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My name is Joshua and I am your host, and today we're gonna talk about living in your car and loving it. Car living is interesting to me because it's one of those things that we often talk about, but we often talk about it in a very pejorative tone, a very kind of downright, "I can't believe that someone so-and-so is living in their car." Frankly, a lot of people get forced into living in their car.

Over the past years, especially right in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, there were a number of articles about increasing communities of people that were living in their cars to save money, people that were losing their houses, getting forced out, getting laid off, et cetera. I noticed a big uptick in news articles on the subject, and I haven't noticed those news articles continuing today in 2017, but I have noticed a fascinating growth of people who are living in their cars on purpose.

There are many people who live in their vehicles on purpose, and with our modern democratization of communication where any individual can get their message out, I've found really interesting communities of people who are all engaged in living in their cars, and they're called van-dwelling communities 'cause many people will live in their van.

Of course, there are many variations of this, and this is not an unknown thing. After all, there are thousands of very wealthy people who live in their cars. They just call their cars RVs, and they're very big and often have an expensive bus chassis and a big old diesel engine at the back, but there are lots of millionaires who live in their cars, and RV is just a glorified car, and then there are people who are flat-out broke, dirtbag rock climbers living in the back of their pickup truck out at the rock face so they can crawl up the rock face all day long.

Now, for whatever reason, I've always been interested in car living, and it's something that I never did when I was younger when I probably could have done it, or at least I never did it the way that I'm gonna describe to you now. For a brief time in college, I was commuting from home, and I drove a van, and I would keep all my stuff in my van, but I would primarily just live on my friend's dorm couches and things like that, and I would go back home a couple times a week, but I never got to the point where I was actually sleeping in my car, and today I kinda regret it.

I wish that I had spent time living in my car when I was in college 'cause that would've saved a lot of money, and I get a little sick when I think about how much money I spent on housing expenses during a time in my life at which it would have been very inexpensive to live in my car, but whatever, water under the bridge.

What I do have extensive personal experience with is traveling in my car and living in my car while traveling. I don't have extensive experience with doing it for months and months and months at a time, but I've done it four weeks at a time, and in that process, I've learned some lessons, and I thought I'd pass them along to you today because, frankly, there's a big, big benefit for many people, especially many people who are in really tough living situations to be able to live comfortably in their car, and there can be major opportunity for you to have a breakout financially if you use a strategy of living in your car.

I've interviewed in past episodes of Radical Personal Finance people who've lived in their car in college to save money, to graduate debt-free. I know many people who've done it. I've talked to many people who've done it, and I think I have some ideas that are helpful for you, that could be helpful for you to consider about how to do it and live well because, to me, the big thing is how to live in your car and love it is a key.

We all have a different threshold for pain. We all have a different threshold for things that we don't wanna do, but I want you, if you're gonna live in your car, I want you to love it, so let me give you some strategies and ideas, but first, let's talk about the value of why this would be helpful for you.

In most major cities around the United States, I think what you'll find is about the cheapest you could live, just renting a place to live on your own, about the cheapest would be something like $500 a month. I've seen a few places cheaper. If you're out in a rural area or a very low-cost-of-living place, you may be able to get it lower, but if you're gonna rent an apartment, an efficiency apartment or some kind of room, basically about $500 a month is gonna be the lowest that you can get.

Now, that, for many people, will be appropriate, but $500 a month still adds up quickly, and if you compare that today, left and right on Craigslist, right in your town, you could buy a really good, high-quality minivan for about 3,000 bucks, and if you chose to buy a good, high-quality minivan, which I'm showing my hand here as to what I think is the ideal solution for a single person, if you buy a $3,000 minivan, you live in it for a year, you could turn around and sell that thing all day long for $2,500.

So let's say that it costs you $500 per year of straight cost for living in the minivan versus $500 a month for rent. There's a $5,000-plus savings there for you, and for somebody who is living in extreme poverty or for somebody who's trying to break out to accumulate the investment capital to make a significant investment of some kind or just for somebody who wants to travel and do something fun, that's a big benefit there, and I think, especially for a short-term strategy, I think there's a really good opportunity here.

Now, whether you do this on the long-term or whether you just do this for the short-term, like I do, I think you should consider it. I've just returned from a week on the road. I went out to Texas for FinCon 2017, and I spent a total of a week on the road, and I actually didn't plan, I got behind and I didn't plan ahead in time this time.

I didn't intend to drive out there. I was gonna book a room at the hotel and I was gonna fly out, but I got behind, and all the prices by the time I got around to booking my travel were just crazy expensive, and I looked at the prices, I'm not gonna do that, I said, "I'll just drive." So I did my usual minivan traveling technique that I'm gonna describe for you, and I saved quite a bit of money, quite a bit of money by going and staying in my car for the last week while I was at a professional conference and while I did some personal travel and did some other personal things along the way that I needed to do.

Now, why would I do that? Could I not have paid the higher price? Well, yes, I could. I have the money, I could have purchased the hotel room, I could have purchased the air travel, but I have a few things that I have learned as to why I always think carefully.

First, anytime I can save money, I think about the value of that savings and I consider what I get if I spend the money versus what I save if I don't spend the money, and I always try to put a long-term time perspective on it. So let's say that I conservatively saved, and I saved quite a bit more, but let's say over the last week, I conservatively saved $500 by avoiding hotel expenses and staying in my car, and I was very comfortable, very happy about it.

I'll describe more about how and why to do this comfortably and love it, how to live in your car and love it. But if I saved $500, now, certainly $500 would have been a business expense, so I have a little bit of tax savings there, but if I take $500, and let's say that I saved that $500 today, I'm still in the wealth accumulation stage of my life and I haven't hit the tipping point at which my wealth grows so fast that I can spend and still grow wealthier.

