I was at work one day and we needed somebody to
voice a commercial for one of our car
dealerships. And as a joke, I read it and
shockingly, everyone was like, "That was kind of
good." I've done commercials for national
airlines. I'm in a video game for playing soccer.
I get to voice all sorts of projects and it's a lot
of fun. There are times when I go on vacation
officially or, you know, we're on the bus and we
stop somewhere really cool and we want to go
explore for a few days.
And that's when I shut off my work and I let my
clients know that I won't be available.
My name is Alice Everdeen.
I'm 31 years old.
I'm a voiceover artist, and I travel full time in
my bus conversion with my dog and my boyfriend.
And I'm currently in Lacombe, Louisiana.
Growing up, I would always mock the radio.
Anything I heard.
One of my favorites was the Downs Ford commercial
in New Jersey. Downs Ford.
You'll love the feeling.
Downs Ford, you'll love the price.
And if you want to buy a car or truck,
they always treat you right!
I would do this all day, every day.
I don't know why, but somehow it ended up paying
off years later, so I'm not mad about it.
When I first started doing voiceovers, I was
just doing it for the advertising agency I
worked at, and I probably voiced about maybe ten of
them or so for this one car dealership nearby.
That was my only real experience in that realm.
My first month on Fiverr, I made over $1,000 and so
I would say about three months in.
I was really considering trying to do it full time
because I started to match my full time salary
and within I believe four or five months I was able
to quit my full time job.
At the moment, I'm completing about 150 jobs
a month. It's been about two and a half years and
I've completed, I believe, just under 3000
jobs. So it got really busy really quickly.
I mostly do commercial, TV and radio spots.
I also do a lot of phone recordings, which is a lot
of fun. Thanks for calling, Stanfield
Veterinary Services for Sales, Press one.
One day Jay and I were having a couple of drinks.
We were talking about goals that we had and
things we wanted to do, and we both realized that
we wanted to travel more and we never really had
the opportunity. We wanted to do a bus because
they're a lot more customizable. RVs
typically have a set layout.
They're also not as safe.
Busses are made to keep dozens of kids safe.
We're bringing it home.
We took out all of the seats.
We took out all of the windows. We stripped this
thing down to nothing and built it from the ground
level. This is our school bus that we converted into
our home. From the bumper to bumper, it's about 30
feet, but inside we have 21 feet from the dashboard
all the way back.
Our seat converts into our bed, which is actually a
pretty cool feature since it saves so much space.
We are fully set up to be completely off-grid.
We have a phone booster that is a antenna at the
side of the bus and that boosts our signal.
We also have solar panels on a roof of our bus, so
that gives us all the energy we need throughout
the day to use our appliances, to use our
phones, all sorts of stuff.
Over here we have our wood burning stove.
We really wanted something that was small
and super efficient that we could possibly reach
from our bed but still be a safe enough distance
away that obviously we're not going to burn the bus
down.
We have a full kitchen area because I cook a lot,
as you can see by all the spices everywhere.
We have a full apartment size range.
It's 24 inches.
This is actually our freezer.
We have a chest style fridge and freezer full of
alcohol and Ben and Jerry's.
The two most important things.
Jay is a master with water.
He built the bus so that we can suck up water from
a body of water that doesn't have salt in it
and filter it on board into purified drinking
water. So really, really cool.
It's a full wet room. We have a composting toilet
from separate, full shower and also we can use
this as a back door.
Basically, we just want to have a really nice view
when we poop.
That was actually- that's not actually a joke.
My whole life I kind of didn't have the best
relationship with money, meaning I would spend all
of it on travel and then I would pay down my credit
cards and I would do it over and over and over
again. When I started making more money, I
really realized that I needed to have a better
grip on where my money was going.
I finally got an accountant to handle
things for me and try to set me on the right path.
Our expenses are generally limited to car
insurance, gas, pet insurance, some
subscriptions I have for my work cell phone bills.
We have Verizon and T-Mobile, and that allows
us to expand our coverage as much as possible to be
able to pick up, signal and have Internet
connections in more rural areas and across the
country. I would say we usually spend the most
money on high quality food and going out to eat
because we love to try awesome new restaurants.
But in addition to that, gas is definitely a
killer. Parking the bus can be difficult at times.
They have Hipcamp which is like Airbnb for RV-ers
or renters. In addition to that, there's state
parks, national parks.
There's government land where you can park for
free, or a lot of people go the Cracker Barrel and
Wal-Mart route and they just kind of stay in the
parking lot. Love Cracker Barrel.
They have RV parking overnight and their
expectation is that you go there for a meal and
luckily we love biscuits and gravy, so it works out
for everybody.
In the past, I've been really stressed out over
credit card debt, and I've kind of come to
realize that it is what it is.
I can't change it. All I can do is pay it down and
call it a day. So each month I pay down as much
as I can and whatever rolls over rolls over.
We had a couple unexpected expenses.
Primarily, we broke down, which was about $1,200
dollars. Luckily, it was only that much.
Towing a 25,000 pound bus is not cheap and where you
break down can really play a role in how much
money you spend.
Over the next 5 to 10 years our goals are to
obviously pay off the debt from the bus build,
but we're also hoping to buy property at some
point. We'd love to have a couple of spots across
the country where we can go and hang out for a few
weeks and maybe build something or just a spot
to visit.
At this point, we really don't know how long we're
going to travel for. And I think that's kind of the
beauty of being on the road, is you kind of go
where the wind takes you.
Being on the bus is a different kind of
fulfillment. I feel like prior to this I was very
caught up in wanting more and needing more.
And now that I have everything I need in such
a small space, I'm not as stressed as I was.
I don't have to make as many decisions every day.
I can spend time with the people I love.
It's a different sense of freedom that I didn't
think I would ever feel.
And this is the first time in my life where I
haven't just constantly wanted more.