Quote:
Originally Posted by DTEJD1997
Hey all:
I don't think this question & idea has been brought up about Rice before?
Has he considered trading his car in and getting a mini-van or camper or vehicle that he could very easily, very comfortably live out of for a day or two?
There is a whole genre of video makers on the YouTube who engage in "van life" that live out of vans & travel around. Some of the vans are borderline luxurious (obviously they cost a lot more).
So why does not Mr. Rice engage in this to some degree? Over the long term, he could lower his living costs quite substantially. He could cut his Airb&b at least in half. When he needs to shower, go to a gym OR use a comp to get a room. When rooms are too expensive/expensive to get, live out of his van. That would also enable him to travel very easily and increase the venues he could play in.
He would not have to go to Airb&b's nearly as much.
Use the comps/cheap hotel rooms as much as possible. If not available, stay in the van!
As he is so frugal & smart, I am surprised he is not already doing this!
as someone who's put a lot of thought into campervans
the skyrocketing demand for them has artificially inflated the price of all vans on the market - your base unit, even if it's a 2003 Econoline with 300k miles on it and will need regular and costly maintenance (and probably needs something fixed as is) will still cost you a few thousand dollars
Even the most basic DIY conversions will cost a few thousand dollars and quite a lot of time to build - bringing it to the people who specialize in converting them starts at about 20k and goes up from there
most of the camper vans you see online that look amazing can't be purchased for <40k and there are many which cost well into 6 figures
look at it this way, a software engineer working for google decides he wants to take advantage of Google's work from home and thus goes all in on a camper van so he follow the waves of the surf season to get in a morning surf session every day - as camper vans are not mass produced that's the kind of person who drives this market
you can see the market for yourself
https://vanlifetrader.com/
if we restrict it to vans under 10k then this is it
our hero rice is in luck, one of the cheap ones is in vegas! is this fate?
it's actually a pretty good deal if you ask me, but it's also a very basic setup as you'd expect from the price given the kbb for the van alone is about 4k
there's no heater nor solar, there is a camping stove and sink and a clean water and grey water tank
so you can cook and clean from the camper, there's also an interior battery that can be charged with a plug but no solar
no heating
no bathroom
no shower
no solar
it's a very basic unit, would need to get a heater added for winter time if he leaves vegas (which he does) and would need to be supplemented via solar because the only way to charge it is to park it at home (which he don't have) or to take it to an RV park (which would negate the savings of using the camper van)
but legit a good deal as far as they go, but still that's like a year's worth housing for him, not to mention it'll need more money sunk into it as well as have a hefty maintenance bill, can you imagine him losing it when he gets a regular 2k repair bill?