I haven't yet reached that point. I'm working towards it, but I haven't reached that point. So any savings that I can make happen at this stage of my life winds up being very helpful. If I saved $500 by living in my car for the last week, if I were to invest and successfully invest that $500 over the next 40 years at 10% growth rate, that could conceivably be worth $22,629 40 years hence.

So again, my $500 savings invested at 10% over the next 40 years could wind up being worth $22,629. Now, is that an accurate number? Yes, if under those circumstances, will I wait 40 years and do this? I don't know, but I definitely saved far more than $500 this last week by living in my car and loving it.

And I've done this again and again and again, and all these little savings add up. So big cost savings and potentially big investment return by me freeing up more and more investment capital so that I can invest aggressively at this stage of my life to build wealth more quickly and build financial freedom much more quickly.

Now, what about the downside of it? There are downsides to living in a car, traveling in a car, et cetera. And I'll cover those at the end of today's show. I'll tell you when you should not live in a van or even travel in a van, because I don't always do this, but I do frequently do this because there are a lot of upsides to it as well.

I enjoy traveling, I enjoy traveling on the road by myself, I enjoy the freedom and the flexibility and the adventure. And traveling on the road by myself allows me to have an adventure and to have a nice tax-deductible adventure. And I actually prefer, and I own an RV, I've owned other RVs in the past, there've been many times where I've actually chosen not to use an RV that I've had, but simply chosen to use a minivan.

And I think that some of the things that I'll share with you will be very helpful to a few of you. The previous show that I have released here on Radical Personal Finance, I did it on how to save money. And just as a simple example, I was with a friend of mine who has really been struggling financially, a college student.

And for this college student, if he could maneuver himself into owning a minivan to live in versus renting an apartment, it would be a major, major financial benefit for him. It would make a huge difference in his life to be able to do this. So I wanna share with you some ideas of how to live in your car and love it.

So let's talk first about what kind of car to live in. Well, first you have just a standard car. I'm just gonna say car, a standard sedan. Now this is the worst solution in general. So let's talk about why it's bad and how to make it less bad. Many people wind up forced into their car.

They get behind on their rent, they lose their house, and for whatever, they reach a financial crisis and they're kind of forced into their car. And they got to deal with whatever it is that they have, whatever kind of car that they have. And frequently this is something like a sedan.

Now this for me, I'm a very large man. So I'm six and a half feet tall, I weigh over 300 pounds. So for me, this is the worst because there's almost no way for me to be comfortable in a small car the way that some people are. Some people can curl up in the backseat of a car and curl their legs up and be okay.

But for me, there's almost no way to do this and be comfortable. So I consider this option to be absolutely awful. But if you find yourself living in a car, like just a small sedan of some kind, there are a couple of strategies that I have used and that I have tried that can be useful.

Number one, check to see if the backseat of your car can flip down. Frequently, if you flip the backseat of your car down flat, you'll have a pass-through between the trunk of your car and the backseat. And sometimes in a small car, you can put your feet at the trunk and then you can lie in that pass-through with your head up towards the front seats, lying parallel with the orientation of the car.

And that can be a way that you may be able to stretch out fully. Years ago, I had an old 1993 Honda Accord. I drove this car all over the place. And when I graduated from college, I took off on a, I did a 13,000 mile road trip over the course of a couple of months all around the US.

And in this Accord that I had, I didn't really have a good way to sleep in it. And so I was primarily planning to stay with friends on that trip. I didn't have the money to stay in hotels, but I was planning to stay in with friends. And so I had the friend option.

And then of course there was the tent option. I think I had a tent with me, but my backup plan was to just stay in the car. And I had tried it out, that I was able to flip that backseat flat and I was able to be, to lie in it with my feet at the trunk and my body coming through that hatch and to be not grossly uncomfortable.

I wouldn't call it comfortable, but it was not grossly uncomfortable. So consider that if you're in a situation where you're in your car and it may be the kind of thing where it helps you if you're traveling across the country, you don't wanna pull into a hotel, you just wanna pull into a rest area, look to see if your car can be used in that way.

Second, many sedans could be modified in a way. And especially if you have a cheap car where you can just change it without too much of a pain. You can modify it by taking out the passenger seat. So if you remove the passenger seat from a standard sedan and possibly if you remove the backseat, you may be able to build a platform there that would be sufficient for you to be able to lie flat on that platform.

So build a sleeping platform. And you could do this even if you have rudimentary carpentry skills, build a plywood sleeping platform and then put some padding, a nice thermo rest or other mattress type of material on top of it. And you may be able to build a flat sleeping platform if you take the passenger seat out.

So that can be a way for you to do it. Now, I think that's really not superior, but those are two options that can make an awful situation of living in a standard car a little bit better. Now, next kind of subset of a car is a special car called a Toyota Prius, which I consider to be basically the perfect car for most people who are gonna have a car.

They're inexpensive, they're well-made, they're very efficient with fuel, et cetera. And I've described in previous episode of "Radical Personal Finance" how I've used a Toyota Prius to camp in comfortably and many other people have discovered this as well. The basic function of a Prius, because it's a hatchback, you have a significant amount of vertical space in the very rear of the car.

And so, and interestingly also with the Toyota Prius, you can fold the seat back of the rear seat forward and it makes a flat shelf on the back of the car. And then you can fold the front seats, seat backs, backwards and you make basically a very long flat shelf.

And so the Prius has significant interior space and I've camped many nights in a Prius with just a small mattress pad underneath me and can do it very, very comfortably for one person. I don't think, and by the way, all of my, most of my discussion today is for one person.

In a moment, I will talk about vans, which are the options for two people. The Prius is really only suitable for one person because of where your need to put your baggage. And if you have two people in it, there's basically no place for you to put your baggage.

And the only option would be to use something like a rooftop box, cargo box, for you to put your baggage. And there, that's gonna destroy your gas mileage significantly, I don't think it's a good plan. But the Prius can work really, really well for a single person. Today, if I were interested in long-term travel and I wanted to tour the U.S.

