{"id":42664,"date":"2026-01-09T15:01:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T15:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/ive-spent-5-years-living-in-a-tiny-home-and-2-years-in-a-camper-van-heres-how-they-compare-and-which-is-my-favorite\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T15:01:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T15:01:12","slug":"ive-spent-5-years-living-in-a-tiny-home-and-2-years-in-a-camper-van-heres-how-they-compare-and-which-is-my-favorite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/ive-spent-5-years-living-in-a-tiny-home-and-2-years-in-a-camper-van-heres-how-they-compare-and-which-is-my-favorite\/","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;ve spent 5 years living in a tiny home and 2 years in a camper van. Here&#8217;s how they compare &mdash; and which is my favorite."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69123f5446c4547ecb057f6e?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Author Amber McDaniel sitting in chair in tiny. home with cup of coffee, smiling\"\/><figcaption>Trading living in a van for residing in a 400-square-foot tiny house didn&#039;t solve everything, but it finally gave us what the road couldn&#039;t.<\/p>\n<p>Amber McDaniel<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>My partner and I spent two years living in a van. It was affordable and freeing, but not perfect.<\/li>\n<li>That lifestyle came with hidden costs, like constant stress, instability, and loneliness.<\/li>\n<li>We&#039;ve been living in a tiny home for years now and prefer it, though it&#039;s pricier and has drawbacks.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>&quot;Home is where you roam.&quot;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&quot;Home is where you park it.&quot;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Those charming slogans look great on a bumper sticker. And at first, when my partner and I began our two years living full-time in a self-converted camper van, chasing mountains, cool climbing lines, and a cheaper, freer lifestyle, they felt true.<\/p>\n<p>But over time, the charm wore thin. After the van came the tiny house, where we&#039;ve now lived for five years.<\/p>\n<p>Both have given us lessons in minimalism, self-reliance, and adaptation, but if I had to pick a favorite? The tiny house wins, even if it&#039;s not our ideal living situation.<\/p>\n<h2>Life on the road brought us freedom and fairly low bills<\/h2>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/68d6f75fcc993f9955cf0b0b?format=jpeg\" alt=\"White van  in desert\"\/><figcaption>What started as a dream of total freedom in our self-built van quickly became a lesson in how fragile &quot;home&quot; can feel when it&#039;s on four wheels.<\/p>\n<p>Amber McDaniel<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>At first, van life was everything social media promised it to be: sunsets from mountain overlooks, coffee brewed with the back doors flung open, and a different backyard every few days.<\/p>\n<p>It was pretty cheap, too. My partner and I bought a behemoth of a high-roof van new for about $40,000 in 2018. We spent three months and nearly $10,000 \u2014 nearly half of which went toward our fully off-grid solar setup \u2014 converting it to something we could live in.<\/p>\n<p>We recouped our investment quickly, especially since we spent the following summer juggling several jobs while saving up to hit the road for an indefinite period.<\/p>\n<p>We only had three relatively large recurring monthly expenses: the $400 loan payment on the van itself, $150 in insurance, and an average of about $200 a month in fuel, depending on how much we drove.<\/p>\n<p>We utilized public land and the occasional Cracker Barrel parking lot for camping and boondocking, so we never spent a dime on campgrounds or RV parks.<\/p>\n<p>Factoring in food and a slim recreational budget (which we often never used), our monthly cost of living hovered under $1,000.<\/p>\n<h2>However, this lifestyle came with some high costs that weren&#039;t financial <\/h2>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69123cc746c4547ecb057f15?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Author Amber McDaniel posing standing outside of a van\"\/><figcaption>Two years of chasing coastlines and sunsets taught us that mobility comes with hidden costs \u2014 stress, instability, and the loneliness of never quite belonging anywhere.<\/p>\n<p>Amber McDaniel<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The trade-off of free-wheeling, inexpensive living was everything else. First, there was the omnipresent stress of having everything you own in one compact wheeled thing that begs, &quot;Steal me!&quot;<\/p>\n<p>It also wasn&#039;t easy living in a home that could break if you hit a pothole just wrong \u2026 or, in my case, misjudged the height of a stump questing for a backroad campsite.<\/p>\n<p>Seeing friends and family meant long drives, taking showers meant going to public gyms, and having privacy meant \u2026 well, there wasn&#039;t any.<\/p>\n<p>Nothing in van life was guaranteed, not even something as simple as having a safe place to sleep at night.