How I Afford Full-Time Van Life and Boat Life (No, I’m Not a Trust Fund Baby)

One of the most common questions I get is: “How do you afford this lifestyle?”

Or: “Are you a trust fund baby?”

Or: “Do your parents pay for all this?”

Or: “Do you pay taxes?”

These questions are so insane to me. Just because I live a nomadic lifestyle doesn’t mean I am trying to beat the system, rely on my parents, or don’t work.

News flash: I pay TONS of taxes.

It took years of effort to build an online business that could sustain my dreams of full-time travel. Months of making barely any money, sitting in cafes with Wi-Fi, taking online courses, busting my butt to make this happen.

In this post, I’m pulling back the curtain on exactly how I make this lifestyle work financially—how I earn money, how I keep my costs low, and what I gave up in exchange for this kind of freedom.

Why I Chose Blogging as my Online Business

I was a radio news reporter for 15 years before I was laid off in 2016 from KGO radio in San Francisco. I immediately gave notice on my room in an apartment and moved onto Tom’s sailboat. I knew I wanted to find some way to work remotely so we could travel, but had no idea how.

That’s when I learned blogs actually make money. I read an article about Michelle Schroeder-Gardner of Making Sense of Cents. She was traveling full-time in an RV and making $100,000 PER MONTH blogging. This was an insane revelation! I thought blogs were more journal entries than a viable business, but I couldn’t be more wrong.

I was determined that a blog would be my online business venture. So, I used some of my savings to purchase an $800 blogging course (big money for me!), and threw my entire heart into blogging.

Blogging was like learning a new degree, and it took me two years to make a decent living. But ever since that first year in 2019, I have made six figures every year.

In 2020, we decided to make the leap and leave Tom’s job and San Francisco for a full-time lifestyle on our sailboat and in our campervan.

How Exactly Blogs Make Money

Blogs make money in so many different ways! Here’s how my blog earns an income:

Ad Revenue

My main income source is through display ads (via the ad network Mediavine). Mediavine is a premium ad network that puts ads right on a blogging site and takes a cut of the earnings. I love this income source because I don’t have to do anything like insert code, work with advertisers, etc. Mediavine does everything. At the prime of my blogging career, sometimes I could make $15,000-$17,000 per month in ad revenue alone.

Now that a lot of my Google traffic has disappeared thanks to AI overviews and algorithm updates, my ad revenue is more like $4,500 per month. My goal is to increase ad revenue wth new traffic sources from Facebook Pages, Pinterest and my email list.

I know some of the ads on my site are annoying, but there are ways to close out of a couple of them to make your reading experience more enjoyable. Just remember that as you scroll past each ad, I am making money from those impressions, and it helps me to continue creating free content, so thank you!

Affiliate Income

Affiliate income is where I recommend products I use and love, and if someone clicks on my link and buys the product, I get a small commission. I’m talking usually between 3%-8%. Sometimes, if its a course or service, the commission is higher like 20%, but those cases are rare.

As you can see, I have to sell A LOT of products, or more expensive products, to make this work.

Digital Products

I sell a variety of digital products and courses that help people live the nomadic life—like toolkits on boondocking, campervan rentals in Europe, and making money on the road. These products provide passive income and are a big part of my strategy. Here are some of my products:

• The Camper Rentals in Europe Toolkit
• The Van Life Parking Playbook
• The Profitable Blogging Blueprint
• The Facebook Traffic Goldmine

Sponsorships

I partner with brands that align with my values—like solar companies, campervan builders, or gear I actually use. Sponsored blog posts, social media content, or email placements help bring in additional income.

Facebook Page Monetization

One of my most surprising income streams is through Facebook. I run a large page (The Van Life Collective), and by driving traffic to my blog and using Meta’s bonus programs and ad revenue tools, I generate consistent monthly income from content I’d be posting anyway.

How I Pay Taxes

A lot of people seem concerned that just because I live on the road and on the water, I somehow avoid taxes. That couldn’t be further from the truth!

My business is an S Corp licensed with the state of South Dakota, where I have my physical address. I use a CPA familiar with online business, especially the blogging business. She helps me figure out my quarterly and annual taxes, as well as how much to pay myself in wages for the year.

I submit quarterly payments to the IRS and I pay what’s due at the end of the year (or I get a refund if my expenses were high enough).

One amazing thing about creating content about my lifestyle (van life and boat life) is that I can write off a lot of expenses like internet, my phone bill, parts for the van and the boat, and certain travel expenses.

How I Keep My Costs Low

Like any business, blogs can have their ups and downs. My blogging income was very consistent until Google changed things up with AI Overviews and gave more search results to sites like Reddit and other forums. Blogs lost rankings or were pushed to pages 2 and 3 on Google where nobody ever goes.

You can read this amazing article about what Google is doing to small bloggers like me and how its destroying many people’s businesses and livelihoods.

Luckily, I live frugally, so I can weather these online business storms while I work on creating new revenue streams.

Here’s how I keep things affordable:

No Rent or Mortgage

We own both of our sailboats outright and don’t owe much on our Sprinter campervan. I intentionally got a loan for this van to build up my credit. Otherwise, I advocate for being able to pay for vans and boats outright, unless you really want a payment to build credit.

That’s not to say sailboat living is ALWAYS cheap. We have boat parts to purchase and boatyard and marina fees. The boatyard is in Mexico, so it has very reasonable monthly fees for storage.

Free & Cheap Camping and Anchoring

When we travel in our campervan or on our sailboat, we usually stay places for free. We love finding boondocking spots in our van and anchoring when on our boat. This keeps monthly expenses WAY down. Check out my Van Life Parking Playbook for my camping insider tips.

Minimalist Lifestyle

Neither of us own much stuff, and we don’t shop for many things unless they are needed. When we do buy something, we get rid of something. Most of the items we buy are boat parts, haha.

DIY Upgrades

Rather than hire out the campervan build and sailboat work, Tom does everything himself. He works on the boat at a DIY boatyard in Mexico, which is affordable, and we get to live there. If we hired out this work it would be extremely expensive.

Cooking at Home

We cook at home for the majority of our meals. We have a large stove and oven on the sailboat, and we alternate between an induction cooktop and outdoor propane camp stove with the van. Shopping at Costco and grinding our own coffee also makes a huge difference.

There are SO MANY Ways to Make Money Online

I love that the nomadic lifestyle has become easier and easier. There are so many ways to make money online these days. In fact, I have an entire section of my website devoted to making money online, which you can check out here: https://www.thewaywardhome.com/category/money/

How do you make money to support your nomadic lifestyle? Share in the comments to inspire others!