United States as a single person and travel all around, I would choose a Prius. They're inexpensive to buy. They are very fuel efficient, which allows you to put on tons of miles at a very low cost. And the big benefit of the Prius is, because it's a hybrid, you can leave it on all night long and run the air conditioning while you're sleeping.

You can also leave it on all night long and run the heater while you're sleeping. And it'll run the air conditioning, as a true hybrid, it'll run the air conditioning off of the battery system. And then as you drain your high voltage battery system, it will automatically turn itself on to recharge the batteries, and then off.

And it'll cycle on and off all night, and it will just basically sip fuel. You can camp in this very comfortably, and you can travel very inexpensively. I've spent, I think my maximum time was two weeks that I spent traveling and camping in a Prius. And it worked really, really well.

I've been so comfortable in many places. I've parked in parking garages in a Prius and slept in there. It's just been a, it's a great option. The challenge with a Prius is, you still have minimal interior space. And so you're kind of always vaguely uncomfortable if you're doing anything but sleeping.

And so if you can't be out of the vehicle, it's really hard to be in the vehicle and be anything except vaguely uncomfortable, with the exception of being able to lie flat. So the Prius is hard to live in full-time. It's adequate for sleeping, but it would be hard to live in full-time.

But good for travel, just hard for living full-time. If you're gonna travel with it, make sure that your style of travel is gonna involve your ability to be outside of the vehicle frequently for extended periods of time. You're traveling where there's good weather, and you can just set up your chair, set up a table outside of the car, because you don't wanna, it's too small to be able to comfortably live in.

I consider it ideal for traveling, not for living. Next option would be a pickup truck with a camper shell. Actually, let's do SUV next. Next option would be an SUV. I've camped in SUVs, both a Ford Expedition and also a Ford Escape. The Expedition, of course, far larger. The benefit of the Expedition is that if you fold all of the three rows of seats, you can do the same thing with Suburban.

If you fold them flat, you can get a pretty large flat space in the back of a full-size SUV. You can do this also with a Ford Escape. My wife and I, when we were newly married, we had both an Expedition and an Escape, and we both camped together, the two of us, in both the Expedition and the Escape.

In case you're wondering why, what I frequently found is I like to have a tent. A tent is nice, but there are often times where if you just can stay in your car, you can be in a place where a tent is not appropriate. You don't have to go to a campground or find some kind of wooded area.

The car, by being able to be in your car, you can be comfortable, you can be private, and you can sleep well in an urban environment. That's been the type of thing that was helpful for us. When we were newly married and saving money, I remember one time we went to a friend's wedding that was in another town.

Of course, we could have spent the money to stay at the hotel, but we didn't have any need for that, so we just went there. Then on the way home, we pulled over, we had the mattresses in the back, and we were able to be comfortable in a parking lot or rest area on the way home.

Those types of savings, when you're young and you're willing to be flexible, you're willing to be adventurous, those savings of hundreds of dollars add up. When you're in that wedding season of life, those things add up and it allows you to put a lot more money into your investments if you can minimize your hotel expenditures.

We've done both the expedition and the escape. The expedition was obviously nice 'cause I could stretch out full length. The escape was a little bit pinched for me, but the escape was really nice because with the older original models of the escape, you could get that completely flat load floor.

It just wasn't quite long enough for me. I had to make alternative provision, but if you're under six feet, then a Ford Escape or similar size Mazda Tribute, that type of midsize SUV might work for you. Just put the seats down in the back and start to play with it and figure out what looks good.

Sometimes with different SUVs, you can remove the seat back or remove the base of the seats and then put the seat back flat. Sometimes you need to build a small platform, a small wood platform with a piece of plywood and some legs where the rear seat passengers feet would go.

And or sometimes you need to put, you can fill it with bags or some other kind of material so that you have a longer place to lie down. The problem with SUVs is however, again, vertical space. You don't have much space between your platform and your roof because the seats aren't usually designed to go completely flat.

And because of the way that SUVs are constructed, they don't have that low floor. And so you have very little vertical space. So again, although two people can go in an SUV and because it's more comfortable than a car, you still don't have all that much vertical space. So hanging out inside the vehicle is never gonna be quite comfortable.

It's just not. And so they're just always vaguely uncomfortable. It's fine for temporary sleeping, not fine for being inside. It's kind of the same, imagine this is the same problem that you face with tent selection because we all have these same trade-offs. You can get a very small tent.

Let's say you have a small backpacking tent. Well, a small backpacking tent is wonderful. It's lightweight, it's small. It can be very good in extreme weather. It's low to the ground, minimizes the wind pickup, the wind that hits it. But the problem is you don't really wanna hang out in a two-person backpacking tent.

There's just no room to set up. There's no room to be in it. And so if you're stuck in the thing in a bad weather on a bad camping day, it's just not fun. You can get a big old wall tent, like the ones they use out in the Western United States during elk season.

You set up these giant wall tents. Well, they're awesome to live in, but now you're not gonna set one up and move every day if you're traveling across the country. You face the same trade-off with vehicles. So SUVs I consider adequate in some cases, but subpar. Just like with about everything else about an SUV is they do everything in a mediocre manner.

And really, unless you need to haul a bunch of people and tow a heavy trailer, and you need four-wheel drive and high ground clearance 'cause you live at the top of a mountain, nobody should own SUVs 'cause they're worthless vehicles. How's that for an absolute statement? Just teasing you, but I really think pretty much about that.

Next would be a full-size. Let's do pickup with a camper shell. And this is a frequent option that you see that can really work. If you buy an eight-foot pickup, or if you're shorter, you buy a shorter bed pickup, and you put a camper shell on the back, you can have an inexpensive dry place, and this can work well.

