Thread: Alternative dwellings for independence (tiny houses, stealth vans, etc)

MGTOW is freedom. We're all free from the bullshit demand that we earn a shit ton of money in some soul-crushing job to support a woman. Fuck that shit. However, most of us live in the US, which is a country whose government doesn't give a fuck about us, and only cares about the ultra rich corporations. They don't give a fuck if rent and mortgage prices get out of reach in multiple parts of the country.

It's why there's a growing movement of people finding alternative ways to meet their domicile needs. Some people live in an RV. Others in a tiny house, and some even rough it in a tent.

This stealth van in the video offers a lot of huge advantages. You can't just park an RV anywhere. In a lot of places, you'll get kicked out or you'd be an easy target for thieves. This dude turned an ordinary looking work truck into a small apartment where he could live in for his grad school. It's genius, and will save him from paying thousands on an apartment. He can part it just about anywhere without drawing too much attention.

I'm not Mr. Handyman, but I wonder if I could still get something like this if I hired out the construction to someone who is good with that kind of stuff.

https://youtu.be/py4zetCEYzA

It wasn't stealth, but I converted a school bus into a RV. Didn't drive it much, it set in the trailer park most of the time. If you were going to drive much, a smaller bus would be better. A full size bus is over thirty feet long. In the woods you could have problems turning a rig like that around.

For the money they cost, store bought RV's are not built that good. Doing your own is the way to go if you can. It wouldn't take much skill to do most of the work yourself. Ordinary carpenter skills would cover most of it, and you could get help with the wiring and plumbing.

Without extensive insulation, you have a steel box which will be hot in the summer and cold in the winter. I had a woodstove for the winter and a shady parking spot in summer. And even with a big rig, there's only so much room. A lot of people would either be cramped or have to some storage elsewhere to get by. I was pretty cramped with a big book collection, a bunch of tools, and a lot a riding gear besides my household stuff.

Most parks don't want homemade RV's. Only the oldest park in town would have me. A professional looking rig might help, but it might not too. Besides, a lot of places don't seem to have trailer parks anymore and that's a downside.

Originally Posted by TigPlaze

MGTOW is freedom. (...)
It's why there's a growing movement of people finding alternative ways to meet their domicile needs.(...)
This stealth van in the video offers a lot of huge advantages. You can't just park an RV anywhere.

This idea is truly ingenious. I'm not from US but even I can see how this could be beneficial.

We had this guy in our country about a two centuries ago who lived in a something conceptually similiar to RV.
His idea was not to give governament a single dime, as he was deeply dissapointed with how the country was led.
He noticed that taxes only applied to immovable structures. Each day he moved his "RV" slightly
so it couldn't be considered a residency. He even got sued by a state three times an won each trial.

Nowdays this level of bullshittery is impossible to pull off but you still can save some money.

As a full-time RV occupant. I can say that it is a hard life. Summer's are good, (if you have shade) Springs and Autumns are good. But Winter will fuck you up. HARD. I magended 3 Winter's in my RV. But now, moving back to town. I need Heat. Been a Sun-baby my entire Life, I need a good 85 degrees at all times. Lots of sweat. Forever and Always. More Sweat.

And yes, I accept that I am an outlier among the human race. Point is, I lived in a miserable goddamn Winnebago for three years, just to make sure that women were gone. Go to the Sweat Lodge. Listen to Master of Puppets. / drunk

I would consider this a truck, not a van. But cool concept.

I've been tossing around the idea of selling my home and going mobile, I've concluded that buying a camping trailer and a newer Toyota Taco 4x4 to pull it and my Honda 110 strapped to the back of it or in the pickup bed and an E-bike.

Having just a truck like that alone excludes independent transportation (pickup/motorcycle/e-bike) and park the camper in trailer parks with water hookup and electricity (air conditioning/hot showers).

The last thing you want is a knock on the door by police and the local zoning enforcement officer, once they know your vehicle there will be no place to stealth within city limits, you'll be arrested and your van towed once cited.

