Came across an interesting question on another forum. Living in a tent...or similar.

My best friend spent 11 months in a VW vancamper in Kissimmee Florida w/his girlfriend. They were at a campsite so they had showers and such.
 
Some will rise by the same thing that others will fall.............. I'm positive I've met people that would be suicidal if we stuck them in a pup tent in a forest after a very short amount of time even if they had adequate food, water, and medication. Especially if they didn't know how long they would have to put up with it. Apathy would kick in and they'd embark on the downward spiral............Others go on expeditions to the frozen white wastelands for months at a time. They live in tents, lose body parts to cold, come back, only to start drumming up sponsorship so they can get back out there and have another go........................Consider the guy that has become dead chuffed that he now owns a few sheets of corrugated iron to build his shanty. He's ecstatic today because he has secured a pitch right next to the dump, and he can send all of his kids out foraging for food without needing to go hunting. What a blessing..........................The point here is that how people think about stuff is usually way more important than the stuff itself. Celebrities can wilt in homes running to several million despite being surrounded by toads that will all fawn on command. “My Botox hell” writes the bloated gessler that didn't grasp that cookies and coke should be taken in moderation. Mebe they'll find him hanged in a wardrobe, apple in his mouth and snudging on a pair of undersmackers with a butt-out butting in. The world is not enough....................That said, I've seen it reported here that the Didikai which live in caravans and prefab type housing tend to have a much a shorter life expectancy. And that's despite having money, gas, electric, water, sanitation, and available schooling. Given they tend to eulogize caravan living with a sense of pride it's hardly the caravan living a such that causes it. Diet, religion, and smoking probably sets them apart from the modern world, but they certainly seem more active than the average modern potato. Dunno, Something is at work though.
 
My dad's mother's family was dirt poor; well, technically 3/4 of my grandparents were, and the other was close in the Depression(which didn't really affect the rest of them!).
Anyway, it was 80+ years ago, but my grandmother's family lived in a tent with dirt for the floor. So, yeah, it's quite doable. Most of the things we think of as necessities are just icing on the cake, which we could easily live without if we had to.
 
And that's certainly far harder than the question posed by the OP because it is open ended. “Is this my lot now” surely exerts a different effect from “this is comparatively transient”................I have a bunch of relatives in Australia that do stuff very differently from what we do here. We tend to buy brick properties. Most of them seem to buy a plot and then live on site in something temporary 'till their house is built. If the goal is to own a Queenslander or whatever, and they know it is coming, at worst they seem mildly inconvenienced. I've never known it take less than a year. It's a price they pay gladly for the all muck in and help each other approach.
 
Professional hippies do this all the time. Of course someone could live a minimal lifestyle out of a tent. I think a better question would be, would someone want to?

It sounds neat, but I wouldn't do it. I do think it’s interesting. However, there are expensive social costs to this kind of lifestyle. I think our culture frowns upon non-conformists, especially the transient type. In some places they are outcast or meddled with. You need a place to put the tent. You know, the whole private property thing. The modern USA lifestyle requires manufactured materials, goods, services, rents (rent seeking), and infrastructure in order to interact with commerce. Even the most diehard outdoors person, survivalist, bushcrafter, whatever you want to call these people, will eventually go back to commerce and interact with it.

Personally I'll pay the social costs of city life and camp and hike on the weekends. Actually, there are several “homeless” encampments in the city I live in. They occasionally pop-up on neighborhood listservs. Like I said above, more often than not they are frowned upon until the marginal lifestyle connoisseur pops-up and defends the act as freedom of choice and/or “they aren’t hurting anyone” mind your own business. I think the “homeless” tend to be tolerated more or less as long as no seediness can be linked to the camps.
 
My wife and I lived on a sailboat for over a year. It was a 27' boat with minimal gear, uninsulated. We still remember those days fondly.
 
The hardest thing is not having a place to put your 'stuff'. Sure, we don't need all of the stuff we have, but still it's nice to have a few things. A computer, comfortable chair, tools, hunting and fishing gear, kitchen utensils, some clean clothes, an extra pair of boots...

You live in a tent, and you pack it in and out of a car trunk daily, there's not room for many extras and even necessities become prioritized.
 
I was homeless and hoping trains, lived outside, lived in a truck, lived out of a pack, and built a shack. For about 12 years off and on but full time for about 4 years.
 
Two Winters in a Tipi is not a manual by any stretch, but a great read with many lessons and will be good food for thought in your question. I have trained with Mark many times. Great guy with tremendous knowledge.

Book Review


Article from Mark giving you some more insight into his knowledge and style.
 
I've come across it being done successfully, if you can call it "successful" a few times in my life.
One worth mention in the past few years, with a dude I worked with.
It's actually a pretty good story, and somewhat a cautionary one.
This guy I know, Bruce, had a decent job as what we call a Township inspector here in Pa, but like a lot of us his municipality suffered budget cuts, and he was more in a supervisory role so he got let go first.
Even though where he and I worked together was his SECOND job, he still couldn't make ends.