Frequently, people who do this will build a sleeping platform that is raised, or sometimes they'll go ahead and just put a mattress right on the floor of the pickup. You can also buy very high camper shells, which can gain you more vertical height. And here, there's gonna be a balance between how much vertical space you have and how comfortable you are.

One individual, single person could be very comfortable camping in the back of a pickup with a very simple topper shell. And by camper shell, I'm not referring to a truck camper, which is a drop-in RV that would have a kitchen and a dinette. Those are good options, but I'm talking cheap here.

I'm just talking about a standard truck topper, fiberglass truck topper, like you see all over the place. You can build, in the back of a pickup truck bed, you can build a single-width cot that's raised up a little bit, and that gives you a comfortable bed. It gives you storage space underneath the bed.

And then, beside the bed, you can also set up a low platform for you to work on, set up a mini desk or to cook on, et cetera. So an individual, single person can be comfortable in a camper shell. And because the space is so large, you have the benefit of being able to use large mattresses.

So a couple people can sleep comfortably in the back of a camper shell. That works well, but again, you face the problem of livability, especially if you have a compact pickup truck or a relatively low-height camper shell. And if you need the storage space under the bed, you start to face a problem with that livability 'cause you don't have much vertical room.

So I think that the pickup with camper shell is workable, but the other big problem is what do you do in terms of climate control? If you are camping in a hot area, then, and you're in the back with a camper shell, you have no air conditioning. And if you're in a cold area and you're back with a camper shell, you have no built-in heating from the vehicle.

You simply have to use an external heater, a kerosene heater or something like that. And with air conditioning, that's especially hard. So I think this is an okay option, but it's not the best. It would be the best if you are camping in a remote rural place where you need off-road capability and you need four-wheel drive capability.

But here, depending on your budget, if you're a real dirt bag and you just don't have any money, then you gotta go with a camper shell, me, I would look to buy a cheap truck topper. Some of the, sorry, a cheap drop-in truck camper. Some of these options with the raised roofs are really nice and give you substantially more living space with minimal costs, gonna be a few thousand dollars, five or six, especially for a used one, and/or it's gonna be a lot more livable and a lot more usefulness.

One thing I have seen if you own a pickup truck is you can sometimes stay inside of it, especially if you are somewhat short. I have seen a friend of mine, real redneck out here in Florida, he used this idea and he took one of the folding bench seats from the back of a conversion van and he swapped out the front seat in a crew cab pickup with the folding bench seat.

And so that folding bench seat would fold down flat into a bed and he lined up that bed with the back seat to make a very large mattress inside of a crew cab pickup. So that could be done if you're really into that. I wouldn't wanna do that because I wouldn't wanna have a fixed bed seat, you'd give up all the ability to, that wouldn't work for me, but you could do that.

And then you also will see frequently the over-the-road pickup truck drivers, especially these guys that are car haulers, they usually will use these large trailers and they haul cars for car dealers, but they'll often use a one-ton pickup truck. Frequently you see them and they'll often sleep in the back seat and they'll make that back seat area up into a bed that works if you're short and/or sometimes you can actually buy a small sleeper module.

There are companies that manufacture a small sleeper module that goes in the front of the bed and they target it to that world of trucking as well. So if you're interested in that, if you have a pickup truck, there are options there for you, but I still don't think it's ideal.

Next would be a full-size van. And a full-size van is a wonderful option for two people. It really is. Or it's a great option if you're gonna be on the road full-time and you're gonna be living in a full-size van all the time. There are many good things to say about a full-size van.

There are many manufactured RVs that are built upon a full-size van chassis. And you can get a large high roof, you can get a large high roof sprinter van or modern variation of that. Lots of the manufacturers now have high roof vans and very long. And these vans can be very spacious for a couple of people to be in.

I previously owned a, what's called a class B motorhome, which is built upon a van chassis. And we loved that thing. It was awesome. And you can do that as well. The problem with the full-size van or an RV that's built upon that platform is it's still pretty big.

And which means it's still pretty inefficient on fuel. My class B motorhome or my other full-size vans have frequently gotten 10 to 13 miles per gallon on the highway, sometimes as high as 15, but that's not abnormal. Now, often you have to look at what you're doing. Are you living in it?

Are you traveling in it, et cetera? But that miles per gallon can add substantially to your cost if you're traveling long distances. So full-size van, there's a world out there, both commercial and DIY. I think it's a good solution, but it's not, in my opinion, the sweet spot. I continue to be convinced that a minivan is the sweet spot for one person, either as a traveling rig or as a living rig.

And let me explain why. Minivans can be found cheap. You can buy, if you're willing to buy a Kia Sedona, Hyundai Entourage, you can buy one of the Korean minivans that's less than 10 years old, was less than 100,000 miles, you can pick 'em up for four grand. And these are good, useful minivans with a ton of life left in them.

They're a knockoff, basically, of the Toyota and the Honda designs. The Toyotas and the Hondas are also available. Whatever you find, you can buy a great van for under $4,000 all day long on Craigslist. You can buy them even cheaper. The last minivan that I bought, I bought a nice Toyota, paid 3,000 bucks for it, the thing is great.

And it's very reliable and wonderful. The minivan has the benefit of being very easy to drive. They're built to be easy to drive. In a past episode of Radical Personal Finance, where I shared with you that your only car should be a minivan, I explained to you how minivans have greater cargo volume than even a big SUV like a Suburban.

I explained to you that they have a tighter turning radius than a small SUV like an Escape. They have better gas mileage than any kind of SUV, basically. You can frequently get 25 miles per gallon on the highway with a minivan. And that's wonderful, that's really, really good. But the benefit of the minivan is you get a ton of interior space.

Because of the way that minivans are constructed, they have a very low load floor and a high ceiling. And so you get a lot of interior space. You get a very usable platform and you get a lot of interior space with still some of those benefits of good gas mileage, easy parkability.

