Reddit reviews Walden on Wheels: On The Open Road from Debt to Freedom

Go to a community college for 2 years before university, get a job, save every cent, get scholarships, sell your stuff, borrow textbooks from friends, find a cheap room to rent, and eat nothing but ramen. That's how i did it.

Here's a book by a student at Duke who secretly lived in his van to escape debt. If you're interested, I recommend it: http://www.amazon.com/Walden-Wheels-Open-Road-Freedom/dp/054402883X/ref=la_B00CHGS5YI_sp-atf_title_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1398049979&sr=1-1

Some memoirs... would probably fall under "practical."

• "No Baggage: A Minimalist Tale of Love and Wandering" by Clara Bensen -- Putting this at the top of the list because I love the concept so much. Girl meets a guy and they decide to go on a multi-week trip to Europe together... with no luggage. Basically, all they have are the clothes on their back and what they can carry in their pockets / purse. (I learned later that said boyfriend is Jeff Wilson, aka "Professor Dumpster," the college professor who lived in a retrofitted dumpster to show people how lightly one can live on the earth. More here: The Dumpster Project )
  
  
• "The Unsettlers: In Search of the Good Life in Today's America" by Mark Sundeen -- About three different couples that attempt homesteading in three remarkably different ways -- one in a traditional homestead on an old Amish farm with no electricity Northeastern Missouri where they teach others, one on an urban homestead in Detroit, and one on a farm attempting to be organic in Montana. This is probably the quirkiest, most offbeat title on the list and the one closest to my heart (possibly tying with "No Baggage.")
  
  
• "The Big Tiny: A Built-It-Myself Memoir" by Dee Williams -- About a Boomer woman who builds her own tiny house to live in.
  
  
• "Living Large in Our Little House: Thriving in 480 Square Feet with Six Dogs, a Husband, and One Remote" by Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell -- About a woman and her husband who were forced (due to financial circumstances) to live in their vacation cabin in the woods and ended up making it their full-time residence.
  
  
• "The Shepherd's Life: Modern Dispatches from an Ancient Landscape" by James Rebanks -- About a guy who still raises sheep the traditional way in the Yorkshire Dales area of the UK. He's also published a photography book (since this memoir was a runaway bestseller across the pond) and has a beautifully quirky Instagram account worth a follow.
  
  
• "Meet the Frugalwoods: Achieving Financial Independence Through Simple Living" by Elizabeth Willard Thames -- About a young woman in New England who decides with her husband to eschew superfluous purchases for a few years so that they can build up their savings enough to buy a farm in Vermont and raise their family without the need to work. While I know reaction to this writer have been mixed (it's very "you can do what we did too", despite the fact that the couple had no student loan debt and were from middle-class backgrounds with self-sufficient parents), it is quite inspiring, and reinvigorated my attempts at making conscious purchases.
  
  
• "Walden on Wheels: On The Open Road from Debt to Freedom" by Ken Ilgunas -- About a post-college guy's adventures in living minimally in his twenties while attempting to pay back his student loans. While there are a number of different experiences he discusses, the main focus is on him deciding to live in a van while pursuing a master's degree so as to save on living costs.
  
  
• "No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process" by Colin Beaven -- About a man with a young family who decides he will attempt, while living in their New York City apartment, to create zero impact on the environment for one full year. (This is also the title of a 2009 documentary about the same man, cataloguing his adventure.)
  
  
• "Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping" by Judith Levine -- About a middle-aged writer who decides, along with her husband, to only buy imperative purchases, like food and toilet paper. No clothes, souvenirs, event tickets, etc. I found this to be quite well-written and another inspiring volume.
  
  
• "The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life Is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store" by Cait Flanders -- Similar idea to the prior book, but instead it is a young woman living on her own. An enjoyable read, but I did not find it all that well-written.
  
  
• "Everything That Remains: A Memoir by The Minimalists" by Joshua Fields Millburn -- This book is by the guys who did the "Minimalism" documentary on Netflix. Pretty cookie cutter and not terribly well-written, but again, relatively inspiring. Something I appreciated about this book is that Joshua came from a very tumultuous, working-class background, which sheds a new light on going minimalist. (So often I feel like these memoirs are written by the typical white, affluent, college-educated Boomers or Millennials that have never had to struggle much with want.)

There's a book called Walden on Wheels by a guy who went through graduate school at Duke doing this.

You will have more time to study. You may want to read: https://www.amazon.com/Walden-Wheels-Open-Road-Freedom/dp/054402883X

I'd suggest you live in your current car before you go to university if you can, even if only for a couple of weeks. See how you like it, and don't cheat. If it is OK but you just need to make a couple of tweaks, good to go. If it is miserable or stressful and you think somehow a pretty van with high tech gizmos will make it work -- I'd caution against going forward.

