Monday, October 29, 2012

Living in Your Car

So I did my "get rid of your stuff" video and several of the comments were people talking about living in their cars.  I figured today there must be some kind of sub-culture where people do live in their cars and probably have made an art of it, and BAAM!!!  What do you know?



The idea of living out of your car intrigues me on several levels.

One, with all the hiking, adventuring and mountain climbing I do, it inevitable that I would have to sleep in my car at times.  Additionally, if you can avoid paying for hotels, you can take what would be a mere week long vacation and turn it into a two week vacation with the money you save.  It wasn't until quite recently anyway that I allowed myself to sleep in hotels.  I would either push onto my destination staying awake the extra 8 hours and saving $70 or I would find a wayside, get 4 hours sleep and finish the trip.  Regardless, it was interesting to see my experiences taught me most of what he presents in his video/blog.

Two, if the SHTF living in a vehicle I believe is going to be the default option for a lot of people.  Myself and most of us here i believe have the mental fortitude to do that, but I wonder how many preppy suburbanites who rely on their daily Starbucks would have a mental break down.  Oh, and no nesting in the car.

Three, in my pursuit and obsession with minimalism, I am intrigued by the savings power of living in a vehicle.  STick with me here.  How long would you have to live in a car, essentially rent free, to save up enough money to just pay for a house?  Or heck, pay for college.  Assume $750 a month and that's about 15 years for a $150,000 house.  Not likely to do that, but it is possible.  Additionally, consider the freedom.  With no mortgage or rent to pay, your living expenses are just food, gas, and toiletries.   If you can make some kind of income off of the internet, then you can pretty much just drive where ever you want making "homeless" a term of freedom, not a societal class.

Four, I was going to say the one drawback of this would be it would kill your love life, but after thinking about it I'm not even sure about that.  How many loser musicians do you know that mooch off of girlfriend after girlfriend?  You're not playing "Dirk Winthrop Investment Banker" game, but poor starving, impoverished loser man game.  Certainly better than being a nice, reliable guy.

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