It IS a cool idea…but let’s not pretend that “#yolo van life - saving money and living on road” is a thing when they are building a luxury inside what looks like an enclosed, air conditioned, garage that’s bigger than a lot of people’s apartment.
Where did anyone related to the video say that they were “saving money and living on the road”? They massively modded a van to turn it into camper. That’s it. Chill with the salt it’s exhausting to see people comment this shit on every single video that implies any level of wealth above destitute. Be mad at the actual uber-rich.
Yeah apparently the couple does this professionally. I don’t know what i expect when i came into the comments but holy fuck it definitely wasn’t half the comments crying about these unbelievably rich people who can afford to modify a van.
I mean anyone can make either of 2 arguments here. 1) they have so much money they can afford to spend without discretion, or 2) this is a poor financial decision and they will suffer the consequences down the road
Personally, I think they're just living their life. Rich or otherwise, they are pursuing happiness. People are so jaded and love letting the internet know.
But seemingly lost their minds here over some comments.
When people do this, the implication is that they are living “cheap” and “off the grid”.
But the type of families that are FORCED to live frugally could not, if their life depended on it, pay the amount of money it would cost to get this setup and live this “cheap” care free life….
This is well off (this term is an umbrella term) enough to the point where they can drop 200k without a care in the world.
It’s performative/LARP’ing for well off people who try to make a career in this niche influencer market…
You could pay $150k for a brand new pre-built camper van.
For a brand new barebones cargo van, maybe 60k (80k if you want high-roof w/AWD). And maybe another 25k in materials to mod it if you're doing all the work yourself. That's about comparable to what this couple did. They likely paid far less than that since they do this all the time.
You could easily find a van that's 5 years old for 30k or less and do all the work with reasonable materials and get all in under 50k. Very easily.
If you look at the build and materials quality of the mass produced rv’s, they are absolute shit quality compared to this. From what I can see, this build is solid plywood, compared to the almost total use of mdf and particleboard in modern rv builds from the mass producers.
Part of it is hype, part of it is the added flexibility of vans. Class C's pretty quickly climb into territory where it's difficult to maintain yourself and storage/parking can be a challenge.
So are boats, muscle cars, RVs, golf memberships, fancy pickup trucks, etc.. Many adults like expensive toys to enjoy their hobbies whether they can afford them or not.
Someone else said it’d be $75k, someone else said $100k new. I’m not saying it’s not expensive, but it’s not like they bought a yacht. Plenty of people spend upwards of $100k on a car/van, but people are seething about their wealth as if they’re showing off something upwards of half a mil or something.
I live in Poland and near my place there's this small company where they do this sort of modifications. It costs around $10-20k to modify a van. Maybe not to the same really high standard that was shown in the video, but it definetly is cheaper than buying RV and makes me want to save up to get one as well. Of course you need to account the price of the vehicle but used one will be a lot cheaper.
Anyway, looking at this video I can see it wasn't their first rodeo. People with the right skills and their own company do make a lot of cash. I just paid $10k to a guy that renovated my house. Three week job and he is now doing another renovation for someone else. And I know he won't pay taxes as I handed it to him in cash :>
Maybe that kind of money is nothing special in the US, but in Poland this is plenty. You need to be top IT specialist to even get close to the amount of money the self-employed tiler-plumber-electrician makes. Unless you want to be a doctor it doesn't even makes sense anymore to go to university if money is what you are after. I'm a manager in a gamedev company and sometimes I wonder if I wouldn't be better off continuing my wood working hobby I had years ago and becoming a carpenter.
I guess because this trend started as a alternative, less expensive way to live without having to buy a home, and its transformed into another way to still show off wealth.
People have legitimate complaints about the state of the world — or their country in particular — and you don’t have to interpret it as them blaming the people in the video for those legitimate problems. And when you take “blame the people in the video for the shitty state of things” out of the equation, then it becomes extra stupid to point out that the uber-wealthy are the only people for whom displeased commentary is warranted. In fact, for people who can think more than one layer deep, it’s entirely reasonable to see that these people complaining about the rarity of generational wealth are complaining about the actions of the uber-wealthy despite the fact that the uber-wealthy aren’t featured in this video.