They're just small and nimble as compared to a full-size van. So, inexpensively available, lot of interior space, small and nimble, cheap to buy because there's a large supply, cheap to own because there's a large supply, reliable, I mean, they're just a wonderful vehicle. But what about camping in 'em?

What do you actually do? For camping inside, a minivan is great because with no modifications, you can fit a twin-size mattress in the back and have a little bit of room left to spare. Now, there's all kinds of things, and again, I'm focusing on one person, there's all kinds of modifications that you can make if you want to.

There are people who will build platforms for storage boxes, platforms for kitchen equipment, et cetera, and put mattress on top, that's fine. But you can take a standard minivan from almost any manufacturer, as long as it's not one of the older, tiny ones. But Dodge, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Toyota, doesn't matter.

Any of the modern ones that are 10 years old or newer, and you can just take the seats out, fold them flat, or take them out. All of them now have the flat seats in the rear row, and you either remove the middle row seats or fold them flat as well.

You could just take that thing, toss a twin-size mattress right in the back, and you have a comfortable, normal mattress on a flat load floor that will fit any size person. That's the benefit. You get a comfortable mattress, an actual, real bed with no modification. And because of the high interior height, you have living area.

Now you can't stand up, obviously. You can't stand up. That's one of the benefits of a full-size van. You can stand up, especially if you have a raised roof, you can stand up, you can use that all to get dressed, et cetera, but it's not a claustrophobic space. I frequently have found it very easy to hang out in the back of a minivan, sitting on a twin-size mattress, and I can sit, I can work on my computer comfortably.

I've recorded episodes of "Radical Personal Finance" sitting on a mattress in the back of my minivan. You would have no idea which ones they were. And I can just sit and work comfortably for a very long period of time. They're easy, no modifications needed. Twin-size mattress, normal bed. That leads to good sleep.

And it's superior to all of the other options for sleeping, which are in a car or even the Prius, you can't put a real mattress in 'em. You're limited to some kind of camping mattress. You're limited to some kind of thin air mattress, which is fine for a short period of time, but it's not as truly comfortable as a real spring mattress or a real foam mattress, if you're into a foam mattress.

That is huge. Huge. (laughs) It's a big, big deal. That living space means that you can hang out inside of a minivan very comfortably. So if you're traveling and it's a rainy day and you're not on the road, you can be inside of the van and you have a few different positions inside of it.

If you need to sit up, you can always use the passenger front seat. I've done that frequently. You sit in the passenger front seat, work comfortably on a laptop, or you can sit Indian style on a bed in the back, or you can lie down and read, or of course, one of the pieces of equipment that's good to take with you is you can carry a chair with you and use that.

If you need an additional seat, one thing I have done in the past is instead of using a real coil spring mattress, I've used an air mattress. You can get a small air mattress and that can work well for you. It can put you in a situation where you can actually pivot it.

It's a little smaller and you can have a third seat in the back as well. Because minivans, most of them now have doors on both sides, if you're in a place where you can just open up the doors and you wanna work in your minivan, you can pull it up into a beautiful park underneath a tree or down by the ocean or down by the river.

Evidently, that's a cultural meme. Living in a van down by the river, you can pull it down by the river. You can open up the two big sliding doors on either side. You can open up the back hatch and now you have a big, airy, comfortable place to be to hang out, which is really, really nice.

So a minivan is vastly superior with the ability for you to just simply be very comfortable, very comfortable in a real sized mattress on the road. And that sleeping quality is important, especially if you were considering staying in it for a long period of time. Now, another big benefit of the minivan is the climate control system.

So a minivan is inferior to something like a hybrid. I'm not aware of any hybrid minivans yet, but in the future, maybe we'll have those. It's inferior to a Prius because if you're gonna run the air conditioning all night, you have to actually run the air conditioning all night.

But I've done it and I've measured it. And you'll often find that if you just run the vehicle all night long and you run the air conditioning all night long, you can sleep well, and it'll use about three gallons of gas, two or three gallons of gas, depending on the size of your vehicle.

Now, that's obviously cost, puts wear and tear on the engine. But if you compare that cost for the times when it's so hot and so humid or perhaps raining, and you can't be comfortable without the air conditioning, that's a very low cost, very, very low cost, comparatively speaking. Now, a quick safety tip, make sure you have a carbon monoxide detector in the car.

It's easy to have a carbon monoxide detector so that in case there is an exhaust leak, in case the vehicle is leaking in some way and there's carbon monoxide coming into the car, you wanna make sure you have a carbon monoxide detector ready for you. That's a standard piece of safety equipment I really recommend.

The likelihood is very low, but it is possible and it's cheap to protect against that risk. That climate control system, however, is very valuable. It means that when you're hot and it's humid, you can have air conditioning. The other big benefit is what if you're in a place where it's cold?

Well, cold is easier to deal with because you can deal with cold while you're sleeping with insulation, with blankets and a cold weather sleeping bag. This past week, as I have been staying in my minivan, it's been pretty cold. I've needed a couple of blankets. But the best thing about a minivan is even if it's snowing, you can be warm if you put on enough blankets and you can be warm if you put on enough of a good enough sleeping bag.

But when the morning all you do is get up, flip the van on and turn the heater on and there are front air conditioning vents and rear air conditioning vents, crawl back into your sleeping bag and about 10 minutes later, you'll have a toasty warm interior space. So if you're living in a minivan full time and even if you're a college student and you're going to class in a cold weather place, you can turn it on, run the van for 30 minutes in the morning while you're getting dressed, getting everything ready and that doesn't take very much fuel.

Just a little bit of fuel to be warm. And you don't have to deal with having the external heater. You don't have to deal with the extra propane heater or whatever your other heating mechanism are is because it's built into the van. It makes it simple and easy. What else is great about a minivan?

