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Breaking Down Your Budget

(dramatic music) All right, so you're looking at getting into van life? What's your budget? That's probably the biggest question that you have to ask yourself in the beginning because van life really does range from dirtbag lifestyle that's gonna cost you two grand, likely won't get you very far. Unimog overland vehicle, that's like a million. So there's such a massive range of what you can spend on a van. On average, a nice van similar to this one would probably cost you about 100 grand. This one is a little different, and it might be worth a little more because it is so unique on the market, but if you're looking at a Sprinter, Transit, ProMaster, which are like the classic van life vehicles nowadays, I feel like you're probably looking at around 50 grand to 100 grand, that's a good range to look at. So breaking down the progress of my vans. My first van cost me about four grand, given it was a 1985. I thought it was a cool looking van. So there was some value in just the overall r...

etro style. So I thought four grand was pretty good. Little did I know the engine was terrible. It never ran very well. So that's when I learned you get what you pay for in van life. I didn't do my research, I didn't check the engine well enough, and I regretted that decision. The next van I bought, I did not convert. I bought it from my friend. It was a 2005 Sprinter, and I bought it fully converted for 39,000. The next van that I built myself cost me about 55,000 and four months of my labor. So I don't know how you factor in how much of my time went into that, but that van itself, because it was brand new, I probably would've sold it for about $80,000. Now, the Sprinter that I'm currently in, it's a four wheel drive, a 2019 Sprinter. It cost me around $56,000 from picking it up off the lot, that's an empty cargo van. And then I would say, total cost of expenses, all the fancy features that I put in there was about $90,000, but that was also six months of my labor. So that van, market value would probably be about $150,000. This box truck is a little more interpretable in terms of what it's worth, because it is a unique take on van life. So there's not really a market value for what I'm trying to do here, but I got the box for about $55,000. Surprisingly box fans are not cheap as you might think. And with all the wood and like fabric and upholstery and all that stuff, I'd say I'm probably in about $75,000 in the box van, and I'm going on seven months of my time here. So you do the math. I don't know what my time would be worth on that, but it also wasn't a full-time build. I've been doing photography jobs here and there. So that's the breakdown of what I've spent on my van so far, maybe that helps you analyze how much you might have to allocate to get the build of your dreams or to make it if you're gonna make it yourself, if you're gonna hire someone to do it, you really gotta factor in what people are gonna charge. Given the van life is pretty hot right now. I do know a lot of people that are trying to build vans and they have a wait list of a year or more. So that's another factor you have to think about. So if we're breaking down some of the expensive components that you can factor in when you're mapping out your budget and what you can expect to pay, I would say a fridge is one of those things you gotta look at. You can spend $100 on a fridge that's not gonna be very efficient, and you'll spend a lot more on the electricity it's gonna take to power that fridge, or you can get a nicer, more van life friendly fridge, much more efficient. And basically you're investing $1000 up front for an efficient usage of your power. So I think getting that fridge, paying a little bit of extra money up front to have a nice efficient fridge is totally worth it. If you're looking at like the electrical system itself, solar is actually one of the least expensive portions of the electrical system. You can get like 100 Watts solar panels for 100 bucks, and a pretty common system is like 200 Watts of solar. So you're looking at $200 for the solar panels. The more expensive section of the electrical system is usually the batteries. Like if you're looking at getting nice lithium batteries, 100 amp hours is like $1000. And I have 600 amp hours, so that's $6,000. That's really the most expensive portion of the system, but the bigger battery bank you have, the longer you can go off grid. So it's also the most important part of the electrical system. Skimping on an electrical system can be really stressful in van life because you'll be monitoring it more and more, and you'll be that much more limited if you don't have enough juice to cook your meal, maybe you're gonna have to sacrifice and eat dry food for a day instead of feeling like you're at home in a van being able to cook. So yeah, definitely things to factor in, getting a big enough battery bank for you to live comfortably is a nice luxury in a van. A lot of the kitchen components end up costing quite a bit of money. A sink can be $200 or $100, and then you got the faucet and you got the water pump and things like that. So the kitchen components can add up for sure. The type of wood you use, the type of paint you use, the type of fabric, if you're upholstering fabric. I know a lot of people that go down to Mexico to get their cushions upholstered because it's like a quarter of the price down in Mexico. So there are ways to get around, needing to throw so much money into these random aspects of the van that you don't really factor in. Another big debatable one is if you wanna put a toilet in a van. I find a lot of people go without a toilet once they see how much it's gonna cost to have a nice composting toilet in their van. The Nature's Head that I use is about $1000, and you also have to allocate space for that toilet. Now you could potentially get, I forget what they're called. You can get a much cheaper toilet. It's gonna smell a lot worse, it's gonna be a much more of an inconvenience, but you can get that for like 50 bucks on Amazon. It really just depends on how much you care about having a toilet in your van, how much you're gonna use it. If you have a cheap cassette toilet in your van, you might save 900 bucks, but you also have to deal with the downsides of having smells in your van, which to me is a pretty big