Quote:
Originally Posted by angle_shooter
Rice can convince himself of anything. According to him the difference in gas would be more than $2500. Not only is that an absurd exaggeration but he's also conveniently forgetting that a lot of the trips he does are specifically to avoid higher room rates. If he had a van to live in then he would probably have to do less than half the amount of driving each year as he would be able to stay in Vegas a higher % of the time.
I love how he said he would prefer to just sleep in a car on expensive weekends. That is what it boils down to. He simply doesn't value having a bed/shower/kitchen enough to justify the cost. Has literally nothing to do with anything else that he rambled on about. He prefers his strategy of doing a bunch of 48 hour homeless "challenges" each year. After all you can't get any cheaper solution than that.
My estimation of Rice's intelligence & reasoning skills just went down quite a bit after watching his "van life" video.
If he wishes to be frugal and has a VERY LIMITED bankroll & budget, he can easily get a Ford or Dodge RAM work mini-van for WELL under $10K. I'm also not talking about something on it's last legs with 250K miles. With 1 minute of searching, I saw several SCREENS of these work vans in the Detroit area with about 100K miles for WELL under $10K. As sharp & frugal as he is, could he get one for $6K? Maybe? Spend $2k on new tires, new brakes, other repairs & improvements, and the thing would probably be in pretty good mechanical shape & good for another 100K miles.
Rice would then spend another couple few grand outfitting it to allow him to live out of it reasonably comfortably for a few nights at a time. How? The thing is probably stripped out. Put in some plush carpeting & noise deadening, black out the window. Put in a comfortable futon. Upgrade the electrical system & put in a battery. This would allow him to run a SMALL refrigerator, recharge his computer/phone and put in a TV to watch re-runs of his cherished TV shows.
Put in some shelving to store stuff.
Put in a hot plate to cook rice & sausage.
Put in a fan to keep the thing somewhat cool when it gets hot. Have another fan for when he sleeps.
REMEMBER, this is not something to be lived out of for weeks at a time. It is for expensive weekends, traveling, and as a backup.
As for gas mileage, YES, Rice is correct that vans generally don't get as good mileage as cars do. HOWEVER, a small work van can easily get 18 in the city and 28 on the freeway. How much worse than his car is this? A few MPG? So maybe a 10% to 15% hit on the MPG?
As for room rates, RICE can get off strip rooms on expensive weekends for $50/night? Whut whut? Where is he staying? A hostel? I call nonsense on this.
RICE also needs to consider what his time is worth. With a van, he only has to walk out of the casino and into the parking lot. He also saves gas & time by not having to drive anywhere.
Of course, RICE's time might only be $3/hour? We don't know as he won't disclose his results for the past year.