Living on the Road for 40 Years in a RV - Without Bounds

so and i've known randy for a while and uh i've just learned so much from him and i just would uh i'm delighted to have the chance for you to get to know him uh if probably the most of you found me uh through the without bound uh documentary made by michael tubbs a master video maker and so you know randy already you you're familiar with him from there so randy we're gonna i guess we'll just kind of pick up where we left off except we'll focus on you and get to know you a bit because uh you're someone we need to get to know so how long have you been on the road 40 years 40 years which is the title of my book what a coincidence 40 years a nomad yes go ahead and uh you know there there are a number of people watching this video that aren't even 40 years old a number and so you've been on the road longer than they've been alive truly enough and uh how did you end up on the road i guess that's the next obvious question uh sort of tapered into it i i read i was inspired by henry david thoreau in his book walden and he says in there why would you spend all of your life working in order to have a little bit of freedom at the end of your life when if you could learn to live efficiently you could adventure on life now and he did he drifted down rivers he walked all the way to plymouth massachusetts and so i thought well i could do that i can live cheap so i've been living cheap for 40 years and you know that's also a philosophy i've i've adopted for myself that uh uh i can always make more money i can never make more time and so i'm using the time i've got right now like it's not coming up but here's here's the counter argument and the argument people ask me all the time what are you going to do when you're old although you're kind of getting there now i guess well i sometimes i imagine myself getting the bad news you know that i've come down with something fatal in which case i think i'll just i will try to be courageous and off myself i don't want to be a pain in the ass and i really don't deserve a lot of expensive medical treatment and besides i hate that so uh but at the rate i'm going i spend so little money i can see all my way to my 90s unless you know the world inflation goes out of hand or something uh and so uh do you mind if i ask you how are you supporting yourself for the last 40 years uh oh and well i have a poem on the subject okay i'd like to hear a poem ask me this pretty often how in the world did i sustain myself for 40 years and so here's i wrote a poem it's called a bucket full of freedom wealth is like a leaky bucket beneath a water spout running water is your income expense is leakage out and the measure of your wealth is how long could you hold out if some sad misfortune turned off the water spout now most folks focus on the spigot seeking increase of the flow but i focused my attention on the leakage down below i have sought to plug my bucket reducing my expenses holding in my savings like a cowboy mending fences with patience i waited for bargains i didn't count on lady luck live well below my means getting bang for every buck and when the water rising in my bucket reached that calculated mark i left behind all drudgery and flew off like a lark so i think my wealth is great because my needs are small and i won't have to work again with any luck at all money can purchase freedom if you have the guts to buy it i know folks with boku books too afraid to try it but i have purchased freedom with the savings in my pale and down highway seas of adventure in my land yacht i will sail very good thank you and that poem must be in your book it's in my book so folks if you do read his book and it's it can be purchased from amazon for a dollar a dollar download it or you can uh buy it from blurb for six bucks uh and folks you know some people's i have people tell me oh man you guys are just out here to make money on us you're just not here to make money on them no no no for a dollar you're not going to make a lot of money i don't care [Music] i know i uh and i do i make money on my website and things but no i'm not out here i think i hope people can see my heart beyond that and i know your heart and that your goal is never to make money on anybody and i know yours yeah so uh so how did you accumulate the money to begin with because you you know you had to fill that bucket pretty full true i i i i flipped a couple of houses you just found something you knew and you could do yeah i found an old abandoned house in new orleans an old abandoned mansion columns and all it was in terrible shape but i fixed it up and five years later i sold it and made my first 50 grand uh-huh and then you did that one more time i did it one more time yeah and uh tell me if we're prying too much so you had like 100 grand in the bank a little over 100 grand i inherited another 30 and so uh so at 130 grand i've been able to coast all these years i still have most of it left but that was back in the 70s it was yeah and i got 16 interest then and now i get zero percent interest and so i'm dying a little bit but i die only at the rate of about three hundred dollars a month you live on three hundred dollars a month no i get two hundred dollars a month social security so so i live on about five hundred you live on five hundred a month and they're about yet well you must be starving do you dog food you don't eat dog food it's clear that i i eat too much whatever i eat no you know what's really killing america financially is is housing and so the average american spends 47 percent of their take-home pay for a roof over the head which is crazy and so imagine if you could knock off 47 percent of i mean you'd have that money uh you wouldn't have to spend if you can just rent is in fact the big enemy it