It IS a cool idea…but let’s not pretend that “#yolo van life - saving money and living on road” is a thing when they are building a luxury inside what looks like an enclosed, air conditioned, garage that’s bigger than a lot of people’s apartment.
Where did anyone related to the video say that they were “saving money and living on the road”? They massively modded a van to turn it into camper. That’s it. Chill with the salt it’s exhausting to see people comment this shit on every single video that implies any level of wealth above destitute. Be mad at the actual uber-rich.
Yeah apparently the couple does this professionally. I don’t know what i expect when i came into the comments but holy fuck it definitely wasn’t half the comments crying about these unbelievably rich people who can afford to modify a van.
I mean anyone can make either of 2 arguments here. 1) they have so much money they can afford to spend without discretion, or 2) this is a poor financial decision and they will suffer the consequences down the road
Personally, I think they're just living their life. Rich or otherwise, they are pursuing happiness. People are so jaded and love letting the internet know.
But seemingly lost their minds here over some comments.
When people do this, the implication is that they are living “cheap” and “off the grid”.
But the type of families that are FORCED to live frugally could not, if their life depended on it, pay the amount of money it would cost to get this setup and live this “cheap” care free life….
This is well off (this term is an umbrella term) enough to the point where they can drop 200k without a care in the world.
It’s performative/LARP’ing for well off people who try to make a career in this niche influencer market…
You could pay $150k for a brand new pre-built camper van.
For a brand new barebones cargo van, maybe 60k (80k if you want high-roof w/AWD). And maybe another 25k in materials to mod it if you're doing all the work yourself. That's about comparable to what this couple did. They likely paid far less than that since they do this all the time.
You could easily find a van that's 5 years old for 30k or less and do all the work with reasonable materials and get all in under 50k. Very easily.
Part of it is hype, part of it is the added flexibility of vans. Class C's pretty quickly climb into territory where it's difficult to maintain yourself and storage/parking can be a challenge.
If you look at the build and materials quality of the mass produced rv’s, they are absolute shit quality compared to this. From what I can see, this build is solid plywood, compared to the almost total use of mdf and particleboard in modern rv builds from the mass producers.
Someone else said it’d be $75k, someone else said $100k new. I’m not saying it’s not expensive, but it’s not like they bought a yacht. Plenty of people spend upwards of $100k on a car/van, but people are seething about their wealth as if they’re showing off something upwards of half a mil or something.
I live in Poland and near my place there's this small company where they do this sort of modifications. It costs around $10-20k to modify a van. Maybe not to the same really high standard that was shown in the video, but it definetly is cheaper than buying RV and makes me want to save up to get one as well. Of course you need to account the price of the vehicle but used one will be a lot cheaper.
Anyway, looking at this video I can see it wasn't their first rodeo. People with the right skills and their own company do make a lot of cash. I just paid $10k to a guy that renovated my house. Three week job and he is now doing another renovation for someone else. And I know he won't pay taxes as I handed it to him in cash :>
Maybe that kind of money is nothing special in the US, but in Poland this is plenty. You need to be top IT specialist to even get close to the amount of money the self-employed tiler-plumber-electrician makes. Unless you want to be a doctor it doesn't even makes sense anymore to go to university if money is what you are after. I'm a manager in a gamedev company and sometimes I wonder if I wouldn't be better off continuing my wood working hobby I had years ago and becoming a carpenter.
I guess because this trend started as a alternative, less expensive way to live without having to buy a home, and its transformed into another way to still show off wealth.
We bought one to go camping. Son is 7 and has been to 47 states. Campgrounds aren’t really our thing so we try to find places to boondock. It’s nice to open the slider and be parked on a 200 ft cliff in Newfoundland overlooking the Atlantic.
I suppose people might have different definitions of camping.
All by people who have never spent more than 30 seconds looking at outrageous prices in their nearest metro area. There's nothing more annoying than a reddit nerd refusing to realize they don't know what they're talking about.
