It’s finally real! We’ve been talking about this for a while, and for a long time it felt like a dream, but its finally here!

Heres how it happened.

First, let’s take a quick step back. This has been a plan (but felt like a dream) for the last two years. In March of 2018 we had decided to move in together and one of the prerequisites for our new place was it would have to be able to facilitate purchasing a bus. This was an easy move because it doesn’t lock us in to anything, we just would have the ability to make the move if/when we decided it was the right time. We found a cute little house in Charlotte, not too far from where we had already been living and a bit cheaper than we were currently paying in rent. It had a back yard, a gate that opened to 110 inches wide, and best of all, after the first year of the lease it switched to month to month meaning we could leave when it was convenient for us. No fear of moving into the bus prematurely, and no need to sign on for another year if we only have a couple months of work left. We settled in and made it our own.

Along the way we started doing things to make the dream of “bus life” more of a reality. It all started when I can across an AirBnB where we could actually stay in a bus! We took a short weekend trip to Shelby, NC to stay in a school bus in someones back yard. Since then we’ve stayed in another bus in Edisto Beach, SC and in an Airstream in Savannah, GA.

We had done some more realistic things to prepare as well. Chelsea ended up finding a Skoolie Workshop that was being run at a tiny home festival in Macon, GA. Not only did we get the opportunity to learn just about every aspect of building a skoolie, but it was taught by some of the people we had been following on instagram for the last few years! There will definitely be more on that in a separate post.

We had started trying to prep our lives for “bus life”. Chelsea had a car lease that we wanted to get rid of and we figured we’d need a truck for supplies, visits to the dump, etc. We saved a little bit and ended up buying a 2003 Ford Explorer Sport Trac for $2400. We also cut out about $300 in expenses per month. Win-win.

At this point, we were ready to jump. We had learned a lot, cut some expenses, paid down some debts, saved up a little bit of money, and it was time to start looking at some busses.