Ultra Cheap Full-Time RV Living on a Budget! Under $1000 PER YEAR! INTERVIEW

i like keeping the home constant but the areas i go to changing tiny home enormous backyard there we go that's brilliant that changes all the time yeah [Music] hi everyone welcome back to our next video today we're gonna do something really special we're gonna actually get to meet and introduce brian in his uh really nice older class c and uh you'll get to know him and because you're going to be seeing a lot of them on the channel so that's a good thing welcome brian you've been on before but welcome well thank you very much yeah you know we've had a lot of people in the videos that i have done a lot of people have asked you know what do i live in a tour of my rig i toured my setup and so we thought it'd be a great idea to give you guys a gander of what is going on in my rig and also get a little bit i can tell you guys a little bit about myself and i think brian and i present a really good balance because you know i'm kind of living a van living something small and you're living in an rv and have been for a while it's like a mansion right it's a mansion yeah so you know i think it's a good balance brian's a little younger i'm a little older and i just think it's a really really good balance so uh let's go back to the beginning like i do we always do in these interviews and uh how did you end up living on the road uh so i was living in denver colorado and it just years before i'd seen stuff about the tiny house movement and i was just fascinated by that i thought it was so cool environmentally uh and then about 2009-ish i was living in denver and i just started getting really bored with my life i thought i was i was thinking i might have to do what i'm doing now for 30 years and i would like no changes in sight uh and so i just kind of had inspiration to you know look at like the tiny houses and things like that once i started looking at that i was like well an rv is just a tiny house on wheels and i didn't have a location i wanted to be and so i just kind of became enamored with maybe getting on the road and a girl i was dating at the time we both wanted to do that and so i bought an rv and fixed it up and hit the road yeah you know i can completely relate to that story the idea i can remember when i was younger much younger 30 years ago more than 30 years ago thinking i'm going to do this for 30 more years yeah and then i remember thinking i'm going to do this for 20 more years and then by the time i was saying i'm going to be doing this for 10 more years i was at the end you had enough right that was it i was done i wanted something else yeah and so this is of course i was forced into it but and so you just started doing your research and found out about this way of life i did and i honestly at the time this was 2009 i didn't know there were a lot of other people doing it and granted the numbers were lower than but there were still plenty of people doing it um i just wasn't aware of them i thought i was unique you know and as it turns out not as unique as i thought well in in 2009 you were pretty unique yeah so and uh but yeah so i just kind of do did a little more research back then i didn't really have you know a lot of websites to choose from i came across yours and also the yahoo groups the band dwellers a lot of information was put forth on that you answered some of my questions uh you and another gentleman so it was very very helpful and it made the transition on the road much much easier and you also were in colorado and uh you were uh doing a lot of things out in nature you were doing a lot of backpacking things like that yeah a lot of car camping a lot of backpacking mountain biking so a lot of outdoor stuff and that's the other thing that pushed me into the vehicular nomadic lifestyle is that i love being outside i was in the city near downtown it was fine but i really had a desire to be out in nature more and more and more and so that made it very easy to make that transition because i was already into the outdoors and one of the things you're going to you will have seen already and you're going to see going forward is that brian will do a lot more adventure things so you know i'm not very all that adventurous i'm older it's just not as easy for me uh and so that's an element that i think has been missing from the channel that here's an opportunity to go out and do things and brian's going to be the doer of the deeds yeah i mean my job is to go out and have fun in nature this is a dream you know so yeah i'm looking very much forward to that now you're living you were have been living the dream now you're living the dreamers dream there we go so and recording it so yeah there'll be proof yeah and so you've been in the same exact rig this whole time i have and i've found over the years that that's kind of unusual a lot of people try their first rig then they'll go on to something else the 2.0 the 3.0 uh no i've been in the same thing for 12 years and uh i like it it it really works for me uh i started off without a tow behind car for the first six months and then getting a job up as a campground host with you i figured i needed a second car so i had a little white ford festiva uh you know and that worked great for six years or so but then i started feeling a little limited on where i could go because the car had low clearance the motorhome can't get as far deep into the woods as i wanted and so i traded the i gave the festiva away and then i got the little geo tracker and that has opened the doors a ton to all the places i can go now so that's been very very exciting for me i've had the geo now for five years almost five years uh but yeah the system works for me i don't know if i'll be in it forever but i love my home it's very comfortable for me i'm used to it i've built it out how i want it things i've changed i'm happy with and so the idea of going to something else and having to go through all those pains again a little daunting right i like keeping the home constant but the areas i go to changing tiny home enormous backyard there we go that's brilliant that changes all the time yeah uh every every 14 days you're ma or less often less and you've worked for the same company for the same same company as a campground host ever since then too yeah so i had 12 seasons with uh they were called california land management uh they just merged with another company now they're called vista recreation i believe but they are they were great i had an incredible time working for them as a campground host uh and with that money that i made during those summers i was able to not work most the winter and so it became a very sustainable lifestyle that i can make a little bit more than i spend each year and i can live pretty frugally in this and by doing that i don't have to worry about you know not making enough money so and i'll always have a roof over my head right that's what i love most about this life you'll never be homeless no absolutely and you can always find food but if you're never homeless then you're okay yeah to my mind that's exactly how i think yep i have shelter so i'm i'm good yeah folks we're going to do a tour here in right after this video uh but i wanted to talk a little bit about brian's rig and so you have a fairly old rv i do it's so it's a 1977 uh a class c motorhome and so when i first went looking for motorhomes or whatever at that point i wasn't really thinking about a van because there was going to be two of us uh that never actually came to