You can also buy cheap land with no local government in the rural areas for longer self sustained stays with very little taxes and expenses.

I'm figuring we'll have property tax increases fueled by higher evaluations forcing my hand to retreat to this life style. Nobody enjoys being a tax slave just to enrich the gluttons that want more and more and more until there's nothing left to take and whole neighborhoods reduced to rubble and ashes due to aggressive taxation policies to continue their wants and ways detrimental to personal survival and prohibiting prosperity.

I wouldn't want to feed that tank the 5 gallons of gas ($50.00) needed to go to the store where prices have and continue to soar in these times of hyper inflation.

In the end I bought a rundown house and lived in the bus next to it till the house was ready. It worked out well. I suppose you could do the same with a hunk of raw land, though it would be harder. Besides electricity you need water and sewage. Now a legal septic tank and drain field take a backhoe and a lot of money. My house was built before a bunch of regulations came along. It had a 200-gallon tank and 35 feet of drain field. Now they want a 2000-gallon tank and hundreds of feet of drain. It wasn't legal and if you had women, it wasn't big enough. But with just me living there it wasn't a problem till the tank rotted out.
If you were somewhere where you could outlaw things, you could dig a hole for a small tank and thirty-five feet of drain field by hand. It would be hard, but if you had the water, it would be way better than an outhouse. Digging a full-sized system by hand is out of the question unless you have one hell of a lot of labor available.

On the eve of Independence Day in America, I content myself with the knowledge that one of my forefathers probably shot one of Spooky's forefathers.

I'm out. Peace.
- Owen, 07.03.2022

Originally Posted by frog

In the end I bought a rundown house and lived in the bus next to it till the house was ready. It worked out well. I suppose you could do the same with a hunk of raw land, though it would be harder. Besides electricity you need water and sewage. Now a legal septic tank and drain field take a backhoe and a lot of money. My house was built before a bunch of regulations came along. It had a 200-gallon tank and 35 feet of drain field. Now they want a 2000-gallon tank and hundreds of feet of drain. It wasn't legal and if you had women, it wasn't big enough. But with just me living there it wasn't a problem till the tank rotted out.
If you were somewhere where you could outlaw things, you could dig a hole for a small tank and thirty-five feet of drain field by hand. It would be hard, but if you had the water, it would be way better than an outhouse. Digging a full-sized system by hand is out of the question unless you have one hell of a lot of labor available.

$7.00 a gallon diesel is worth $1,200 a manned shovel, I love diesel powered equipment, it's what I use to go down the street and fetch my road every time it rains hard! A shovel and wheelbarrow would take days and cost more in food than the gallon of diesel and .45 man hours!

If you're gonna break ground, toss the shovel and get the diesel! don't get a big one, midsize is more than enough! 3,000 Chinamen at your fingertips is more than ENOUGH! Blisters are for CHUMPS!

Ingenious it might be, but the stealth truck sounds like it was built to get him through grad school, not to be his full-time home. You'd have to be pretty minimal to be happy in that thing, however well it's set up.

I suppose stealth trucks work in a city. In the burbs or a small town though, people would soon realize your living there. And you got to drive around to take care of your sewage and grey water. Though far better than renting, you're still spending money. I think having your own place is cheaper than living on the road in the long run. The recent real estate boom has no doubt made it harder, but it's still the best plan. If you got work covered in a town with no jobs, there's bargain's to be had.

Originally Posted by mgtower

If you're gonna break ground, toss the shovel and get the diesel! don't get a big one, midsize is more than enough! 3,000 Chinamen at your fingertips is more than ENOUGH! Blisters are for CHUMPS!

My neighbor talked the people who sold me the place into loaning me their old backhoe, or I'd still be digging. I didn't have the money back then to pay someone else.