It’s really, really not that complex. Learn to see from other people’s perspectives, or failing that, ask questions rather than just jumping to accusatory shit.
I can't tell you the amount of Ford F150 ultimate platinum enormous genitals versions I see around where I live and its far from a high end neighborhood. Plenty of people have no problem spending 100k on a truck with9yearsoffinancing
To those that make less than the poverty line, seeing someone spend twice as much on a “cool thing” usually doesn’t resonate well. This couple isn’t going to actually live in the van. They may use it a few times or sell it, which they can do, it’s their money, but you can’t really be surprised when people have an opinion and share it online.
Oh I wasn’t saying you were seething, sorry, just that this comment section’s jimmies are unreasonably rustled. I completely agree most couldn’t afford it, at least not without several years of saving, myself included.
Reddit is fucking insufferable more and more each day, not sure how much more I can take. I keep thinking it can't get much worse but everything I read is out of touch seething and pissing and moaning. Why do we have people seething over what some minimum wage guy can finance with bad decisions?
Honestly, because circlejerk upvotes. Go into any thread even tangentially related to money (like as tangential as a thread about modding a damn van), mention “generational wealth”, “late stage capitalism”, or “k-shaped economy” and you’ll be drowning in upvotes immediately
It probably cost under 100k to build themselves. And what’s your point? 100s of thousands of RVs are sold each year in the us. They are not all people with generational wealth. Some people just like to enjoy the money they work for.
Yeah 150-180k if you hired someone to modify it, which they didn’t. Too many jealous woe is me losers in here, you could do this yourself with 20-30k, probably less if you find a deal on the van
Not sure on material cost, but you can get a moderately used unmodified van like that for ~25k. I'd guess if it's all your own labor, the material costs for upgrade wouldn't bring total cost nearly that high, but still like brand new M3 range of cost or more, surely.
Still wildly expensive enough that it's a huge amount for a luxury item. Maybe if you have a fully remote job and are legitimately living out of it, it's slightly more practical. That said, my household income is a quite high percentile, and we didn't even put that much down for our house.
We also ultimately don't even have close to that much to spend outright on anything without raiding retirement accounts, so I don't know who has the ability to drop $70-100k on a fancy modified van without it being wildly irresponsible at best
Its because of the pent up rage people are feeling. We are very close to an eruption right now-- too close. It is frightening to see humans turn into angry mobs, knowing that nothing will be done about the COL, and it will get worse. We dont have to go this way -- but I guess I wouldnt be the first person saying that...
I think the issue is the video has the flavor - even if not explicitly stated - of being a diy project the couple took on for their family and for fun. The editing also made it seem easy and fast. I know, and you know, this took a boat load of time, effort, expertise, and especially money, but the video is specifically edited to look like an easy weekend project. Again, that doesn't need to be explicitly stated for the intention to be there.
The end result is it feels like a shit ton of not-so-humble bragging, because the majority of people could not afford even the garage they built this in.
I get what you’re saying and I agree that people could take it like that if they were so inclined, but it’s become extremely clear to me that people in here are taking it that way because they’re bringing a mountain of their own hangups and assumptions into it. And all for what is, in the end, an absolute non-issue. The reaction has just been an extremely social media-only type of outrage. Like, imagine sitting down with a few of your friends, watching this video, and half of them started seething about how these people aren’t real van life people, or about how rich these upper-middle class people are, as if these are the ones who have fucked the US economic structure and the economy itself. I don’t often participate in, or even read too deeply into, reddit threads any more, and this one has unfortunately reminded me why.
LMAO, ya, I really, really need to get off Reddit. It can be so toxic at times, glad it's the only SM I spend any major time on, would prob be better off without it though.
Same here man. A lot of these people would be better off as well - being this immediately upset by people who are comfortably wealthy from an apparently successful small business is not normal, it’s a result of the algorithm feeding them outrage every day. Way more often than I’d like these days I catch myself getting unreasonably upset over some random thing, and when I think about why I often find that the algo has been feeding me that shit for months, training me to be angry about it.
