60: How Much Does Van Life Cost? Real Life Examples and Money Saving Tips

Are you ready to save money and live the van life?  In this week's episode, I'll share my personal budget for life on the road, as well as some money-saving hacks I've discovered along the way.

Of course, expenses for nomadic living can vary greatly depending on your lifestyle, just as they can in any living situation.  But the beauty of van life is how flexible and customizable it is.  And you have the significant advantage of saving money on rent or mortgage!

Van life is not one-size-fits-all; the cost of thi can be tailored according to your choice of van, driving habits, and camping style, among other factors.  But the expenses don't stop at the van. We'll also tackle the costs of groceries, health insurance, internet and cell phone service, and how you can optimize these for your life on the road.

Whether you're a seasoned road tripper or considering van life for the first time, I promise this episode is brimming with useful tips and insights to help you save money while living a life of freedom and adventure.


Learn how to navigate van life with my Van Life Prep Pack that includes essential tools such as expense and income trackers, worksheet for choosing, financing and repairing a van, build cost and insurance tracker, and more!

Van Life Prep Pack

Other resources mentioned in this episode:
Upside
Gas Buddy App
$5 Meal Plans
Harvest Hosts
The Wayward Home Podcast - Van Life WiFi
Visible Wireless Review
Guide to Health Insurance for Full Time RVers
The Wayward Home Facebook Group

Check out the full episode blog post here: https://www.thewaywardhome.com/episode60/

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:00

So back in 2015, I started living in a Toyota Prius. I was working as a news reporter for KGO Radio at the time in San Francisco, and I had met Tom, who is now my boyfriend, and he decided to live in a Prius to save money on rent. So you might be wondering how much does van life cost? How much savings are you really going to have by living in a van? So I know this varies a great deal, but I just wanted to touch on this in an episode of the Wayward Home podcast. So if you're deciding whether or not to live in a van, you can get a general idea of how much van life costs. I'm also going to share some tips and ideas for saving money on the road. Let's go Welcome to the Wayward Home podcast. All about van life, boat life and nomadic living. We'll bring you tips, interviews and stories from the road and on the water. Now here's your host, Kristen Haynes. Hey there, I'm Kristen Haynes with thewaywardhomecom and I spend half the year in my camper van and half on my sailboat in Mexico and I hope to inspire you to live nomadically too. So you might be wondering just how much van life costs, or, if you're already living in a van. You might be wondering how much other people spend on van life and how you can make some changes to save money on your lifestyle. So the truth is about this issue is it varies so much on type of van, on how much you drive, whether you stay in campgrounds, what your eating habits are Everyone really has a different baseline of how much van life costs. So I know the answer it varies is not really all that helpful when you're planning on living the van life. So I wanted to give you some specific examples from my life that you can use and you can assess, like how you can either save money and spend way less than I do on certain things, or just what to expect from this lifestyle. Through my life on the road, I've also accrued some money saving tips that I wanted to share with you, and I'll be referencing these throughout the podcast and any links I say you'll be able to find below in the show notes. So don't worry, if you are listening right now while you're driving or doing something else, you don't have to stop and write down all these links. They are below in the show notes and you'll find links to everything I'm talking about in this episode.

Speaker 0: 2:00

But before we get started on this episode, I just wanted to tell you about my complete van life prep pack. I designed this PDF to help you start getting ready for van life and to plan your adventures. It includes downsizing checklists, worksheets to help you choose, finance and repair a van, a list of places to sleep in your camper van, a calendar for staying organized and even more. But what's really cool about this van life prep pack is the three bonuses that I have included. One of those is a meal plan where you'll get 15 meal ideas for van life, because I know figuring out what you're going to eat can be kind of complicated. But you're also going to get a van life expense and income tracker where you can track down all your expenses and incomes. You can see exactly what you are spending with life on the road. The third bonus is you'll get a van life build cost and insurance tracker. If you are building out your own van, then you'll want to keep track of everything you put in your van so that you can give the insurance company the correct amount they should insure your van for. They'll also want to see your receipts and what kinds of components you've added to your van. So that tracker is also included if you purchase the van life prep pack. So I have included a link to the van life prep pack in the show notes. Or, if you want to go there right now, go to thewaywardhomecom forward slash prep pack. So let's get into it and talk about just how much van life costs. So your biggest expense will be your camper van that the big sum of money upfront and that's going to be something you'll need to budget for or figure out exactly how you will finance that.