Originally Posted by OwenWentFullMGTOW

A different friend recently announced that he's going in the opposite direction. He's buying a house in a far away small town and settling there. His plan is to use his (considerable) wealth to be THE pillar of the community. Assist with paying for renovations to the local high school, starting a scholarship, etc. He hasn't told me all the details but he says he plans to only support likeminded teenage boys who need help with college because most of them don't have fathers. He says the culture of most small town is a lot more conservative than most of us can imagine, so he'll feel right at home.

We really need more heroes like him. Good man, your friend.

Originally Posted by OwenWentFullMGTOW

Once the gas prices come back down, my MGTOW friend plans to buy a shiny new RV, retire and just drive around the US for the next several years. His attitude is that he's lived the majority of his life in the same ten or twenty square mile radius. And now, he wants to see his country. Hence, the RV. He and his dog are going to spend at least a few weeks visiting every state.

A different friend recently announced that he's going in the opposite direction. He's buying a house in a far away small town and settling there. His plan is to use his (considerable) wealth to be THE pillar of the community. Assist with paying for renovations to the local high school, starting a scholarship, etc. He hasn't told me all the details but he says he plans to only support likeminded teenage boys who need help with college because most of them don't have fathers. He says the culture of most small towns is a lot more conservative than most of us can imagine, so he'll feel right at home.

Driven by unskilled car drivers, RV's are painfully slow. Except for passing lanes, then they're in a hurry. And they never do a thing to help a guy out. I hate the bastards. But they are here to stay, if you got money. I just wish they'd learn to drive. Oh well, what's one more? I hope your friend has fun. I hope too, that he gets a class C and not one of those monsters.

Your other pal has a good idea. But he should scout towns before he picks. Though similar, small towns have many quirks that make them different from each other. You could also find a great town and neighborhood, with a single house full of meth heads stinking the place up. Better to find out before buying.

He should also start slow. Locals hate it when a stranger roars into town and wants to change things. Even good change if pushed too hard. Remember the common clay scene in Blazing Saddles? "You know, morons?" There's some of that in every small town. But he should do fine if he'll try to fit in.

While I like the ingenuity, he has failed miserably in the stealth department by allowing himself to be filmed and the video posted online. It's only a matter of time before some busybody sees that video and recognizing his truck and starting all sorts of trouble for the guy. That is unless he is through with it and intending to sell it soon.

Originally Posted by TigPlaze

MGTOW is freedom. We're all free from the bullshit demand that we earn a shit ton of money in some soul-crushing job to support a woman. Fuck that shit. However, most of us live in the US, which is a country whose government doesn't give a fuck about us, and only cares about the ultra rich corporations. They don't give a fuck if rent and mortgage prices get out of reach in multiple parts of the country.

It's why there's a growing movement of people finding alternative ways to meet their domicile needs. Some people live in an RV. Others in a tiny house, and some even rough it in a tent.

This stealth van in the video offers a lot of huge advantages. You can't just park an RV anywhere. In a lot of places, you'll get kicked out or you'd be an easy target for thieves. This dude turned an ordinary looking work truck into a small apartment where he could live in for his grad school. It's genius, and will save him from paying thousands on an apartment. He can part it just about anywhere without drawing too much attention.

I'm not Mr. Handyman, but I wonder if I could still get something like this if I hired out the construction to someone who is good with that kind of stuff.

https://youtu.be/py4zetCEYzA

There is much truth in this, yet I’m concerned.

Dig down deep. Conserve your resources. Use them wisely and plan for your future.

All good advice – except…

Our standards are being lowered. Year on year, month on month, day on day.

Aspiration is being killed by this thought trend. Instead of aspiring for living the good life, more and more we are aspiring just to survive in the hope of something better down the road.

This is not the dream; this is the nightmare.

Instead of looking up, in how to upscale out lives; we are looking down:

How can I cut back? How much less can I live on?

And don’t get me wrong, this is o.k. in the short term when you have a plan for your future and that plan works out, but how many of those plans work out?

