A millennial couple spent $20,000 buying an RV and turning it into a tiny home on wheels. They now h
After being foster parents to eight children for two years, Chris and Lindsay Harvey were looking for a change in lifestyle. "By then, we were a few years into our marriage and on the fence about whether we wanted to have kids of our own," Chris, 42, told Insider.
2023-08-07T00:45:01Z
Chris and Lindsay Harvey wanted to travel while living debt-free, so they turned to van life.
The Florida couple spent $20,000 buying and remodeling an RV, turning it into a cozy home on wheels.
They say part of their debt-free lifestyle involves a strict $2,500 monthly budget, excluding fuel.
After being foster parents to eight children for two years, Chris and Lindsay Harvey were looking for a change in lifestyle.
"By then, we were a few years into our marriage and on the fence about whether we wanted to have kids of our own," Chris, 42, told Insider.
As the Florida couple started thinking about their next chapter, they realized that all they wanted to do was travel while living debt-free.
Chris and Lindsay with their two dogs, Everest and Huckleberry. Zach Rohe
Living in a van on the open road seemed like a good arrangement
As Lindsay has Crohn's disease, which is a chronic inflammatory bowel disease, getting on planes or going hiking on multi-day trips was difficult, Chris said.
"We needed to have a bathroom with us wherever we went, so we said, 'Why not give RV life a try?'" he added. "That way, we can visit amazing, beautiful places and still be able to take our bathroom with us everywhere we go."
It was March 2018 when the couple sold all their items and set off in their flatbed truck camper.
Before buying and renovating an RV, the couple travelled in and lived out of a red flatbed truck camper. Called to Wander
"We started traveling in a truck camper and our initial plan was to drive from Florida to Alaska and then from Alaska to Argentina," Chris said.
But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the couple never made it any further south than Baja, Mexico.
"We changed our plans and decided to buy a bigger motor home, and we've just been making loops around the US, and we go to Baja, Mexico, every winter," Chris said.
The couple ended up selling their red camper to buy a 1999 Class C RV in November 2020 for $12,000
"I found it online — I'd been searching for a little bit," Lindsay, 37, told Insider. "It was a pretty good deal because it was right before RV prices really shot up."
In July 2020, the average retail value of a Class C RV like theirs would have cost $74,885, according to data from a 2021 J.D. Power report. In July 2021, the average retail value rose to $93,146.
Chris in front of their current RV and Lindsay in front of their previous red flatbed truck camper. The couple sold the red camper to buy the white RV. Called to Wander
The couple drove about two to three hours from Georgia to pick up the vehicle from the seller, who was in Alabama.
The couple was visiting Lindsay's sister in Atlanta at the time and drew a five-hour radius around the city. "We said we'd drive five hours to find what we could find," Chris said.
Before they bought this Class C RV, they had shortlisted a few other motorhomes, but those flew off the market quickly.
"We picked out one or two other ones and we went and looked at them. By the time we slept on it and got back to the seller, they were already sold," Chris said.
Compared with the truck camper, their RV is much larger and has all the amenities of a tiny home
The couple's RV is much larger than their previous red truck camper. Called to Wander
"The red camper was supposed to be our rugged vehicle to drive all the way down to Argentina, so we weren't thinking about how it looked or felt," Chris said. "Whereas with the RV, we wanted to have an apartment on wheels."
That's the main reason the two of them decided to gut and remodel the entire RV.
"We wanted to be able to park it and stay for a week or two weeks or five months, wherever we were. We wanted it to feel like home," Chris added.
Despite its age and the dated interior decor, the RV they bought was in pretty good shape
The RV had been kept in storage for seven years, Chris said.
"We had to do basic things, like new tires, brakes, and plumbing, but in terms of all the appliances and everything inside, it worked really well," he added.
Lindsay said that the couple wasn't particularly concerned about how things looked, because they were planning to redo the interiors anyway.
Photos of the RV's interior before remodeling show old-fashioned wooden cabinets, dated wallpaper, and a vintage floral couch
The kitchenette is located directly opposite the entrance to the RV. The primary living area and the driver's seat are to the right of the entrance, while the bedroom and the bathroom are to the left.
One of the features that drew them to the RV was the separate corner shower and bathroom, Lindsay said.
"And that bathroom is huge — I can lay on the floor and do pushups or sit-ups on it because there was just so much room there," Chris added. "I'm six foot four, so I can actually stand in the shower and lather without having to step out."
The couple started remodeling the RV in December 2020, working on and off on the project until they completed it in July 2021
The interiors of the RV before the couple repainted and remodeled it. Called to Wander
The first task was to repaint the entire interior, which the couple managed to finish by Christmas 2020.
Everything else the couple worked at slowly for the next few months, because they got full-time jobs in order to afford the remodel.
"Lindsay drove for Instacart, and then I worked in a restaurant," Chris said. "Debt-free was our goal, so we said we'll take as long as we need, as long as we're not dipping into our savings or relying on credit."
A before image of the RV's interiors. This is the sleeping area. Called to Wander
Working full-time meant that they typically had just two days a week to work on the camper, although they tried to squeeze out pockets of time whenever possible.
"Sometimes, like if I worked a morning shift, we would work on it in the evenings, or if I was on an evening shift, we'd try to work on it in the mornings," Chris said. "But we definitely took our time because we had to learn everything as we went."
