SUV Car Tour Solo Woman Living in a SUV on $250 Per Month

lisa hi lisa hi bob nice to see you we uh we've known each other for quite a while uh five or six years has it been that long yeah time flies when you're having fun right and you so you've been a nomad for the last five or six years or more or more yes you would i would actually have to kind of say your whole life has been my whole adult life yeah yeah so tell us a little bit about it how did you end up and now you're in this nice passport on a passport so how did you end up as a nomad well you know sometimes families are kind of wonky and my life wasn't all that pretty um the original uh first time i lived in a van was in 1978 i was married my ex-husband didn't like to pay rent and it made sense to me to do something other than have a landlord come pestering me all the time so we moved into a 1968 chevy van with the engine between the seats and that was the start so you started young yeah yeah before i had babies yes yeah and then i know you've been a long distance backpacker yes and that's a kind of a nomadic theme to it definitely plus plus which is one of the um one of the reasons that i really love being in my uh honda passport is that the years that i spent backpacking both as a long distance hiker on the appalachian trail and in foreign countries just traveling especially in central america there was a certain amount of freedom when everything you own is actually in a backpack and there's less for less problems there's a just a different level of freedom and so did you actually hike the appalachian trail i didn't finish i i did three months solo and most of my hike was completely alone uh on the trail i chose to go when nobody was there i i think i needed what's called trail therapy okay a lot of people say that long-distance hiking is one of the most therapeutic things you can do yeah i've heard that often uh and so i happen to know that you ended up in costa rica for quite a few years between seven and eight years seven eight years and uh that probably too was some kind of search for a healing of some kind uh but probably um but also it it also had a lot of adventure involved i have this thing about making life an adventure so um i found that after i became permanently disabled i could still get my money and i could travel so i found a way that i could do that and i did a lot of house sitting and i stayed on wolf farms and i helped with different american projects down there and then after a while i just decided to rent a house in an indigenous village and i did that for a couple of years and really became a local yeah and uh when you're on a so you're on a disability payment of some kind i am and that's usually no extra money left over no so living in costa rica probably made that money go a long ways it made it go a lot further yes um it doesn't solve all the issues uh i still qualify as low income in the united states i get less than a thousand dollars every month so i can get my medical care and and i qualify for fifteen dollars worth of food stamps and you know i you know i get i get a few things i can go to food pantries and you know take take advantage of some of the the different services are available in the united states so you're living on less than a thousand a month i actually live on my i'll i'll be honest with everybody i get an 864 dollar check once a month for the last three years because of a financial glitch i have lived on 250 dollars a month really i have been making payments trying to take care of like i said a financial glitch actually the van i had ended up costing me a lot of money and repairs and a lot got put on credit cards and i'm still paying some of that off okay so you still get the 860 but but you're paying off i'm paying off debts so well paying off debts and then this little thing that can came to me that that you know about where i've been um flipping campers as in uh buying a camper project and then making it prettier or making it into a glamper and then reselling it right and um it's going to become a little side business to you yeah very little yeah you know i'm not getting rich but i am it's helping me so you've been living on 250 a month for three years for three years because i'm paying bills because you're not you could do bankruptcy or you could just let them go but you're not going to do that no because i chose i wanted to pay them off i i i feel that it's important to have self-responsibility and so i'm responsible for what i did and i will pay it off even if it takes me forever right but well now most of us are going to say it is completely impossible to live on 250 a month no but it's very hard and if you're not disciplined or and i'm not saying i am because i i i struggle with it too but i made it my goal that if i do this within two years i can be in a different place and so you're probably fairly close to that i am actually in june one of my big bills goes away so i have quite a bit more money quite a bit more or put that back into the debt yeah i'll put it into the debt so that i so i can get out faster now a lot of you folks are out there going have just heard all what we just said you're and you're going to write in and say oh i'm so sorry for her i'm so sad she's got this terrible life what a horrible life she must be living you have a horrible life no no oh yes you do you god oh okay sure okay no actually i ha i feel like i'm one of the most blessed beings on the earth um i last winter was able to buy a piece of land um it's one of the reasons i wasn't able to be at the rtr for the first time in like five or six years whatever it was and um so you know i i have i have vehicles that run i have friends who are mechanics i'm able to help other people some of some of you that know me out there from rtr world know how generous and kind i am because i learned how to be and i'm not i'm i may not have wealth in dollars the way the uh mainstream people might think about it but i'm not missing anything and plus i have some skills so flipping trailers you've got some skills right and and i know how to cook so if i want some fancy meal i can't afford a restaurant necessarily but i i find a way to cook it right which is a good lead-in to the back end of my car okay so so well one of the ways you can live on 250 a month is living in your car uh you have a honda passport and as we can see this is remarkably large for an suv for a small one yes actually it seems like it would be quite comfortable now you are rigged up right now for travel mode yes this is my my normal travel mode yes so we're going to actually show you uh the remodel so when she travels this is what it looks like and then when you get somewhere and you set up camp it use it transforms into camp boat into camp mode right now when i'm traveling i leave everything in the same places and just move a couple of things into the driver's seat like if i'm doing a stealth overnight like in a walmart [Music]

Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 667,409

Keywords: live, living, car, van, RV, Fill-time, nomad, gypsy, camper, camp, boondock, travel, debt, budget, $250, month, SUV, Honda, Pilot, vandwelling

Id: D1MKpQW5SFQ

Length: 8min 37sec (517 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 01 2017