Van Life Wisdom: Why I Live in a Van

uh this is gonna be a series i think called uh van dwelling philosophy what kind of the ideas behind what i do and how i do it um it's also part of a v-log of my build on the new van i just bought so that's really how you're going to be thinking of it right now uh the big thing being that why did i buy a van instead of an rd rv as you may know i just bought this van and this van was nineteen thousand dollars because it was a 2015 uh i'm buying it i bought it in february of 2017 so it's only a year and a half old and it's only got 12 000 miles so it's very new it's almost practically brand new and so uh i spent a lot of money for it but it's gonna last me a very very long time it's still under full factory warranty bumper to bumper and body train and drivetrain so it's gonna last me a very long time and i'm really delighted with it uh with the van so far and i'm going to continue the build and that's mostly what you're going to want to watch i'm sure is the build so uh but today i want to talk to you about why i bought a van instead of an rv for 19 000 i could have bought a pretty darn nice rv uh and so you're probably thinking come on bob you want to live in a van that's just silly why would you choose to live in a van when you could be living in a nice rv so i want to tell you why and that's the point here is why i chose to live in a van and have for a long time now for 15 years i've been living in a vehicle i've never owned an rv i have a website called cheap rv living and i've never owned an rv and so a lot of you will write in and ask me questions about living in rv and i just have to say i don't know because i've never lived in an rv uh i don't want to live in an rv and i know that's really hard for some of you to understand and the point today is to try and trying to get this thing just right to explain to you why i choose not to live in an rv now i don't take this as a criticism if you want to live in an rv then that's great i'm not in any way criticizing you that's not my intent a lot of people just simply can't live in a van although i think you probably could if you tried but i just want you to understand my thinking and so again not a criticism of you or your friends or your choices it's my choice and what the choice i've made for myself to me it always comes down to this simple equation comfort which is what you get with an rv you get a lot of comfort right is exactly the opposite of freedom you get a lot of comfort you get very little freedom you get very little comfort you get a huge amount of freedom so it's always this balancing act will i have more freedom or will i have more comfort let's look at an extreme example you live in a house but most of you probably live in houses now who are watching this on youtube and so you get a lot of comfort don't you you get you get in on on demand heat and hot water and and cooling and ac and you got a lot of comfort you got a lot of space depends on your situation but most of you are very comfortable in your homes your apartments and so you get this comfort but you got no mobility you got a job to pay for it your boss tells you where you can go when you can go he'll let you have your whole weekend and your whole evenings off but during the day monday through friday or whatever your schedule is you're there he said he writes a schedule and you are there you have no freedom do you you he determines where you go and when you go there you don't that's not your decision next friday i'm gonna go there well i'll go in and ask my boss next friday can i take a three-day weekend and go here well maybe he will maybe he won't and most likely he won't let you do it so you don't have much freedom you've got all this comfort but you got very little freedom and you're going to be doing this all this comfort with very little freedom for the next 10 20 30 40 years of your life that's not what i wanted that's not my choice i want freedom i give up the comfort to give the freedom well that's an extreme example of living in an apartment so but what about if you decide to become a nomad well just automatically you gain a lot more freedom by being a nomad you can come you can go you go and live where you want you don't like where you are you turn the key you drive away that's freedom but you're still limited by the choice you make of a vehicle so let's say you choose a diesel pusher now the sun's come out so let me push this down maybe i'll get a little more uh shade on me yeah that i think that helped so let's decide you you decide you need all the maximum comfort you can get you're going to live in a 40-foot diesel pusher well you get a lot of comfort and i've been in some magnificent diesel pushers well they're going to cost you a huge amount of money what's it going to cost so the first thing that uh comfort costs you is money and money makes you a slave you are a slave to the marketplace to the dollar bill because it makes you a slave to a job and a job makes you a slave to a boss he decides who you are where you go and what you do uh you don't can't go when you want because he it's his decision you're on his schedule he writes your schedule and even if you have a lot of flexibility in your