Once he realized he was going to lose his house, he cashed out what he could, divided all his assets off and made the decision to keep some camping stuff, his cell phone and his truck.
He pretty much went to this campground he frequented as a patron and laid the story out to them, and made a deal with them to let him camp the whole season for a little money and traded his wealth of trade knowledge for not being held to a time limit.
he ended up "living" there for several months before getting another job in Lancaster.
 
ThriftyJoe said:
Amen, brother bonee. I lived very cheap in a mini mobile home for several years while I was working as an engineer. Got my degree from a cheap state school working part-time + some help from my folks. Retired at 45 to a comfy little town in the West. Anybody can do it. It's about knowing the difference between needs and wants. Madison Avenue would like us to confuse the two, and to stay in debt forever paying off loans for a bunch of junk we don't need. You gotta learn to think for yourself. That's the first step.

Back to the OP's question. I knew a guy in Taos NM years ago who lived in a tent for many months including winter, while he was building his "Earth ship" off-grid house there. He had his big dog with him for warmth. Pretty cool idea. All he had to pay for was the land. The rest was owner labor and recycled materials. Of course you need those liberal Taos building codes to pull that off. It's part of the culture there.

A lot of people don't realize that manufactured HUD code housing is built to federal building codes, which supersede local building codes. Local building codes are all about forcing you to build a 4000 sq ft house even if you're a bachelor, supposedly to protect the value of your neighbor's house. That way we can all be indebted rats together, get it? Watch out though. Local communities can still get you by setting a minimum square footage or width, so it ends up costing almost as much as a site built house. Also land covenants frequently ban manufactured housing.

Best value? Look for old beat up mobile homes on private lots in tiny towns. You can buy them dirt cheap, around the cost of a new Toyota. Sometimes the neighborhood is not that bad, and crime is usually much lower than in big cities. Make your offer contingent on the building permit for the new(er) small house you want to bring in. The local town government may let you put a very small house there, if it's significantly better than the old house. Works great, and you just saved yourself thirty years of mortgage interest.

EDIT: I've done it twice. A great way to get a modern clean comfortable home for cheap.
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A newer mobile home, or did you build a home on that site?
 
When I graduated from high school I had over a year of sleeping outdoors time. I continued outdoor living right up to my introduction to spinal stenosis and the subsequent surgeries.A gallon of milk is on the higher end of my weight limitation now.
 
I've livedin my mini-van for the past 4 months, banking the money from my school loans towards an income producing idea that I have. It's quite feasible to do, while also selling blood plasma and doing cash gigs from craigslist on the weekends. I do spend $40 per month on a 5x10 public storage, tho and soon that will increase, cause I gotta have one that is "climate controlled" once the summer heat arrives.
 
Needs vs. wants vs. future plans. Here where I live there are lots of VW combis and pop-tops that have permanent occupants. probably one in 10 station wagons has a "bed deck" built into the back, and everything has a surfboard rack on top. Lots of ways to pick up a meal and a few bucks, and lots of people who just want the freedom. My parents lived in a converted school bus for quite a while, parked it at friends houses in exchange for a little money and some help. Because of that they were able to live on a very tight budget while they did university. RVs and bunk-houses have been part of the family for a long time while houses were built.

As for being a mooch, most people who get back into the workforce pay that back in taxes pretty quick anyway, so if it lets you get out of the hole faster, then go for it. The rules all changed with the GFC. If the normal rules no longer apply, then find a set that do. If that means living in a van for a couple of years to keep out of dept, or instead of renting, putting that money into an RV. Its also about very tight budgeting, and knowing what you need. It also helps to have some legal standing as far as a job, or at least a social connection that can protect you from a vagrancy charge. Heck depending on where you are, you may even be able to get legal sanction to set up camp if you have a plan to build or can prove an intention to stay local, especially in a smaller town that is loosing people.

The first part of living that life is deciding what you can live without, then figuring out what changes that will mean. Its far easier to go that way by choice, with a goal. When I did it, it was out of necessity and lack of cash. Found a place willing to trade work for food and a place to live, but it put me behind in a lot of ways. Had I done it earlier, and by choice, I could have probably gotten a better start than I did, and not have been on the back foot for several years. I tried to keep far too much crap, and that caused several rather poor living decisions. I fell victim to the sunk cost fallacy several times. Next time, everything fits in one car load, mistake number one. Number two was trying to have "house stuff" I would have been better off to have just used camping stuff. And never, never pay rent on credit, no matter who the land-lord is.
 
bored2deth said:
The woman who posed the question was wanting advice in hopes of saving up money for land/house.
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Yes, it can be done. But I would advise as other s have that one live out of a van or back of a truck for security.

The best way to legitimately do this is if you can afford the undeveloped land on which you want to put a house. That way, you have a physical address as soon as you put up a mailbox (necessary now to maintain your driver's license), and land to live on that is actually yours, and you can return to each night after work. This does give a psychological advantage, knowing that you are working on something, and can see the progress being made. A lot fo the land clearing and prep work can be done yourself.

First thing I'd do when able is get a well drilled, and a pump put in. Having water on site is a big advantage, and psychological thing.
 
To my experience, car is more comfortable than tent if you could find a nice place to park.
It is less cold and less wind. No needs to set up and fold, either.
 
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