The electrical system. Minivans are built for people to go and families, which means they have electrical outlets. Some of the modern ones have a built in 120 volt system, an alternating current electrical system with a built in inverter. Mine doesn't, but what mine does have is it has multiple 12 volt sockets that are live, whether or not the key is on or not.

So you have of course, the 12 volt cigarette lighter plug up front. That's very useful. But almost every mini, all my minivans have in the back as well. So you have a 12 volt socket in the back. This can be very helpful because you have a battery that's sufficient to run 12 volt stuff on pretty consistently.

So for my computers, one thing I always buy for my computers, I always buy a cigarette lighter adapter, which allows me to run the computer directly on DC current. That's more efficient than running an inverter. So if you need a laptop, you can plug your laptop in and run right from the power system that's built into the van.

You don't have to buy something extra. You don't have to build something extra. It's built into the van. It's the battery that's up front underneath the hood. You can of course run anything and charge anything that runs on USB. You just plug your little USB cigarette lighter adapter in, you run your phone, get yourself a six foot or a 10 foot USB cord to your phone.

And you now have the ability to charge your phone overnight while you're sleeping. Or, and or, you get yourself an inverter. I recommend getting a small one and also a larger one. So the small one is nice, like up to 300 watts or so. A small one is nice because you can plug it right into the cigarette lighter right there in the back of your van.

So if you have a small electrical appliances that are gonna be under that wattage, you can use the electrical system that's in the van. You just plug your inverter into the 12 volt system. It inverts the direct current into alternating current. And you can use small appliances, whatever it is that you need to do.

I've used this for blowing up an air mattress. You buy an air mattress, a lot of times now the cheap ones have the blower built in. And so you can blow it up and put it down. It's all built in right to the van. If you're gonna run an appliance for a significant amount of time, just turn the engine on in the van and use the engine as a generator.

Or of course, carry a larger one. And you can carry a larger one and pop the hood and connect to the hood and use that to run any kind of larger electrical equipment that you have. One thing I have done, found very easy, you can actually put the inverter on.

You can find a place under the hood that's safe, put a little platform for the inverter, and then just run your electrical cord from the front right into the vehicle. Now you have an electrical cord that can run larger current draw equipment inside the vehicle. It's fun, sorry, it's, I guess it's fun.

I'm having fun describing it to you, but it's easy and it works. The inverter is simple. It's really, really nice. So when you start putting these things together, a lot of your basic equipment is there and it's built in. You don't have to do a lot of modifications. Is it as good as having a nice RV with a built-in toilet and all that?

No, it's not. It's definitely not. But is it adequate? Is it adequate for one person with an adventurous spirit? I think it's more than adequate. There are people all around the world who don't live nearly as well every day. And I could very happily, very pleasantly, without feeling like I was suffering, I could very easily, as a single person, live in a minivan for an extended period of time, traveling or living for an extended period of time.

And I would be willing to make that choice. If I were gonna go back today, now we're 18 years old, now we're looking at my college living expenses or things like that, personally, if I were gonna do it again, I would do that and I would save the $30,000 that I spent on living expenses during those college years.

And I would use that and I would invest the money instead to build a stronger foundation for my financial future. This is different than at other stages of life, when you're wealthy or when you have other people. I would not, unless we were forced to, I would not live with my family in a van, certainly not.

But when you're young and you're single and you're flexible, there are tremendous opportunities. Let's talk about necessary and valuable equipment. I talked about a comfortable mattress already. Safety equipment, carbon monoxide detector, make sure you have one of those just to make sure. Test it as well. I recommend having a fire extinguisher.

You should always have a fire extinguisher in all of your vehicles. How dumb to have your car burned down because you didn't have a fire extinguisher. I talked about an inverter, having an inverter. Other basic and important equipment is you wanna make sure that you have some tinting on the windows and a sunshade for the front window for privacy.

Now, many, many vans come from the factory with dark tinting all around. So once again, this doesn't require you to do anything. If yours doesn't, then you can go ahead and tint it. Get a sunshade for the front window so to enhance your privacy. Many times what you'll find is when you're sleeping in a vehicle, you'll be sleeping in a place where there are other people and that privacy will be valuable for you.

Some people will go ahead and modify their vehicle by installing curtains. You can do this with Velcro. You can do this with snaps. You may do that. If and if I were doing it full-time, I would consider it. Some people also will add insulation to their vehicle. The most popular product is a product called Reflectix.

You can get it at the local home improvement store. They sell it in large rolls, but it's this shiny, silvery bubble insulation material that'll help you to stay warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. I don't think I would do that unless I were living in the van full-time, but if I were, just a tip for you, don't put the shiny silver Reflectix up to the window.

Make sure you have a black curtain or perhaps a black piece of cardboard. Make sure that your vehicle just looks like it has dark windows so that you can camp in places that are populated and you don't have to worry about someone knowing that you look like you're living in a van.

I think that stealth camping is really valuable. We've all known people, I think, who've lived in their vehicles, and the front dash is filled with junk. The vehicle's filled with junk. That's not me, I don't like junk. So dark tinting and a sunshade are valuable. Cold weather sleeping bag blankets is important, especially if you're gonna be where it's cold.

And then my big philosophy is try not to have a ton of stuff. The more stuff you have, the worse it is. If you have just a few things with you, you won't feel oppressed, you won't feel like you're suffering. If you have tons of stuff with you, then you constantly feel like you're digging through stuff and now it just gets really annoying.

It gets really annoying, like I need a big dresser. Well, yes, because you have too much junk. So try not to have too much junk. One thing, one philosophy I've developed is that stuff is really oppressive if it's not modularized and organized. It's not so annoying to have larger amounts of things if they're modularized and organized.