People have legitimate complaints about the state of the world — or their country in particular — and you don’t have to interpret it as them blaming the people in the video for those legitimate problems. And when you take “blame the people in the video for the shitty state of things” out of the equation, then it becomes extra stupid to point out that the uber-wealthy are the only people for whom displeased commentary is warranted. In fact, for people who can think more than one layer deep, it’s entirely reasonable to see that these people complaining about the rarity of generational wealth are complaining about the actions of the uber-wealthy despite the fact that the uber-wealthy aren’t featured in this video.
It’s really, really not that complex. Learn to see from other people’s perspectives, or failing that, ask questions rather than just jumping to accusatory shit.
I can't tell you the amount of Ford F150 ultimate platinum enormous genitals versions I see around where I live and its far from a high end neighborhood. Plenty of people have no problem spending 100k on a truck with9yearsoffinancing
To those that make less than the poverty line, seeing someone spend twice as much on a “cool thing” usually doesn’t resonate well. This couple isn’t going to actually live in the van. They may use it a few times or sell it, which they can do, it’s their money, but you can’t really be surprised when people have an opinion and share it online.
I'm not surprised by it, it's just permeated every square inch of every subreddit and it's fundamentally misplaced, purely reflexive anger. These people are not the enemy. They are the goal. Like I said in another comment, this isn't "fucking over your large workforce to gas up the stock price" wealth, it's just "living comfortably and being able to pursue your hobbies" wealth. It's not a million dollar diamond-encrusted supercar, it's a van with an MSRP of $53k-78k that they modded themselves. What the hell is so offensive about that?
And nobody here seems to know that financing a vehicle exists - they could've put down $15k at purchase and plan to pay it off in 5-10 years. And as you correctly guessed, they're very likely going to sell it, as this is their actual business. When did people flipping a damn car become something to get angry about?
Oh I wasn’t saying you were seething, sorry, just that this comment section’s jimmies are unreasonably rustled. I completely agree most couldn’t afford it, at least not without several years of saving, myself included.
Reddit is fucking insufferable more and more each day, not sure how much more I can take. I keep thinking it can't get much worse but everything I read is out of touch seething and pissing and moaning. Why do we have people seething over what some minimum wage guy can finance with bad decisions?
Honestly, because circlejerk upvotes. Go into any thread even tangentially related to money (like as tangential as a thread about modding a damn van), mention “generational wealth”, “late stage capitalism”, or “k-shaped economy” and you’ll be drowning in upvotes immediately
From Kelley Blue Book: MSRP for 2026 models ranges from $53,125 to $78,125, with national avg purchase price ranges lower than the MSRPs across the board.
Like god damn, if you're pissed about something at least double check that you're pissed about reality.
Yeah apparently it's their actual business, not even a side gig. I've always wanted to learn the crafts required to do this kind of stuff, seems super interesting and apparently profitable on top of that.
It’s a Mercedes van. Bare bones is 75-85k. The topper tent is 4k. Inside the van is easily 20k for everything in it. The only thing is the labor. You can by this van already decked out for 135k based on features.
MSRP for sprinters is $53k-78k. Regardless, I'm not sure what your point is. Yall keep throwing random numbers at me as if it refutes the fact that plenty of people spend $100k+ on a car, and they rarely do it out of pocket because financing is a thing. Do you think all of the contractors driving around in their fully loaded F-150s just walked into the dealership and dropped $100k on the spot?
Yes, when I was in the business before I needed one? Yes I did. The tax benefits were in my corner. I knew I could drive it for 2-4 years and sell it for a decent amount. If you’re financing a 100k truck? You should be shopping for a 25-35k truck. Period. No more than 60 months if that!
It's a Mercedes sprinter cargo van with a High roof and extended wheel base. Not sure if diesel or not. Basically you're looking at 70-75k. Maybe 60k used.
