We Sold Everything To Live In Our Van
Our First Month Living In The Van
Well today is the day. We closed on the condo on May 31st and are now full time Van Lifers!! You are probably reading this a few days later but today was a big day. Logan and I have been planning and working towards this since 2020. For some time I was starting to feel like it wasn’t going to happen. We had actually set a date to have everything sold and be in the van for 2023 but… that just didn’t happen. Life happened and before we knew it 2023 had come and gone. Now that we have sold the condo and are living in the van.
It has been 4 days now since moving into the van and it has been a daily challenge for figuring everything out. First let’s start with it HOT!! We are still in Florida in peek summer because Logan is still working full time and we are currently parked out front of our grandmothers yard. At night time we have found it to be comfortable with our max-air fan and two rechargeable fans and we even got a little portable AC unit. Well you just put ice cubes in the water container in the bottom and as it melts the fan blows out the cold air. It actually works well so far. Lets just cross our fingers its going to make a difference in mid august. Another thing we have been doing at night is taking a shower. When we don’t turn on the water heater it water is just cold enough to be refreshing and cool our body temperature down for the night. For now that has been our routine for getting ready for bed.
A few days before closing on the condo I organized everything that was going to fit in the van to a tee. Finding little places to put things but also make it convenient for the things we use on a daily basis. The last thing you want to do is unpack things to get to other things. And this brings me to today. It’s June 5th and you probably guessed it… I had to organize the van again. Now this was removing my paints that I have in storage containers. I actually eliminated one of them so that was great. I used to have all the paints under the sink and it did work for that short time but as we have been doing the daily things I found it hard to get to the cleaning supplies that’s also under the sink. Like I said before on trying to eliminate the amount of times we move things in and out of cabinets and drawers.
Let’s Talk about our bathroom! We get a lot of the same questions. How do you shower and go to the bathroom? All really good questions if you're not familiar with the lifestyle. When Logan and I was planing out the build we knew we definitely wanted a shower in the van and a toilet. Now that the van is finished we just put a shower curtain for the shower entry and quickly realized that wasn’t going to work. Because the shower is not a normal size like in a house every time we turn around to rinse off sometimes the curtain moves and some water goes out. It’s more annoying than anything but we knew we had to spend the few hundred dollars and get a shower door. So we bought it last night and for the toilet situation well… lets just say we are on our 2nd option and the one we have is not going to work either so after a few nights of doing all kinds of research we decided on a fry flush toilet and are praying this will be the last toilet we buy because this one is $1000. Yikes!!! But with that being said we went ahead and got the dry flush toilet and it’s so legit. It is heavier than I thought but that’s okay. The best part is there is no smell at all. Logan even went to the bathroom and the toilet is left out in the van
It’s now been a full week since moving into the van and today has been the first day that I haven't reorganized the van. I think we are getting somewhere guys. lol. The other day when I had some cereal my milk wasn’t as cold as I like so I moved it from the door of the fridge to lay down on the top shelf. Today the milk was a lot cooler so the things we need to keep the coldest will have to go on the top shelf of the fridge. The fridge we do have is great and it works fine but it’s not as big as the ones in your home of course so learning on where to put things to keep them the most fresh is importing.
If you have made it this far that’s great and we are almost at the end of the first month of living in the van. Some things have changed already. The past few days we have been sleeping in our grandmothers old room because we are helping take care of her while she is on hospice. Not only is she letting us park in her driveway but we have been helping her at night. In some way I feel like we are still part time in the van just because we still have access to the comforts of a house. So with that being said it’s almost July and I have no idea how long we will be parked outside of her house. Logan and I haven't really set a date to leave grandmothers and on to the next driveway. So we may be here another month or three, we just don’t know.
Action Plan
Paying Off The Van - We still have a couple thousand left on the van and definitely don’t want to leave for our travels with a large van payment. Our van payment is $700 a month so to not have that while traveling is going to be less of a headache. While we are traveling we want to limit out monthly bills outtakes as much as we can. Now that it has been some time since writing this I’ve come back in to add some things because we have paid off the van. So we are off to a great start.
Replenish The Funds - With paying off the van it will be a big chunk of money and we want to leave with the maximum amount of money as we can.
Logan Wants To Hit His 20 Year Mark - Logan has worked for Coca-Cola for 19 years as of now and he really wants to hit his 20th year. For a 37 year old and hitting his 20 yr mark at the same job is impressive. As much as I want to hit the road traveling right now I respect what’s important to Logan. Also for the next year we will be in our local area still working all of those paychecks will just keep building up.
Setting A Date To Hit The Road- I know this is going to sound obvious but setting a date to leave has been a long decision. Our original plan was to leave at the end of 2023 but things happened that was out of our control and it got delayed. Now that the condo is sold and the very little things we have that’s not in the van is either at in-laws or a tiny storage unit so this means we can set a date to leave. After a long talk we have decided to leave after Logans 20 year mark and after the next summer rush with Logans work so this means September 2025.
Why Did We Sell Everything But Not Leave Yet? - This is a question we get and it’s very relevant. Our thought process was once the van is all built out we can just move in to the van and save up money until Logan hits his 20 year mark. There was no point in keeping the condo and paying a mortgage and a $450 a month HOA fee and a $700 van payment. All we needed was one of them to live in so we picked the van because it was finished and we had everything we needed. It didn’t make sense to have two very big monthly bills when we could eliminate the most expensive one. So instead of paying mortgage, HOA, van payment and all the other monthly bills we decided it would be so much better to pocket all that money in savings instead. The best things to do if your trying to start traveling and wanting to save for it is cut your bills as much as you can and save everything.
Hitting $100,000 - Our goal is to hit $100,000 before we travel full time. The more we have as cousin money the more comfortable we can live. We are going to set a goal budget of $2,000 a month of travel expenses while we are on the road. This will include things like van insurance , gas, food, cell phone bill, health care and fun things to do and see. Now yes you’re probably thinking how can you know what your bills while traveling will be before you even do it? Good question. After years of research and talking with countless other van lifers we have an estimate of what it will be. Now yes some of it may vary and some months we may spend more than 2 grand and some may only spend a couple hundred depending where we are. Also for the most part we already know some of our fixed bills that won’t change whether we are traveling or stationary like our cell phone bill. That’s $185 a month for 2 iPhones unlimited everything. Also our van insurance is $70 a month and that will still be the same. With things like that that will not change we can get a gage of a budget while traveling. Now food and gas will be our biggest expenses but the good thing is we can stock up on food and water for 2 weeks and go find a place in the mountains or desert and stay there. We will definitely find ways to cut on how much money we spend when we can.