Early Retirement Extreme Forums

What an amazing journal, thanks for sharing.
Sorry I have nothing more to add

Thank you Seppia

BRUTE wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 01, 2018 2:50 pm

how does C40 like the Promaster? a lot of old school van dwellers seemed skeptical at first because it seems to be a FIAT rebranded to Dodge. but the idea of a more affordable Sprinter format seems appealing, obviously.

brute has heard that Las Vegas still has tons of houses <$50k, and is only a short flight away from Phoenix. apparently pretty well-connected airport in general, for a more part-time home base.

I like the Promasters. And the Transits and the Nissan NVs. I think they're all better than a Sprinter. I believe the Nissans are the best for rough roads as they are built on a truck platform (and aren't really a eurovan)

The Promasters have limited ground clearance. They do get pretty good traction though. A couple guys I spent time with in Mexico got their Promasters through some pretty soft sandy roads.

Money-wise, an older style American van with a high top put on it is still way cheaper than the eurovans, and is more more rough-road capable. But in most cases that requires putting a top on one yourself (which isn't all that hard)




I took a quick look at Vegas on Zillow and didn't see much as far as cheap houses. (?). I'm not a big van of Vegas, but maybe I wasn't there long enough to make a good judgement (just a week or two).. sizeable cities in the western US that aren't really expensive are few and far between though. Vegas is located fairly well for outdoors stuff

what about Salt Lake City?
Utah is the most beautiful state of all in my opinion, such a diverse array of amazing nature. Mountain, forest, canyons, desert... I could spend ages in Utah.

Also, I've found the fears of... uh... higher than usual focus on religion... to be overblown.
Lots of regular people there.

Yeah that's another option I'm considering. I like Utah a lot. I want to go hang out in SLC some, as I've only been there for work trips or driving straight through. It looks pretty pricy compared to what I'd really like. Might be a good place to do a house fix/flip project if I'd like more profit potential than in places like the southeast US

I was surprised to learn about the smog problem in SLC. Something to think about. Maybe everyone knows about it here already but I just didn't put smog + Utah on the same page. Is it a real problem or overblown?

C40 wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 04, 2018 3:46 pm

I took a quick look at Vegas on Zillow and didn't see much as far as cheap houses.

there are quite a few <$50k

The housing crisis was especially severe in Vegas and Florida. I would think there are still a number of bargains out there. Maybe type in "stripper pole" in the search engine.

@SWB real problem. IIRC it's called "inversion". Something about temperature differences or whatever and the pollutants can't get blown over the mountains so they stay stuck in the valley. In the winter, you can look across the valley and yon snow covered mountain looks brown. It's gross.

@suomalainen That sounds bad. I've never lived somewhere with smog. I think that would be a deal breaker for me.

You merely adopted the smog...

Viktor K thinks smog is his ally?

Just finished reading all 35 pages of this the past couple days. Amazing journey - inspiring and picked up a few tips and ideas, even if I'm unlikely to buy a van anytime soon. Thanks for the journal.

--------------------------------------
JUNE 2018
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JUNE SPENDING: $716

• Bought a pen for $260 (one I’ve wanted for a long time and that is hard to find)
• 6 months of van insurance: $189
• Food spending is pretty low because mom is buying most of the food while I work on her van.

CHARTS








YTD savings rate is up to 51%. WOO HOOOO.





VAN FOR MOM
It’s coming along. I have a lot of the main design decisions made and and now I’m getting on to building the stuff inside. It’s kind of slow going because nothing is straight, even, or square inside the van so I’ll be making all kinds of custom wood pieces.

You can see the progress here: https://www.instagram.com/stories/highl ... 066174684/




SOCIAL/~LOVE
I’ve made a couple friends and have a lover with a big ol’ booty. The lover can be annoying when we’re not having sex, so I may look for a replacement.




FITNESS
Going well. I joined a gym and started bulking again. I’m looking and feeling pretty damn good. This second bulking and cutting cycle may get me as big as I want - about 160# when really lean. With my small bone frame, that’s pretty big and strong, looks really good, but doesn’t require a huge amount of maintenance calories.




PROPERTY SEARCHING
I’ve been looking at cities in Arizona lately (mainly in Phoenix and Tucson) since my brother and mom are moving there. Sometimes I also look at Wichita and Topeka. The later two are very cheap and are a good way to compare how expensive other places really are. Houses in Phoenix cost about three times as much as Wichita. And for big cities, Phoenix is fairly cheap.