Maybe if you build it yourself and already have the tools, space, and time. But if you're buying something like this, you're looking at around $75k–$100k even for something more pedestrian like these https://rafttiger.com/vans-for-sale . The example in this video is more on the ballpark of 150k to 275k https://outsidevan.com/vans-for-sale/
So are boats, muscle cars, RVs, golf memberships, fancy pickup trucks, etc.. Many adults like expensive toys to enjoy their hobbies whether they can afford them or not.
It probably cost under 100k to build themselves. And what’s your point? 100s of thousands of RVs are sold each year in the us. They are not all people with generational wealth. Some people just like to enjoy the money they work for.
Yeah 150-180k if you hired someone to modify it, which they didn’t. Too many jealous woe is me losers in here, you could do this yourself with 20-30k, probably less if you find a deal on the van
Not sure on material cost, but you can get a moderately used unmodified van like that for ~25k. I'd guess if it's all your own labor, the material costs for upgrade wouldn't bring total cost nearly that high, but still like brand new M3 range of cost or more, surely.
Still wildly expensive enough that it's a huge amount for a luxury item. Maybe if you have a fully remote job and are legitimately living out of it, it's slightly more practical. That said, my household income is a quite high percentile, and we didn't even put that much down for our house.
We also ultimately don't even have close to that much to spend outright on anything without raiding retirement accounts, so I don't know who has the ability to drop $70-100k on a fancy modified van without it being wildly irresponsible at best
LMAO, ya, I really, really need to get off Reddit. It can be so toxic at times, glad it's the only SM I spend any major time on, would prob be better off without it though.
Same here man. A lot of these people would be better off as well - being this immediately upset by people who are comfortably wealthy from an apparently successful small business is not normal, it’s a result of the algorithm feeding them outrage every day. Way more often than I’d like these days I catch myself getting unreasonably upset over some random thing, and when I think about why I often find that the algo has been feeding me that shit for months, training me to be angry about it.
Its because of the pent up rage people are feeling. We are very close to an eruption right now-- too close. It is frightening to see humans turn into angry mobs, knowing that nothing will be done about the COL, and it will get worse. We dont have to go this way -- but I guess I wouldnt be the first person saying that...
We need to go this way if we want humanity to go on at all instead of decaying into a cyberpunk dystopia, we need to burn bright and big, burn every rotten tree in this forest, so new buds can grow from the ashes, hell for us and heaven for our childeen type shit.
Yeah, it might be the only way. I kept thinking the ultrawealthy would turn things around, watching the way its going, but I guess they are very capable of watching families around the world die without any emotional or moral investment on their part.
I wonder if its just the money. Maybe any of us would be the same with that much wealth. I like to think that I would be different if I was super wealthy, and Ill bet a lot of you think you would be different, but look at the situation... not one of them is even talking about changing things. Every single one of them is spending a fortune on hiring politicians to keep their tax rates down, while they all have more money than they or their offspring could ever spend.
people are naive and think that because the elites appear "godless" they are above or beyond the allures of religious belief, no they are not, every day that passes, with every new secret exposed, it becomes more clear that they are quite religious, just that they worship "evil" things, canaanite gods, death, and other esoteric shit, and im NOT saying any of that is true, that such entities are real or whatever, just that they believe in them to varying degrees, and thus they are mostly completely unbothered by not only our suffering and demise, but their own, they don't care that their children or grandchildren will inherit a dead world, hell we know they prey on their own children sometimes, what about that guy that notified epstein he was bringing his children to the island soon...
I think the issue is the video has the flavor - even if not explicitly stated - of being a diy project the couple took on for their family and for fun. The editing also made it seem easy and fast. I know, and you know, this took a boat load of time, effort, expertise, and especially money, but the video is specifically edited to look like an easy weekend project. Again, that doesn't need to be explicitly stated for the intention to be there.
The end result is it feels like a shit ton of not-so-humble bragging, because the majority of people could not afford even the garage they built this in.
