Interesting. Any more details here? I get that there are remote working opportunities but it would be tough to get mail and forms without an address. What do you do about healthcare?
Yeah, without some sort of income, living in a van and traveling isn’t really doable (or I would do it).
It’s actually somewhat irritating with early retirement/off-the-grid types, because a lot of them actually make a shitload of money off of their blogs.
There is a fairly famous early retirement advocate/guru, for example, Mr. Money Moustache (yes, I know). Turns out, his “thin living life” has actually been bringing in around $400,000 a year from blog/website revenue for years.
Now before you say that’s just sour grapes, I have no problem with people making money. I do think there is some conflict with making money off of a message that is about how you can retire early with very little money and no real income source.
I mean, that’s a time honored tradition tho. The real secret to success from get-rich-quick books is to write a get-rich-quick book.
Yes. But again, those at least appeal to a sense of greed, and suggest that everyone should want easy money.
This is particularly insidious, because the siren call is essentially “You can retire on a lot less, you don’t really need money coming in if you manage things well.”
Meanwhile, the person is bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from that message.
It seems even more disingenuous somehow.
I like the idea of the tiny, mobile lifestyle, but I think a van is too small for anything long-term for us and pooping in the woods just doesn’t appeal. Our plan is to sell the house and just enjoy short-term or 12-month rental apartments in different areas.
I’ve read mr. Money mustache’s blog. To be fair to him, when he started it was just some random Internet guy posting stuff. It definitely took off though. But I don’t believe he claims that no money is made from the blog and I vaguely recall that he was going to donate the proceeds from it to charity. I don’t know the exact truth about that though.
Also I believe his family spending is on the order of $25,000 per year so regardless as to how much he makes off the blog, he doesn’t actually need it to have the kind of lifestyle he espouses.
That is not the case. He has (I understand, I have not personally verified it) admitted that his lifestyle has definitely expanded significantly because of his additional wealth.
It just a different angle on the same old schtick. A bottom feeder is a bottom feeder. They both prey on the same demographic.
Well, maybe. It’s more akin to selling mining equipment during a gold rush. The self-help industry has some pathologies that are … unavoidable, is perhaps the best word?
I sort of feel the same way about The Minimalists. I get their message, and it’s a good one, but they have the whole “we quit our corporate jobs to lead a simpler life” but they are still making money… somehow? I like Minimalism and it has helped me ask if I “really” need something. But their message gets old. I gave up listening to the podcast because they have pretty much the same answers to questions.
Back to the matter at hand, I think it is possible to make a living as a digital nomad. Freelance coders and the like seem to be the most successful.
The Outline just had a great article on this. Basically, lots of the self-help frugality gurus retiring at age 35 are playing with substantially weighted dice.
That’s a really good article, and covers a lot of my concerns about this. But I think it centers a little more around Millennial than it needs to. As a Gen Xer, I see my friends struggling in the same way.
That’s the thing with the “early retirement/financial independence” movement. They always play some big song and dance about being hyper-frugal, shitting in buckets and collecting rainwater.
But when you look at who they are, they are almost always software engineers, investment bankers, large law firm attorneys, etc. who have been making staggering amounts of money for a long time.
And our puritan American work ethic always seems to want to punish people by making them feel guilty for having some enjoyment in life. The reality is, saving $1,000 a year by cutting out Starbucks is a good idea, but it’s not what’s keeping you from “making it.” What’s keeping you from “making it” is that you and your wife don’t each make $250k a year working at Google.
Ha, I mean I laughed but yeah, you’ve got a point. Also with our fucked up healthcare and insurance system all it takes is one catastrophic health emergency and you’re wiped out. It’s all a roll of the dice.
Well, if you save $1k/year skipping mocha lattes and avocado toast starting at age 21 and put that in a no-load low-cost index fund, you’d be in a substantially better position at age 40. Can’t retire off it certainly, but compound investing is a powerful thing. Invest early is always great advice, but it’s impossible to do that when you have $80k in student debt and are making $35k/year driving an Uber or whatever.
Your “substantially better” for that 20 years of savings would still be equal to roughly 1/4 of a single year’s income of that Google engineer.
So you can ignore Starbucks (or some other small enjoyment that makes your life not so miserable as you drive your commute to the $15 an hour cubicle job processing insurance paperwork that destroys your soul), and after 20 years of depriving yourself of one of the small things that keeps you from tasting gunmetal, you can have saved as much as a Google engineer who decided as a lark for a single year to “only” live off of $125,000 that year and just save what he had left from his income for that single year.
Except 20 years from now, the Google Engineer will be making like $500,000 a year, so your 20 years of savings will at that time basically be the pocket change that rolls out of his pockets when he drops trow to take a dump in the company’s golden toilet one afternoon.
We chastise people for spending, and people certainly do make dumb decisions, like the obsessive need I’ve seen of people to purchase $60,000 pickup trucks that they then drive around town. But saving nickels here and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to the stupifying value of simply having high annual income.
The problem is, we seem to have an industry of making people who make a pittance feel badly because god forbid they enjoy a store bought coffee, instead of recognizing the reality of wealth and income disparity in this country. They could retire, if only they stopped drinking Starbucks and eating their avocado toast. But that’s just not the problem. It’s really not the issue.
And I’m a conservative, for god’s sake. (Well, I used to be. This kind of stuff is making me rethink that pretty heavily over the years.)
Err, yeah. It’s better to just make more money in the first place. Don’t think anyone would argue against that.
Tiny houses, converted vans – it’s all just a new twist on trailer living. It looks like you can get a used single-wide for $10-$25k. Get one of those, drink nothing but water and eat lunchmeat sandwiches on cheap white bread and enjoy the millions you will save over the next 50 years!
Hey man, singlewides are up to 1300 square feet, which is considerably larger than my NYC apartment which cost, lets say, somewhat more than $25k and has had women say “OMG it’s huge!” when they walk in the doorway.
The apartment, not my crotchal area, but like, that too.