junk land and van living

JUNK LAND AND VAN LIVING
There is a lot of unease out there about a possible economic crash. Folks living in Michigan might already be experiencing one, although it speaks volumes about our education system that those folks didn’t see this coming a long time ago. Anyway, I thought now might be a good time to focus a bit more on emergency living situations in case any of you start your own economic depression sometime soon. I am going to share with you my personal experiences with junk land and van living. And everything that I did wrong. My extensive planning was faulty, my back-up plans were for the wrong contingency and my ultimate choices were manageable but rather uncomfortable.
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Over a year ago, the start of summer ’06, the casino I was working at laid off our entire department. They planned on rehiring 75%. Several people got transferred, I just up and quite in disgust. Mistake number one. This was my second layoff ( the first was to trim management ) and I let my emotions get in the way. In retrospect it was the right decision since the stress level there was rising as compensation was falling, but I did act rashly. Even worse was deciding to move to my land in Elko, 300 miles away. I sold my trailer rather than paying the extra to get it towed. Mistake number two. Once I got up there we only had the van to live out of. And the town was full up as the gold mine was booming. There were no storage units to be had at all. I had a van, was able to live in it except it was full of my crap. Then, the road to the property was far worse than I had anticipated. It would have been impossible to commute to town daily. After that, things just got worse. No trailer parks would take my 1968 van, it was too old. That was the for the few spots still open in parks. Despite having a lot of RV parks in the area.
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So I couldn’t live on the property full time, nor could I live in town part time. Instead of waiting around to see if a cheap RV would become available ( none at the time ), I just left town after a week. I didn’t want to deplete my savings and child support payments were due. If I had brought or bought a trailer I could have biked to the freeway and paid to park the van there. I moved back to Carson City and lived for five months in the van, parked in my stepdaughters driveway. Mistake number, three or five or seven ( I lost track ). I love the little gal but she is a control freak and five months later we were all ready to move back to the trailer park even if we couldn’t afford it ( and it helped I got a loaner trailer ). So since last winter we lived in an RV park, with the extra needed money coming out of my savings. Recently I shaved my spending and with the Bison profits I am able to leave my savings in the bank. After needing savings for a year.
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Lessons. Whatever can go wrong will. If you are living on the road, mechanic bills will kill you. And where do you live in the meantime? ( plus, the harassment factor with parking ). If you have a piece of land, your planning will fail to see emergencies or strange events unfolding. Whatever space you have, it isn’t enough for more than one person. You will not have enough savings, so don’t deplete it early on. It will be damn stressful, even though the lack of rent or a mortgage will counter-balance it. It is far from an easy answer.
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After the fear and stress are dwelt with, after unforeseen problems are solved, then it becomes easy and worth the money savings. But at first it is going to be a bear. If I believed in fate, perhaps I was not meant to rough it just yet. I have built up Bison to paying status and I have written a lot after getting the extra motivation from seeing my land ( a tease only, unfortunately ). It all worked out well. But I also lucked out on a lot to have a happy ending. Make sure you plan well enough that you won’t need luck.
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