The basic costs of getting a van and converting it can be thousands of dollars at the cheap end, not counting the van itself.
If you want to get a pre-made travel van with amenities like a toilet and lighting already installed it will set you back tens of thousands more than just getting an old beater and modifying it, and that counts on your ability and energy to actually engineer and build the stuff you will need.
So you need either a huge up-front investment, or you need to make monthly payments if you finance it, or you need an already stable lifestyle that lets you slowly collect and build the stuff you need over a long period of time.
I don’t know how you support a mobile lifestyle anyway unless you have a job you can do from the back of a van parked in a walmart parking lot, which is where you will spend most of your time as you will need daily life shit like toilet paper and a few meals a day. (Except you can’t park there overnight, you will need to park either in a campground or an RV park or some place for designated overnight parking, which usually comes with fees if they’re anywhere near a city. Long-term sites with utility hookups or bathrooms will need a monthly rental contract.)
I’m fully convinced, that at least in the US, every last “van life” influencer can only support the lifestyle by promoting it and riding on trust-funds when views run short. Homelessness isn’t that fun actually.
Edit: just to make it clear, my family lived in a van for a few years when I was little, and I respect people who have no choice and live out of their cars or vans, and yah you can do it for next to nothing if you have to, but it’s a hard life and and you still need money, which means some form of stability to interact with the world, a phone, a craft or job or something you can sell, expenses for a vehicle that’s going to run a lot. You’re going to interact with a lot of cops. And other types. Wouldn’t recommend it if you can help it. I am calling out specifically the influencers and the popularized “van lifestyle” that makes it look like a perpetual party on the beach.
I will never not read this as some kind of obscure, local nickname for something absurd and sexual/scatalogical. Like “Me and this chick did an Ohio Boondock in an Ace Hardware parking lot once, the manager called the cops so we had to get out of there, but man they must have been glad they rent carpet steamers, ah tell you what.”
The basic costs of getting a van and converting it can be thousands of dollars at the cheap end, not counting the van itself.
If you want to get a pre-made travel van with amenities like a toilet and lighting already installed it will set you back tens of thousands more than just getting an old beater and modifying it, and that counts on your ability and energy to actually engineer and build the stuff you will need.
So you need either a huge up-front investment, or you need to make monthly payments if you finance it, or you need an already stable lifestyle that lets you slowly collect and build the stuff you need over a long period of time.
I don’t know how you support a mobile lifestyle anyway unless you have a job you can do from the back of a van parked in a walmart parking lot, which is where you will spend most of your time as you will need daily life shit like toilet paper and a few meals a day. (Except you can’t park there overnight, you will need to park either in a campground or an RV park or some place for designated overnight parking, which usually comes with fees if they’re anywhere near a city. Long-term sites with utility hookups or bathrooms will need a monthly rental contract.)
I’m fully convinced, that at least in the US, every last “van life” influencer can only support the lifestyle by promoting it and riding on trust-funds when views run short. Homelessness isn’t that fun actually.
Edit: just to make it clear, my family lived in a van for a few years when I was little, and I respect people who have no choice and live out of their cars or vans, and yah you can do it for next to nothing if you have to, but it’s a hard life and and you still need money, which means some form of stability to interact with the world, a phone, a craft or job or something you can sell, expenses for a vehicle that’s going to run a lot. You’re going to interact with a lot of cops. And other types. Wouldn’t recommend it if you can help it. I am calling out specifically the influencers and the popularized “van lifestyle” that makes it look like a perpetual party on the beach.
Actually Walmart is one of the more popular boondocking locations.
I will never not read this as some kind of obscure, local nickname for something absurd and sexual/scatalogical. Like “Me and this chick did an Ohio Boondock in an Ace Hardware parking lot once, the manager called the cops so we had to get out of there, but man they must have been glad they rent carpet steamers, ah tell you what.”