I get what you’re saying and I agree that people could take it like that if they were so inclined, but it’s become extremely clear to me that people in here are taking it that way because they’re bringing a mountain of their own hangups and assumptions into it. And all for what is, in the end, an absolute non-issue. The reaction has just been an extremely social media-only type of outrage. Like, imagine sitting down with a few of your friends, watching this video, and half of them started seething about how these people aren’t real van life people, or about how rich these upper-middle class people are, as if these are the ones who have fucked the US economic structure and the economy itself. I don’t often participate in, or even read too deeply into, reddit threads any more, and this one has unfortunately reminded me why.
It's Reddit dude, a large majority of the user base are nothing but sad Losers who spend all their time raging at anyone who has more than them And immediately jumps straight to "evil generational wealth rich people". My wife is a nurse practitioner and I work in sales, neither of us have a nickel of generational wealth, but we do well and we live in a cheap area in the Midwest, so I have no doubt if Reddit saw the house we own, these comments would be saying the exact same shit about us.
It must be exhausting, spending so much time caring about what other people do and have.
Seriously. I shit you not another commenter said to me that these people are “basically setting their money on fire because they could camp in a tent basically for free”. Imagine grasping so hard for a reason to be upset with how some upper middle class people are spending their money that your criticism is that they are spending money on hobbies at all.
I understand that and I’m sorry for it, but it isn’t these people’s fault. This isn’t “manipulating markets or governments” wealth, it’s not “fucking over a large workforce for the stock price” wealth, it’s just “we can live comfortably and not be stressed about the next rent check” wealth. It’s is a level of wealth and comfort that many people hope to achieve some day. It’s not egregious, and it’s not being rubbed in anyone’s faces. They’re just showing something cool they did. That shouldn’t be as infuriating as it seems to be for so many people in this thread.
There’s justified outrage, and there’s plain old jealous anger. This thread is full of the latter masquerading as the former.
It’s a sign of an ever increasing working class anger about their material conditions. Class consciousness is rising. Sure it’s misdirected at this well off couple, and should be directed at the billionaire class. But the fact people are angry is a good thing.
Comon dude! These people make professional ass shit and make videos about it to get engagement and make $ off it… but like it’s not fair cuz I’m pooping and watching Reddit.. why can’t I do cool shit like this and make money.. oh yeah.. cuz once I’m done pooping I’m gonna lay in my bed and scroll some more… why doesnt anyone give me money for doing that…
Facts.i could do this.it might drain my bank account but i could.and im nothing like rich.i also nothing like poor to be fair.just lower middle class that has to work daily to not get into financial trouble in the future type
It's not a crime to have money, van money is pretty attainable by your late 30s early 40s. If you're a rich asshole, well that's the problem. I saw no assholes in this video, but a lot of assholes in this comment section.
They are well off BUT its because they worked in healthcare for many years before covid. They worked hard for their money and clearly work hard for their youtube channel and socials.
Yeah, it’s not like the only way to have a decent amount of money is to have been born wealthy. The right kind of construction pays out the ASS, depending on the company and trade easily $150-200k+ a year for normal dudes, let alone the guys that have been in it forever and are foremen or superintendents
Eh on the one hand that’s a reasonable enough assumption, on the other hand people have also been assuming that the garage they did the mods in is theirs (which it is, but without context that’s another assumption), which directly contradicts the idea that they’d be living in the van perpetually.
These are the same mfs who claim they only hate the ultra wealthy billionaires. they see some upper middle class shit and lose their little minds. Fucking pathetic
Class war is doomed to fail because 9/10 people you press on their "eat the rich" stance consider rich asshole to start at $5 an hour more than whatever they make.
This entire thread is barefaced seething at a literal carpenter building out a van because how dare anyone rub unachievable wealth (van + carpentry) in their faces.
I don’t know if they claimed it anywhere, but it is a big part of the #VanLife movement that influencers push. The idea that you can be a successful remote worker (ideally, an entrepreneur) while driving around the country and living a dream life.
I could see why somebody might think that, but I originally commented because the person i responded to was clearly just trying to paint them in a bad light for no reason other than petty jealousy.