schedules and every so often people do you still are a slave to his schedule so uh the first way that you lose comfort you lose freedom by getting comfort is money you need money and so you lose a lot of freedom so you buy it you decide you're going to become a nomad and get a lot more of your freedom back well you saw you buy a great big diesel class a well you paid a huge amount of money for it did you right up front you had to work longer and harder and save more to buy it then it costs a huge amount of money to maintain it to drive it and so money is just pouring out of you to own the most maximum amount of comfort on wheels a 40-foot diesel pusher or or a 40-foot fifth wheel they're both very very expensive to own and to operate but let's say the exact opposite you say i want maximum amount of freedom and minimum amount of comfort you move into a prius 50 miles to the gallon you can buy a really good used one for ten thousand dollars you can just jump in it you cost they are the most one of the most reliable vehicles ever made you look at any top ten most reliable vehicles there will be a prius on that list they are incredibly reliable again after 200 000 you may or may not have to replace the battery pack but that doesn't change the fact in the meantime it was extraordinarily reliable you put almost no money into this thing and so uh and it costs nothing to operate at 50 miles to the gallon do regular oil changes and there's this tiny little engine that doesn't even cost much so it costs almost nothing to live in a prius but it costs a huge amount to live in a diesel pusher or a big fifth wheel so you have this balance you get all this comfort and very little freedom or you get a lot of freedom and very little comfort so it's just a matter of choice that everyone makes and my choice is freedom i choose this life to be free and if it means giving out the comfort i'm going to gladly do that it's not what i want i don't care about the comfort i want freedom and all the costs okay so how do you give up how do you have to give up well the big one is money money living comfort costs money a lot of it whether it's in a home or in a fifth wheel or in an rv versus living in a van or a minivan or a toyota civic honda civic or toyota corolla or a toilet prius there's this money always is a lot more how does it cost you more to live in more comfort uh for the same money that uh for the amount of money that i spent to buy this almost new van i mean almost new van i would have gotten multiple year old with more miles a lot more problem on any rv even a class c let's say one class c is one of the cheaps or or a uh let's say i had bought a travel trailer i could have bought a brand new travel trailer for nineteen thousand dollars and i'd have gotten a bathroom and tanks and a fridge but so i still could have bought a brand new one but i'd still had an old tow vehicle and the tow vehicle was going to cost me a lot of money to keep that thing maintained so uh or if i bought a new tow vehicle it would have been a much older vehicle than this 2015 van so the money is much much more up front to make the purchase then once you've made the purchase you're going to get half the miles per gallon on towing any vehicle i mean if you're towing a small very small let's say you're throwing a casita or a scamp you're still at best going to get eight ten twelve miles to the gallon out of a out of a really efficient tow vehicle say you buy a diesel well that's great diesels get really good gas mileage towing light weights like that but they cost so much to repair i mean the it's a couple hundred two hundred dollars to do an oil change in the diesel you do them more often they have gallons of water a few of oil not quartz uh and so and then every repair is going to be 10 times more any repair you do instead of hundreds will be maybe thousands so no operating and maintaining a diesel is not less in the long run it's we want to think it is but it is not it's much more expensive so no matter what you're driving if it's in an rv it's going to be much more miles per gallon so this van i believe will get 18 1920 easily on a road trip whereas no rv is going to get much better than 10 11 12. that would be very exceptional to get 12 miles per gallon out of any rv so this is going to so i hear there's going to be a super bloom in death valley and i want to run up there to it or there's a great concert whatever my interests are i want to go to see the new the eclipse that's coming up uh in august so i want to run up to north carolina where i get the best view so i got a 2 000 mile road trip well a 2 000 mile road trip at uh eight miles a gallon in a class c six seven eight miles to gallon or eighteen nineteen twenty in a van well that's an easy choice giving up that comfort of the class c gives me so much more mobility because i can afford to drive the crazy thing i can afford it i don't have to go get a job to pay for the gas to drive from here to north carolina or to florida to see my mom or to maine to see the uh to see the uh fall colors i love the fall colors of me or go to alaska 9000 mile trip back and forth to alaska i can afford that at 20 miles a gallon but let's say i get a minivan i'm getting 