<\/p>\n<p>I certainly don&#039;t miss the unique stress of trying to find a place to park and not knowing whether we would wake up surrounded by cops or cows or an angry farmer because following a county road after dark unwittingly led us onto private land \u2014 all things that happened to us during our two-year tenure on the road.<\/p>\n<p>Freedom, I learned, can feel a lot like instability.<\/p>\n<p>And that was before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and we suddenly felt like the community equivalent of an unwanted creepy uncle at the family reunion.<\/p>\n<p>Though we practiced social distancing to the extreme, often spending weeks at a time parked in the middle of nowhere without encountering another soul, the second we pulled into a grocery-store parking lot with our out-of-state license plates for a biweekly supply restock, we were repeatedly given scornful looks and told to &quot;stay home.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Never mind that the van <em>was<\/em> our home \u2014 the only one we had. All in all, it&#039;s hard to feel settled when your existence feels temporary in everyone else&#039;s eyes.<\/p>\n<h2>Eventually, we traded our four wheels for four walls<\/h2>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69123feb46c4547ecb057f8b?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Author Amber McDaniel sitting on steps of tiny home\"\/><figcaption>Living in a tiny home has given us a sense of stability we didn&#039;t know we&#039;d been missing.<\/p>\n<p>Amber McDaniel<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>When those pressures finally got to us, we hung up our van-lifer jackets and parked the van for good on a rented lot in front of a brand-new 400-square-foot tiny house.<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly, we had running water, electricity that didn&#039;t rely on a sunny day, and enough space to cook a full meal without bumping elbows.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/68d6f7f61c1f80efbec4708f?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Author Amber McDaniel standing at raised standing desk in kitchen of tiny home\"\/><figcaption>Our tiny home costs us more than our van did.<\/p>\n<p>Amber McDaniel<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The immediate financial stress, however, was undeniable.<\/p>\n<p>Our mortgage and lot rent combined cost double our van payment (which we were also still paying off). Utility costs went from a $30 propane tank refill a month to electricity, water, gas, and internet bills that combined to cost a whopping $350 on average.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69582342832e0ef1ead718b7?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Bed w ith tray table, railing behind it\"\/><figcaption>It&#039;s nice to have more space now that we&#039;re in a home. <\/p>\n<p>Amber McDaniel<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>When adding the cost to furnish the house and buy a used vehicle to serve as our everyday all-season driver (a financial headache in its own right), our hard-earned reserves were quickly depleted.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, the tiny home gave us a tenuous sense of belonging and stability we didn&#039;t realize we were missing.<\/p>\n<p>We now have an address to receive mail at, we know our neighbors, we can plant herbs in the yard, and we can sit on a porch that doesn&#039;t roll away with the wind.<\/p>\n<h2>I&#039;ve thought a lot about what &#039;home&#039; really means<\/h2>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69582342832e0ef1ead718b6?format=jpeg\" alt=\"van parked outside of tiny home\"\/><figcaption>For now, the van stays parked outside. <\/p>\n<p>Amber McDaniel<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>If I could only keep one version of tiny living, it&#039;d be the house \u2014 not because it&#039;s easier or perfect, but because it feels like <em>ours<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>I won&#039;t say I don&#039;t miss the untethered freedom to simply drive to warmer climates when I&#039;m shoveling snow from the driveway or the near-viscous silence of a desolate campsite in the mountains when I&#039;m listening to our neighbors&#039; dogs bark incessantly at 3 a.m.<\/p>\n<p>However, I can&#039;t say I&#039;d go back on the road right now. I love the quiet, simple mornings of waking up to water tanks that aren&#039;t frozen and being able to sit in my rocking chair with a cup of coffee, thinking about the art I want to make that day.<\/p>\n<p>If van life taught me anything, it&#039;s that part of the joy in traveling is the periods of stillness in between that make you restless for the road in the first place. Without a waking reality in between, the dream of perpetual motion becomes unspectacular.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Trading living in a van for residing in a 400-square-foot tiny house didn&#039;t solve everything, but it finally gave us what the road couldn&#039;t. Amber McDaniel My partner and I spent two years living in a van. It was affordable and freeing, but not perfect. That lifestyle came with hidden costs, like constant stress, instability, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-42664","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42664\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}