downside if you're gonna live in it full time. So the Nature's Head Composting Toilet was a total game changer. It was super worth it for me. I didn't have to go to rest areas or truck stops and all that to go to the bathroom in the morning or anything like that. But it's an extra $1000 that you have to factor in when you're making your van. So pros and cons, you gotta figure out what you value, what your budget is and go from there. When I bought that first Sprinter, I was under the mindset that I didn't have the time to make a van. I was pretty busy with photography and I still am busy with photography. So I didn't think I had time to figure out how to make a van. But when I bought a van, I realized how into it I was and how passionate I was about having the exact right dimensions and being able to use it exactly how I wanted. So I made time. That's the reality of my situation. I honestly just didn't think it was worth my time, and now it's like where most of my time goes, and my time and effort, and mental space is I'm habitually drawing new van layouts. But I couldn't have anticipated that, and I'm glad that I purchased that first van instead of designed it, because at that point, my design would've been really, really bad 'cause I didn't even know anything about what I wanted. So the way that I did it, I think was pretty good for me, where I just purchased a van from someone that I trusted and then I analyzed his design and made my own from there, and that was really good for me. Yeah, so big question is if you're gonna buy new or used. I remember thinking when I was younger that I would never buy a new car. Just the idea of buying a new car off the lot seemed almost wasteful, but when I'm talking about van life now, and the amount of time and effort and money I'm putting into converting these vans, I honestly would never buy used again, because I had two used vans in the beginning and they both broke down. And when your car and house that you live in breaks down, it's like a double hit. It's like the end of the world. It's really hard to take. So I broke down so many times in my first Toyota van, but even the old Sprinter that I got started breaking down, and I was trying to get to a job. I think it was in Lake Tahoe or something. I was trying to get to this job, and it was completely devastating 'cause not only did I have to spend thousands of dollars to fix my van, but I missed out on what I would've been making as a photographer in that job. So I mean, once that first Sprinter started breaking down, I kind of just made a mental note that it was not worth having your house in a van that's about to break down. So since then, my ProMaster, my Sprinter, my box truck here, I've bought everything new. Obviously, it's a privileged place to be. It's a luxury to be able to afford a new van, but I think probably the best goal is to be able to afford a new van if you're gonna be putting so much time, effort, money into having a home on wheels. Given a lot of people that I know can't afford a new van and I would just be really careful, I would check out whatever used van you're about to buy, get the engine checked, do a lot of online research to see if that certain year of Sprinter, ProMaster, whatever if that certain year had any defects or whatnot. So yeah, I would say, if you can afford it, buy new when you're putting your whole life in that van. Yeah, another big factor when buying new or used is resale value. Yeah, in the end, if you buy a van with high mileage, you put all that effort into converting it and making it look really good for the photo. When you go to sell it, if you have 200,000 miles on that van, you're gonna encounter a lot of buyers, potential buyers that are super skeptical about putting their life savings into a high mileage van, for correct reasons because I'm that way too. I put all my money into that Sprinter and it started breaking down and was completely devastating. If you're buying a used van, you might save money on the front end, but when you go to sell it, you're not gonna be able to sell it for nearly as much for those skeptical buyers. So if you can potentially invest a little bit more into a new van, and you're selling that new van that you purchased a few years ago new and you're selling it now at 40,000 miles, nobody's gonna blink buying a van with 40,000 miles. You'll be able to sell it for so much more and so much easier. So you invest a little bit more in the front end, you get it back in the back end. If you save a little bit on the front end, you buy something used, it's gonna be a challenge to sell that, you might lose money in the end. Yeah, and building a van is a massive learning curve. I remember feeling completely out of my element, and it was crazy stressful in the beginning, but that made it so much satisfying to eventually finish that first van. And now I have a very long term approach to when I'm building vans. So anytime I'm learning something new, I'm really stressed, I try to take it as just a fun challenge that eventually will pay off in the end, and then when I build my next van, I'll have that new skill that I can build off of. Try to take a long term approach to it. If you're watching this workshop, likely you're interested in building your own van. The skills that you learn building vans are gonna build you as a person, you'll be able to apply them to potentially building a house in the future. It's a very rewarding experience to figure out how to put in a water pump or how to just piece together the puzzle. And by the end, six months later, it's just such a rewarding accomplishment. So hope you guys can have a more long term approach to building a van. So the three options of going about van life is to make a van yourself, to hire somebody to make a custom van. Maybe you design it, or you just buy it off the shelf. I will say it was satisfying buying that first Sprinter, not having to do any work, just dropping the money, driving it home, just the most stoked I've ever been that day to have this new home on wheels. So there is something to be said about buying an already converted van almost instantly. Within the first week I was pointing out flaws in the design, things that I would change, all that. And the biggest point I wanna make with that first van and almost the main reason why I sold it was when things would break down, when the batteries stopped