A big challenge so far with this location analysis is that every place has something big wrong with it. Phoenix is hot in the summer, too expensive, and too dry for a good garden. Wichita is too conservative and square. Portland/Seattle are too grey and crazy expensive. It seems that for the set of characteristics I desire, there will be no “having it all”. So I’ll need to prioritize more.

I still need to do some thinking about whether I want a (relatively) short-term home or a long term one, and whether I want a fixer-upper or not.

In general, I would like to do a good job of optimizing this in at least some ways. Like one or some of these:

• Really inexpensive
• I make money on it when I sell it
• Rent out part of the property while I live there
• It being particularly good for some other kinds of hobby income generation

I did find and get pretty excited about this property in Topeka . It’s really just a workshop, with half of the building sort of converted into a home, on nearly 3 acres, IN THE CITY. The list price got down to $45k and it sold in May for $36k. I’m not entirely sure whether I’d consider the living quarters good enough, but in general it looks like a property I’d like a lot. (small home, workshop, plenty of land, in a city, cheap). I’d like to find more properties like this. It’s time consuming looking through tons of listings though.

If I want to live in a city, especially one like Phoenix or even one that’s more expensive, I’m thinking that I’d like to find a house on a big lot, build a small home on the back of the property for me to live in, and rent out the house. If the money works out well, I could get the same kind of income that I would’ve gotten as dividends if I’d left the money in stocks (or more), but I will have a home. I think I'll start researching the laws/building codes related to building the second home. If you know of any good references for this kind of thing, or you know about it yourself, please share.

Because I can take my time, I’d like to do this in a good way money-wise.

We looked at building once. Zoning restrictions vary widely so you'll just have to read/inquire about footprint, density, setback, environmental, site, etc. restrictions in each targeted locale and/or specific zones (same city can have various zones each with their own unique issues), but presumably if you're living there, the small house will have to be permitted, up to code, etc. Maybe not if you find yourself in a very rural or anti-government locale. Maybe if you build a tiny house on a trailer stuck in the back you can get away with less (assuming zoning permits whatever tiny houses on trailers are considered there). Depending on the zoning/building department, you might be able to get questions answered over the phone, but in my area you had to show up in person and/or make an appointment. But they were very helpful.

C40 wrote: ↑

Sat Jun 30, 2018 8:34 pm

lover with a big ol’ booty.

pics or it didn't happen

Ha, nice try.

Ben Leybovich on BiggerPockets had a couple articles about a "luxury house hack" in Phoenix, which was essentially him living in a house, and renting out an ADU out back, so I figure it's either zoning-compliant in at least some places, or it was at one point and you just have to keep an eye out for a property with one that's grandfathered in.

The lover can be annoying when we’re not having sex, so I may look for a replacement.

Don't get trapped with someone you don't really want.

C40, have you noticed any big changes to the vandwelling community (online?) in the past year? I'm not on Instagram so don't quite have the insight, but when talking with new folks recently (Bay Area) many are not as surprised as they used to be that I lived in a van for a spell and am planning to do it again soon. Also saw a lady's tweet going viral today that for some reason a lot of guys are driving vans these days.

Berkeley is thinking about segregating vandwellers to specific areas (and offering some van-dwelling specific space.. I think. They have already been pretty strict regarding needing residential permits to park on most streets).

@bryan: online, idk.. mainly there is more people/content. There are more people sharing. More 'fancy lifestyle' type content. A couple years ago, the popular van pictures were showing a woman lying stomach down on the bed in the van, looking out the open back doors, with her ass as a focal point. Now, more of the popular ones are of really clean and fancy eurovan coversions, with the people dressed like lifestyle models and the women in full makeup.

Out in the real world, way more people are aware of living in van as a lifestyle design and where I used to get a lot of "wait, what, you really live in a van??" I now get more "wow! that's my dream."

Two years ago, when someone initially said "that's my dream", when we had a conversation, they were going to ask me 20 questions about living and traveling in a van. I started avoiding those folks sometimes because I've had that conversation enough times. But now, when people say that, most of them aren't that interested in it and will only ask a couple questions about it. It's sort of a surface level awareness/interest because now so many more people are exposed to it.



@Kriegspiel - yeah, there are a handful of properties in Phoenix and Tucson with ADUs. (maybe 15 or so for sale when I checked). I spent a couple days looking at them online and running rental income numbers. It would work, but I'd likely have to spend at the very high end of what I'm willing to and capable of.