Speaker 0: 3:29

Now I'm someone who recommends that you choose a van you can afford. I'm not super important to me. My very first van was a Chevy Astro van A 1994 Chevy Astro with only 57,000 miles on it. I got a great deal, but I was able to pay for that van in cash and we lived out of that for several years as I worked on building my business and creating a savings account. I really recommend that you do buy something you can't afford so you're not going into a lot of debt that you cannot pay off just to live van life. So the first van was really cheap and then I worked for many years saving money and later, in 2021, I purchased the van I am sitting in now, which is a 2021 4x4 Sprinter van.

Speaker 0: 4:08

This van right out of the chute with all the bells and whistles and the four-wheel drive was $65,000 out of the dealership. Now this is an empty cargo van, totally not build out, and that's a pretty big sum of money. Now I put a large down payment on the van and I chose to take out a payment plan because I need to improve my credit score. I don't have a lot of long-term loans to show on my credit because I choose to typically pay stuff in cash and I don't have a mortgage. I no longer pay rent. So I chose to take out a loan on this van in order to build up my credit score. But I know that if I have to, I can pay off this van, and that's what I'm trying to say about choosing a van you can afford. If you have to pay it off, do you have the cash to do so? So anyway.

Speaker 0: 4:51

So, as you can see, there was a huge difference between my first two vans, with the one being $6,000, this one being $65,000 out of the dealership, and then we still had to build it out. So another huge expense is building out a van. I was lucky in that I am a blogger over at the Wayward Home and so some companies did give me some items to put in my van. I do have to include those as income on my taxes, so it's not a complete free ride, but it really does help cut down the costs of van build expenses, for example, the bed in my van and the flair space flares those are typically worth around maybe $5,000, and flair space did give me those components in order to install in the van and write about them. So that was very lucky for me. But there were plenty of things in this van that I did have to pay for, including the wood paneling and including the flooring that we use, which I did get a discount on from Campervan HQ, but I did pay for that and all the rack systems and exterior gear on the Campervan. I'd say when it's all said and done, the bill for building out this Campervan was probably around $30,000, so that was pretty expensive.

Speaker 0: 5:58

You can do it more cheaply than that, depending on which materials and supplies you're doing. You can go very basic with a Campervan build. I know if you're doing a small van like a minivan, there are minivan conversion kits that run just a few thousand dollars. So this can really run the gamut. And again, I would encourage you to only build out what you can afford in your van. If you want to save a lot of money, just purchase a van for you know $5,000 and put a kid in it, or build out a simple platform bed. There's many different ways to make your van build more affordable, and so that's just what I spent on both of my vans and building out the van. So hopefully you'll find some sort of happy medium or whatever works in your budget. So that will be your very first gigantic cost is buying and building out your Campervan.

Speaker 0: 6:44

One of the biggest expenses I found when living the van life is paying for fuel. Now, of course, that depends on how much fuel is, but over the last couple of years it's been pretty expensive, especially since we switched over to the Sprinter Van, which takes diesel, which tends to be more expensive In California. I believe it was last summer of 2022. I was seeing prices over $6 a gallon. Luckily, this year, in 2023, it's dropped quite a bit, but it still takes between $100 and $130 every time I want to fill up the Sprinter Van. So fuel can be a really large cost of van life, and of course this varies quite a bit depending on just how much you're driving, how much distance you want to put on your van or if you're staying put for many weeks at a time. Of course that'll drastically improve how much money you are spending on your fuel.

Speaker 0: 7:33

I'd say for us we spend between maybe $400 and $800 per month on fuel. That's because we tend to move around quite a bit Our summer months. We leave the sailboat in Mexico, then we drive through California to visit various family members, up to Oregon to visit family members, and a lot of that time is spent in the Columbia River Gorge, where we bounce between the gorge and Mount Hood, depending on the weather. So sometimes we're looking for various wind surfing spots or hikes in different places, and so we put a lot of miles on the van just looking for, you know, outdoor activities that we want to participate in, and also part of that is then driving to Portland to visit my family. So there you are looking at a lot of different legs of driving throughout the week, every single day we're basically driving, so sometimes we do stay put. For example, last year we boondocked outside Yuma for months, and so the fuel costs went way down when we were boondocking for many days at a time and not driving around quite a bit. So luckily that is a van life cost that can be changed depending on your financial situation and just how much money you want to spend on fuel.