is and going up really quickly right now yes it is and and the other big is of course medical care and and it just so happens that i served in the army and so i get that for free so that takes care of the two biggies oh yeah if you those are the two biggies if you can cover those you're in pretty good shape but it takes a lot of discipline to live in 500 a month not really i whatever i want i get it's amazing i mean i can sit out here for two weeks and uh and not spend anything at all that's pretty cheap so really uh if you're not using uh self-discipline self-control which is what most of us would have to do maybe it's just an acquired habit that you've gained over the whole 40 years you've just learned i don't need to spend money that is the case uh yeah and plus frugality is a fun game i i i know people with a ton of money and uh and and they practice the game of frugality but you know out of other reasons they just they choose to have a low carbon footprint and they care about the world they know that we can't we can't recklessly consume and have a have a decent world so they're big on sustainability my my colleague my colleague cb drives this point home very often to live to live a low impact low carb and sustainable life yeah he asked you know how many people could the whole world live the way you live well they almost could live the way i live i bet that's true for you too the world would certainly be the earth itself would be a far better place if they did yeah most of our environmental problems would just be solved right then absolutely if if everybody in america spent 500 a month now the economy would collapse because it depends on consumerism but the the earth the planet would be so far better off and our our great great grandchildren who are going to suffer because of our consumerism would be a million times better off so true and yet all we're doing is thinking about ourselves on our economy in our country and something we're so proud of sure enough although okay don't write in and say you're a kami uh i love america i think it's the best country ever ever made and will ever be but we're going the wrong way right now we need to make some real serious changes at the end of that let's not talk about that anymore i love the philosopher in you [Laughter] so so for 40 years you've been doing this and you've just kind of developed a mindset of i i need to live on about this mountain you probably don't even keep track of your money do you no i don't i i no i just assume i live in a certain style and also i don't have to think about it but the hard part for most of us is the switch because we've uh most people have been so influenced by the consumerism of our country it's deep down inside us we want more and we want better and we want it now but you don't have that or you couldn't live on 500 happily live on 500 a month what do you attribute that to or a better question how can a person learn to live that way and feel and think that way any ideas yeah it's a values shift that's at the heart of it i mean if if you ask yourself in a serious moment sometimes you know what do i really enjoy and the things that you really enjoy really not expensive like talking to a friend or camping in a beautiful place with a view like this wow look at that that's the muggy on rim up there and i can see at least a hundred miles of it from where i am stand and um and uh if you ask yourself you know the challenge the the big challenge believe it or not is to generate meaning and uh once you win your freedom a lot of people go back to the to the rat race because they they never learn how to generate meaning and that's something that i've focused my attention on and uh and i have some ideas on the subject yeah well can you elaborate then and tell us exactly what you mean for so here's the average joe sitting at home he's just worked like everyone else works he's barely surviving month to month what kind of meaning should he be thinking about once you get free uh meaning here's here's a very brief summary of what meaning is meaning is the thrill of personal evolution and i bet you can feel it in yourself i mean you you were once on the streets of of anchorage living in a van and now you're the foremost philosopher in my opinion for this lifestyle and so how did it evolve into being just step by step it turns out that that whatever we do has a feedback loop uh and whatever you focus on it becomes we create little neural pathways it's sort of like a car driving down a soft dirt road after a while the ruts get deeper and deeper and deeper and whatever whatever is really wonderful about anybody usually has to do with with the the focus the the ruts that they have engineered in their mind and by the way whatever is terrible about people is also a kind of a rut that they've that they have done it enough the feedback loop thing uh yeah absolutely so you just uh you just set out on this new life with the idea that you're going to become a better person is it that blatant well i'm gonna have i'm gonna i'm gonna live the good life i'm gonna have fun i started out with little adventures like um i wanted to do the huckleberry finn thing down the mississippi river and i did it five times i went from memphis to new orleans uh on in the catamaran boat without any power and uh the sailboat there was and then just a little bit of adventure makes you hungry for more and more and more and pretty soon you know i've learned how to adventure cheaply well i i think that personal evolution and growth really is the key to this life and and i know it's it's hard to accept to explain that to someone who's just been stuck in the rut you know society defines how we live and we are in here in this rot and we can't see any other way uh but if you can get out out of the rut