You've seen it everywhere the trend is a monster now and it's called
fan life but behind every cutesy picture that you see on instagram is a different reality and things
are a little bit more challenging than it seems yes so before quitting your job selling everything
and buying a truck we're gonna see if van life is really for you are you ready for the van life
yes marie and i listed the 10 questions you should ask yourself before starting any kind of
van life quest and number nine and number ten are the things that are the worst from everyone that
we've talked to on the road number nine and number ten are extremely challenging but if you can pull
it off you're ready for vanlife yes if you ever have some questions while you're watching the
video just stop write your question in the comment and we'll try to answer everything and let's go
we are dom and marie we were traveling around the united states and covet him
stuck at home we sold our first van vanessa to build a bigger one after a few months
in the shop we are now back on the road with our new home on wheels that we named
vanessa nessa tune in every sunday for a new episode of van life saga
you're driving me insane it's very very plain question one to see if van life is
for you can you go a couple of days without showering van life is for me
because you never shower some fans have showers some don't now if you have a van
you do not have unlimited water you might not have hot water you will either be showering inside in a
very tiny space or outside in front of families eating their hot dogs on a tuesday night yeah
that happened in the past so water management is a very big hustle on the road if you are someone
that needs showering once or twice a day you might want to reconsider life on the road now if you
don't have a shower again very complicated you can either find them in campgrounds truck stops
lakes it won't be the comfy little shower that you have in a normal home it will always be surrounded
by people dirty floors you know people waiting in line after you etc so it's not showering as
you would shower sometimes you have to pay for them again not super complicated if that's not
an issue for you if you can shower anywhere hot cold name it van life might be for you
question number two probably my favorite
are you ready to invest time and energy in your waste management or are you okay with
emptying your dump or are you okay with playing with your number ones and number twos once in a
while when you drive in a self-contained vehicle you have at one point and it's
usually once a week or once every three or four days depending on how much stuff you
you produce in a week and that in the beginning marie and i were like okay
we're gonna do that in the forest and that was a challenge but friends also have toilets aboard
and it's also a big it's a it's a work of art to manage your waste um a work of art a work of
art if you're okay with doing it outside or in a can or in a pot a one if you need a toilet no
worries we have one in the van now again you just have to empty it and find spot and it needs to be
something that you think about and sometimes it's males in the van oki especially when mary goes
people's come on
question number three can you plan ahead and that means i said you have a hard time with that that
means gas water food internet insurance insurance security yeah everything obviously the most
beautiful places you're going to find in canada in the states wherever you are are very very secluded
very remote that means driving long distances in the wild in the mountains in the deserts where you
have no internet connection where the groceries are far where the water is far where the dumps
are far toilet showers are far so you need to plan ahead yes and it's not my forte when you travel in
other countries you're like oh let's go see that special place in iceland okay great you get there
then you realize there's not a lot of gas left so you have to come back you realize
there's no grocery stores you realize there's no water you realize the road is not fit for
the van you have so you're like yeah damn eye over lander is an app we use every day just
because it tells you where to sleep does it have water showers a fire pit is it accessible is it
safe so number three if you can plan ahead and manage your resources you are going to be fine but
these are things that you have to think about yeah can you live with the bare minimum and i remember
packing the van the first van we had vanessa with a lot of stuff that was overwhelming marie
because she was like we don't need that we don't need that we don't need this etc and at one point
i was like god damn it i have to rethink the whole way i live because i don't have access to you know
all the gear the equipment the knives the the tools that we need to survive usually or that
we need to live usually yeah living in such a tiny space you have limited water limited food
limited clothes limited accessories the things that we have in the van i mean i don't have ten
pair of jeans i have two probably two you have two in real life you know a couple of shirts
no heels in a van i've never worn heels well you can if you have a lot of shoe storage which is
not our case exactly that's a that's a tip everything that's in the van or most of the
things that are in the van we can use like they have multiple utilities we can use on different
things sometimes it's worth paying a little bit more for things that are smaller and more compact
so it takes less smaller glasses smaller glasses smaller cups smaller everything yet
so yeah space is limited and that's something that you need to figure out
can you live without wi-fi or with unstable wi-fi and i'm asking this
the question seriously because someone in the room
thought she could go without wi-fi for a couple of days and it was not the case last year right why
are you talking like lte like 5g connection in general if your job needs wi-fi or if your family
or your kids or or if you need to be in constant communication with people whether it's clients
or personal contacts you have to imagine yourself disappearing from the network for days at the time
it's a very very stressful feeling when you're in the mountains having fun skiing and then coming
back and the cell phones are not working the computers are not working nothing's working and
someone's trying to call you or a client is is has an emergency and you're like
if you are living in your van in the city totally different story because you might have internet
connection but if you want to do like remote van life and you are working from the word
from the root if you're working from the word if you're working from the road you need to plan
accordingly because in the mountains the internet connection is the thing that
we had the most problems with it was probably the number one number one source of stress right
number six and i'm gonna do number six because number six doesn't apply to this guy
can you keep a place tidy and clean what look at this place clean the house every time i come back
because you want to make sure i'm happy you're cleaning so when you live in a van remember
that you were living in your bathroom kitchen office living room toilet and it's all in a very
tiny place when you're driving the windows are down there are cracks everywhere you get sand
dirt in the van every time you cook a meal i mean your sink is this big you're gonna have to
do the dishes every time so you need to be good with keeping a van clean if you're a neat freak