So I always like to have nice organized modules for stuff. In my home, that means I try to just keep everything and I use bags for most things, boxes are fine, but keeping things in modules, things that go together, go together. So all the cables are in one place, all of the miscellaneous things are kept together.

That allows me to have more things, but not to be so obnoxious to have those things. This is to me, the practical balance between excessive junk everywhere being oppressive to you and minimalism, where you get rid of all the stuff that's useful, is to have things organized into nice modules.

In a van, soft modules are better than hard. A standard van, you put a twin mattress in, you slide it over to the side, there's enough room down the side to put some normal size duffel bags, and then you have some hanging shirts or things that you don't wanna have wrinkled, then you could put those along the side.

So that's my recommendation, is keep soft modules, soft duffel bags with bags in them as well. That works really well. I recommend that you consider having some cooking gear. I think the best, most practical solution here is a small butane stove. This is what I travel with, is a small butane stove, single burner gas stove, runs on a little butane bottle.

So it's the kind of thing, if you stay in a nice hotel, they'll usually use these stoves for the omelet station. You'll frequently see them used for that. That works great, it gives you a stove to cook on. And you can keep a small stove, some simple pots and pans.

I like to travel with a French press to make coffee. And that allows you to have a small cooking kit held in a small duffel bag. So if you're gonna get up in the morning and you wanna cook, then you pull, or make some coffee, then you go ahead and just find a park or a picnic table, or if you're at a rest area on the highway it takes about 10 minutes, just grab your stove, take your little bag over to the table, set up your stove, and you're good to go.

And you can make a little pot of coffee very easily. So I think it's worth it to have a little bit of cooking gear. Because when you're on the road, the two big expenses are, well, three big expenses are cost of getting there, plane tickets and/or cost of gas.

We're trying to minimize that by having a vehicle that has decent gas mileage. Cost of accommodation, this is usually the huge cost, especially if you're going to a big city conference or something like that, $150 a night is not an abnormal cost, or even more sometimes. And then the cost of food.

When food is taken out of your control and you're at the mercy of the restaurants around, oftentimes that can be a substantial cost for you. So having a little bit of cooking gear helps as well. Next piece of gear is having a cooler. And since the modern injection molded coolers have kind of taken over the market, that's kind of the term for, sorry, it's the roto-molded coolers, like the Yeti brand that you see a lot of places.

These modern coolers have changed much of the cooling technology. So the Yeti, it's probably the most popular brand name in the roto-molded coolers, they've come out with soft coolers. And you can now buy these in the, kind of the knockoff marketplace. We can buy one of these soft coolers that has a good thick foam insulation, and they do really well, but they're very, very flexible inside a vehicle, and they're small.

I'm not talking here about the very thin lunch coolers that just have very little insulation, but you don't want, in a van, you don't want a big square plastic thing that's getting in your way. You want a small, compact cooler. So I have one from Walmart that just does a great job.

It'll keep a bag of ice for multiple days, and that allows you to keep your food cold, which is really worth considering. And it's small enough and simple enough to be useful and not to be oppressive inside a small minivan. Make sure you have a comfortable chair to sit in outside.

The whole point of doing something like this is to get outside when the weather's beautiful. So you want something small, but something comfortable that you can sit in outside. Make sure that you carry with you an eye mask in case it's light. One of the biggest challenges, the places that are easy to sleep and safe to sleep when you're on the road, for example, a rest stop or a truck stop, many of these places are very bright.

Now, that bright light is nice for safety, but it's often not so nice when you're sleeping. And if you're in a vehicle that has open windows and you don't have curtains, then sometimes the angles, if you're lying down in the back, the angles of the bright truck stop sign or the bright light will just come right in and be right in your face.

So carry an eye mask with you. Other equipment that's important, gym membership. The best, easiest place to get a shower on the road, 'cause of course, what do you do about bathroom facilities? Well, bathrooms are easy to find. And as an adult, those are easy to find and easy to deal with.

And then for showering, you can use either a national large gym franchise or what I found many times, just go to a local gym, explain to them, hey, I'm traveling, I'm staying in my car, I need to take a shower, may I take a shower? And they'll allow you to take a shower.

At the, in the worst case scenario, if you have to pay for one, you can always take a shower at a truck stop. They're expensive, they're not cheap. That's the same thing, not cheap and expensive. They're expensive, but in a pinch, it'll do. And make sure you also just travel with washcloths and baby wipes.

There have been times where I've needed a shower and I couldn't find facilities. And so in those circumstances, you wanna make sure that you have a washcloth, then you find a public restroom where you have privacy and you can use a washcloth to freshen up and or baby wipes are very useful.

In terms of, I glossed over bathroom facilities. For most adults, bathroom facilities should be fine and easy to find. There's plenty of public bathroom facilities. Some people who are living in larger vans or larger vehicles will use things like a cassette toilet. There's a technology called a cassette toilet that even many RVers will use.

Those are fine, they're very practical. There's not enough room in a minivan to use one. So you'll just wanna use public restrooms and or make temporary accommodations in your vehicle, just like you do when you are in a tent. Have a pee bottle or something like that. Next, where can you sleep?

Basically almost anywhere, especially if you have a minivan with dark windows. I have stayed in parking garages in big cities. This can actually be great in the winter time. Sometimes if you're in a big city and you're traveling in the winter time when it's cold, if you find a parking garage in a city where there are basement facilities, you go down below, the parking garage can be very warm and that can help you to sleep more comfortably.

So I've stayed on the fifth floor of a parking garage and then four floors underneath the surface street. And sometimes that's your best bet. Yes, you pay for parking, but when you're in a big city, your hotel costs are generally just massive. And frequently, if you are staying in a car, you can be right at your whatever it is.

If you have to go to a business conference or if you're a sightseeing, you can be right in the city and paying $10 for 24 hours of parking in a parking garage is a lot better than paying $300 for a mediocre room in that hotel. You can stay in parking lots, obviously, almost anywhere.

