The allure of #vanlife online can sometimes make it seem like living in a van is nothing but easy travel, financial freedom, and incredible views.
While it is partly true that living and traveling in a van can be a great way of spending less per month while getting to travel to some of the most scenic and beautiful locations in the country. There are also a lot of hard truths that are often overlooked and rarely discussed.
If you are just starting out on your vanlife journey. Hopefully, we’ll be able to shed some light on a few of the lesser talked about things to consider before living in a van.
1. Vanlife Is Stressful
Living in a van can be stressful, not the pulling your hair out kind of stress, just constant low-key stress.
A fair amount of traveling in a van is resource management. How much water do you have left? Where can you fill your water tank? When do you need to refill your propane? Do I need to empty my campervan toilet today or tomorrow? Where can I empty my toilet? Where are you going next? Will there be enough sun to keep my batteries charged? Will there be strong enough internet for work?
While none of those questions are stressful to deal with on their own, you have to answer them daily. Leading to a constant low level of stress that’s in the background. Fortunately, there are many apps out there that help with finding free camping places to fill up your water or to empty your campervan toilet.
We find that using apps designed for vanlife combined with doing a bunch of research on the area we are interested in helps relieve some of the constant stress that comes with traveling. In no way are we saying that you will be stressed out all of the time when living in a van. Just know that until you get the hang of living in a van and traveling, there is a constant low level of stress in the background.
After a few weeks of traveling in a van, you’ll get used to finding places to fill up your water tank, finding new camp spots, and monitoring your solar system to make sure you have enough power.
2. Living In A Can Be Expensive
Most people think that living in a van while traveling is super cheap. Isn’t vanlife all about free camping, cooking all of your own meals, and spending next to nothing while traveling across the country? Despite what #vanlife on Instagram may have most believe, vanlife can get expensive fast.
Can vanlife be a low-cost way of living and traveling? Yes absolutely. The issue is what most people imagine #vanlife to be, is not the cheap way of living in a van. Most people think of a brand new Sprinter van with a fully built-out interior, being able to move to new locations almost daily, and having no mechanical issues.
The truth is new vans cost a lot, fuel can cost a lot, and no matter how new of a van you have, you will have breakdowns. Most people living in a van start by traveling in an older vehicle before upgrading to a newer van. We started by buying a 1971 Blue Bird bus that we built out and then sold. Only then could we get our current van, a 2015 Ford Transit.
Fuel is perhaps the highest cost of living in a van. Luckily it’s also the one cost that is entirely in your control. If you want to be constantly moving, then your fuel costs are also going to be high. The more you drive, the more often you’ll need to refill.
If you want to buy a new van and be constantly on the move, you should expect living in a van to cost about the same as some apartments each month. On the other hand, if you are okay with not having a new van and traveling a bit slower, vanlife can cost just a few hundred dollars a month. It really comes down to you.
3. Summers Are Hot And Winters Are Cold
Part of living vanlife is traveling with the weather. When you live in a van, the summers can get hot, and the winters get cold. Having your campervan, well-insulated helps, but only to a point.
When the temperatures rise, most people living in a van will seek higher elevations or simply head further north to escape the heat. You head south to escape the snow in the winter unless the snow is your thing.
It’s essential to take a few steps to ensure your campervan stays comfortable if you cannot travel with the weather or just prefer spending your winters in the snow. For the winter months, make sure to have a reliable heater. Your body heat and any heat released while cooking will not be enough to keep you warm, even if you have the best insulation.
During the summer months, having some sort of cooling in your campervan is needed. While there are 12v air conditioners, they typically cost thousands of dollars. Having 12v rooftop fans will help with air circulation and staying cool. It’s important to know that rooftop fans can only keep inside your van as cool as the shaded temperature outside.
A standard RV air conditioner is an option, but they require 110v hookups to run unless you have a massive, costly solar system. We made a window insert for our campervan that fits in the driver’s side window that can hold a household window unit. While we do need to be able to plug in somewhere to run the AC, it keeps the inside of our van cold, even during the height of summer.
4. Living In A Van In One Spot Sucks
No one goes into vanlife planning on sitting still at one location for months on end. The whole idea of living in a van is to be able to travel. To constantly explore new places and return to your favorite spots you’ve found. Not sitting still for weeks or months. Yet, living in a van in one location happens pretty often.
Sometimes it is due to a breakdown, sometimes, it’s for work, and sometimes you’ll end up parked in one location for months just because you need or want a break from constantly being on the move. The truth is you will not always be on the go when living vanlife.
To be honest, living in a van when you are not traveling kinda sucks. The issue with staying in one spot for a while is that vans are not that big. Once you start building out a van, adding a bed, kitchen, and sitting area, an already small space starts to feel pretty tiny. Normally that’s not an issue. When traveling, you are always getting out of the van, going on hikes, and living OUT of the van.
Whereas living stationary Vanlife, it gets really easy not to leave your van. To not be constantly out exploring, and you end up living IN your van full-time. Even an extended-length van does not have a lot of room inside, and when you are living stationary vanlife, it gets easy to feel cramped and a bit crowded in your van.
5. Vanlife Can Get Lonely
Something we never see anyone online talk about is how traveling and living in a van can get lonely. If you were to just go off of what most Instagram and Youtube vanlifers say, you would think traveling in a van is filled with constantly making new friends and hanging out in large groups around the fire.
In reality, it can be challenging to make new friends while traveling, especially if you are not an extrovert. While there are plenty of gatherings and events that you can attend to meet people and make new friends. We find that outside of tiny house events and van gatherings, most people traveling tend to keep to themselves, us included.
Maintaining friendships can also be challenging. When you first start to travel, you’ll be leaving behind your friend group. When you make friends with other people traveling, you are not always heading in the same direction. Making it so you won’t be able to meet up again for weeks or even months.
These things can make it, so you are a bit lonely at times while traveling. The trick is to learn to recognize if you are just feeling a bit homesick and need to call some friends or family or feel lonely and need to reach out to other traveling friends to find out where they are if they can meet up for a bit. While we like being off on our own, we’ve learned how to recognize when we need to put a friend’s address into google maps and would gladly be a bit lonely here and there in return for being able to travel and live vanlife.
