Living in a Van

For the frugal traveller who wants to live in a van but move around (perhaps while developing your web app or similar), we've started a community where fellow RV'ers (or people who just like RVers) offer their driveways to others to camp on for a night or two for free - http://www.boondockerswelcome.com. We're going to start charging a small annual fee to cover our costs, but for $25/year you can travel all over the continent and park your van for free. Of course, this doesn't solve the bathroom or showering issue, as most people aren't opening up their bathrooms to their guests. But my mom (who has a small Roadtrek RV, which is really no bigger than a van and has no shower), has travelled for 5 months at a time getting by with showers in the occasional truck stop or an outdoor shower that she uses when they're parked in the forest. (There's also tons of free parking for RVs in US National forests BTW, plus lots of other spots. My mom writes e-books all about the free "boondocking" locations she's discovered complete with GPS co-ordinates and interesting nearby attractions - find them at http://www.frugal-rv-travel.com.)

I know that this comment reads like a big advert, but if hackers here are actually interested in living on the cheap while launching their bootstrapped startup, these are actually viable options.

"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).

I would have loved to save money right out of school, being as frugal as I am, but I was married when I graduated and the first thing my wife wanted after I got my first (low paying) full time job? A house.

So much for the life of a cheapskate.

This will get much easier when robocars come out. You won't have to worry about police and zoning laws, the car can move every once in a while or continuously be moving. If robocar renting takes off you don't even the cash up front to pay for one. Showers and toilets can be separately moving robocars so this can all be done in small vehicles rather than large RV's. The fuel would electric (robocars recharge themselves from electric gas stations) so the costs of all this would be minimal as well. If this all plays out well, apartments, and even houses should see a drop in value (a good thing because too much of wealth is being plowed into the unproductive economy of land owning - it can instead shift to purchasing engineered products).

I lived in my van for about 6 months after I graduated from college in Portland, OR. I spent part of that time up in Alaska, working in the fisheries (unloading fish from boats with a great group of guys) and the rest of my time in Portland trying to find places to park overnight in the city and trying to get back to a more stable life.

There were good things and bad things. It definitely simplified my possessions and when I was in Alaska I could basically park my van anywhere overnight. But when I got back to Portland, it was a lot harder to find places to park where I wouldn't get harassed.

I used my college (as an alum) gym showers and spent time in parks. This was 1996 so I wasn't too worried about internet connectivity and there definitely weren't any free wifi hotspots ;)