I’ll live in this car, this R.V., this trailer park until things pan out; but they rarely do.

You end up stuck there and 20 years later you’re still in the same shit and wondering how this came to be.

The only answer I have is because you were looking down instead of up. Sometimes shit happens and you have to adapt, but never loose focus on who you are and where you want to be.

Originally Posted by frog

Ingenious it might be, but the stealth truck sounds like it was built to get him through grad school, not to be his full-time home. You'd have to be pretty minimal to be happy in that thing, however well it's set up.

I suppose stealth trucks work in a city. In the burbs or a small town though, people would soon realize your living there. And you got to drive around to take care of your sewage and grey water. Though far better than renting, you're still spending money. I think having your own place is cheaper than living on the road in the long run. The recent real estate boom has no doubt made it harder, but it's still the best plan. If you got work covered in a town with no jobs, there's bargain's to be had.

When I was in college, I would have loved having that stealth truck instead of having to live in the dorms or in a shitty college apartment complex. There was always some idiot being a loudmouth when I needed to study or sleep. In the dorms, they could move anyone in with you they wanted to, and you had no say in it, and that person might come home drunk and puke all over the place. They couldn't do that in apartments, but many of the complexes were in areas where wild parties would keep you up all night. I always hated the party scene. I would have loved being able to park that stealth truck way away from all that noise and just do my thing. Study when I needed to; take it easy when I needed to.

I do wonder where you find places to dump your grey water and composting toilet. I also would have needed something that made enough power to run air conditioning. Where I went to college, it was often really hot. But, yeah, I spent much of my college time frustrated by dumb-asses who I just wanted to leave me alone. What would be really good is if you could make a deal with a local resident to park either on the street by their house or on the property, and register the vehicle at their address, and have access for dumping your grey water and compost.

Originally Posted by Jackoff

There is much truth in this, yet I’m concerned.


Dig down deep. Conserve your resources. Use them wisely and plan for your future.


All good advice – except…


Our standards are being lowered. Year on year, month on month, day on day.


Aspiration is being killed by this thought trend. Instead of aspiring for living the good life, more and more we are aspiring just to survive in the hope of something better down the road.


This is not the dream; this is the nightmare.


Instead of looking up, in how to upscale out lives; we are looking down:


How can I cut back? How much less can I live on?


And don’t get me wrong, this is o.k. in the short term when you have a plan for your future and that plan works out, but how many of those plans work out?


I’ll live in this car, this R.V., this trailer park until things pan out; but they rarely do.


You end up stuck there and 20 years later you’re still in the same shit and wondering how this came to be.


The only answer I have is because you were looking down instead of up. Sometimes shit happens and you have to adapt, but never loose focus on who you are and where you want to be.

Good point, it's possible to get stuck living minimalist. However, if your expenses are low and you have a decent income, you could use the time to save up a lot of money. Then when you go to buy a house, you have useful savings. Then if you buy a fixer-upper, you've got money set aside for that task.

This topic hits home for me because I live in an apartment in one of the (unfortunately) popular cities in the US. I just got wacked with a 25% rent increase. It's enough to knock me out of complacency and start looking at alternatives again. 20 years ago, I researched the overseas options and concluded they're mostly a fantasy. Cheap living and easy women, $1000 a month in the Philippines. Yeah right. If you want to live in a hot, humid, bug infested place, with no change of seasons and a garbage dump the size of Mount Everest, Manila is the place for you. There's a mini-industry out there trying to convince men this is a great alternative to the US. Note to young lurkers out there. The grass is not greener and the women less obnoxious on the other side of the planet. Maybe at first, until they figure out you aren't the ticket to Western decadence they are looking for.

The apartment inflation seems to be nationwide in the US. The big cities are all showing huge increases in rent rates. I looked at less popular areas. Unless a person has the desire to live in someplace such as Topeka Kansas, flat as a board and boring as hell, there aren't a lot of cheap rent alternatives in the US.