Through DIY, the couple managed to keep their renovation costs under $8,000
The couple worked on their RV on Chris' parents' driveway and they completed the entire build on their own.
"The weather wasn't too bad initially because we started in winter. In Florida, it was moderate. It was only when April and May started to come around that it got really hot and it became harder to work during the day," Chris said.
But by then, they had already completed most of the bigger parts of the project, Lindsay added: "We planned it that way."
The couple built many features of the RV home from scratch, including the shower, the composting toilet, and the sliding sofa
A comparison photo of the toilets before and after the remodel. Called to Wander
"Figuring out the shower was a challenge because while we had seen other people do that design, no one had a how-to," Lindsay said.
The couple also built their composting toilet from scratch, Chris said: "We don't camp at campgrounds a lot. We camp off-grid, boondocking, so we didn't want to waste water flushing the toilet or having water go into our tank before we empty it."
Building their sliding sofa was also something that the couple put off for a while.
"There were a few moving parts — we wanted it to slide out so we could put a full-size air mattress there if we had guests, and we also wanted to be able to lift it up," Chris said.
The couple says they often had to redo things because there were no perfect tutorials they could follow back then
In the case of the sliding sofa, Chris found two tutorials that combined the idea of what they were trying to build.
"Neither one was perfect. Like I needed to see how the hinges worked, so one video showed me how to do that so that we could lift it, and the other video showed me how to put slats in so that we could pull it out," Chris said.
Most times, he had to rely on his intuition to figure out how things would fit together and these projects often took some trial-and-error, he said.
"That's why we decided to film every minute of what we did to help other people," he added.
The two of them have a website and a YouTube channel where they documented their experiences remodeling the RV.
Another stressful moment was trying to cut a hole for their sink in their butcher-block kitchen countertop
"The butcher-block countertop was something Lindsay had been talking about for years, so we went to Home Depot and we spent almost $300 on this huge slab that we had to cut up," Chris said.
The slab was about two inches thick, and the couple had to use a variety of blades and tools to cut the hole.
"Every cut was nerve-racking because if we screwed it up, we couldn't afford to go and buy another one," he added.
Although the RV comes with a generator, the couple relies mostly on their solar power and battery set-up
The RV's interiors after renovation. The couple installed a desk for them to work from. Called to Wander
"Lindsay has an air fryer, we've got an Instant pot, we can use the blow dryer, heating pads," Chris said. "We can do almost everything."
The RV can also be hooked up to power sources at campgrounds, he added.
They also get water wherever they're able to find it — which includes campsites, water stations, and gas stations. They keep a 30-gallon water tank and multiple collapsible containers on board that they fill up for their trips.
"If we know we're going to the desert for a week or so, we'll fill those up, and we'll have that extra water with us," Chris said.
Part of their debt-free lifestyle involves having a strict monthly budget of $2,500 for their expenses, excluding fuel
The RV's interiors after renovation. The couple installed a double bed in their room. Called to Wander
Insider viewed an extensive budgeting sheet that the couple shared detailing their monthly expenses for the past months, stretching back to as early as October 2020.
When the couple first started RV life, they were able to keep their monthly expenses within $2,000, Chris said. But with rising costs, they've had to increase that amount to $2,500.
"We purchased a car that we now tow, so we have additional insurance for that, and we've insured our pets. Our health insurance went up as well," Chris said. "But we capped it at $2,500 and we said no more. That's what we can live on reasonably, without excess and without depriving ourselves of simple joys and simple pleasures."
While the couple hopes that they'll be able to turn content creation into a full-time job, they know it's not as easy as people make it out to be on Instagram. For now, they're working seasonal jobs in Custer State Park in South Dakota, he said.
"We wanted to show people what it's really like. Not show that you can live on $2,000 and then not show all the details, which is why we kept up with sharing our expenses online," Chris said.
The years they spent on the road provided a good idea of how much they needed to live comfortably every monthThe RV in an open field during sunset. Called to Wander
"Our fixed expenses were things like insurance, cellphone service, and internet. We stripped down everything to get the most basic plans available," Chris said. "For example, we're on a family plan with my family for cell phones, so we have a great deal on that."
For other variable expenses, the couple worked out that they needed about $35 to $40 a day, which came out to $1200 a month.
The amount that they spend on fuel is calculated separately because it depends on how far they plan to travel, Chris said. It's also affected by the fuel efficiency of the different RV models.
"Some people will want to travel and go someplace every day," he added. "Our RV only gets seven miles per gallon, so we travel slower and we stay longer, so we're not consuming as much fuel."
Chris has one tip for those who aspire to live a debt-free RV life: Always over budget
The couple in front of their RV with their dogs during winter. Called to Wander
"So if I know that the RV gets seven miles per gallon, I'll budget us getting six. If GasBuddy tells me that the average price in an area where we're traveling is $3.50, I'll budget $4," Chris said.
That has almost always given the couple a buffer for emergencies, he said.
"We've almost always had leftover money because of that over-budgeting principle," he added.
Aside from overbudgeting, it's also important to set a reasonable budget to begin with.
"Somebody who retires from the military and has a paycheck coming in for retirement with full medical benefits, their situation is gonna look different from a 27-year-old kid who worked his first job for five years out of college and realized he wanted a gap year," Chris said.
"We don't deprive ourselves of fun, but we also don't overindulge. I think what's important is having a realistic expectation of what life for you is going to cost," he added.
