When we started telling people that we made the decision to leave our jobs to start van life, we knew there would be a difference between the responses we see online versus the ones we’ll hear in person. We’ve gotten a lot of shock, both good and bad, but what’s surprised us the most has been how often our real life friends and family sincerely express how much they want to do this exact thing one day.
So many people have dreamed about van life—and yet I don’t know anyone who has actually tried it.
And to be honest, that was us, only a few short months ago.
Since our announcement, lots of people have asked eager questions about logistics. How will you make money? How did you find the company to convert it? Where are you going to go? We can’t answer all of them, because honestly we don’t know.
Even though we’re fully committed, don’t mistake that for meaning we have everything together.
That’s what most people don’t fully understand—you’re never fully ready for this kind of change.
A lot like when we had our son—if we’d waited until we were entirely ready, we likely never would have had kids. We’d been married several years by that point, we owned a (super cheap) house and we’re working on (undesirable) careers. We had enough of our lives in order not to completely drown.
And yet, we were not intending to have kids for another few years (a target that kept moving back and back, if we’re honest).
We didn’t know how to be parents. We certainly weren’t in the best financial situationto be parents. But when the test came back positive, we didn’t have a choice but to figure it out. Between family help, a lot of research on the fly and some good old-fashioned winging it, we made it work.
Not everyone waits until they must figure it out, but whether through fate or by choice, at some point we all go through a change that requires us to venture into the unknown. No amount of research and planning can prepare you for everything. So, a leap is a must.
And this is certainly a leap.
Like many others, over the last few years, we’ve watched vlog after vlog of travel goers, hitting the open road in search of something to fulfill their craving for advanture. We have that very same craving.
We kept saying “one day.” When we’re more ready for it. When we’ve got more in savings. When our son is grown.
One option we talked about was to hit the road once our son graduated high school. I mean, how could we make it work with a kid? We just couldn’t. So, in a decade, we would do it! We would be empty nesters, packing everything we own into a van to travel the country. This sounded like a great plan, something fun and exciting to look forward to.
But that’s a long time from now and you never know what will happen between then and now.
One day, we were talking about the things we wanted and needed in life. We were having this discussion because we were feeling a bit lost about where we were headed, and what we wanted out of life.
We were in a position where we felt like we needed a change. Something new. We looked at new houses, both in our area and in other states (we’ve also been talking about moving to Florida for years). We looked deeply at finances and even though we’ve been pretty financially comfortable for a few years, upgrading our house would end up putting a lot of stress on us. Stacey would have to work more, when what she really wants is to focus on her business. I would have to really dig into work, when what I really want is to spend more time with my family.
We thought long and hard about what our next step would be.
At one point in the conversation, Stacey just spit it out, as if she couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“Let’s just do it”…
“Do what?” I replied.
“Vanlife! Let’s just do it!”
And honestly—that’s all there was to it.
We didn’t suddenly get our lives in order. We didn’t get forced out of our house. We wanted an adventure, a big one. So we just… decided to make it work.
Of course, that sounds so much easier said than done, but in reality, commitment is the only thing holding us back.
At this moment, we made the decision to move forward with vanlife because we ultimately decided that this was where we wanted our life to go. We removed the phrases “maybe if” “but what about…” from our vocabulary, and words like “can’t” from our minds, then we replaced them with "we’ll just figure it out”.
There were so many questions and lots of stress looming over us since we made this new decision with absolutely no clue on how to make it a reality. But bigger than the stress was excitement.
No one said this would be easy. In fact, we knew the challenges that would present themselves would be hard. But that won’t stop us.
So, once we’d made our mind up, we had some major things to figure out before we could start telling people.
We determined our three most important questions:
1) How do we get the van?
2) How do we make it a tiny home?
3) How do we make some kind of money?
The rest we will figure out along the way, but answer these three questions and I know the rest will be easier.
Interesting thing about these three questions is that they kind of need to be answered simultaneously. We can’t really find a van until we figure out our income and expenses to see what we can afford. Income is pretty tricky, since both of our primary sources of pay comes from a typical job that won’t work on the road. But we also don’t know what the expenses will be without looking into every van option, every conversion company as well as all the RV dealerships, so we have as much information as possible.
So we decided to look into finances first. How far can we reasonably cut our expenses? How can we make enough money to make this work?
Essentially, how do we live without our jobs in a brick and mortar business? We know that the cost of living on the road can vary greatly, but our intention is to live a simple life, bringing our expenses way down. Less eating out, less frivolous spending, and more intentional purchases.
With that in mind, we knew we didn’t necessarily need a high paying remote job — and to be honest, we don’t want to be working all the time. Would we even be able to fully enjoy the experience if we’re working constantly?
