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This seems like a romantically bohemian way to approximate a pampered middle class kid's idea of how poor people live. If you want to save money, you can try w

• tgrass 14y ago
  Patrick, he does write "it’s worth noting that we are talking about people that want to live in vans." I was a lower middle class kid with a lackluster middle class education and good manners so I was able to scrape by on $17K a year and "live" off my motorcycle and later out of my truck in between stints at a lodge in back country Alaska. It was privileged. Sure. And there were before the crash many of us doing it. None of us had any responsibilities. Why the disdain? No one ever claimed it was more than it was. There's a leisure class at both ends of the economic spectrum. For the most part, there were very few Trustafarians. We were middle class kids who wanted to climb/write novels/surf/snowboard/insert your interest here. We all sacrificed future income for those days. No need for disdain. We all make our own choices. [EDIT] Here's a current stream of a couple living the dream: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Drive-Nacho-Drive/218388858200902?fref=ts https://www.facebook.com/pages/Drive-Nacho-Drive/21838885820...
  • mturmon 14y ago
    Thanks for this counterpoint. I've met various beach bums, ski instructors, and summer resort waiters, from all social classes, who were taking a break in this way. Compare also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gap_year http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gap_year and the concept of a wanderjahr.
• GladHatter 14y ago
  I'm not sure if the allure is necessarily the bohemian way of feeling poor. I think much of it has to do with the minimalism of the experience. The ability to pack up and move on at a moments notice has 'starting over' feel to it, which can be quite nice. Kind of like refactoring crufty code.
  • enraged_camel 14y ago
    >>Kind of like refactoring crufty code. I think you mean "deleting code and starting from scratch". Refactoring code involves making changes to existing code in order to optimize it - I don't think it's analogous to packing up and moving on.
    • sukuriant 14y ago
      Refactoring code can also include making the code comply with "Don't Repeat Yourself", which would include removing a large amount of code and replacing it with references to a single function, etc. It also includes removing deleting dead code, another thing relateable to minimalism.
  • davidw 14y ago
    A guy I know recently bought a van, and you nailed it. It has nothing to do with patio11's comment, and everything to do with the 'minimalist' experience you describe. He says it's an experiment - maybe he'll get tired of it, but it's something he wanted to try, and has the cash to spend on it (the van was not cheap). I can't say I would be interested in that variety of experiment myself, but "to each his own".
• larrys 14y ago
  "is class disdain because I'm too well off to consider it or class disdain because when I wasn't well off we had too much pride to ever stoop to anything like that." Normally when you read stories about these outliers in life there is always a story behind it. I remember the case of the guy on the street corner who was discovered as having singing talent, made it to network news shows, was given some sort of leg up opportunity and then it turned out (iirc) that he was just some mentally ill guy and that's why he was living on street corners and homeless. In a quote in the OP there is this as one related example: "I didn’t waste time watching re-runs of Cheers for three hours on Netflix. I read a lot of books, I worked on my music more. When I lived in a house, I never really used my guitar because it was in another room. When I was in the RV, everything I owned was in the same room so I played my guitar a lot.”" So we have someone who didn't play his guitar because it was in another room. And someone who spent 3 hours per day watching a sitcom on netflix. And you wonder why he is living in a van? By the way, I located my personal laser printer in an outer office. That way each time I print something I have to getup to get the printout. I could easily put it next to my desk and only have to lift my hand. But I choose to do the extra work and get the nominal health benefits from getting off my ass as much as I can (which costs $0).
  • pemulis 14y ago
    So we have someone who didn't play his guitar because it was in another room. And someone who spent 3 hours per day watching a sitcom on netflix. And you wonder why he is living in a van? Watching Netflix for a few hours in a row and having an instrument you don't play as much as you should are incredibly common experiences. I don't know how you extrapolate that into some sort of mental illness or moral failure that leads to living in a van. I don't think he was literally too lazy to go to another room to play his guitar. It's just a way of saying that when you have a big house and a lot of stuff you can lose track of things you used to find important and fulfilling.