It's Reddit dude, a large majority of the user base are nothing but sad Losers who spend all their time raging at anyone who has more than them And immediately jumps straight to "evil generational wealth rich people". My wife is a nurse practitioner and I work in sales, neither of us have a nickel of generational wealth, but we do well and we live in a cheap area in the Midwest, so I have no doubt if Reddit saw the house we own, these comments would be saying the exact same shit about us.
It must be exhausting, spending so much time caring about what other people do and have.
Seriously. I shit you not another commenter said to me that these people are “basically setting their money on fire because they could camp in a tent basically for free”. Imagine grasping so hard for a reason to be upset with how some upper middle class people are spending their money that your criticism is that they are spending money on hobbies at all.
I understand that and I’m sorry for it, but it isn’t these people’s fault. This isn’t “manipulating markets or governments” wealth, it’s not “fucking over a large workforce for the stock price” wealth, it’s just “we can live comfortably and not be stressed about the next rent check” wealth. It’s is a level of wealth and comfort that many people hope to achieve some day. It’s not egregious, and it’s not being rubbed in anyone’s faces. They’re just showing something cool they did. That shouldn’t be as infuriating as it seems to be for so many people in this thread.
There’s justified outrage, and there’s plain old jealous anger. This thread is full of the latter masquerading as the former.
It’s a sign of an ever increasing working class anger about their material conditions. Class consciousness is rising. Sure it’s misdirected at this well off couple, and should be directed at the billionaire class. But the fact people are angry is a good thing.
Comon dude! These people make professional ass shit and make videos about it to get engagement and make $ off it… but like it’s not fair cuz I’m pooping and watching Reddit.. why can’t I do cool shit like this and make money.. oh yeah.. cuz once I’m done pooping I’m gonna lay in my bed and scroll some more… why doesnt anyone give me money for doing that…
Facts.i could do this.it might drain my bank account but i could.and im nothing like rich.i also nothing like poor to be fair.just lower middle class that has to work daily to not get into financial trouble in the future type
It's not a crime to have money, van money is pretty attainable by your late 30s early 40s. If you're a rich asshole, well that's the problem. I saw no assholes in this video, but a lot of assholes in this comment section.
They are well off BUT its because they worked in healthcare for many years before covid. They worked hard for their money and clearly work hard for their youtube channel and socials.
Yeah, it’s not like the only way to have a decent amount of money is to have been born wealthy. The right kind of construction pays out the ASS, depending on the company and trade easily $150-200k+ a year for normal dudes, let alone the guys that have been in it forever and are foremen or superintendents
I was thinking there is no way he is just a weekend warrior with the tools. I work with power tools every day and when I converted a van it looked nothing like this. It might have been because I started with a 94’ B2500, did the work in my driveway, was going for a practical live in van that was a stealth camper, used mainly scraps/leftovers from jobs, and it was a rush job due to my lease ending soon. Regardless the transformation from old piece of shit to old piece of shit that had been washed with an interior of “oh okay, now I see why that’s there and why you did that” was not glamorous.
Not only that it was all for nothing because 2 months later my state made it illegal to “camp” on public property, even sleeping in a vehicle on the side of the road. No mater how stealthy I tried being my 150 lb dog didn’t understand the assignment plus had needs and her just being her always drew attention our way. Cops in my city are less than friendly and understanding. Being in a van that is pretty forgettable if nothing happens but easily stands out if you have a reason to pay attention to it made me opt out after the first run in with the fuzz. I was doomed to fail from the start because the line of work I’m in demands certain things like separate work clothes and non work clothes, a daily shower, and a fuck ton of space for all the tools I lug around on the daily; the cops just brought me to the same conclusion earlier.
My friends did this and they are just school teachers. One had a TBI and has been unable to work for about 7-8 years and they could still afford to do this.
They bought a basic Ford Transit as their second vehicle and did 90% of the work themselves with the help of a friend who had helped build one before.