I read this.
https://www.amazon.com/Walden-Wheels-Open-Road-Freedom/dp/054402883X
Not a bad read. It might include some thoughts you had not considered. The author was at Duke. North Carolina is considerably warmer than chicago.

I grew up in Alaska. You can effectively draw a line from Anchorage to Buffalo NY and pull that middle section way down into Chicago and Gary and get approximate winters. Chicago is arguably worse than Anchorage because Anchorage has mountains between it and the arctic circle. The midwest has a whole lot of nothing.

Anyways...The reason I drone on and on about that is that winter can really exhaust you. And it is a slow attrition. Picture this: Its january. You are tucked in a library study carrel. The library is about to close. And soon you have to leave. To walk across campus. It is 20F out. And thats before taking the wind into account. You will walk a mile in that deep freeze to arrive at home...where everything is just as frozen as the outdoors. The only difference is the wind. Inside you wait for the van to warm up. your hands are stiff and clumsy.your feet ache. much of what you own is wither frosty, or when it warms, wet. This is day 60.

Okay I do engage in a little hyperbole there. Worst factors all at once and all that. But this is the sort of thing that leads to Cabin Fever which you really dont need when you are studying. I'm not trying to scare you off. Just offer some thoughts to consider. Do the research and if you decide its what you want, then jump in with both feet

Here's a book about a dude living in his van on campus because of college debt.

Its been done before, and he wrote a book about it.

http://smile.amazon.com/Walden-Wheels-Open-Road-Freedom/dp/054402883X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413762133&sr=8-1&keywords=walden+on+wheels

Ken ilgunas' book Walden on Wheels is a great read about just this.

https://www.amazon.com/Walden-Wheels-Open-Road-Freedom/dp/054402883X

Give them a copy of Walden on Wheels?

https://www.amazon.com/Walden-Wheels-Open-Road-Freedom/dp/054402883X?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=054402883X&linkCode=as2&redirect=true&ref_=as_li_ss_tl&tag=yahfin-20

The short answer is: you need to save more of your salary, 15%/year isn't enough. At 100K a year, you could feasibly save $50k a year or more if you really tried, even in New York. Instead of an apartment downtown, rent a bedroom in someone's house to bring rent down to $6-700 a month in rent (can you move in with a sig. other?), cancel all extraneous costs (expensive cell phone plans, CABLE, internet too - use starbucks wifi or work). Take your whole bonus and don't spend any of it. Put it into the 401k, which you'll then draw down on to buy your house. If you live frugally for two years you'll have your down payment by the time you're 33.

To buy my house, I spoke with my parents and lived at home for about 14 months at 26 years old, socking away every penny of my $51k salary (I contributed 36% of my salary to my 401k, and paid off almost $15k of student loans - in a year!). I only drove to work and biked everywhere else. I inherently saved on groceries since food was always around. Work paid for my phone plan. I NEVER carried money, just so I wouldn't spend it. I tutored and picked up odd jobs on weekends. When I bought my 4 bed, 2 bath house for $185k (for 3% down taken as a loan from my 401k), I immediately rented out rooms to cover the mortgage plus some. If I couldn't have lived at home, I would have bought a van and a gym membership near my work (no shit). I'd live in the van for a year and keep myself clean at the gym (ask yourself: what is being a homeowner worth to you?). I think if you're like me, a year or so of discomfort is more than worth it to own your own property.

You can do it, you just need to be dedicated to the cause and do what it takes, regardless of what people say. Everyone told me that I was crazy for living with my parents again and that they "couldn't do it". Most, and maybe all, of them do not own where they live.

It's a lot easier to spend less money than make more, esp. at $100k/year (that's a shit-ton of money)! I recommend these sites and resources - they are a constant source of motivation for me:

mrmoneymustache.com
"Walden on Wheels" by Ken Ilgunas http://amzn.com/054402883X

Making $100k, you can easily do this. Find a way to save at least half of your salary for 2 years and you'll have your down payment and set yourself up with good habits as a homeowner. Easy, you can do it!

I'm reading this book right now: can't say if the whole thing is great, but the first chapter and half are (although he uses a thesaurus a little much for my tastes) excellent; it's about his adventure from to independence. Walden on Wheels by Ken Ilguskas

http://www.amazon.com/Walden-Wheels-Open-Road-Freedom/dp/054402883X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372982298&sr=1-1&keywords=walden+on+wheels

This is a classic case of framing the situation the wrong way.

What you did was kick ass and get out of debt! There is another person that did the same as you and wrote a book about how awesome it was. http://www.amazon.com/Walden-Wheels-Open-Road-Freedom/dp/054402883X Walden on Wheels.

Where is living in a Van illegal? Almost nowhere. Keep on keeping on.

check our r/vandwelling for more people doing what you did.