somehow and that's not easy it takes some real courage uh and you can see there's a whole other world plato's cave you're you're looking at the shadows you're chained to the shadows and that's all you can see but there's a whole world about behind you uh to me and i agree so 100 with what you're saying i am as totally i am not changed at the cellular level the person i was 10 years ago that person's gone uh although i can still see him around you know he kind of bangs around in my head sometimes it pops up and i get angry and i the old feelings come back but you know what i attribute a lot of it to and i understand the idea of the neural pathways i think it's the connection to the nature is a huge part of it it's certainly not all uh there was a native american chief one of his famous quotes and i forgotten his name was that apart from nature man's heart becomes hard so true very very true and um there have been and i really love science like sounds like you do too and i i've studied a lot of the science of nature's impact on the human uh psychology and psyche and and physiology and it's there's a huge amount of research showing today that connection to nature or disconnection from nature has a huge impact on who we are and i think a lot of it is you just come out here and sit and watch this view long enough you're gonna become a different person one two or nine absolutely and then on top of that you have a personal desire to grow and be a new person true and have been working on it for 40 years now yes which is one reason why i camp with uh i try to camp with my best friends i'm also persuaded i i don't know whether you're persuaded of this that that the people you have around you it can enrich you amazingly so i i've lived communally for 17 years and and i was so charmed by that lifestyle it always needs a little tweaking but but the the ideal community is one like we have here like you know she has all the privacy that she wants over there and uh and and yet whenever she feels the need for for company i mean here i am two or three steps away you know and and there's that one in that one and that one and different personalities each of them and each one of them is is a rich personality they they charm me and make me smarter cb's going to make me thinner somehow i didn't know he's a magician and by the way we both could use a little work oh i'm afraid well that's that's forbidden we can't talk about that oh no no no we're stopping right now on this way this train whole train of thought but no you're absolutely right cody's not fat no well i'm careful with him i'm not so careful with myself you know what that sounds like that sounds like i love him and not myself enough i love him enough to deprive him but i don't love myself enough it wouldn't surprise me at all if you loved cody more than yourself i would say there's no doubt about that yeah yeah so i don't know maybe i'm asking if there's one thing an interviewer should never do is ask a question if he doesn't know the answer uh have you given any thought what it would take for a person today to head out on the road for you you thought it was a hundred 150 thousand dollars is that about right yeah about that and have you given thought to what it would take for a person today to head out on the road a young person and never work again well i know someone who's doing it and he managed to have see he has his rig and 25 000 and uh and he tries to figure out a way to to make money and in small tiny ways he does he does counseling by by means he's a very smart guy and he does counseling with uh what do you call it skype over skype yeah and i have a bunch of other friends who don't have a big stash of money but they can live cheap and so they're inventing little ways to to make money uh there's this couple called technomatia and they do a seminar on 50 different ways you can make money on the road several one a person in our group does bookkeeping from the road and others have their own little gigs it's possible to actually to get on the road and and and and make a living it is uh-huh yes it really is and um you haven't had to because you were fortunate you came up in the 70s it was a different time you could make 16 percent interest you could save 150 000 and live on it right uh today that really is not so much in the way you can't get 16 percent interest and no i'm slowly dying at a rate of three to four 400 a month or so but you know at that rate i'll still make it to my to my 90s i have a poem on that subject too sure let's hear your poem it's what's on my tombstone you know is here lies the remains of randy vining a man who died with perfect timing philosopher poet and gad about he died the day his money ran out that's a good point [Laughter] so after 40 years do you have any regrets none at all zero more not at all i i'm sort of uh i'm pleased that uh at the way my being has evolved uh there not everyone in my family and my sister thinks i'm crazy you know and an old friend thinks that i must be a sociopath uh to live like this but i'm i'm i'm comfortable in my skin i sleep well and i never have bad dreams that's always a good a good way and and what a bank of memories you must have of the last 40 years oh it is true you know and even if you get old and sick and you've got you can't be out uh living the life you want someday god forbid you've got a bank full of memories that'll that'll get you through and probably photos and and and family and friends and connections that will get you through whatever remains at the end of your life yeah well i hope you're right whenever walt whitman got old he never had any money to amount to anything his friends his friends in cambridge cambridge massachusetts yeah and took care of him they came by they even made a little carriage for him and