Speaker 0: 8:39

What's pretty cool is there are a couple of apps I use in order to save money on fuel. One of those is called Upside, and you can find that in the show notes or I have a simple link which is thewaywardhomecom forward slash upside. So that app not only helps you save money on gas but also other things like groceries and restaurants. But when you sign into the app you can use it to find a gas station that's offering a discount. Usually that's anywhere between three cents and maybe up to 30 cents off each gallon of fuel. So I've used that quite a bit and I think I've gotten about $50 back using that app. I also use an app called Gas Buddy so I can look for the best diesel prices around me, and sometimes we'll stick it out and drive a little bit further in order to find a dollar off of the diesel price for the van. And also it depends on what state you're fueling up in. Like, if we're in California and we're heading to Arizona, we wait until we cross the border in order to get fuel, if we can, because fuel is way cheaper in Arizona. So it also depends on where you're traveling in the country. But I hope those two apps I mentioned Upside and Gas Buddy will help you save a little bit of money on fuel.

Speaker 0: 9:42

Another thing that we probably spend too much money on is food, and that includes groceries, eating out and alcohol, because I really like buying high quality food. I eat organic food whenever possible, and that is more expensive, and I buy products so I can do Asian cooking, and each time you buy a bottle of like oyster sauce, for example, or rice noodles, those are pretty expensive, and so I'd say that my eating habits and our eating habits generally are on the more expensive side, and it's kind of interesting that we end up spending this much money on groceries, because we do eat vegetarian most of the time. So all these groceries are vegetarian food. They do not include any meat products, but sometimes we do buy things like impossible burger or, you know, vegan sausages, and those are fairly expensive, probably along the same lines as meat products. So I'd say our grocery bill or our food bill is anywhere between $500 and $800 per month. Sometimes it's a little more if we throw more restaurants in. Sometimes it's less if we're in Mexico, and that's actually when we're on our sailboat, not in our van, but our grocery bill goes way down when we're in Mexico. So I know there are ways to save money on groceries, like you can shop at discount stores like all these or grocery outlet.

Speaker 0: 10:56

But for me I'm making a decent enough income that my main splurge in life is eating good food and drinking good alcohol. I particularly have a soft spot for craft beer and good wine and good cheese and good bread, even though I do bake some of my own sourdough bread, but that's mostly on the sailboat because I have no oven in the van. But food prices can really get very expensive for us, so that's one of our higher. So food prices and paying for fuel are probably our highest expenses when living the van life. So a couple more ways to save money on food besides shopping at discount grocery stores is to mostly cook your own meals and that's, you know, pretty much a given. But anytime you eat out in a restaurant it's just going to cost way more, especially if you're also ordering alcohol. But another thing you can do that I actually just re-signed up this very day while recording this podcast is the $5 meal plan. So it's just $5 a month and you'll get meal plans for every single day and a printable grocery list. So it pretty much plans out all your meals for you and it makes it way easier to you know, eat at home. I used to use the $5 meal plan many years ago and, frankly, I forgot about it until I was recording this podcast and I literally went and signed up right now. So you'll find that link below in the show notes if you want to try $5 meal plans in order to save money on food.

Speaker 0: 12:15

Another thing that can really get you while living the van life is campground fees. I'd say that this really varies with us depending on what time of year, where we're in the mood to stay, if we need a hot tub or not, so I'd say we typically spend between $50 and maybe up to $400 per month on camping. Now, just recently, when we got back from Europe, we just spent five weeks in Europe renting camper vans, which I'll talk about in future episodes but we stored our van in San Diego and then we spent two weeks on California's coastline camping at various beachfront campgrounds. Now those can really add up. The cheapest ones are probably $50 per night, but it goes up to $80 per night. And I did this because I wanted to be near the coast, tom wanted to get some surfing in and just felt so good to be near the ocean, walking on the beach, exploring the coastal town and I do want to write a blog post about beach campgrounds in California, so we spent more money than normal exploring some of those campgrounds in Southern California recently. But also we went out to the desert, to desert hot springs, and there's a particular RV park there that I really like, because it has tons of mineral pools, hot water pools that you can just soak in. They're fantastic, and it also has a gym, a laundromat and it's just a beautiful facility.

Speaker 0: 13:31

We're not people that typically stay in RV parks. They don't have a lot of privacy, they're just kind of, you know, everybody's too close together. But once in a blue moon we want to pamper ourselves with hot tubs, and so we went there and we got a great deal. It's usually $70 a night, but it was only 35 a night. They were running a two-for-one special and so we stayed there for a couple of nights. But otherwise we typically boondock and boondocking. If you don't know what that is, it's finding free campsites. So that's way out in the middle of nowhere on Federal Land, bureau of Land Management and National Forest Service. So we usually camp for free, but sometimes we do spoil ourselves and get campgrounds.