it's totally feasible you just you just need to make sure you're traveling with someone that's you
know compatible with what you're doing and what your expectations are for the small space you
have otherwise vans get dirty really fast you have a broom you have a couple of cleaning products and
that's it the second you open the door in the middle of lone rock there's going to be an inch
of sand 12 hours later on your floor so so you need to sweep you need to do your dishes by hand
you need to sometimes wash your underwear by hand or just accept that the vans are going to be dirty
which is my technique but we're not going to talk about this today you know next point
question number seven of the questions you have to ask yourself to see if you're good for van life
or not or not are you good at prepping meal and are you good at food management in general you
have a fridge you have places to put your food however you don't have as much space as you would
usually have in a house and food can go bad quite quickly most of the time you don't even have an
oven some do yeah but most people don't and you have one or two burner stoves sorry i didn't want
to cut you no problems maggie and i are pretty easy on food because the only thing we eat
are avocados and peppers with hummus but it's not true if you're a big eater or a big cook
you might want to plan your kitchen accordingly or limit your expectations right food wise that
is a very good one you need to limit your expectations you are not going to be cooking
like a three-pot dish in a van it's way too complicated it's messy i mean you can you can
but afterwards you have to think of cleaning those dishes with limited resources uh in water in space
in cleaning stuff unless you're a restaurant on wheels uh food in the van is a big big hustle yup
question number eight can you manage heat or cold now this really depends on where you live
but us canadians in the winter it can go down to minus 30 celsius 40 minus 40 celsius which is
really darn cold and you need to be able to manage heat and cold and cold right a couple of weeks ago
you spent a night at -30 40. i know outside but in the van it could it wouldn't go like no no so it
was minus 40. in the van it was around 10. under the bed it was around one so see heat management
is really hard you need a phd in heat management if you want to live in a van in cold in cold in
cold countries and even when you have the heaters and the things to block the windows etc parts of
your van in the winter are gonna freeze so for example the grey water pipe underneath completely
froze last week and just to give you the example this problem forced me to have containers that i
used to do the dishes and to have water aboard so if you're not good with managing heat or
cold or if you think it's too complicated van life is going to be a hard ride for you
question number nine question number nine coven is comfort a top priority for you or are you
the flexible kind of person that can basically live sleep and operate anywhere king-size beds
in a van it's feasible but i mean it's not always the case again we talked about cold we
talked about heat we talked about water if you have animals or pets it might be difficult for
them finding a parking spot at night is a chore it is not i mean again you can do my walmart walmart
parking lots walmart parking lots and even then when you have a comfortable leveled place where
you can sleep in your king-sized bed there's going to be stuff going on around your van that are
going to make you feel uncomfortable when i was camping in colorado a couple of weeks ago in the
in the buttes there were gunshots around the van of people just i guess having fun in the fields
for us canadians it's very uncomfortable to have people playing with real guns around a
camping spot because we're not used to it and here it's not legal so it's like am i
safe where am i am i safe and i was alone so i was like what's the emergency route did you
have internet connection or did your phone work if anything went it was it was on and
off so if there were a big problem i was like the comfort if you're a comfortable kind of
person that needs you know to check all the boxes before feeling okay it's okay if you are van life
can be a bit challenging on the comfort level right and final and last question to know if
van life is ready for you or not or whatever the thing you were saying every time you spoke do
you have money stacked somewhere or do you have a plan do you have a plan a lot of people say
we're privileged we work for our money first of all and we have money stacked just in case yeah
uh health insurance yeah breakdowns insurance uh the van itself the conversion itself fines
name it you can't just live in a van and pretend you're going to have no depos expenses expenses
you need to plan accordingly i hate to bring that to you but selling everything
buying a van converting it and leaving on the road is probably the worst thing you can do for
your personal finances why long term long term right why because a vehicle has a depreciation
what's the word uh the money goes down a vehicle has a depreciation rate that is high
your conversion is going to be flooded with other conversions on the market in a couple of years so
the value of it probably won't go up after 2023 or 2024 and your assets that are usually useful to
build up some money like real estate or companies or other investments you can make have nothing to
do with van life van life is just a temporary lifestyle temporary well you can do it all your
life if you want if you have a plan to make money but it's not an investment it's the van itself is
not an investment financially and your time needs to be invested wisely to make sure you're not
running after your wallet right so running after your wallet can we have
a video of dumb running after your wallet i was translating from the french personality
that's the french lesson so what's the what's the english version of it not running after to
run after your money van life is not an investment and a lot of people are like yeah i'm planning to
invest in a van you're not investing in a van you're spending on a van well again you
can build and convert and make money off off of your conversions yes but your conversions have to
be quick right you have to find a van convert it and sell it and make sure your revenues are over
your expenses but then again you need to be a professional builder to do that make sure you
have a little financial plan or money stacked somewhere to do this lifestyle and just write
a plan i could actually do a full video on how to plan van life on the money aspect of things
so that's it guys um if you feel we haven't covered everything or if you
have questions about the downsides or the things you have to think of
before starting please send us your questions we love answering those questions and just
making sure you've got everything set up right before hitting the road that's it
like share subscribe and enjoy the ride
see you next week
that phrase has two meanings the first meaning is to run after a payment or the second meaning
is the pursuit of money it's never to run after a wallet i don't know what happened in my head
during this video because kuria means to run apre means after and sound action means a payment
or money in general it's never to run after a wallet unless you are impaired in that scenario
it's pretty fun otherwise means to run after a payment or to run after money in general
one's okay
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