My name is Deborah Mayes, and I'm a mom of four. A few years ago
my husband and I decided to downsize our home, moving on to a school bus,
and adopt a minimalist lifestyle. By living simply we've taken control of
our finances and are living the life
we've always dreamed of.
Gabriel
and I got married in 2005. After I had Grayson, I actually stayed home full-time
with the kids while Gabriel continued to work. In the early years of marriage, our
relationship to money was really just focused on making enough to survive.
The first, honestly, 10 years of our life, we were just
paycheck to paycheck.
The stress for us was the fact that we had a 5,000-square-foot house.
Cause as you have more kids and you upgrade and then you have to work even
harder to provide for those things.
In the process of trying to figure out how to move forward as a
family, we just realized that the way that we were living was not
really what we wanted from our life.
And so I had the idea of moving onto a school bus.
I thought it was the perfect way to travel.
Our expenses would be very low, so we wouldn't need a lot of income
and it would just give us a season of life to connect as a family,
and so we did that.
In order to prepare our family for this big journey, we actually ended up moving
in with Gabriel's parents for six months while the school bus was being converted.
Because we knew we were going to be living in a school bus,
we actually moved all the kids into one room so that they could get used
to sleeping in the same room together.
We had to figure out the layout of the school bus while we were living there,
so we taped their living room and kitchen.
And so it was a massive adjustment as a family, but the kids were so excited.
In that season, any money we made just went straight to the conversion.
The total cost was $36,000 for everything.
We saved money on the conversion by doing the finishing touches
ourselves.
The amazing thing about the bus was that,
because it was such a small space,
I got to pick exactly what I wanted. That had never happened in our entire marriage
for 12 years. We were super excited to pick up the school bus, but we discovered
that the people that had converted our boss had made a lot of mistakes.
We ended up breaking down within hours of driving away, but that changed the dynamic
of our family completely at that point, just learning to roll with the punches.
When you move on to an RV, it's a massive learning curve.
Essentially,
you have a black and a gray tank underneath the bus, and that's
where all the sewage goes.
There's definitely times when it was raining out
and those moments were really difficult.
Our bedroom was the one room all the way in the back and it had a door on it,
so we could close it and just hang out.
While we were on the bus, we started a business from scratch.
That allowed for us to have a monthly income that was recurring.
Our levels of expenses were so low at that time.
We left on our road trip in the end of July 2017
and we arrived in California in the middle of August.
What we were living in the whole time was an RV park. It's super inexpensive.
So really we would just
pay for gas and for food at that point.
And during our time on the bus, we had our kids in school,
so every holiday, we would take a big long road trip.
So we did two years,
exactly
and we really wanted to keep the bus, but we decided to start the
journey of renovating a home, which is something I would have never done
but walking into the home, we just knew that this was our next step.
We have saved at least $20,000 in doing everything ourselves.
We hired people to do the electricity and plumbing, but we tore down a wall ourselves.
We ended up doing our own kitchen cabinets. In total,
we ended up spending close to $40,000 on the renovation.
It was worth it to me to save money in certain areas or to budget so that
I can have my home reflect exactly what I want it to look like.
I feel like living on the bus empowered us to know that we could
do more than we thought we could.
We're going to wrap up this house.
We want to keep as a rental and then we're going to be building a house on our land -
my dream home.
One of the main things that happened with us is I learned that the quality of
things is much more important than the quantity of the things that you have.
We really downsized all the toys, all the clothes.
Embracing a minimalist lifestyle looks like only having the things that
you really love and that you really need. For the longest time I would
just pick out whatever's on sale.
Now I've learned that I would rather spend a little bit extra rather
than getting a good deal and then having to replace it next month.
So that has massively impacted the way that we do our budget.
The things that I want to instill in our children is the mindset of abundance.
Money can always be made.
I would have money in my wallet, but I didn't want to spend it.
I don't want my kids to live like that.
And then the next thing is getting clear on what you want
to be doing with your life.
I would just love to empower my kids to not be afraid to go after
things, because that's where you're going to find true contentment.
Living on the school bus was absolutely worth it
for us. I wouldn't change a thing. Even all of the bumps in the road,
cause it really brought us together,
and I'm so thankful for that.