drove him around town somehow maybe i've generated enough love by that time that that the people will care about me and and then if life gets miserable i'll just off myself that's exactly my plan uh i'm still quite a bit further away from uh hopefully then i'm a long ways away from that but yeah that's definitely my plan and i know to the audience that just sounds horrible but if you've lived your full life another native american saying i really love is that today is a good day to die yeah and every day is a good day to die i think it's courageous and i have contempt for people who who whimper their way into the grave i'm thinking you know especially if they suck up millions of dollars in in tax money to do it i mean i would be embarrassed and ashamed to do that and and knowing you're going to die anyway yeah your quality of your life is gone that you're probably life is over yeah and i hope my you know i hope i i will be able to walk the walk whenever the time comes right it's easy to say it now while we're young and having a great time right well and along those lines my uh my personal philosophy is to adopt people different people look for different things you mentioned people who live for their old age they give up their whole youth to 40s 50s the prime of their life 30s 40s 50s 60s hoping to have some really great time at the end uh and but here's and that's because they fear uh an unpleasant old age that's their whole motivation in life to have a good old age and they might gonna be diet young my dad lived that way planned ahead retired at 60. never had to think about money again he was wealthy really uh and at 62 he was dead never enjoyed a bitty of it wow and so that lesson said to me that i live not for my old age uh the last 20 years of my life which is what most people are doing i live for the last minutes of my life that there will be no regrets a life with no regrets i will not look back on my life and say this was an unlived life wow and uh i will die chock full of memories just like you will and so that's uh my motivation in life is to die with it no regrets in a life full of uh i like ted i live for my last few minutes i lived for my last few minutes oh that's great my whole plan in life is the last few minutes when i'm going to say i am ready to go what a good life i've had so that's pretty amazing yeah yeah well so any last minute advice we'll just close up here any final advice you can have for people out there watching there's so many folks who are hoping and dreaming and just can't get over the final hurdle to do it uh this if this lifestyle appeals to you if being free appeals to you uh it's doable and it's doable in small stages and it's doable as a feedback loop you know you do a little bit of it and it will teach you a little bit about how to do a little bit more of it and more and more and that's how it is i tapered into i tapered into it and you can taper into it too so that would be my uh my thinking maybe start with baby steps yes yes like that uh did you come and go from it is that what you mean tapered in i did indeed yeah i the only job i ever had was a probation officer in in new orleans and i only worked five years at a job in my life and the rest of the time i was flipping houses and so forth but yeah this is doable and and and baby steps would be the way to go i recommend that they read your column yours is your column your blog has the best advice on how to how to do it i i understand you have a book that can actually teach people how to live in their car yeah i have seen it done yeah yeah you did it didn't you i did it yeah in the car i did it for in a car for a while and you can make a car comfortable as i'm sure you know strip out three of the seats make a platform a bid you happy happy happy yeah absolutely yeah yeah uh okay well one more question a lot of what stops people from coming and doing this uh is the sacrifices they're gonna have to make have you made and in the early days when you were learning you probably did make some sacrifices is of course you started with a good nest egg so that was less do you think you've made a lot of sacrifices to live this life well uh yeah i mean i i i never had the respect of my family for example uh uh i i you know they don't they feel a little differently now i mean ever since you and i were in a movie together right my stock rose just a little bit but that's a small thing i mean somehow another i'm happy enough um and i seem to have pretty well what i want i'm comfortable i have a good bed to sleep in and all that i don't feel no i guess i guess i don't i don't feel short of anything really right okay well randy thank you so much for spending your time with us and sharing your poems and your wisdom and i understand you have a book for sale thank you for a dollar you can have this you can have what i have to say you can download it from amazon uh or you can buy it from blurb for six bucks 40 years a nomad i thank you bob for taking the time to interview me you're welcome so there you have it folks uh this could be your life it uh it it i know it's scary i know it seems hard but if randy can do it and i can do it we're nothing special and so many people around us that you're meeting on the channel you can too i really would encourage you to take some baby steps and make a few efforts and actually go do something start taking some actions alright so thanks randy and we'll visit with you later

Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 515,422

Keywords: live, living, car, van, RV, Fill-time, nomad, gypsy, camper, camp, boondock, travel, Thoreau, Randy, Vinning, Without, Bound, poet, frugal, cheap, meaning, personal evolution, free

Id: UjTGF4jPdCY

Length: 26min 7sec (1567 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 31 2016