1) Adding he “saving money” part is done to make them look like they’re cosplaying as poor people, which they clearly aren’t, and
2) They built the thing in their garage, so there’s no reason to think that they have any plans to “live on the road” rather than just using it for camping or something. A mobile home can be used when you go camping or on a road trip, just because you call it a “home” doesn’t mean you’re living in it year-round.
Plenty of influencers try to portray extravagant lifestyles as easily achievable, and those influencers can eat shit, but nothing in this video has that vibe. It’s unfair to lump these people in with them.
I don't find it unfair myself. If you want to be an influencer don't be shocked when people lump you into influencer behavior. Right or wrong it's just how the world works.
Saying this is my home and having the name "thetriointransit" is very leading and follows a lot of the van life culture and implies they don't have a house but live full time in the van.
Then when you go to their Instagram and find videos of them in their home gym, videos of their garage extension, it makes you question the validity of entire thing.
Why can't they just be honest and say we are building a really cool van bc we simply want to, we know how, and could use it for awesome trips.
If they are going to blur the lines themselves, don't be shocked when others blur the lines too.
Fair enough on the van life point; I just googled their handle, and van life is definitely a major part of their branding, so they'd definitely be considered a van influencer or whatever you'd call it. I have no problem with that though - my main influencer beef is portraying extravagant lifestyles as easily attainable, which this doesn't seem to do, and it's that group that I don't think it's fair to lump them into.
To be honest, I don't really understand the issue with the van life thing. As someone with 0 exposure to that culture (so feel free to correct me if you have any insight; I'm not being facetious here), it seems like a weird kind of gatekeeping. They have multiple kids, and those kids deserve to have a stable home environment, so are the parents just not allowed to be in to vans? How often do they need to be on the road to not be considered a "van poser"? If they take multiple trips a year in the thing and they enjoy working on/camping in/generally using them, why isn't that enough? I didn't do much research on them (because at this point the amount of time I've spent talking about these random people over the last day is getting absurd lmao), but at a glance they don't seem to be the "cosplaying as homeless" type of van people, just regular old "we like vans, we mod vans, and they're a part of our life" type of van people.
Why can't they just be honest and say we are building a really cool van bc we simply want to, we know how, and could use it for awesome trips.
That's a bit long for a hashtag, hahaha. I think it's just as simple as that.
Overall I agree with you. What others choose to do with their time has no effect on me.
I only commented to shed light that it's easy for people like the original commenters to assume they are the "status quo" van life types simply bc they have lumped themselves into that category.
Just want to say I appreciate the respectful dialogue you chose to engage with me. It's a breath of fresh air on reddit
Thanks to you as well! I’ve had a few good conversations on this thread and a few absolutely shite ones, so thanks for being one of the good ones. Have a great day my friend.
This is what they do so they got it at cost, but a custom mod like this would be $50k easy. I don’t begrudge them for it but this is like the Ritz-Carlton of sprinter vans.
Those vans are $50k new at the low end. Which is what you'd start with considering you're tearing out half the things to replace them anyway. The mods are on top of that. But you're still looking at a net outcome of $70k tops if you do the custom refit labor yourself like they did.
it's cheaper than that. You buy the base model and then mod it yourself. My uncle bought one, had a company do the mods. All in he was 150k, but that's paying top dollar for everything. The people here modded it themselves and saved a lot of money. I could see it costing 80~100k all-in for them.
That can there is about 70k new, I'd say. Probably long wheelbase, the duallies in the rear imply AWD and it should be the high-roof version,l. With the high-output diesel, that totals at 73k. The mods probably run around the same.
People love to fucking project. Video was great then you get these clowns on here saying nonsense. I love this idea and may tackle it myself, for my family. I have no "generational wealth" and I'm pretty confident I can do this.
The van alone is $75k, the conversion turns it into a $150,000 luxury vehicle. You can camp in a tent for free, anyone buying something like this is just burning money. Hard to watch when so many are struggling with basic needs.
I did the van life thing for a couple of years and had enough money saved up to put a big down-payment down and fix up my used Sprinter. I work remotely so I continued to make a decent tech salary the whole time. I lived all over the US and feel like I really got to know the country.
