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Save up for your junk land
Ok, you want to cut expenses and buy your junk land, but you work in the city and have little saved up. Or, you need to figure out a way to survive in the urban jungle without having to give up all your privacy! The following idea is not new. I have thought of a few things to add though that might make it more feasible for some. There are some pre-requisites though.
This idea works best if you are single, work in or near downtown and have a van, preferably a panel van with minimal windows. You will need figure out how to get the van if you don't already have one..... Get a PO Box for all your mail now! Don't wait until later. The Post Office checks your address when you get a box, but after that they never really verify if you move. (yes, you are supposed to tell them, but I often forget)
At my employer, they will pay for a monthly parking pass in a 5 story parking garage. This gives me a pass card that allows me to enter and leave as often as I wish at any time day or night. If you do not have an employer who is so nice, the going rate around here is about $140 a month. Cheaper than an RV spot at a park! They have some simple "security" people that patrol occasionally, but they don't seem to really look at anything unless someone is obviously trying to break into a car. I have seen cars sit for weeks in the same spot.
I know some people will say, but you can park for free in local neighborhoods if you are low key! Yeah, and you have to move at least once or twice a day (uses gas) and all it takes is one nosey neighbor to call the cops!.
You need to outfit your van with blackout shades for all your windows. You don't want any light escaping while you are inside. You will need to outfit with a self contained sink for cleaning, perhaps a sawdust toilet (for emergency use only), and some sort of cooking arrangement. All your lighting should be LED, preferably using rechargeable batteries. Use a laptop that you charge while at work (along with your batteries for your lights). The laptop gives you the ability to watch movies if it has dvd, and you get the movies at the library for free. If you have a cell phone, see about hooking your laptop up the internet through it if you really have to have the connectivity.
Most of you already see where this is going- sleep in your van; move it occasionally to charge the battery, go do laundry and avoid being obvious; use the toilet facilities at your work as much as you can maybe a nearby fast food joint at other times; find a local gym that has cheap membership and showers for staying clean; save all the money you can.
Granted, staying warm in the winter, cooking, refilling the water jugs, emptying the toilet and all that will give you some reason to pause, but we are all smart people and can not only figure out how to take care of these things, but hopefully you can even think of ways to improve on this idea!
Insulating the inside of the van can cut down on needed heat. Use the local parks to rest during the summer or even the city library if it is too warm. Get out enough so you don't get cabin fever. Make sure you have a roof vent if you do any cooking or heating with flames-all the usual caveats apply to this idea.
Once you have some money saved, buy your junk land! Save a little more and really outfit your van for comfort and move to your junk land when times start getting bad. You get the idea! I don't have to spell it all out step by step.
TMM
Thank you, loyal minion! Feel free to write for free. E-mail with any guest article you want to publish. BUY MY CRAP http://www.bisonpress.com/
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6 comments:
For about 15 bucks at Harbor Freight you can get a solar cell that will plug into your cig lighter, just plop it on your dash and point your van south in the parking garage and it will keep you Van's 12v battery trickle charged so you don't need to run the engine. Plus, if you remove all of the internal body panels of the van (if any) and line the sheetmetal with sections of newspaper and then follow that up with copies of the yellow pages (look around, I see pallets of them laying around at library's and colleges) and you have increased your R value tremendously and done it for next to no money (the cost of duct tape).
A used panel van on ebay will run you less than ~2000 dollars if you look hard.
A roof vent kit with butyl tape and screws will run less than $30 at an RV supply place, and will keep you from dying from carbon monoxide poisoning. A CO monitor is cheap and probably worthwhile, as is a fire extinguisher.
I lived in a van on top of a parking garage for almost two years in college ($85 a month back then), showered at the gym everyday and washed my clothes at the laundromat. I was clean and smelled nice and no one was the wiser that I was saving hundreds of dollars a month on rent.
The toilet situation can suck, but I finally plunked down $100 for an RV chemical toilet and it solved all the odor troubles.
I used a hot plate to cook with instead of my coleman stove, just to avoid any problems, but it required a 10W monocrystalline solar cell and a marine deep cycle battery, put me back some jack, but kept me from worrying about asphyxiation. I mounted that panel on the roof.
Van living; it is a serious money saver if you can pull it off.
For about the same money i would rent a room in someones house,i imagine many people are looking for help with paying their morgage.Buy an RV trailer and rent a space in town and tow it away to your junk land later.Ask about parking on the lot of empty commercial property in return for helping to keep an eye on it.RW
I have seen some recipes from the Fluwiki site that are really easy to put together, could do it inside a van, a park picnic table etc. Would save a lot of money and add variety from fat food stuff. let me know and i will locate the web site.
prepared warrior
Some parking structures are uptight, some are not. Remember, the motto in the US is, like in Vegas, "no one sleeps for free". It's a possibly workable plan.
A good philosophy is to imagine you're subject to random artillery hits, so that if you have everything in one place, you lose it all. That's what happened to me. If I'd had a storage unit, a van I could live in, a rented room to live in, yet another place to do my small business, then I could have shed a few of these things and downscaled gracefully. Instead I went from doing OK to hollow-eyed, scared, nomad within about a month. I've never forgotten this. I'm in a very good situation now and I still worry about what to do if TSHTF here because right now I don't have another place to run to, if I'm not killed in the battle it's back to a nomadic existence, in perhaps a Mad Max economy or oh, an economy that resembles the landscape of The Road.
A problem is, as the Depression gets deeper and people get bitchier, snitches are becoming more common. Being poor, or looking poor because you're saving money by living in a van, amounts to taping a "KICK ME" sign on your back.
Some solutions are joining the Elks and parking there, many Elks lodges have RV parking for members are fairly low rates. Or exchanging parking for "watch dog" duties somewhere, etc. I met one guy I sold a radio to, who lived at a local tow yard. It was heaven! He had two old trailers, one to live in and one was storage, and was always coming across deals like motorcycles and scooters for something like $100 each. Only a little smashed up! Worth a goldmine in parts. He was older and retired so he had something like $800 a month coming in, us younger folks will never have it that good.
But add up your costs, because if it's got tires or tits it's gonna cost you money. By the time you register the van, insure the van, maintain the van, smog-test the van, and keep the van looking good, plus eat restaurant food, or cook with a Coleman, and run around to a gym for your showers, are you really saving money? My opinion is No. Frankly, if you're in a town, renting a room and riding a bicycle makes the most sense.
Bison's contact with the Internet seems to be becoming tenuous just as I predicted. I hope he is working on some way to make a living within a 10-mile radius at least as some sort of backup for when his job goes away.
Hi Jim,
Thought this might interest you:
http://www.energybulletin.net/51752
It's not letting me log in through Google.
Michael
I guess it should also be mentioned that when selecting a van for living in, manually operated windows should be one feature selected. Window screening can be attached along door window perimeter to keep the creepy crawlies and skeeters from flying inside. Helps keep things a little more comfortable.
Thanks for a lot of the ideas / tips listed above. I've camped out in a truck for a weekend, but never lived in one for much longer periods. Another alternative to van is Suburban - a little more roomy up front without engine cab intrusion.
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