Speaker 0: 14:06

But if you're someone who really wants to stay in a campground all the time, you're going to see your monthly budget go way up Because there are more affordable campgrounds. You know $20 a night but they can get really expensive, and so you'll just have to figure out how often you want to stay in campgrounds and the price point. And the price point goes up depending on the amenities. Like the ones with the hot tubs and mineral pools, those tend to be a little more expensive. If you do want to stay in campgrounds or at various facilities and you want to save a little bit of money, I recommend you try signing up for Harvest Hosts. If you haven't heard of Harvest Hosts yet, this is a program where you pay a yearly fee and then you get unlimited stays at wineries, at farms, breweries, distilleries, even. You can pay a little extra and stay at golf courses and then you can use those amenities or shop in the store or go wine tasting and that's a really cool way to save money on camping. So if you want to check out Harvest Hosts, I put a link there in the show notes.

Speaker 0: 15:01

So vehicle maintenance fees are going to be another cost of living the van life and that also depends on what kind of vehicle you have, how old it is, what state of repair or disrepair it's in. So for us we do not have a lot of vehicle maintenance fees Right now. Our Sprinter Van is very new, only two years old, with about 30,000 miles, and I'm very lucky that Tom is, you know, a mechanic and he knows how to fix things and he does the oil changes on the Sprinter Van, which is fantastic. So all we do is go to the Mercedes dealership. We buy the Mercedes engine oil and that was about $300 recently, pretty expensive. But if you bring your Mercedes into the dealership and get its service there, the services can be up to $700. So that's one way we save money on maintenance. And he also rotates our tires and he conducts the maintenance on the Sprinter Van and he also conducts the maintenance on the Astro yes, I am very lucky. Recently the alternator crapped out in the Astro so we went to O'Reilly's Auto Parts, bought a $200 alternator and he put that in the Astro, where that would have been a lot more expensive if we had taken it to a shop. However, even when we did live in the Astro, it really held up pretty well. It was a 1994 Van but it really only required a few hundred dollars per year of maintenance. I think we got really lucky with that Van and so far, really lucky with the Sprinter Van, even though it is newer. But it really will depend on a lot of things if you need a lot of regular maintenance or not. You know, I do encourage you to get your oil changes and if you change out your filters and everything you need to do with this general maintenance. Also have an emergency fund in case something big breaks in your Van and you need to go stay in an Airbnb for a few days. It's important that you do have money set aside to deal with vehicle maintenance.

Speaker 0: 16:44

So internet and cell phone service is a really big deal for us and something that we pay a good amount for every month. For living the Van life. I operate a remote work business on the road, the waywardhomecom and also this podcast. So I need really good Wi-Fi in the camper van. So I have a Starlink and that runs $145 a month to use but provides really fast, high-speed internet that we can both use anywhere, both on the camper van and the sailboat. So that's fantastic.

Speaker 0: 17:13

I couldn't live without Starlink and both of us have phone plans through Visible and for phone plans these are actually really affordable. We do pay the higher price fee $45 per month which allows us to use the phones in Mexico because we spend half the year in Mexico. But Visible does offer a really cheap bare-bones plan. That's only $25. It has unlimited talk, text and data. So if you are on a budget and you're looking for a more affordable phone plan, you can get Visible at just $25 per month and that should just take care of all your internet needs, unless you are off-grid, which then you would need Starlink. So those are the two things that we do use for Wi-Fi in the van and that probably runs us between the Starlink and both of our phone plans, probably around a little under $250 per month. If you want to learn more about how I get Wi-Fi in the van, you can tune in to episode 49 of the Wayward Home Podcast and I'll add that link below in the show notes. And there's also an entire article I wrote on visible phone service and its pros and cons. I'll also link that in the show notes. So definitely, we do spend a decent amount of money per month on getting good Wi-Fi in our van.

Speaker 0: 18:20

We also pay for a RV storage space in Arizona and that runs $145 per month and we do pay for that because we have a utility trailer that stores all of our belongings. This is like a mobile storage unit. This not only has mementos personal mementos but also tools and machines that help us build out this camper van. Because we don't have a home, we don't have a garage, we have to do everything out in nature while boondocking. So in our utility trailer we have things like a generator that can run our tools. A band saw a variety of power tools and supplies for building out the van. And this storage space in Arizona where I'm recording this podcast right now actually also provides a space for our Astro or for the Sprinter Van. For example, if we want to take the Astro into Mexico, we can leave the Sprinter Van here. It's fenced in, it has a code to get in. It's a very secure facility, and so we can leave one van here and one utility trailer full of our belongings.