When I was done, these vehicles had actually gone up in value so I made a little money selling mine. Since I was paying less monthly than my previous rent, I was saving even more the entire time.
I hit your numbers pretty closely, although mine was more of a complete build-out when I bought it for around $140k and put around $10k into it.
I sold it for $165k. I could have done this whole thing on half my salary pretty easily.
Anyway, it's not always a money pit if you plan things right. Even if I had lost $20k on the sale, I still would have made up for it with cheaper monthly costs overall. I know people that have spent way more on booze over 4 years than it took to get my trip going. Also, I was almost 30 and had been working since I was 15.
The only really privileged thing I had was remote work and enough of a salary to save a little.
There's the people that can certainly afford these rigs for family weekend trips, but there's a lot of us that just use them full-time and sell them after a few years.
If it's an AWD it's closer to 85/87k $.
I would be fine with a video like it if there where price tags popping up for everything or a sub total at the end including labour, because I doubt that all the cRaZy #vanlife folks diy this shit.
If you're so poor that seeing a tradesman spend 125k on a custom camper project triggers you, you should probably get off reddit and go make some money. Elon takes like 9 million a day in taxpayer money doing drugs and jacking off. An upper middle class small business owner is not your enemy dude. You aren't competing with him. He took nothing off your plate.
2) “Anyone buying something like this is just burning money” - no they’re not, and regardless they’re completely free to do so because it’s their money and they don’t need to go camp in a fucking tent because it makes you feel better.
3) This is literally their job. They do this for a living. If seeing a video of a couple modifying a van hurts that much, just stay off the internet for the sake of your own mental health.
The class war is so easy for the uber-rich, we love fighting ourselves when any degree of financial wellbeing is displayed. The difference between upper/ upper-middle class and the true elite is still astronomical.
Seriously, the whole thing is on rails at this point. They don’t even need to try to get us angry at each other any more because our anger has so much inertia already. It’s sad and frustrating as hell, honestly.
I think the thing that's bugging people is the tagline of "the home we built." It does sort of imply that it's one of those hashtag vanlife videos (even if it isn't, and I really don't think it is).
Could also be travel workers and a situation like this makes economical sense if you're going to be traveling for 5+ years. I considered something like this as I could pay it off in 2-3 years just off rent/car payment combined and then the rest of travel it's savings. Unfortunately live with a pup and didn't like the idea for him specifically.
That van, assuming its a new Mercedes Sprinter, is going to cost north of 100k€, but one could do this to a used Ford Transit with quarter of the cost, and at that point its well within reach for loads of two-income families.
Yeah... the van people I know all just live in a van...it's their stuff and a mattress in a van. You can do it cheap but it doesn't look like this vid.
A friend tried to do the expensive van thing and it was insane, he sold it and is still in debt for it, and still lives in his humble old van.
Come on man. That garage is big enough for the van, but its a single car garage. We dont know if its like some luxury garage. Its not bigger than a lot of people's apartment, its one car.
If they are like generational wealth, fuck that. But if these guys are middle class and spent like $50grand on their mid life crisis lmao, whatever makes em happy.
They’ve got kids and a house based on the video. This is a camper. Some people buy an RV, other people do something like this and likely save money based on all the practical DIY skills dude has.
AND they fucking have 2 kids along with it lol. So either they're all good with their kids not having a real house to live in (AKA they won't have the stability of staying in one place during childhood, attending one school system and actually making friends long term), or they've got fuck you money and have a whole separate house to live in along with this multi-hundred-thousand dollar project. And since they show the van backing into a big nice garage, and since they're buying a brand new Mercedes Sprinter van to completely gut and custom remodel, and since Dad owns basically the entire Dewalt line of tools, I'm guessing filthy rich thanks to Grandma and Grandpa or just wealthy and cosplaying as "roughing it".
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u/Genetic_Heretic 17h ago
It’s good to have generational wealth so that you can do this quirky fun stuff!