It has been awhile since I posted, but here goes with a brief update. I have been working with Dad on a house for the last two weeks. We are getting everything packed and ready to haul to the ranch. After discussing it with Mom and Dad it was decided that we will stay with them for a bit and I can help Dad with some work he has had come up, and he can help us build our bus into a comfortable living space. Sy will help Mom around the ranch while I'm working with Dad. In our spare time we will finish sorting our belongings and putting some in storage in our shed at the ranch. Some is going with us, and some we will sell along the way.
Right now we are just trying to get it packed so that we can get it out of this house. Dad is bringing a stock trailer and I think with that and the bus and the van, we can get just about everything out of the house in this next week. Sy took a van load down this past week and baby sat the horses and dogs while Mom took a friend to Amarillo for medical stuff.
I took the bus to have an emissions test and be weighed on Monday. It has passed emissions and can now be licensed. Our insurance company is going to drop coverage on the bus in February because the underwriting dept will not cover it. So I will be shopping our insurance around very soon.
I need to get back to packing. For the near future, I will probably update this blog about once a week. In a couple of months, When we hit the road for real, I will update more often on our adventures in Nomadism. We want to get to Phoenix and San Antonio in the Spring before it gets too hot to be tolerable. Please keep checking back or subscribe for updates. Thanks for reading.
Showing posts with label Nomadic Lifestyle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nomadic Lifestyle. Show all posts
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
The First Steps to Location Independent
We are now a few days into our decision to transition to location independent living. We went into high gear trying to find a suitable ride. We have looked at several motor homes, and even made an offer on one yesterday. The gentleman wasn't apparently as motivated of a seller as I thought him to be. We are fine with that though as we have been considering the bus/conversion option as well. If I had the money we would love to be cruising around in an older Wanderlodge by Bluebird.
As it stands, we are now looking at purchasing a school or church bus and roughing it while we build our own custom coach as we go. We are both internet savvy, and Craigslist has tons of treasures if one has the time and patience to find them. I was surprised that it was Sy pushing me for this option. She has been camping only a few times and we roughed it in a tent for a couple of nights at a time. I was the one being a whiner about not having a bed and a shower, the guy who lived on the streets of Colorado Springs for a year as a 19 something.
We are going to look at a Partridge familyish church bus tomorrow. It is well within our price range and the lady has already volunteered that she is willing to negotiate on the price. There is a glut of retired school buses on the market in our price range. We are thinking that we will build as we go along. We will start with the most basic necessities such as a composting toilet, and a generator, and water storage and disposal. Our camping setup will need to be upgraded just a bit to accommodate everyday cooking use.
We are already working on a rough floor plan so we have an idea of what we will need to acquire to convert said bus to a nice RV. We will eventually be completely solar powered. We are playing with the idea of a gravity fed water system. By using a composting toilet, we will not need to have or clean a black water tank. Our gray water can be used to water a lawn. Down the road we will spend the money to convert the diesel to run on used vegetable oil. It runs a couple of grand for that conversion, but will save bazillions over the life of the vehicle with the added benefit of a much lower environmental footprint.
After much consideration we decided a bus is a better built and safer vehicle than most motor homes. We can build it to suit us. We are excited and scared at the same time. It is going to be a great adventure, and we can't wait.
As it stands, we are now looking at purchasing a school or church bus and roughing it while we build our own custom coach as we go. We are both internet savvy, and Craigslist has tons of treasures if one has the time and patience to find them. I was surprised that it was Sy pushing me for this option. She has been camping only a few times and we roughed it in a tent for a couple of nights at a time. I was the one being a whiner about not having a bed and a shower, the guy who lived on the streets of Colorado Springs for a year as a 19 something.
We are going to look at a Partridge familyish church bus tomorrow. It is well within our price range and the lady has already volunteered that she is willing to negotiate on the price. There is a glut of retired school buses on the market in our price range. We are thinking that we will build as we go along. We will start with the most basic necessities such as a composting toilet, and a generator, and water storage and disposal. Our camping setup will need to be upgraded just a bit to accommodate everyday cooking use.
We are already working on a rough floor plan so we have an idea of what we will need to acquire to convert said bus to a nice RV. We will eventually be completely solar powered. We are playing with the idea of a gravity fed water system. By using a composting toilet, we will not need to have or clean a black water tank. Our gray water can be used to water a lawn. Down the road we will spend the money to convert the diesel to run on used vegetable oil. It runs a couple of grand for that conversion, but will save bazillions over the life of the vehicle with the added benefit of a much lower environmental footprint.
After much consideration we decided a bus is a better built and safer vehicle than most motor homes. We can build it to suit us. We are excited and scared at the same time. It is going to be a great adventure, and we can't wait.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
The Choice is Made
Sy and I have made the decision to go nomadic. We were leaning yesterday. We continued talking ourselves into it today. We are going to look at a nice motor home tomorrow. It is taking a new set of eyes to determine how to proceed. Everything will be a new challenge for awhile as we transition.
