What can someone do to find work while choosing to live the "van life"?
I've been doing some reading and research on "van life" lately where people choose to make a specialized van their permanent dwelling. What are some ways that one could find work to support this lifestyle on a continuous basis? Is there a best practice when it comes to working and earning on the road?
Answers ( 1 )
The best jobs are full time ones that you can do onlinr: virtual assistants, copy writers, customer service, temote IT help desk, coding, any job that be done entirely over the internet. To work remotely you’ll need a good computer with a service/replacement plan, data backup, reliable internet service plus the knowledge that such service can fade out on some of the roads or in more remote areas. You’ll need a better cell phone with good coverage and possibly a backup phone.
You can look for supplemental work while on the road, but it is extremely unlikely to provide enough income to deal with unexpected expenses. Rolling into town and tending bar or picking up odd jobs isn’t going to allow you to deal with serious expenses unless you have a sizable nest egg in savings. In this case your on-road earnings will only need to cover gas, food and necessities, with you drawing on that big lump sum for bigger expenses. A lot of bars and restaurants aren’t fond of going through the hassle of hiring someone who is only going to work for them for a short period of time.
While van life is less expensive than traditional living, there are unexpected significant expenses that you simply can not escape entirely from. The bohemian lifestyle appeals to very young people largely because they underestimate the problems than waylay people in life and the expenses that come with them.
As a magician with decades of experience who can face paint, make balloon sculpture s and juggle a little, I could do busking on the street in many places and make a surprising amount of money in the right towns having found the right spots. Of course I’d still be competing with other established street performers in those areas and trying not to step on the toes of locals. Many places require licenses to perform on the street and pass the hat, and dodging the police can cut shows short and take a big bite out of the day’s earnings.
I could also canvass every bar and restaurant in a tourist-centric town for opportunities to perform doing table hopping. Between several of these gigs and busking in between, I could earn a thousand dollars or more per week and pick up an occasional private show. I wouldn’t want to rely on it but I could do it if I had to.
Illness.
Three million people are injured in car accidents in the US every year. The United States has a shamefully ineffective and overly expensive healthcare system. You can easily fall ill or have an accident that racks up very large hospital bills. Insurance can cover some of these bills, but good health coverage is difficult without a regular job. Much current health insurance requires care by doctors and facilities that are within your network, complicating finding care that is covered in emergency situations. A regular employer may provide sick days, although worker’s comp isn’t going to apply with you choosing to gallivant all over the country without it being a job requirement.
Vehicle Insurance
Your rates are going to be higher than someone who drives to work 20 minutes every day. You can be dishonest but you risk having coverage canceled or denied if you claim that a vehicle is for work and shipping but your accidents always happen 1,000 miles from your supposed home address. Since your vehicle is now your primary possession, it needs full coverage which is more expensive than partial coverage. If your vehicle is stolen or vandalized, your home has been trashed, unless you are going to be staying in inexpensive hotel rooms and living more of a road dog/traveling salesperson lifestyle than the free spirit who is living in a home with wheels.
Vehicle Repairs
If you are driving a lot, the wear and tear on your vehicle is going to happen faster and will strand you in places at times. Shocks, struts and transmissions are going to fail quicker and have significant price tags attached. You’ll want more frequent oil changes with a better grade of high mileage synthetic oil, you’ll want your engine coolant flushed and refilled more frequently, as well as your transmission fluid. When my tires need replacing I kiss $1,200 goodbye.
A Permanent Address
Numerous official documents require current and permanent addresses. If you are going to be traveling full time without the expense of owning or renting a home, you still need an address for a driver’s license, insurance, and other things. You may be able to use the address of a relative and pay them one dollar a month rent to make it arguably legal. Full time RVers generally have large and expensive coaches. I could practically park my 26 foot RV inside the rockstar buses owned by some people that I know! Motorcoach Fulltimers generally have a network of campgrounds that they rotate amongst throughout the year and have their mail forwarded there. Snail mail is not entirely dead quite yet. They may have a costly membership to private campground a which guarantee them a spot so long as they reserve them. These are generally retired people with the financial resources to sell their homes and use their motor coaches as a home. Transmission fluid must be flushed and replace d more often than other drivers because of the mileage incurred and to forestall the outrageous expense of transmission work. When your vehicle is in the shop for several days, you’ll have to transfer your belongings to a motel/hotel.
You’ll likely find life more manageable if you take on some of the practices of RV Fulltimers and choose our or more areas to live in per year, rotating to the places with the most favorable weather at that time of year. If you are going to attempt the risky practice of scraping up local work, you’re most likely to be successful picking popular tourist spots and living on them during their busy seasons. You’ll want to stay in warmer climates during the winter. My RV has a queen size bed, a full suze bed, generator, furnace, AC, bathroom, shower, microwave, fridge, dining area, TV, oven and a slide out to provide more interior space. I can dry camp in all sorts of places including in snow, but I vastly prefer a campground with 40 amp electrical service and a water hookup. Staying in a converted van is much, much, much more challenging.
Legal Expenses
If you are involved in a vehicle accident, inadvertently break a law somewhere, are mugged, or are just one of the too frequently entirely innocent people in the wrong place at the wrong time and are arrested for a crime that they didn’t commit, you might require legal services.
Being a nomadic Deadhead/hippie sounds romantic, but unless you are a very young person who is relying on their parents to come racing to their rescue and ball them out of trouble when the fertilizer hits the fan, alternative on-road life has to be carefully managed and planned in order to be executed in a reasonable and responsible way.