The question of how to support yourself when living/traveling in a van is one which crops up time and again. It’s a question which I suppose I’ve tried to avoid answering because 1) I like to keep my personal life personal; this blog is more about the lifestyle/van/adventure than it is about me, and 2) How I choose to live and earn will inevitably be different to how you would choose to. We’re all individuals after all. But I understand the curiosity and remember my own burning questions before I bit the bullet and took the plunge, so I’ll have a go at addressing the elephant in the room and tell you how I earned money whilst living the vanlife.
When I first began looking into getting my van it seemed that people who were already traveling in theirs did either one of two things for the most part to fund their travels. They either had jobs which they could take with them, graphic designers, Youtubers, web designers etc People who are collectively known as “Digital Nomads”. This seems like the ideal situation, roaming around as you please, occasionally tapping into free local wifi to get some work done and bring in some money on a semi regular basis. It’s far more complex than this however and things such as needing to be in an area where the internet signal is strong enough for you to work, and the requirement to hit deadlines combined with dealing with clients/managers over the phone or via email make it quite stressful at times. So I'm told. It also requires a knowledge of working online, and to be skilful enough at what you do that people will actually pay for your services.
With no technical knowledge, this was just not an option for me.
Option two then seemed to be more viable. Just save up a cushion of money and strike out with that for as long as possible, then when it runs out, get another “normal” job, and repeat.
This is what I decided to do.
At the time I was contemplating getting a van I was working two part time jobs. When I decided that I was definitely getting a van I got a third job and saved as much of my income as possible. The idea was to try and calculate how much I would spend once I moved out of a house and into a van, and save enough to do that for a year. Again, this golden amount is going to depend on so many variables that will be personal to you that I’m reluctant to go into the exact maths involved. Maybe that’s a blog for the future..?
So my plan had been to work, travel, work, travel over and over. I guess that’s what I’ve done, but its happened in a slightly different way than I’d imagined.
What I hadn’t counted on was that a few months into my van travels I would be offered a job. This job was for an organisation that run lots of outdoor programs around the world and involved me being trained up to instruct for them. It turned out that being in my van was the perfect base for that sort of work, and now that I’ve mixed with plenty of other outdoor instructors I’ve realised that lots of them have vans too! It meant that I could get out into the mountains and train for upcoming assessments as much as I liked, and that whenever the accommodation provided by my work was a bit naff, or even worse, I had to share with someone who snored, I could just use my van. It also made my van travels seem like a bit less of a doss; now when I was in the mountains in the middle of nowhere just pleasing myself wandering through the hills with my map and a packed lunch, I was actually building up a cv! Throw in the added bonus of not having to pay rent whilst away working, and it was a pretty sweet combo. Having done that for a while I’ve worked out how much I need to work in a month or a season to keep hunger at bay (by living super cheaply), and then I can take the rest of the time off to travel and enjoy myself.
There’s a video, which I’ve shared on my Facebook page before, that really got under my skin when I was a student. It’s an excerpt of a talk by Alan Watts where he explains that instead of pursuing a career that pays well, you should pursue whatever it is that you love to do, and that eventually one day you’ll be good enough at it that you can start to charge a fee for your services in that field. I guess without realising it, that’s sort of what I’ve done. I’d strongly recommend you give it a look. (Click here to view it)
In doing this I earn considerably less than the rest of my peer group, but I’m still managing to support myself and save a little each month despite working, on average, far fewer hours/days, so it’s hard to justify ever going back to a standard 9-5. It’s dangerous territory to start asking who’s got it right or wrong, I just think as long as you’re happy doing what you’re doing, you’ve pretty much got it cracked. My work/life balance feels pretty damn good at the moment, so I’m happy with where I’m at.
The other method I have of making money is far newer to me and has been a learning curve in another way. It’s this website and my online shop. I’m nowhere near experienced enough at this to begin trying to pass on knowledge to anyone else on this method of earning an income, in fact if you have any suggestions of how to improve I’d be happy to hear them! All I will say is there is a lot more to it than I’d expected. After setting everything up in April this year, I'm still ticking over and not really making any money from it, which makes any purchase made even more appreciated and critical to keeping me as free and happy as I currently am. So thank you if you’ve ever bought anything from my store :) Click here to give it a look
So I’ve covered the options of digital nomadism, the work-save-travel cycle, and my own experiences of earning on the road. These options are all great for someone wanting to do long trips and travel for extended periods of time. But there is another option…
Some people live full-time in their vans, and work regular 9-5 jobs. Mind blown right!? Well not really. The thing is that the only differences between a van and a conventional house/flat, are the size, cost and I guess manoeuvrability. People live in vans in cities, working city jobs, or they commute in to the cities just like everyone else, except they’re commuting from laybys or campsites, and the vehicle they commute in is also their home. When you stop and think about it, there are very few jobs that are an unworkable match for vanlife. Your only limitation is your imagination really.