So what to do? I don't have an answer yet. I'm looking at tiny houses, and other alternatives. I'm getting more ghost-like in my approach to the current shitshow, so it's a good time for a change of scenery.

I travel around doing the stealth van thing. Great way to travel the country on the cheap, since hotels are a rarity or unnecessary. You can camp all across America, or sleep in the van at a truck stop.

Just park, pop in the back, and have a snooze. The van even has stealth mode to cut off all external lights when on if you want, so you can run it for heat or AC on the sly.

I kinda look at like living minimalist as my tiny way of helping bring down the current system that’s in place. The less of my money that is injected into the system the better. It also speeds me up toward financial independence (basically already there) so that no matter how high prices get, I can just sit back and be entertained by those that consume and complain a lot.

My house is paid for so all I’m on the hook for is $1500/year property tax and $250/month in utilities. I can spend as little or as much as I want on gas. I don’t spend much on clothing or entertainment. The way I have things now I can probably exist comfortably on $1,200/month. Any money over that goes toward making sure I become even less dependent on external sources of money.

I never married so I never had that huge roadblock a lot of guys have before 40. I did have relationships where I found out women will find ways to have you spending money. If I would’ve married one of those greedy cunts there’s no doubt they would’ve taken half and set me back 25 years….to the point I would’ve been working until 60+ to get where I was at 35. I guess I dodged a bullet.

Hey guys, a Fulltime Camper-dweller here. For three years, so let me give you the scoop. For the first thing, you should absolutely look up Bob Wells' https://www.youtube.com/c/CheapRVliving on youtube, and study DEEP. He is the pre-eminent expert on Vehicle Living, and even runs a charity based on the concept. His videos have helped me a great deal, concerning hygiene, solar and sewer.

Also, if you hope to have a stable job in a stable environment (and not work the vagabond jobs) then you are going to need to find an RV Campground.. which is not hard. They are ALL OVER THE PLACE. But.... you will also have to deal with the other denizens of an extremely Low-Cost community...

What this means, in practical terms, is lots of scumfucks, druggies, hookers (and their Pimps) and generally Bad People. Now... do not make a mistake. Their are Good People there too. After two years, I was able to move to the Old Hippie section, and all my close neighbors were wonderful. But you are going to be living in perhaps the most low-cost community in America... and that means scum-bags. Lemme tell you a story...

Okay, so I was once a Pot-head, and am at this time a recovering alcoholic. And I got lonely, after 3 years of Redpill-Rage... And decided to make some new friends. I went out with a bottle of whiskey in my hand, and knocked on doors and offered shots. Basic 'making friends' tactics. And I made friends. And it was good...

Three weeks ago, I had my day off work, got properly drunk and went to make the rounds (for those concerned, now that I have accepted myself as an alchoholic, I drink in moderation. It seems that the shame was fueling the benders.) The guy I was looking for was not around, so I went to see my other 'new friends'.. We were sitting around drinking and smoking pot and having a fine time. Then The Big Man showed up, with some whore in his company... He laid out a line of crystal-methanefedamine, and offers me $100 dollar bill to snort it in front of him...

I can't say exactly what happened then... All I remember was that I saw red, and I was up in this man's face, maybe with a knife.. And I made sure that he understood that This Was an Insult. I made sure that he understood that His Actions were extremely Rude. (And omg, this guy had a 9 in his back-pocket, I probably could have died.) So he wiped the line of meth off in the floor... and my New Friends... They started going over the carpet with a fine-tooth comb, searching for any Meth-dust they could find. And I ran.

This is the ugly reality of mobile-home trailer parks. Hard drugs.. Pimps, hookers, and (occasionally) the most Down-to-Earth Lovely Hippies that you could ever possibly hope to find. I'm not telling you to avoid it, I just want you to know the hazards. There are many very good people living the vagabond life... Just be careful.

And prepare for a Winter that will beat your asshole Black and Blue... It's a cold life.