Speaker 0: 19:19

Now we have this instead of having a traditional storage unit, because I love that. It's movable. We can really just tow our storage unit anywhere in the country in order to access it. Right now, it makes sense for it to be in Arizona, but that's another expense that we have that you may or may not have, depending on if you're trying to store your belongings while you're living the van life. Now, storage units can really run the gamut, depending on what type of unit and where it's located, and so do your homework if you're mobile and you can go to a cheaper part of the country to store your stuff and do that. If you can get rid of everything and not have a storage unit, then that's definitely preferred. So whatever works for you, but that is part of our monthly van life budget.

Speaker 0: 19:59

So another thing that people are curious about is how we pay for health insurance. So I am a resident of South Dakota, but I have health insurance through Zion Health Share. This is not health insurance. This is a health sharing program. So how this works is that members contribute a certain monthly amount Mine happens to be $165, and then members cover each other's medical fees. So if someone has a major incident happened to them or they need a medical procedure, funds come out of this general fund which we're all contributing to monthly, and it covers that person. That's called health sharing. This is not health insurance and a lot of people aren't comfortable with that, but for me I rarely go to the doctor, I really don't need a lot of health care, and so I'm hoping that this would just cover major things that might happen. Knock on wood that it doesn't happen, but this is a safety net. It works all over the world, it's affordable and so I think it's fantastic. Now Tom has a free health care out of California. He's still a resident of California, but has his subsidized, which is fantastic. So if you are curious about health insurance I did write an in-depth blog post about it and if you are considering life on the road but not sure how to get health insurance, you'll definitely want to check out that article, which I'll link to in the show notes.

Speaker 0: 21:13

So those are basically all of our major expenses when it comes to living the van life. Of course we have smaller incidentals, like getting the flu shot or going to the pharmacy or buying clothes, but those do not make up a huge portion of our budget. I would say the fuel costs, the food costs, the campground, the initial cost of the van are all pretty larger sums of money. The rest are more affordable and things that can be dialed down if we needed to. For example, if we had a major loss of income, we could really dial down our monthly expenses by driving less and eating cheaper food. That's all it takes.

Speaker 0: 21:50

One thing I love about van life is just how customizable it is for your budget, and if you do compare it with paying a rent or paying a mortgage, it's really way cheaper. Sometimes I think about wow, we spent a lot of money this month because maybe we purchased some products for the van, or maybe we went and bought some clothes or purchased something for the bow or took a vacation or stayed in an RV park and expenses for that month seemed a little bit higher than normal. We remind ourselves that, yeah, but if we're living in an apartment, it would always be that much a month $2,000 to $3,000 or more, depending on what city we're living in and that, month after month, year after year, you know you're spending anywhere between $30,000 and $50,000 a year just for a place to live, and so when you look at it in that way, you can see just how much more affordable it is and customizable. Like I said, if there's a sudden income loss or if, suddenly, if you need to save money, you're able to pare down expenses. If you have an expensive van, you can always sell it to get a cheaper van. It's nice to have these assets that can be sold and that you can, you know, recoup some of the money you put into van life. So I think it's a really affordable way to live and I just love this way of living, that we can just go camp for free on these beautiful public land, which is something I'm very thankful for. So van life is definitely way more affordable than apartment living, and I hope this episode gave you some ideas on just how much it might cost you. And remember, you can download my van expense and income tracker if you do decide to purchase the van life prep pack as just one of the bonuses that comes with it If you already live in a van. I hope this episode gave you some ideas on how you can save money even more, because I think it's really fun to figure out new and interesting ways to save money.

Speaker 0: 23:36

Yes, I do like to spend my money on my food and groceries, because that's something I love in life. I know I could cut back and eat beans and rice and definitely I love beans and rice, but I also love buying those good products. But I also know that I could cut back on all that if need be, and so that gives me some peace of mind. But living in a van has allowed me to save up a tremendous amount of money. I just love that. I'm able to put money into my 401k every month. My I'm saving for retirement. I have savings, nest egg and emergency fund, and if you compare that back to what I was first talking about at the beginning of this episode, when I lived in that Toyota Prius, I had debt that I couldn't pay off for over 10 years. I did not have any savings. If you look at where I was back then and that was eight years ago to where I am now, with maxing out my 401k and having cash savings for emergencies, I'm in a much better place and I'm really thankful for van life for allowing me to get to that place.

Speaker 0: 24:34

So if you are thinking of living in a van to save money, I would say, go do it. You can always do it for a little while and if you hate it, then find somewhere cheaper in the country to settle. You can find a more affordable rent than what you're paying now. So hopefully you'll go out there, give it a try. If you have any questions, I'm always available. Head on over and join my Facebook group. That's at the wayward home on Facebook and I will put a link below so you can come over and join the group and we can chat over there and you can connect with me. So I hope you enjoyed this episode of the wayward home podcast and I'll see you next time.