    • larrys 14y ago
      "I don't know how you extrapolate that into some sort of mental illness" Where did I say that he had a mental illness? Ask yourself this question. If you were on a job interview for a job where the employer was not desperate to fill that job with a "body", and you didn't have some super stupendous big deal advantage, or credentials, would you think that offering that anecdote reflected highly on you? Or do you think it portrays you a little like a slacker?
• tptacek 14y ago
  It is interesting also to note that the ability to lead any kind of normal or predictable life in this fashion is itself a privilege. People in the software business can get away with wearing the same clothes, coming in wrinkled, missing the occasional shower, and, for that matter, getting in a little later after having to move the van in the middle of the night. Our field is extremely accommodating. Put yourself in the shoes of a call-center worker (and if you want to be mean to the issue, make that call-center worker female). These jobs have dress codes. They're also aggressively monitored during the day and require attentiveness and a cordial demeanor. And obviously, a typical call-center worker cannot depend on the idea of taking off in the van for a month, driving to some other city, and having the same economic prospects when they arrive. Most people cannot afford to be playful with the idea of job security. It's weird to find yourself thinking, "must be nice to be an iOS developer who can live in a van". Especially when you think of the people who do it because they're forced to do it. I found the article to be a little glib about its subject. Glib is the word I would use, for romanticizing a scenario that many Americans actually experience as an intractable nightmare. I found myself first thinking about how nice it would be to pull up to the oceanfront, lay down in my "living room" van, and doze off reading a book while listening to the waves... then I thought of the scene in The Pursuit Of Happiness (not a great movie, but a great scene) where Will Smith has to put his kid to bed in a closet in a train station.
  • larrys 14y ago
    "Glib is the word I would use, for romanticizing a scenario" I would use glib in the same way that people romanticize people living in poverty. Particularly single moms with good kids living in the ghetto. Single mom works so hard holding down 3 jobs cleaning offices and her kids all work hard if only they were given a chance and didn't live in the projects. (Watch http://www.pruitt-igoe.com/ http://www.pruitt-igoe.com/ on netflix to see a little back story) While that situation exists of course (and in fact I remember growing up commercials for the united negro college fund) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfwpeHzc8ks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfwpeHzc8ks ...most likely in reality (drive through any poor neighborhood) there is something else going on that produces the behavior that is observed.
    • 14y ago
• w1ntermute 14y ago
  > You live in a crazy expensive neck of the woods? Nice to meet you; I live in Japan, cry me a river. I was under the impression that things weren't too bad out in the inaka. Is Gifu that expensive compared to SF or NYC?
  • mattm 14y ago
    It's nothing compared to those places.
• athesyn 14y ago
  Yup, thanks for pointing out this is essentially lower class tourism.
• sbochins 14y ago
  I heard other people calling this lower class tourism, that doesn't really seem to be the case though. It seems like a perfectly reasonable way to live for a single guy w/ a day job or someone trying to build a company. I'm not single, but if I were I would like to try something similar. Right now, I'm renting out my entire condo. I would like to rent out everything besides the garage and just live in there. The reason? I don't like to have too many things, I feel it complicates my life. I'm fine w/ a working internet connection and a comfy bed. I don't understand why I am abusing white privilege or engaging in lower class tourism by simplifying my life. I think there is a big problem w/ wealth distribution in this country. But, I think most of that can be blamed on our political system that basically gives the most benefits to the people who pay politicians the most to vote for bills they support and can bills they disdain. Also we have a banking system with absurd incentives that ensures rich bankers are payed by the government each time they gamble away all the nation's capital on insane investments or ponzi schemes.