The job could wait, so first, we looked at all of our current finances and what we could part with to make getting the van a reality.
One thing we had working in our favor was a couple low value rental properties, which we shared with my dad. We’d been talking about moving on from those for a while (it was work we didn’t have the passion for any more). We reached out to a friend of ours, who is an investor, and made a deal to sell.
We’ve had these houses for over 10 years, so there was some built-in equity. Once we sold, we made a profit of a little over $25k between the two. That, along with our savings, and a few other cost saving moves over the next 6 months (cancel all 401k contributions and several subscriptions, eat ramen noodle and PB&J sammies, etc.) this gave us a pretty big starting point to get the van!
In theory, we could have gotten a finished product for around the price we had in cash now, but it would require some serious sacrifices—some that weren’t negotiable, like a van designed with a safe seat for a child.
We have a few things that really helped us financially — and some things that held us back. We’d likely already be on the road if we didn’t have a son. There are some really great pre-built van outs there that would work easily for a couple. But a family? That’s harder.
If we were more patient, we also could have done the build ourselves and saved a lot of money. But again, in part because we have a child with us, it was important to make sure it was done RIGHT. We could take the risk of running electrical and propane in a vehicle ourselves if it were just us. But with our son, the project was a bit riskier than we felt comfortable with.
So instead, we used the savings cushion we had built and splurged a bit, by hiring a company to do the build for us — with all the bells and whistles (like a shower, heat and air conditioning that will be run via solar panels).
At the end of the day, with all the decisions we made, the investments and savings covered our conversion but not the van it’s built on.
So, our next issue was how do we get the van, our soon-to-be home?
Knowing we would need to have a monthly payment for the van meant the job was a bit more important. Can we reasonably commit to bringing in a few thousands dollars per month to cover gas, food, insurance AND a van payment?
Fortunately, we do have something working in our favor right off the bat: Stacey is an author, and a rather successful one at that.
It isn’t her main source of income—yet—but she does have some money coming in every month. It’s not enough for us to rely on consistently, but it’s a sizeable chunk of what we’ll need and gives us a great cushion to begin.
We WILL need more, but after a bit of research, we found some options picking up freelance work, depending on where we are. This is one part we are planning to wing. We know we can find ways to bring in cash when needed. With Stacey’s income, it makes the fact that we don’t know how much money we’ll be making a little less scary. But again, we really don’t know what it will look like.
We have to take a pretty big guess when it comes to what I might scrape up, but either way, this is, and probably always will be, a work in progress and we have decided to be okay with that.
So, we did some research and decided what kind of van we wanted. We took a few calculations and determined a rough amount we can commit to a van payment.
We decided we wanted a Ram ProMaster as the base for our new tiny home, but the next step in our process really shows how you have no choice but to figure it out as you go.
Buying a van was a lot more complicated than we expected.
Let’s be honest with ourselves, anytime you buy a new vehicle, there are mixed emotions of “this is the one” and “we must buy before it sells” along with “I want a good deal” and so on.
The challenge I didn’t expect was that apparently Ram ProMasters are considered “commercial vehicles” and no one will give you a typical vehicle loan on a commercial vehicle.
Even if you intend to turn it into an RV, it isn’t one yet so you can’t get an RV or a vehicle loan. You need a business to get that loan. News to us, haha!
After jumping through a lot of hoops, we were eventually able to purchase the van on a very expensive, high-interest-rate personal loan. Hopefully, this won’t be long because we expect to get the title converted to a motorhome and get it refinanced as an RV once the renovation is complete.
Stacey did a lot of research and found the right company to build it out. Elevation Road.
They are out of Cincinnati, Ohio, which made it a reasonable drive from Cleveland! I reached out to Steven, the owner, to inquire about the process and after my first conversation with him I knew this was the right decision. It took several weeks, but through a bunch of conversations we nailed down the layout.
So, here we are. Van secured, conversion to tiny-home on wheels is in the process and our income strategy is lightly settled. Three important questions answered. Kind of. It will be a 2-3 month wait until our van is converted, but outside of that waiting period, we are ready to do this thing.
This is by far the most spontaneous thing we have ever done.
We are really just winging it… After going through these last few months, the decision to no longer settle for what was easy and step into the unknown, we believe it will be worth it. Being able to make this leap isn’t exclusive to us. We truly believe that if we found a way to do it, more people can. Vanlife is more attainable than you think. We chose a relatively expensive route, and there are significantly cheaper options out there. You just have to be willing to commit to change and say “I’ll figure it out”.
Obviously, thinking about something and doing it are two very different things, but once you’ve mentally committed to making it work—you ultimately will.
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