28 or 29 or a transit connect i'm getting 30 miles to the gallon well i can go so much further on 30 miles to the gallon then i can seven or eight so that's freedom i'm free from the ownership of the dollar bill and a job who writes my schedule and tells me and a boss who writes my schedule and tells me when i can go that's freedom if you live in something uh mobile and cheap to operate that's why i chose a van it's so much cheaper to operate and i become free of a job and the addiction to money and need having to absolutely have to have more money to operate my expensive rv because it i need all that comfort i give up comfort i get freedom period it's just that simple with a with a van another way that an rv will cost you a lot more a lot more money is repairs you buy an rv you better start saving for the new roof because it's going to need one you better start saving for a new fridge because it's going to need one and that fridge is going to be 1600 bucks you're going to need repairs everywhere all over that rv and you better start saving your emergency fund needs to be double or triple in an rv because it's they're poorly made and they fall apart so you're going to need a lot of money and and an emergency fund to operate an rv not only that but it costs a lot more just to run the thing uh you got that great fridge you love the comfort of a fridge freezer and you open the door it's big you just put things away that's a lot of comfort i use a 12-volt compressor fridge it's small it's small i have to open the lid i have to dig everything out to get to the bottom it i lose a lot of comfort period but it's 500 and i can run it off solar you're going to be paying for propane every day for the rest your life to run that fridge you're gonna have to be careful where you park because if it's off level if it's off level your fridge breaks and you're paying sixteen hundred dollars for a new fridge i can park any way i want anywhere i want my fridge doesn't care uh the compressor fridges just don't care how far off level it's so extreme that it's it could damage it but i couldn't sleep so why am i going to do that i don't care about level i don't care about a bumpy road you better care about a bumpy road with your rv uh fridge because it'll break on a bumpy enough road over enough time so you got to really think about all these things about how much it's going to cost you to get all that comfort of that fridge you got to think about uh you ac you say you gotta have ac in an rv furnace okay well that rv first gonna eat your battery you're gonna have to buy more solar or you have to run your generator you wanna run an ac you're gonna run a generator generators aren't free they cost a lot to buy and install they cost a lot to run the fuel for them so you get a small one now i could do that in my van i could buy a honda 2000 and run a portable or a window ic but i'm still losing freedom i lose the space then i'm tied to the gas station i got to get gas for that thing i'm tied to oil changes i'm tied to repairs i'm tied the more comfort i get the more freedom i lose it's just an automatic yet you cannot there's no magic formula there's only a magic center balance point where you get the most you want for the law the least loss of the other that's what you're trying to do this balance of the two for me it's a van a van gives me enough comfort enough freedom that i'm very happy with that balance what your balance will be is something only you can decide of comfort versus freedom uh another way so that's money money caught you the more comfort costs money because you're gonna have to buy the bigger rig and all the features of it comfort costs money money costs freedom the formula is just that simple i'm going to put up on uh somewhere along the line probably before now i'll have put up a a page a graphic that i think really displays the balance so i hope you'll hope you enjoyed that uh next let's talk about mobility the more comfort you have the less mobility you have so i want to be able to go in the back country i drive down a dirt road i want to be able to drive down a dirt road not have to worry about rattling everything in my rv to pieces and some of you are i don't want to be tied to an rv park some of you don't want to be tied to an rv park or a campground i do not i do not want to be tied to the crowd i want to be past the crowd that's my one of my primary goals in life is to get past the crowds and be in solitude in nature that's what i call a good life that's what i call freedom how free are you if you can't get off road if you can't go back to a pretty late and go fishing or if you can't go back to your favorite place and just sit there without rvs all around you how free are you if you can't do that well i'm not free and i'm not going to live that way so that's why i choose mobility mobility over comfort i want the mobility i want to go down a narrow road a narrow forest road forest roads grow in that's what happens with forest roads they're not maintained so they'll grow in the limbs will grow over the top the limbs will reach down and rip the roof right off of your rv they can't rip the roof off of this van because there's nothing on this van to rip off other than the