Living in a School Bus

by M.D. Creekmore (a.k.a Mr. Prepper) on October 19, 2009

Mr. Creekmore,

I found your blog though a link on JWR’S Survivalblog.com. I’ve been reading your site everyday since. I would like to say thanks for the work you do, I’ve found a multitude of interesting and useful information on your site with my favorite subject being the travel trailer homestead.

Unfortunately two months ago I found myself unemployed because of cut backs. Unemployment insurance benefits don’t go very far when you have a wife, child and a $750 a month house payment.It didn’t take long before the bank threatened foreclosure and with no way to pay – I had to come up with a plan to avoid homelessness.

After reading about how you sold everything and moved your travel trailer onto a piece of paid for “junk land”, I thought; I could do that, after all I already owned the land and school bus I’d converted into a motor home of sorts.

I’d used the bus and land for several years as a place for my friends and I to unwind and as a hunting cabin during deer season.

About eight months before losing my job I’d made it into my own personal fix it up project, trying to emulate the plans on Jake’s School Bus Conversion and Other Projects as closely as possible. I didn’t know it at the time but this was likely the wisest decision I ever made.

We sold everything that we felt we could live without, loaded up the bus and my truck and headed for my own little spot of junk land. We told ourselves it was only a temporary fix until we could get back on our feet, but after being out here for several months now we are thinking of making this a permanent way of life.

I found another job, but was forced to take a major pay cut from what I have made in the past, but that is fine with me since my current employment also comes with a lot less stress and I get to spend more time with the people I love.

Money isn’t everything and when you downsize your life to the point I have it doesn’t take much anyway. It’s difficult to imagine were my family and I would be if it were not for the conversion of my own magic bus and Junk land.

How many of you have lived this way – any advice?– Kurt in TX

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{ 2 comments }

Glenn December 31, 2009 at 3:15 AM: I have had 13 jobs in 20 years and gone through 2 bankruptcies and one foreclosure. If I can live in a bus in the U.S. I am moving to Costa Rica where I plan to be an illegal alien. Do the song "Going Mobile" ring any bells with anyone else out there? :)
Gizmo Joe January 1, 2011 at 3:37 PM: I have been living in buses (plural, one is house, another is storage, another is a mini machine shop) and I LOVE buses! Not only are they far superior in body strength, structural integrity and endurance above and beyond any commercial motor home, they have better brakes, easier access for maintenance and repairs – but they are far more stable in high winds and storms (I have sheltered in buses for many storms in the last five years). Also I have never (since my step uncle) ever had even one honest and fair landlord. It is good to have the house on wheels so it can be moved when the landlord gets shifty – note: videorecord all agreements and contracts.
Buses are a godsend to those of us who still haven’t won the lottery or found some other way to climb back up the ‘ladder’ after getting a foot in the face from the economy/fellow worker/former boss/crooked banker/etc. etc. etc.
Even if I was rich and owned land (ha ha ha, good joke that one! If you own land why can so many people tell you how you have to live on it?) I would have my ‘lifeboat’ ready and able to get me clear of unforseen or untenable circumstances.
Now if only I could finish the steam powerplant for my bus… It would feel SO good to tell the oil barons to ‘take a long hike off a short pier’!