We can take a limited amount of stuff on the road with us including our tools to make our living. We have already sold and given away a ton of crap this year. We are now going through the process of trying to guess what we will want to keep in storage for future use when we find our five acres of paradise, and what gets liquidated. The prospect of having the freedom to wake up anywhere we want is actually a little overwhelming. We are already making a list of places to visit. This list includes natural wonders and restaurants alike. We have figured out that our biggest challenge will be downsizing our kitchen. We are both foodies who love to create new dishes. We now get to challenge our skills with much less space for cooking and resources. Our four cats will be re-homed, but we are taking both dogs with us and have to consider space for their food and such.
We are looking forward to eating at local restaurants and finding food at local farmers markets from different areas of the country. We look forward to seeing family that we haven't been able to see often. I will be writing about our experiences along the way. Someday they will be one set of tales out of many from this "great recession." I hope folks will follow along as we take this crazy adventure into location independent living.
We can take a limited amount of stuff on the road with us including our tools to make our living. We have already sold and given away a ton of crap this year. We are now going through the process of trying to guess what we will want to keep in storage for future use when we find our five acres of paradise, and what gets liquidated. The prospect of having the freedom to wake up anywhere we want is actually a little overwhelming. We are already making a list of places to visit. This list includes natural wonders and restaurants alike. We have figured out that our biggest challenge will be downsizing our kitchen. We are both foodies who love to create new dishes. We now get to challenge our skills with much less space for cooking and resources. Our four cats will be re-homed, but we are taking both dogs with us and have to consider space for their food and such.
We are looking forward to eating at local restaurants and finding food at local farmers markets from different areas of the country. We look forward to seeing family that we haven't been able to see often. I will be writing about our experiences along the way. Someday they will be one set of tales out of many from this "great recession." I hope folks will follow along as we take this crazy adventure into location independent living.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
The Road Less Traveled
There come times in our lives where we are presented extraordinary choices and opportunities. Sy and I are at a point in our lives where we have the opportunity to really evaluate a number of different directions for our lives to take. While we have discussed many ideas over the decade we have been together, we really didn't expect to be in the position we are currently in.
We are knee-deep in the foreclosure dance with Bank of America. We have a small business which is paid for other than monthly expenses. Unfortunately, we started a business that in my industry slows down when the cold comes. We have minimized our household bills as much as possible for our acceptable standard of living, and we continue to be behind on our bills. We are better off than a large majority of Americans who are still struggling with significant debt. Our only debt is our mortgage and we had one of those mortgages that is in the news right now. We should not have qualified, and we struggled to pay it consistently the entire time we have lived here.
We are now faced with the question: Where do we go from here. As I stated earlier, we have discussed where we want to head in life, what our dream house will look like when we build it, how we want to live our lives. We both see a huge economic storm still lingering over the United States for the next several years. We are prepared to use our various skills and trades to make a living. We seek a simple life without the corrosion of the rat race. Our long-term dream is to someday buy a small piece of rural property somewhere and build a sustainable, eco-friendly hobbit hole that is off the grid. We ultimately seek to be self supporting in raising our own food and ply our crafts and trades for whatever else we may need. That being said, we are not quite in a position to do that just yet. We have discussed two basic plans with various options.
I will start with the more traditional plan. That is, we find a place to rent that we can afford. We are looking at studio and one bedroom apartments. They are fairly inexpensive and I have found that in the current housing crisis, more rental properties are pet friendly than I remember from past renting experiences. Our overhead would be fairly low. Some of our options for this plan revolve around auto glass repair. We can rent and stay in Colorado Springs, one of the most competitive auto glass repair and replacement markets in the world, or we can move to a smaller town and ply our trade in a rural area to make a living. There is very little competition, but some costs of business are higher. The one foreseeable difficulty with the rent plan is that we are still beholden to pay somebody else for our shelter each month. If business is bad, or we get sick, things can end badly, with us not prepared to move on. Landlords have been known to go into foreclosure as well, leaving tenants high and dry.
The second "less traditional" option we have been discussing is to live location independent. I put less traditional in quotes here because it is actually the way most of humanity has lived at one time and 30 to 40 million still do. I am talking about a neo-nomadic lifestyle. The idea is that we downsize our possessions and buy an RV or coach to live in. Living Location Independent, is not the same as homeless. It means we live in a house we can drive down the road when we feel like moving. The one positive thing I will probably ever say about Wal-Mart is that they are friendly to those who live in RV's and will generally let them park overnight in their parking lots. We can also park at truck stops and in national parks and forests. One great advantage to this plan is that we can visit family and friends that live in places we generally weren't able to afford to visit. With the ability to set up any where and do rock chip repairs and sell our craft goods, we only need to make enough to meet our low fuel and food overhead, and pay for our cell and mobile internet service. This lifestyle is more common than many think. The term snowbird applies to those who live in the northern climes in summer and then migrate to places like Arizona and Florida in the winter time. There are many Technomads, who travel around as consultants and freelance software developers. There are many who write for a living or sell their photography online. They may build websites or set up networks. Often they barter for what they need. Many Technomads travel the world this way.
