from with such authority.

Dan- if you think you made a bad decision, then sell it. If you can be "okay" with it for now, use it for a bit until you really know what you want.

John

I'm not sure if the "authority" remark was directed at me, but Dan said earlier that he either over-analyzes or jumps in and makes course corrections. I was supporting his course-corrections, and they reminded me of concepts from Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz: the grandfather of the self-help genre and (in my opinion) a lot more science-based and rational than the imitations which have followed. One of the key metaphors comes from torpedo / missile guidance systems (hence the "cybernetics" part).

 

[Konaexpress]

Then I would take what max thinks with a grain of salt but I get the gist of what you are saying. Life is built around course correction, sometimes it's just more painful than other times.

John

 

[akrvbob]

For a forum which is supposedly about freedom and being true to oneself, there sure is a lot of encouragement to stick with a recent impulsive decision.

If he'd asked "should I sell my paid-off house of 35 years where I raised my children?", people would be shouting "get rid of that anchor".  But trading a Honda he's owned about 3 weeks is somehow integral to his identity forever now.  Weird.

I went back and looked to see if we had missed it on this thread and I have to honestly say no, the responses were all good-intentioned, helpful, kind and balanced. 

This thread makes me very proud to be associated with all you wonderful, generous people!  :heart:
Bob

 

[Gypsy Jane]

Yes, I am partially unprepared. But I am the type of person who can either research and study and prepare forever without ever actually doing anything, so I have to jump in and just do it, make course corrections along the way, etc.
...

If I'd waited til I was prepared, I'd have missed 20+ years of RoVing! There may not be a permanent right vehicle anyway. I'm in a minivan now but I've got an extended e350 and a motorhome sitting in VA for when the wind changes.

 

[LostlnTransit]

I really hate to say it, but the typical van dweller is not very minimalistic.. In fact based on several of your images.. these are your homes and you horde everything in them.. selecting the van is easy.. learning to live with your selection is hard especially when one hordes everything. Get rid of the hording aspect and you'll have a better experience as well as more room.

 

[Gigi]

If I'd waited til I was prepared, I'd have missed 20+ years of RoVing! There may not be a permanent right vehicle anyway. I'm in a minivan now but I've got an extended e350 and a motorhome sitting in VA for when the wind changes.

Spot on,Gypsy Jane!  

ThunderDan,

Bob had a blog entry a couple days ago about a man living in a minivan.  In the comments, someone wrote there is a marine saying that goes, "go small and go now".  It really hit me (in a good way!)  lol  But ThunderDan, if you had waited to go big, you might not have been able to start out now.  It least you got a little experience behind you so your minivan wasn't a mistake.  Maybe keeping it will be, for you, but you have started your awesome journey!!!  

I just bought a minivan because it really was about doing it asap and I know I can do that in a Minivan...I have the FULL intention of allowing myself to go bigger if I need to later.   That's the beauty of this life, it's all so fluid!  

Gigi<3

 

[ascii_man]

I went back and looked to see if we had missed it on this thread and I have to honestly say no, the responses were all good-intentioned, helpful, kind and balanced. 

This thread makes me very proud to be associated with all you wonderful, generous people!  :heart:
Bob

I expressed that with a little dramatic flair, but my point stands.

I wasn't commenting on the tone or spirit of the remarks/advice (yes, everyone has been kind), simply characterizing the content of the responses.

The OP expressed a conclusion (and shows intellectual honesty and good character by admitting he made a mistake), and then gets dozens of reasons supporting the opposite conclusion ("so-and-so lives in a minivan"). That in and of itself is fine: a true friend will correct you if you're wrong, while an enemy will let you drive off a cliff. But in this case, nobody was refuting the reasons for his conclusion, or offering overwhelming reasons for the other direction: most of the reasons essentially were an argument for the status quo / "sunk cost fallacy". So reading this I was reminded of a professor who said "SUNK COSTS DON'T MATTER" in almost every lecture for a semester, the Silicon Valley "rapid iteration / pivot / move fast and break things" mentality, and I just recently listened to Maxwell Maltz from the 1960s who had a lot of wise points about how to respond to mistakes.

And I found this reasoning a little comical in a forum populated by people who pride themselves in not being bound by tradition or societal expectation. I'm actually the first one to say that people probably should stay with their careers and spouses and stuff. But this is just a used Honda that he recently bought.

It helps if you just think of it like a logic or rhetoric example:
* Thunder Dan decides A
* Forum members offer reasons in support of NOT A
* The reasons are arguments from inertia / sunk costs / tradition
* Forum members generally pride themselves on being nontraditional
Conclusion: Forum members are being inconsistent

It was this inconsistency which I was pointing out with a little hyperbole.

I am just as emotionally supportive as the others, but I'm also intellectually supportive, since I'm NOT listing reasons (many of which seem weak and grasping in service to a very strange form of traditionalism) to second-guess his decision.

So yes, if he's really making a mistake, by all means let him know (and tell me if my fly is unzipped!). But since his decision seems pretty reasonable, I'm just going to support him and encourage him to move forward.

 

[ascii_man]

And yes, this was a really good thread because we did discuss a lot of reasons why minivans do and don't work for different people.

 

[Konaexpress]

I expressed that with a little dramatic flair, but my point stands.

I wasn't commenting on the tone or spirit of the remarks/advice (yes, everyone has been kind), simply characterizing the content of the responses.

The OP expressed a conclusion (and shows intellectual honesty and good character by admitting he made a mistake), and then gets dozens of reasons supporting the opposite conclusion ("so-and-so lives in a minivan").  That in and of itself is fine: a true friend will correct you if you're wrong, while an enemy will let you drive off a cliff.  But in this case, nobody was refuting the reasons for his conclusion, or offering overwhelming reasons for the other direction: most of the reasons essentially were an argument for the status quo / "sunk cost fallacy".  So reading this I was reminded of a professor who said "SUNK COSTS DON'T MATTER" in almost every lecture for a semester, the Silicon Valley "rapid iteration / pivot / move fast and break things" mentality, and I just recently listened to Maxwell Maltz from the 1960s who had a lot of wise points about how to respond to mistakes.

And I found this reasoning a little comical in a forum populated by people who pride themselves in not being bound by tradition or societal expectation.  I'm actually the first one to say that people probably should stay with their careers and spouses and stuff.  But this is just a used Honda that he recently bought.

It helps if you just think of it like a logic or rhetoric example:
* Thunder Dan decides A
* Forum members offer reasons in support of NOT A
* The reasons are arguments from inertia / sunk costs / tradition
* Forum members generally pride themselves on being nontraditional
Conclusion: Forum members are being inconsistent

It was this inconsistency which I was pointing out with a little hyperbole.

I am just as emotionally supportive as the others, but I'm also intellectually supportive, since I'm NOT listing reasons (many of which seem weak and grasping in service to a very strange form of traditionalism) to second-guess his decision.

So yes, if he's really making a mistake, by all means let him know (and tell me if my fly is unzipped!).  But since his decision seems pretty reasonable, I'm just going to support him and encourage him to move forward.

Can't say that I agree with you but you make a well thought out and strong rebuttal. Though the first post came across as confrontational, I find this one as more thoughtful. You obviously have a voice and a point of view and I ask ask for myself, that you take a moment longer to express this when you post.

With kind regards,
John