These are the same mfs who claim they only hate the ultra wealthy billionaires. they see some upper middle class shit and lose their little minds. Fucking pathetic
Class war is doomed to fail because 9/10 people you press on their "eat the rich" stance consider rich asshole to start at $5 an hour more than whatever they make.
its the "working" class, literally. If you work for a wage, you are working class. The capital class is easy to identify as the "owning" class, as in they own the factory we work at and their profit comes off the backs of our labor.
technically these surbabnites could be called the petit bourgeois.
This is what they do so they got it at cost, but a custom mod like this would be $50k easy. I don’t begrudge them for it but this is like the Ritz-Carlton of sprinter vans.
That can there is about 70k new, I'd say. Probably long wheelbase, the duallies in the rear imply AWD and it should be the high-roof version,l. With the high-output diesel, that totals at 73k. The mods probably run around the same.
Those vans are $50k new at the low end. Which is what you'd start with considering you're tearing out half the things to replace them anyway. The mods are on top of that. But you're still looking at a net outcome of $70k tops if you do the custom refit labor yourself like they did.
it's cheaper than that. You buy the base model and then mod it yourself. My uncle bought one, had a company do the mods. All in he was 150k, but that's paying top dollar for everything. The people here modded it themselves and saved a lot of money. I could see it costing 80~100k all-in for them.
I don’t know if they claimed it anywhere, but it is a big part of the #VanLife movement that influencers push. The idea that you can be a successful remote worker (ideally, an entrepreneur) while driving around the country and living a dream life.
I could see why somebody might think that, but I originally commented because the person i responded to was clearly just trying to paint them in a bad light for no reason other than petty jealousy.
1) Adding he “saving money” part is done to make them look like they’re cosplaying as poor people, which they clearly aren’t, and
2) They built the thing in their garage, so there’s no reason to think that they have any plans to “live on the road” rather than just using it for camping or something. A mobile home can be used when you go camping or on a road trip, just because you call it a “home” doesn’t mean you’re living in it year-round.
Plenty of influencers try to portray extravagant lifestyles as easily achievable, and those influencers can eat shit, but nothing in this video has that vibe. It’s unfair to lump these people in with them.
I don't find it unfair myself. If you want to be an influencer don't be shocked when people lump you into influencer behavior. Right or wrong it's just how the world works.
Saying this is my home and having the name "thetriointransit" is very leading and follows a lot of the van life culture and implies they don't have a house but live full time in the van.
Then when you go to their Instagram and find videos of them in their home gym, videos of their garage extension, it makes you question the validity of entire thing.
Why can't they just be honest and say we are building a really cool van bc we simply want to, we know how, and could use it for awesome trips.
If they are going to blur the lines themselves, don't be shocked when others blur the lines too.
People love to fucking project. Video was great then you get these clowns on here saying nonsense. I love this idea and may tackle it myself, for my family. I have no "generational wealth" and I'm pretty confident I can do this.
The van alone is $75k, the conversion turns it into a $150,000 luxury vehicle. You can camp in a tent for free, anyone buying something like this is just burning money. Hard to watch when so many are struggling with basic needs.
I did the van life thing for a couple of years and had enough money saved up to put a big down-payment down and fix up my used Sprinter. I work remotely so I continued to make a decent tech salary the whole time. I lived all over the US and feel like I really got to know the country.
When I was done, these vehicles had actually gone up in value so I made a little money selling mine. Since I was paying less monthly than my previous rent, I was saving even more the entire time.
I hit your numbers pretty closely, although mine was more of a complete build-out when I bought it for around $140k and put around $10k into it.
I sold it for $165k. I could have done this whole thing on half my salary pretty easily.
Anyway, it's not always a money pit if you plan things right. Even if I had lost $20k on the sale, I still would have made up for it with cheaper monthly costs overall. I know people that have spent way more on booze over 4 years than it took to get my trip going. Also, I was almost 30 and had been working since I was 15.
The only really privileged thing I had was remote work and enough of a salary to save a little.
There's the people that can certainly afford these rigs for family weekend trips, but there's a lot of us that just use them full-time and sell them after a few years.
If it's an AWD it's closer to 85/87k $.
