Quote:
Originally Posted by hayden55
Anybody ever tried to live out of their vehicle? Scrolling through trying to find camper shells and quality of life improvements to them (mostly for weekend camping at the lake) and came across this video:
I really think this would be a sweet way travel cheap and not have to pay rent when traveling and working in areas for short periods of time. Brainstorming moving to an area like Dallas after college, and trying not to spend $2000 grand a month on renting housing and thought this would be a fun and quirky little way to live and travel. |
Avoiding high overhead isn’t that hard, it’s that one becomes yet MORE dependent on a vehicle. It continues the trend of city destruction and suburban sprawl underway since the late 1960s.
For the pair of centuries preceding, one rented a room from a family or, later, at a boardinghouse.
Drugs ruined boardinghouses. Call that 1971. Men becoming violent on alcohol was one thing, but drugs another entirely (and; gee, when did we close mental institutions; voila, same exact era). And the ethnic neighborhoods were busted up by a variety of schemes to enact just that. The place we’d have gone to rent a room from a congregation member. And walk the city.
Now we’ve added debt via “education” (really, sloppy indoctrination) and artificially-high housing prices.
And absolute dependence on cars. Not optional for forty years or more.
Plus, all the remaining decent jobs have disappeared to a handful of cities. The de-population of the countryside continues.
How’s a young man supposed to form a family?
I’m at the other end. Children grown and parents deceased. Wife broomsticked away. The quaint notion of “retirement” still appeals. So a high cost fixed overhead is unattractive.
An answer for me has been an aircraft-quality, all-aluminum, fully aerodynamic travel trailer. An indefinite lifespan.
I can move where I want WHEN I want (no lease), and while outside the boundaries of town (meaning longer commute) the individual private vehicle need not be a pickup truck. But it won’t be a Prius either. Somewhere in between.
One does have to be willing to learn to maintain, repair & upgrade. (There are few things in life as satisfying as these), so that seemingly formidable aspect is a win-win.
There’s no substitute for warm & dry. And then, hot water. No passenger vehicle large enough is ever really a substitute as it’s primary function of transportation is burdened by higher than necessary operating costs.
What I checked off above is “the war”. Understanding that it is so, is the first step.
An American high school graduate circa 1960 could find work adequate to making a marriage proposal as sole provider contingent also on the affordable housing of the era.
What has happened since isn’t due to, “impersonal global forces”, or other such claptrap.
How to look upon future prospects is NOT to count on debt forgiveness or asset bubble punctures, but being able leverage tools with a lifetime or half a lifetime of use (50 or 25 years, say). In my opinion. What money I may have needs to cover more than making others yet richer than they are.
I’ll cut this short by saying the vehicles in my sig were chosen this way. Longevity, reliability & low cost of ownership were paramount (today I wouldn’t buy a pickup; had an applicable business way back when). A quarter-century use of them (they need to fully operational at sale) drives what plan there is. That I’m third generation in this made it easier (travel trailer type; a lifetime of acquaintance).
For a young man it’s looking toward a home for a family. For this old man it’s that I might actually get to travel for pleasure, and inevitable decrepitude. Plans
But I ALWAYS have a home. (The details of “ground rent” are another subject). That (a house) should be what drives investment of time.
If one says, “well, I can always live with a relative or friend”, consider that this may not be possible. In fact, they are looking to you.
A young unmarried man is expendable, per se. He is also the only one who can stand up to the rigors of war. It’s a two-edged sword.
Sharpen your half.
Be other than the 22% of twenty-something men foregoing work altogether in order to sponge off their parents (playing video games) with no acquisition of skills or developing sense of responsibility as counterweight.
Not half steps (“hmm, live out of car”).
Outside of Special Forces, the US military has been turned into a giant welfare scam. But even that would be FAR better than a crap job with no future when even basic living expenses are prohibitive.
The taxpayer revenue stream has been the only source of “profit” for an eon. (Public jobs expansion since 1960, and “privatization”; past War Department budgets). But as white men are the sole demographic to generate a tax surplus before leaving this life, that, too, is on the way out.
Your mind is the whetstone.
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Today
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