fruition but again we were planning for that uh and so i was looking at class a's but they were huge i love the front window but it was just way too large but i was really wanting something from the 80s or 90s i didn't want anything in the 70s i thought that was too old but after test driving five or six different motorhomes this one was built the best it was cared for the best i didn't love that it was carbureted versus fuel injection but when i test drove it i was just amazed at how solid the vehicle was how well cared for uh and it had orange shag carpet and that was a little reminiscent of my childhood i have to say and that was kind of a selling point so it was uh just this orange ugly shag carpet but for some reason i loved it and that was something that i was drawn to and it served you really well it has your intuition was right it was and you know i i did have to do some repairs i've actually had to replace the engine uh and do some other kind of engine work on it but all together i'm still i paid 3 300 for it put on solar did some other things i've kept track of all my finances uh or my uh expenses over the years for the motorhome and i think i'm right around 11 or 12 000 total for the vehicle which would put it at less than a thousand dollars a year for me to have my vehicle that doesn't include gas but it includes all maintenance oil changes uh changes i've done to the interior things like that and the engine by putting a brand new engine in yeah yeah and that was expensive that was forty five hundred dollars so yeah so that's really phenomenal you really got a really wonderful rig there yeah i did and the person i bought it from he had actually bought something i think in the 80s or 90s and he was a little reticent about getting rid of this one because he said the newer ones were not built as well as the old one uh you know there are other features obviously with the newer rig but he was a little and maybe he just had nostalgia for the rig you know he he'd had it for you know 20 years or so but it was uh i just had a really good feeling from the owner they were extremely nice very forthcoming on everything he was a mechanic and it was just it felt very very good and what year is this in 1977 so it's a 77 which is you know very old yeah very old now yeah uh and you are while you're not really a mechanic uh you have maintained the outside the rig itself really carefully i have uh you know i'm not a mechanic but i've definitely learned to do a lot of mechanical things over the years by necessity the nice thing about having an older rig is that it is the engine is simpler to work on the systems in general are easier to work on they're not as complicated but you know then obviously you have the outside maintenance of the you know resealing the roof and things like that but again that's a small price to pay because you're gonna have to do that with any vehicle anytime you poke a hole in your roof you're going to have to do the sealant and things like that and i usually i know you're supposed to check it every year i usually do it every two or three years quite honestly but yeah i become intimately aware of the mechanics and the inner workings of my motorhome which is another nice thing about being in the same rig for 12 years is that i know everything there is to know about it whereas if you have a new system a new vehicle you have to relearn those things and there's just no question in my mind at all that a newer rv is not going to be the quality of yours it's not going to last 40 50 years no absolutely yeah because if this was now 45 years old and you know a lot of people i know they've had ones that were either brand new or within the last 10 years and they're kind of falling apart you know and so i don't know if the manufacturing of rvs is getting just uh if they need to like step it up a little bit i think i think that's the bottom line yeah so um and i think they've gotten that input and i think a lot of people are complaining and so they i think they are receiving that input hopefully they'll do something about that right yeah because uh oddly you know you might be better off with either a very old rig or one that you hope is a better quality yeah and you've got to understand with a very old rig you're going to put money into it although you have not had to that's just really amazing yeah again because the systems are more simplified you don't have as many crazy things going on i still have the original refrigerator in there but that's because it does run off of 120 if you're plugged into shore power but it doesn't run off at 12 volt uh you don't need any battery usage on it because there's no monitors things like that it's just a on pilot and it's always going you know and so there's very little technology in there there's no motherboard there's no circuitry anything like that very simple and that's what i if with the new fridges i think that's what's constantly going out on them is just a board and then you can't replace the port yeah for sure and so with with no absolutely no electronics there are not much to break exactly absolutely so and that that's definitely been a positive to having an older rig uh just less things that can go wrong right and at this point the things that have gone wrong i've replaced and it's not been a big deal so you know what i'd like to really hear from all of you what do you think of buying a 45 year old rv i mean we we know their advantages the simplicity the uh they're easier to fix you're still finding parts okay i am it's because it's a gmc it's very very common parts so that's been a blessing so uh what do you think buy new buy old by in between uh what is your thought i'd really love to hear it and what has been in your experience have you bought old and it was junk or have you bought new and it was junk what's been your experience with buying different age of of vans and rvs or whatever it is you that you're in now come right back uh right after you see this video we'll do the tour we'll go around look inside and see some of that orange shag carpet i'm looking forward to that and uh so if you got anything out of this video like us on youtube subscribe to the channel hit that thumbs up button and we'll talk to you later bye now so long if you are brand new to the road or would just like to see everything in one place bob is offering classes on skillshare and udemy.com it's a comprehensive nomad course that has five and a half hours of content spread out in 19 classes with everything you need for your life on the road to make it the best possible experience it can be bob covers all the details from solar and internet options to where to park and how to stay clean working on the road traveling on a budget and so much more so we hope you'll check it out the ultimate crash course to living on the road how you can afford a life of travel and adventure [Music] you

Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 80,641

Keywords: car, van, RV, Full-time, nomad, camper, camp, boondock, travel, caravan, tiny, house, RTR, Bob Wells, Nomadland, CheapRVLiving, Cheap RV Living, vanlife, van life, how to live in a van, van dwelling, van tour, van conversion, living in a van, camper van, van build, diy van build, sprinter van, van living, #vanlife, van dweller, campervan, vandwelling, diy camper van, RV Life, Living in an RV, Class B, Class C, Truck Living, Living in a car, boondocking, Living in a RV

Id: 8_9ojFgH-K4

Length: 14min 50sec (890 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 20 2022