working or a fuse blew or something like that, I just had no idea what to do. I didn't know how it was wired. And it's not anything that you can bring to like your average garage and they'll fix it, because it was a DIY build that my buddy made. I was in the Pacific Northwest, he was in Arizona. So he wasn't able to come fix it for me, so I just didn't know how to fix it. And it was a terrible feeling when something was going wrong and I really just had no ability to fix what was happening. And I was driving around the country with no lights, no fridge, no anything. I had it in my van, but nothing was working. So that was extremely stressful, and that was one of the reasons why I sold that van to make it myself to be able to know how to fix it when things go wrong. So there's immense value in creating your own van, just so that you know how it was done, how it can be fixed, because the reality of all these vans, even though I try to make 'em as solid as possible, it's constantly needing tweaking. And when I know how it was wired, when I know what my mental state was when I was designing everything, it's very easy to fix and to assess the situation, maybe even change the design completely. It's kind of this working organism that I'm constantly tweaking and making better. So if you're gonna go about hiring somebody to make your van, I would suggest being there as much as possible, and having them walk through their mental state of why they're designing it that way, how they're wiring it, how to go about troubleshooting it, where the fuses are, if something blows, how to fix it, how to switch it out. All that stuff is super valuable to know when you're on the road, just to be a little bit more self-sufficient when something like that does happen. If you're hiring out a big company, like a big van life company, there's a good chance that that company won't give you the time of day when you need some help, right? So like, I would advocate to potentially, if you're gonna hire somebody out, ideally, you make friends with that person so that you have a constant stream of communication if you do need to contact that person down the line, or even if you're buying like a Winnebago Revel, which is probably the most common, like, Winnebago's a massive company. I think it would be pretty hard to talk to Winnebago to figure out how to fix things. Given there might be forums online for Winnebago. So that could be a positive for that, but yeah, I think it's just a really good idea to be friends with the person that's building your van so that you could potentially ask them, oh, this is happening, how do I fix it? Things like that. Basically, the more you pay the person that's building your van, if you're contracting out and you're part of the process, you're gonna have an easier stream of communication with that person. If you're just buying it, like, they're used van and you're buying it, generally, you're gonna buy it, you're gonna take it, and it's yours, it's as is maybe you can make a friend with that person, but speaking from experience, it's not generally like that. If you're buying a used van for $10,000, I don't think you can expect much out of the person you're buying it from, but if it's a premium van, you're dropping 100K, you should address it with the person when you're buying it, can you help me out? Can I get your number? Can I give you a call if something goes wrong? And yeah, hopefully you can work that out and have that peace of mind. In the end, I think it's just like striking a balance between... There's a lot of people that think I'm gonna move into a van and rough it. So I don't need anything, all I need is a bed, I don't need lights. Some people just like, they just assume like, oh, I'll just use my cell phone for a light, like, I don't need lights, but it's really just about striking a balance between, what's a realistic luxury that you'll really appreciate? And then what are some ridiculous luxuries that you'll put in and never use? You don't want those, right? So it's just striking a balance between finding all the features that you will use and appreciate versus not overloading it. If you don't need a toilet, then that's really awesome that you know that about yourself. Don't put a toilet in your van. But if you plan on camping in the middle of a Walmart parking lot and you're a girl, like likely you're not gonna wanna jump out of the van and go pee in the bushes in the middle of the night. So you gotta know that about yourself. A toilet would be really nice to have. So it's all about that self-awareness, knowing which features you would really appreciate, which features are worth putting in versus putting in some dead weight that you're not ever gonna use. I don't allocate space to put a full shower inside my van because I value having a short wheel base to be able to potentially get out to far off destinations to be able to be a little bit more nimble and park in a space without hanging out the back and blocking traffic. But some people really value showers and staying clean. They wanna look good. For me, I'd have a shower out the back and that's good enough. I use it maybe every other month, but it's still cool to have. I would say rather unnecessary, but necessary to me aspect of building a van is the general aesthetic and the lighting. So I'd really focus a lot on making the lighting soft, making it customizable, according to the amount of light that's outside. As the light is fading outside, I like to turn up the lights in the van just to have that perfect ratio of light in the van compared to the light outside the van, really to create a nice effect for a photo and just to surround yourself with a very pleasing atmosphere. So I typically choose the warmer option for lighting. I like that warm homey glow. And whenever you're buying light switches, usually there's a cheap option for like 10 bucks, and then there's the little bit more expensive option for 40 bucks that has a dimmable feature. I always justify buying the dimmable switches so that I can customize the lighting just as I want it. By choosing creative lighting and interesting lighting, it can really set your build apart from the rest. You can express your personality, express your style just by the way that you light the features, if you make it symmetrical, if you make it customizable. So a little forethought in lighting can go a long way.