  • sukuriant 14y ago
    As a single male, living in a van doesn't seem like it'd go very well with a nice lady-friend that I might wish to get to know better. Especially when she starts speaking with her mother about my living conditions. That's just me, though. Perhaps I'm wrong here. edit: I should probably clarify what I said. Living in a van, in my mind as an outside observer suggests either some sort of inability to commit, or perhaps falling on hard times, or someone who is dillusional about their circumstances; and, as an outside observer, speaks poorly of the person who is in this situation. What I was refering to with speaking to her mother -- though it truly could be any person that is a friend to your ladyfriend -- is this: This person is looking out for your ladyfriend, and when they hear such things as "he lives out of his car", and "oh, he doesn't have a home", or any other number of issues.
    • sbochins 14y ago
      Yea, living in a van is a non starter for long term relationships. That was what I meant by single, someone not interested in long term relationships. Probably not the actual definition of single though.
• petec 14y ago
  down by the river
• esrauch 14y ago
  I find the idea attractive without any money savings. I find it very odd it's much easier to find a large crappy apartment than a small well-maintained one; I feel like it should be possible to get an apartment at any point in the 2d space of (quality, size) with the cost being some function of that, in reality the apartment seems to only be available around some tight distribution around a line in that space. Moving into a bad neighborhood seems awful to me; for me, living in a 100 sq ft apartment would be only better than living in a 1000 sq ft one. I'm stuck living in an apartment with 2 roommates, a totally unused dining room and a very lightly used and unnecessary living room because there's no reasonable alternatives.
  • ido 14y ago
    I'm glad my new/old mid-sized (250k inhabitants) town's only college is far from the city center (and therefor its students don't want to live in the center) & that hip young people in general have no interest in living here (mostly families, the young & hip go to the big city). Leaves a lot of the old (and therefor small) apartments in the old (and therefor central) part of town available for rent at a semi-decent rate.
• alinajaf 14y ago
  There is literally nothing in the article that suggests that the author is trying to approximate the lifestyle of 'how poor people live'.
• damoncali 14y ago
  I think you read too much into it. He's just saying that "if you think living in a van by yourself would be cool for a while, this is what you can expect." I read nothing more than philosophically slanted curiosity regarding a life that most would rationally choose to avoid (including people without much money).
• defen 14y ago
  So if I eat rice and beans[1] to save money while working on a startup, does that mean I'm trying to emulate the lifestyle of an Andean peasant? The article specifically says it's not about people who live in vans involuntarily, and it explicitly lists reasons for doing it that have nothing to do with saving money ("travel the country", "maintain a lifestyle of minimalism and self-reliance"). Even if your goal is just to save money, why should that involve doing what poor people do, or emulating their lifestyle? Why would you move to the shitty part of town, where you have to deal with higher rates of street violence, vandalism, theft, etc? [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html#f1n http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html#f1n
• runjake 14y ago
  > This seems like a romantically bohemian way to approximate a pampered middle class kid's idea of how poor people live. That's pretty insulting, Patrick. Having been a person who grew up very, very poor and a person who's also done something similar to this (lived in the woods), I can tell you that (for me) it was not about trying to "experience" poverty. It was about getting away from the madness and complexities of modern life... the bills, the spending, the distraction, the self-reliance, the responsibilities. The author didn't say anything about giving away money and collecting cans. They only espoused "minimalism". I will say that it gave me a newfound appreciation for society and the infrastructure we have that I had previously taken for granted. I don't have to be constantly cold and wet, I can take hot showers when I want to, I can eat what I want, when I want and so on.
• Kerrick 14y ago
  The case study in the article spends about $600 per month, mostly on food. That's my entire monthly budget, and my life is stationery, stable, and legal. With it, I buy: rent and utilities ($400) living with two roommates in a poor part of town; food ($100) consisting largely of bulk rice, couscous, ground beef, and other canned/dried goods; and entertainment ($100), which is largely made up of going out to eat at a cheap Chinese buffet every week or two and purchasing the occasional Steam game on sale.