How Van Life Could be Your Ticket to Financial Freedom
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Imagine saving and investing 70% or more of your income every month. Imagine total monthly expenses under $500 person, yet living in complete abundance and freedom to travel to the most beautiful places in the country.
Imagine the cumulative impact on your financial health if you had even just one year without a rent or mortgage payment. How could that be possible?
My husband and I have lived this reality for the past 3 years; debt-free, rent-free, and building a robust path toward early retirement. Yes, we are millennials without any children, but we know people from all walks of life (even those with kids!) who do this as well. This has always been our dream, so we were willing to do whatever it took to make it happen.
“If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.” -Jim Rohn
If it’s not for you, no worries, go check out another article! And no, we aren’t trust fund kids, nor broke hobo tramps (haha, well at least not any more…)
There’s Lots of Ways to “Van Life”
I never thought about van life as a ticket to anything more than being a broke traveling hippie. In fact, that was initially my goal.
I dropped out of college at 17 to get in a 1974 baby blue Dodge van with shag carpet, leather ceiling, and 5 or 10 rowdy hitchhiking traveler punks. None of us had ever heard of “van life” or “bus life”, though we certainly glorified the older hippies who had rainbow-painted school buses and more than 1 square foot of space per person.
Didn’t matter though. We rambled back and forth around the country many times over with nothing more than the boots on our feet and packs on our back.
That van broke down and our group happened upon another junkyard van, and then another, hitchhiking or hopping trains in between. Believe me, we had the time of our lives. And we were incomprehensibly dirty and broke. It was humbling and exhilarating and…