Sy and I have been through hours of discussion about this and we are both in favor of the location independent path. With the advent of the internet and cell phone technology, it is easier than ever to be a nomad and still stay in touch with family and friends. With the lower cost of living a nomadic lifestyle, we would be able to put away for our future plans. If we do this we know that we are giving up a certain level of comfort, but we are prepared for this. With the looming economic and social problems piling up in this country, we almost feel as if we can weather the storm better if we have a shelter we own and can move if we need to make our ends meet. We are both struggling to overcome the modern American consumerist mindset, or the idea that home ownership and possessions are what's best for us. It is deeply ingrained, and as one goes through the foreclosure process, allows for depression and anger to manifest because of feelings of failure. It doesn't matter that the system and our mortgage was designed to fail so that Wall Street speculators could rake in billions. It has been a long arduous process of breaking free from the failure mindset and setting out to determine our next best course. We have done a lot of research and as I said are in favor of location independent living. As we have been doing for a few years now, we will make sustainability and eco-consciousness a focus in our lives.
We ask readers of this blog to share any thoughts you may have about location independent living in the comments.
We are knee-deep in the foreclosure dance with Bank of America. We have a small business which is paid for other than monthly expenses. Unfortunately, we started a business that in my industry slows down when the cold comes. We have minimized our household bills as much as possible for our acceptable standard of living, and we continue to be behind on our bills. We are better off than a large majority of Americans who are still struggling with significant debt. Our only debt is our mortgage and we had one of those mortgages that is in the news right now. We should not have qualified, and we struggled to pay it consistently the entire time we have lived here.
We are now faced with the question: Where do we go from here. As I stated earlier, we have discussed where we want to head in life, what our dream house will look like when we build it, how we want to live our lives. We both see a huge economic storm still lingering over the United States for the next several years. We are prepared to use our various skills and trades to make a living. We seek a simple life without the corrosion of the rat race. Our long-term dream is to someday buy a small piece of rural property somewhere and build a sustainable, eco-friendly hobbit hole that is off the grid. We ultimately seek to be self supporting in raising our own food and ply our crafts and trades for whatever else we may need. That being said, we are not quite in a position to do that just yet. We have discussed two basic plans with various options.
I will start with the more traditional plan. That is, we find a place to rent that we can afford. We are looking at studio and one bedroom apartments. They are fairly inexpensive and I have found that in the current housing crisis, more rental properties are pet friendly than I remember from past renting experiences. Our overhead would be fairly low. Some of our options for this plan revolve around auto glass repair. We can rent and stay in Colorado Springs, one of the most competitive auto glass repair and replacement markets in the world, or we can move to a smaller town and ply our trade in a rural area to make a living. There is very little competition, but some costs of business are higher. The one foreseeable difficulty with the rent plan is that we are still beholden to pay somebody else for our shelter each month. If business is bad, or we get sick, things can end badly, with us not prepared to move on. Landlords have been known to go into foreclosure as well, leaving tenants high and dry.
The second "less traditional" option we have been discussing is to live location independent. I put less traditional in quotes here because it is actually the way most of humanity has lived at one time and 30 to 40 million still do. I am talking about a neo-nomadic lifestyle. The idea is that we downsize our possessions and buy an RV or coach to live in. Living Location Independent, is not the same as homeless. It means we live in a house we can drive down the road when we feel like moving. The one positive thing I will probably ever say about Wal-Mart is that they are friendly to those who live in RV's and will generally let them park overnight in their parking lots. We can also park at truck stops and in national parks and forests. One great advantage to this plan is that we can visit family and friends that live in places we generally weren't able to afford to visit. With the ability to set up any where and do rock chip repairs and sell our craft goods, we only need to make enough to meet our low fuel and food overhead, and pay for our cell and mobile internet service. This lifestyle is more common than many think. The term snowbird applies to those who live in the northern climes in summer and then migrate to places like Arizona and Florida in the winter time. There are many Technomads, who travel around as consultants and freelance software developers. There are many who write for a living or sell their photography online. They may build websites or set up networks. Often they barter for what they need. Many Technomads travel the world this way.
Sy and I have been through hours of discussion about this and we are both in favor of the location independent path. With the advent of the internet and cell phone technology, it is easier than ever to be a nomad and still stay in touch with family and friends. With the lower cost of living a nomadic lifestyle, we would be able to put away for our future plans. If we do this we know that we are giving up a certain level of comfort, but we are prepared for this. With the looming economic and social problems piling up in this country, we almost feel as if we can weather the storm better if we have a shelter we own and can move if we need to make our ends meet. We are both struggling to overcome the modern American consumerist mindset, or the idea that home ownership and possessions are what's best for us. It is deeply ingrained, and as one goes through the foreclosure process, allows for depression and anger to manifest because of feelings of failure. It doesn't matter that the system and our mortgage was designed to fail so that Wall Street speculators could rake in billions. It has been a long arduous process of breaking free from the failure mindset and setting out to determine our next best course. We have done a lot of research and as I said are in favor of location independent living. As we have been doing for a few years now, we will make sustainability and eco-consciousness a focus in our lives.
We ask readers of this blog to share any thoughts you may have about location independent living in the comments.
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