In cities, you can stay in, I've stated, paid parking lots if you're in a city or just about any parking lot, or of course, the parking lot of almost any business. Walmart is well-known for being accepting of people staying in their vehicles, especially RVers. So you can easily stay in most Walmart parking lots.

There are other cities that have this as a, sorry, other businesses that have this as a standard, a standard protocol or a standard procedure. For example, Cracker Barrel. Cracker Barrel, if you're an RVer, you can always stay at a Cracker Barrel in a park without being, fear of being hassled by somebody.

Cabela's or other sporting goods stores will often have this policy as well. But really, just about anywhere. There's a local, in my local Home Depot, there's a van dweller who lives in the Home Depot parking lot that I always notice. I always notice him in there. So big, just any major parking lot.

And of course, you can do this on city streets. On multiple times, I have stayed on city streets. The benefit of a city street is you can often find a dark spot that gives a very nice sleeping environment. And so you just usually wanna be unobtrusive and respectful of the residents of that city street.

And of course, when you're on the highway, some of the simplest and easiest places, if there's a rest area near to you. A rest area on a highway is great. Many rest areas will have nighttime security. So that's good for having a secure location. Always pay attention to your safety.

But it's also a normal place for people to be. Remember, truckers live in their vehicles when they're on the road. And so the rest stops and the truck stops are filled with truckers sleeping in their car. So it's not out of place if you're in a rest area. You go in and you use the restroom, you brush your teeth, things like that, that sometimes can be a little out of place in other places.

If you're near a rest area, truck stops, et cetera, places where the truckers are, that's a very normal, normal place. But what I have found is if you have a small vehicle that's unobtrusive and you're just discreet in your behavior and your actions, you can sleep anywhere. And as a traveler, it's pretty cool to be able to be right in the middle of a downtown place where you're gonna do big tours and things like that and to be very comfortable and yet to be able to do it inexpensively.

Now, what about if you were doing this for the long term? Probably today it's so much easier than it ever was. With internet connection right on your cell phone, you have the electricity right there in the van like I've described with an inverter if you need it or just pull directly from the 12 volt power.

You've got restrooms and things like that all around. I mean, it's so much easier today than it ever was in the past. The only, I guess, other consideration would be mail, mail forwarding services. If I were a college student, of course, college students often will have a mailbox on campus.

Or if I were traveling long term, I would just sign up with one of the mail forwarding services that cater to the RV community and that would be great or rent a post office box. But there's no reason why you can't, you couldn't do this long term. There's no reason why whatsoever.

Now, when should you not live in a van? Or when should you not stay in a van? I think number one, when it impedes your overall performance. So I choose not to do this when I'm giving something like an important speech. If I'm giving an important speech and I wanna make sure that, then I wanna make sure if I'm speaking from stage that I'm feeling confident, that I'm doing well.

I wanna make sure that my, you know, my clothes are right, my hair is right, all of those kinds of things. I've often found that I just often feel just a little tiny bit off when I'm in a van. So if I'm working or if there's something very important, then I'll just go ahead and get the hotel room.

And that's just the cost of doing business. Because it's more important to me that I'm at my top, my peak shape than that I save $100. But that tiny bit off that I'm describing is not, you know, it's not, that's not a big deal most of the time. I think if I were living in a vehicle for the longterm, I would get over it and it would just be normal.

But that it's just the tiniest little bit of kind of being out of sync. And frankly, I think it's more the social aspects of it, the social stigma versus the any actual practical effect. If you're in a place where it's nice and cool and you have a nice comfortable bed and you sleep well, everything's fine.

You can use a restroom, you can freshen up, you can go to the gym, take a shower, everything is fine. But because you're kind of on the fringes of society, if you're staying in a vehicle, you're kind of always on the fringe. You're never in that same place where all the normal people are.

You're never in your normal house. You're never in your normal apartment. You're never in your normal hotel room. You're always kind of on this fringe that has a bit of a psychological effect. And so one thing I've learned is that I don't do it if I have an important business engagement or if I'm giving an important speech or if I have important meetings or something like that there.

I don't wanna lose even the littlest bit of an edge. But in terms of the rest of the time, there are big savings in money and in the early stages of your wealth building, that's so valuable to save those hundreds and hundreds of dollars, but yet still be able to have the big experiences because I wanna live a rich life, which doesn't mean being a hermit and not doing anything, but I wanna live a rich life well.

And then my final piece of advice, make sure you're careful of the way that you're eating and make sure you're not just eating junk all the time. When you're on the road, and this is one of the reasons why I think it's important and valuable to have cooking equipment and to have a cooler with you, be careful how you eat 'cause it's too easy to eat junk and then you feel bad.

But the reason you feel bad is not because you were living in your van. The reason you feel bad is 'cause you've been eating junk. So that's where I try to make sure that I have refrigeration capability with a cooler and a little bit of cooking capability as well so that I can eat quality food.

So that's it, those are my ideas. Those are my recommendations for you on how to live in a van and love it, or live in your car and love it. If you've done this, feel free to come by the show. Tell me about it, radicalpersonalfinance.com. I'd love to hear about it.

And I hope that this is helpful and inspirational to many more of you. Listen, if you wanna live well and get rich, it's possible. You don't have to just sit around and do nothing. You don't have to say, well, either I'm gonna travel and spend thousands of dollars traveling, or I'm not gonna travel at all 'cause I can't afford it.

It's a completely false choice. You can live well and live on a great adventure and save money the whole way. Just think outside the box and look at the opportunities that are around you and don't be scared to buck society's trends. This show is part of the Radical Life Media Network of podcasts and resources.

Find out more at radicallifemedia.com. - Struggling with your electric bill? Get an energy assist from SDG&E and SAFE. You may qualify for an 18% discount. Visit sdge.com/fera to find out more.