solar panels and they're hard very solar panels are much harder than you think they're i've never had a problem with solar panels being ripped up by uh branches but i'm so low i can go under those branches and if you're in a 10 12 9 10 12 foot rv they're going to rip their solar panels off there so i go under them you have to plow through them same with width the width grows in on branches and i can go down a narrow road that you can't even possibly begin to take an rv on routinely that has happened to me i can go places in a van you can't even dream about going in any rv uh it's just that simple and so you are losing freedom to get that comfort and i'm not prepared that's a sacrifice comfort versus freedom you make those sacrifices and i won't it's just a choice but it's a choice that i made because i don't care about all that comfort i don't care about a toilet in a shower those things not only that but those create problems for you you lose the freedom to be out for two weeks or more because you got to go dump your tanks those hoses hanging down uh will get ripped off you go through a desert wash desert washes are like this you go with the bottom and at the right here your hoses your tanks and your uh valves are all going to get ripped off through a desert wash you can't drive through desert watches like i can you'll rip off your tank valves so but i don't have any valves i've got a very short van a regular it's a regular length van uh i don't have valves hanging down there i can go through this wash and go into the desert where your rv can't go and that's what i want i want mobility when it's comfort versus mobility i choose mobility and and if you choose comfort you're gonna lose that mobility you just it's a trade-off you have to be ready to make so uh in many ways driving around the city there's something you want to go see in the city and you got a 40-foot diesel pusher your first thought has to be where am i going to park this these 40-foot diesel pusher or how am i going to carry a tow a toad you have to kill have a toad because your car your van your rv burns so much gas you can't afford to drive it around so you have to pull a towed well the toad really limits her restricts you you pull a casita that really restricts you uh at least with a casita or a scamp most trout any travel trailer you can back it up you can't even back up a toad you've got to just simply unhook it and drive it away so you're driving through the city where can you park where can you go you're much more limited by that in a city than i am in a van a van drives around in any city parks in any parking place goes through most uh parking structures uh then even with solar panels we'll go through the average uh parking structure so you you give up more more freedom uh freedom versus comfort is always the issue with mobility and i want most mobility and minimum comfort and that's what i get finally uh let's look at one more thing uh let's look at minimalism and your impact on the earth and your impact on your soul of this need to have more stuff for more comfort it's addicting getting more and better is an addicting way to live it so you have comfort versus freedom in minimalism by wanting more always more and better and more luxury items you lose you gain comfort now those all that stuff you're buying more and better gives you much more comfort life is much better the more money you spend on it but you give up your freedom because now you have all this stuff that you're addicted to you're addicted to a fridge you can't live without a fridge and freezer you're addicted to a furnace you can't live without a furnace you're addicted to a flush toilet addicted to a flushed toilet you can't poop in a bucket or dig a cat hole because you're addicted to a flushed toilet so and those things all have a negative negative impact on this planet and a negative impact on your soul i i just believe that with the depth of my being that being addicted to more and better luxury is terribly harmful for us as individual human beings and obviously to the planet you can't dig up all these resources and turn them into these stuff and then throw all that stuff in the trash and not have that impact the planet i mean that just defies common sense no one with a brain can think that that we live these lives a luxury and it can't be negative for the planet it is and it's doing us harm and it's certainly going to warm the planet and in a hundred years our art the next generation of 100 years from now will be cursing us as the most selfish people that ever lived and they'll be right we will be we will have destroyed their homes and their environment just for our own luxuries and for our own selfishness it's horrible so being a slave to stuff limits your freedom you're a slave whether you're a slave to money in a job or you're a slave to that you can't drive in the back country or go anywhere you want or whether you're a slave to stuff you always have comfort versus freedom and and one gives you the more less of the other the comfort and the luxury items that you crave and you're addicted to limit your freedom and and steal it away from you you don't have that freedom anymore so it's just a matter of you finding your