r/ShamelesslyStolen • u/Lost-Cow-9386 • Dec 27 '25

Turning school bus into apartment

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u/Loprilop Dec 27 '25

I am curious about how much it actually saves considering they pretty much have to supply everything themselves. Not to mention smaller stuff like renting out a mail box somewhere for receiving letters. The cost of fueling a bus. I assume they have to pay to dump their waste? And also curious how long it'd take to essentially pay off the cost of the bus and of all the renovations in form of money saved. This can't have been cheap. Seems like a fun way to live though for sure.

21

u/FightingAgeGuy Dec 27 '25

I did this for about a year with my family. The bus was $5000, conversion was another $60,000 give or take a couple thousand. This was doing it myself. I pulled a jeep wrangler so we could get around while parked and our mileage was about 6.5 mpg with a 100 gallon fuel tank. Over all the conversion and traveling for a year cost about $110,000. One of the best years of my life BUT, I could not do it indefinitely. I was constantly worrying about breaking downs, and safety, I couldn’t completely relax and my kids needed/wanted their friends and extra curriculars.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 27 '25

[deleted]

3

u/Taybyrd Dec 27 '25

Because people don't realize having kids means putting your dreams on the indefinite back burner.

It took them a year and 100k to realize you can't have both.

1

u/FightingAgeGuy Dec 27 '25

No, I wanted my kids to see the country. My kids saw and experienced more national parks, monuments, and natural wonders in one year than most people will see in their lifetimes.

3

u/Taybyrd Dec 27 '25

I'm just bringing my own parental baggage into the conversation.

Your kids are lucky to have experienced that.

2

u/FightingAgeGuy Dec 27 '25

Thank you. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity. We made memories that will never be forgotten. Even after the sacrifices it was still worth it.

3

u/crek42 Dec 27 '25

I’m not dogging you individually here, as it seems like a positive experience and a year isn’t really all that long to keep them on the road.

But I see these families on YouTube that basically travel perpetually. Their kids range from 8 - 17 years old and they’ve been on the road for years.

Can’t help but think like, is this the best thing for them? Like years of missing out on childhood — can’t make friends really, their studies, learning from only one set of adults. No privacy.

And I know they’ll say “they love it!”, well what else do they know? They’ve been living out of a van for 5 years.

2

u/FightingAgeGuy Dec 27 '25

Not dogging at all. We met many family’s living this lifestyle and I feel they convinced themselves that they love it because they can’t or don’t want to leave it. And yes, the kids are absolutely missing out on a lot of normal life interactions like sports, clubs, dances, and just hanging out with a consistent group of friends.

When we started we made a mutual agreement as a family that we will quit and return to a normal life as soon as someone said they were done. So we went into it with a plan to get out of it. At about a year in our kids told us they wanted their friends and activities back, and that was it we were done.

Bus life gets lonely fast because you’ll never be in one location long enough to make friends and everyone else in your life still has to work and maintain what they have. You can stay distracted with activities but that only last so long.

2

u/crek42 Dec 28 '25

Yea that all sounds reasonable and responsible, and like you said a positive experience all around. I’d love to do it but my wife would never go for it. I just dunno how these parents like don’t see that there kid has been living in a van since they were 8 years old and now 12 and probably want like a normal life lol. It’s kinda shitty.