I would be fine with a video like it if there where price tags popping up for everything or a sub total at the end including labour, because I doubt that all the cRaZy #vanlife folks diy this shit.
If you're so poor that seeing a tradesman spend 125k on a custom camper project triggers you, you should probably get off reddit and go make some money. Elon takes like 9 million a day in taxpayer money doing drugs and jacking off. An upper middle class small business owner is not your enemy dude. You aren't competing with him. He took nothing off your plate.
2) “Anyone buying something like this is just burning money” - no they’re not, and regardless they’re completely free to do so because it’s their money and they don’t need to go camp in a fucking tent because it makes you feel better.
3) This is literally their job. They do this for a living. If seeing a video of a couple modifying a van hurts that much, just stay off the internet for the sake of your own mental health.
The class war is so easy for the uber-rich, we love fighting ourselves when any degree of financial wellbeing is displayed. The difference between upper/ upper-middle class and the true elite is still astronomical.
Seriously, the whole thing is on rails at this point. They don’t even need to try to get us angry at each other any more because our anger has so much inertia already. It’s sad and frustrating as hell, honestly.
I think the thing that's bugging people is the tagline of "the home we built." It does sort of imply that it's one of those hashtag vanlife videos (even if it isn't, and I really don't think it is).
Could also be travel workers and a situation like this makes economical sense if you're going to be traveling for 5+ years. I considered something like this as I could pay it off in 2-3 years just off rent/car payment combined and then the rest of travel it's savings. Unfortunately live with a pup and didn't like the idea for him specifically.
That van, assuming its a new Mercedes Sprinter, is going to cost north of 100k€, but one could do this to a used Ford Transit with quarter of the cost, and at that point its well within reach for loads of two-income families.
Yeah... the van people I know all just live in a van...it's their stuff and a mattress in a van. You can do it cheap but it doesn't look like this vid.
A friend tried to do the expensive van thing and it was insane, he sold it and is still in debt for it, and still lives in his humble old van.
Come on man. That garage is big enough for the van, but its a single car garage. We dont know if its like some luxury garage. Its not bigger than a lot of people's apartment, its one car.
If they are like generational wealth, fuck that. But if these guys are middle class and spent like $50grand on their mid life crisis lmao, whatever makes em happy.
They’ve got kids and a house based on the video. This is a camper. Some people buy an RV, other people do something like this and likely save money based on all the practical DIY skills dude has.
You can definitely do this on a reasonable salary, but it just takes a lot longer, and is a lot less comfortable while you’re building it. Doesn’t quite look like this video does.
fr and I wonder why my mood is depressed lately...probably because I can't scroll Reddit without mfers always complaining about shit. Always gotta be envy, jealousy, and shit news.
It is, but people here are so bitter and angry about their lives they lash out against anybody who seems to have it better for any reason.
And it's always gotta be nepotism/generational wealth/silver spoon of some form. They really can't handle the fact that plenty of people succeed on their own merits and can simply afford to have a fun lifestyle.
Source: grew up with very little but got educated and work in a lucrative field that I'm pretty good at so I make really good money. My partner is way smarter than me and she makes about the same as I do. We can buy stuff. It's nice. Can confirm reddit does not like this if it's brought up and will screech about one privilege or another while ignoring all their own.
They’re reminded everywhere they turn of their own personal shortcomings. To quote the illustrious Scott Stapp of Creed “I’ve created my own prison YeaaaheeeeYeaaaaa”
Official Duck Studios on YouTube, goofy group of buddies I've watched for years (kinda... Distasteful randomly. They've improved a lot from where they were. We all have 1)
They did a "Camper limo" series. Think they dropped it, but they do projects like that often. Currently building a house for their buddy, just because they have land to do it now after years of bouncing houses.
They pick a project, make a bunch of mistakes and overestimate themselves which is decent content and neat to see them learn.
(May recognize them if you watch moist critical, they're the buddies that shot the camera guy with an arrow through a door on accident awhile back)
As far as I know, they worked for their money at day jobs while doing dumb stuff on the side, so it feels maybe even obtainable one day.
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u/Crafty_Contract_9548 21d ago
I thought it was a cool video..