balance if you're willing to work at a job longer and need more money and have to save more money then give up and keep your comforts then you're never going to be free and i'm sorry or you may never be free a lot of you are working one more year five more years 10 more years to have all the money to get all the comforts you need and then i'm going to be i'm concerned then that you'll get you'll wait have worked all that extra time then you'll die young and that happens much too often or you'll health will fade you won't be able to enjoy it that's what i was worried about for myself and i went at 52 i took way early retirement at 52 lost a lot of pension and just went because i'm not gonna i want freedom i want to be free and the only way to get that is just to get up and go and to live without comfort so if you can if you can just work on this balance of comfort versus freedom and if you can just start to try to do without some of the comforts you think you can't live without and you'll get more freedom and the freedom is addicting freedom is addicting the ability to come and go and do as you please when you please is oh man it's wonderful beyond words and i think you'll find that if you'll try it just try it just take a trip camping trip in your car whatever car you have now take a camping trip in it i think you'll find that that freedom will will offset the loss of comfort and and and you'll you'll love the freedom so much that you won't mind the loss of some of these comforts and and less comfort and more freedom and less comfort and more freedom and finally you can be free you can live a free life that you choose to live that's an option for you but you got to make some sacrifices and all the comforts that you are addicted to now are the sacrifices and maybe you don't maybe you're just willing to keep working and spend more for an rv and and give up the freedom to travel and and mobility and minimalism maybe you're willing to just damage the planet all you want because you want more comfort if you hurt future generations because your comfort is all important if that's a choice you're making then that's your choice and i'm certainly not going to condemn you for it i think it's a mistake but it's your choice it's your life you live it the way you choose so there you have it uh my a long and uh in-depth thoughts on van dwelling philosophy why i choose to live in a van because i choose freedom over comfort and if that's of interest to you then my whole channel and my website cheaprvliving.com is dedicated to the purpose of telling you how you can gain freedom and still keep the maximum amount of comfort i think i keep a lot of comfort i'm entirely satisfied with the comfort i get out of living in a van and i hope you can find that balance for yourself even if it's an older it's it's a nice middle-aged van and uh casita an older casita rollers camp there's a good balance of comfort maybe that'll work perfectly for you or uh a camper on the pickup you own now maybe that's the comfort that balance of comfort and freedom will be a camper or uh or or a small older rv that's a very good balance you can go a lot of places in a small 10 15 foot uh travel trailer that like a casita or uh or a camp you can go a lot of places you get an awful lot of comfort and an awful lot of freedom that's a good balance maybe that's the perfect balance for you um get an older one that cost two three thousand dollars you've got a good reliable truck well that's really good balance uh if you can't do a van then that's another really good option you should you should at least be open to it uh or a class b an older class b it's going to be a little more money but man there's a class b that's a camper van like a road track or a pleasure way uh that they have taken and converted to um to a full rv and you get a lot of comfort and a lot of freedom they go a lot of places they operate they aren't terribly expensive to operate so that's also a very good balance there's a balance that will work for you in the nomad life it doesn't have to be extreme like a prius or a car or a minivan i think a minivan is one of the very best balances you can possibly get you might get 24 25 28 miles to the gallon plenty quite a bit of room quite a bit of mobility not as good as a van but good uh and so maybe a minivan is is your balance of comfort versus freedom always it's just this balance you're working on of these things and you can find a balance that will work for you that will be within your budget i believe that okay so there you go just some different ideas for you to ponder and kick around i i hope you got something out of them uh in the meantime i hope you'll like us on youtube subscribe to our channel tell all your friends there are choices in life that you may not be familiar with you have options of what you can do and i hope you will do some of those so we'll talk to you later

Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 306,776

Keywords: live, living, car, van, RV, Fill-time, nomad, gypsy, camper, camp, boondock, travel, why, vandwelling, full-time, comfort, balance, freedom, philosophy

Id: i-_Bw83SvYI

Length: 27min 6sec (1626 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 12 2017