I have, roughly, $6000 in unappropriated savings, at current.
I also have, roughly, 3 months left at my less-than-market living situation.
This has incited an exceptionally stressful dichotomy of needs; and a sobering wakeup call to how unbelievably fucking expensive it’s gotten to live out here.
I gave up the studio this month to slice my office rent, and started taking on more clients, 5 days a week. Exhausting, but working, too, I think.
The problem I’ve been most running up against, is that I don’t have anywhere viable to go, and I don’t have the savings required to buy or build my tiny house on wheels.
The secondary problem, is that the family whose property I have intended to live on has also been anticipating another year or two of time to prepare for me.
We’re all a wee bit stressed out.
I’ve run numbers on getting just a house shell on a trailer with no services or furnishings to crash in like a bum in a train car while simultaneously building the rest out as much as I can with whatever extra cash I can put into it over the summer.
I’ve run numbers on getting a shipping container and insulating it and welding a hole in the ceiling to build out the loft space for my bed, also no furnishings or services.
I’ve run the numbers on getting an enclosed cargo trailer high enough to put a loft in. Again, no furnishings or services.
All of these options provide me with no comforts, require me to pay to store everything I own, require that I find a place where I can build and weld with no building experience and an accelerated timeline, and cost ~$10k to do it right.
So, I’ve made the decision that I will be getting an RV to live in.
I want a tiny house, yes. I want a lot of things. But the bottom line is that I have managed to save up $6000 bucks toward freedom housing, and I need a place to live that CJ and I can move into in August. RV’s are where that’s at.
At this point in my life, more than needing things to be pretty and cute and designed perfectly, I need a place that is mine, that I can afford, that I can modify and count on, and that I can take with me; which was the root of what the tiny house project was meant to accomplish.
So, that means my road trip is cancelled. I’ll be flying directly to and from Palm Springs (I have a second room in my suite, would welcome sharing the cost with someone, and the airfare round trip from Seattle was a paltry $220; so if you think you might want to take your own Palm Springs vacation from June 12 to 17th, hit me up) to get my certification in grief recovery and come back immediately – to work, and search, and hopefully, find home.
It also means I’m selling nearly all of my stuff and furniture, which works out well since I’d like to manage a couple more grand over the next few months to get a nicer trailer with more to work with.
And lastly, it means I’m looking for a place to park and hook up; Land ho!
I’m pretty excited, and feeling ok about how things are shifting; If everything works out, having a home will be way better than a motorcycle vacation would have been.
Like, way better.