The Wanderful

Summary

Introduction

The absolute most-asked question I get about living in the van… “How much does it cost?”.

Asking how much a buildout costs is a loaded question, and every build will be different. For example, my van has a lot of “extras” that some people wouldn’t bother doing. Items like the ladder, rack, rack lightning, suspension upgrade, Espar heater and router system increased the price by ~$9,000.

If you’re thinking of doing a van build, my first piece of advice would be to sit down and really evaluate your budget. Think about what items are essential to you and what items you could live without but would be nice to have. Maybe you can consider adding those items at a later date.

Personally, I found the planning and budgeting aspect of the build to be a very educational part of the entire experience. It really opened my eyes to all of the different options that were available for different aspects of the build. I recommend to anyone considering a build to first open up a Google Sheet and create a simple budget that will highlight your needs. This will give you a great idea of all the costs associated. Speaking from experience, I know that my build came in very close to my original cost breakdown, excluding items that I decided to add about half way through the build.

sprinter van cabinets — Workspace for Van #1

sprinter van window install — Painting the cut edge of the van window

acp sprinter wall panel — Cutting our the ACP Wall panel for the van

dog sprinter van — Ellie and I in the rear of the sprinter van

acp wall panel — Installing insulation covering

sprinter van ceiling — Staining the ceiling boards

sprinter van break time — Sometimes you just think will this ever finish

sprinter van flooring — Installing the floor in the van

sprinter van espar — Installing the Espar Heater

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Budget Breakdown

Breaking It Down

I discovered an awesome online tool called Expensify, which I definitely recommend using once you’ve broken down the different sections of the build into a spreadsheet. Expensify is an app to help you track your receipts and keep all of your costs organized. Inside my Expensify account, I created a category called “Van Build” and then created different tags for each aspect of the build such as; flooring, insulation, cabinets, etc. By doing this, it gave me the ability to quickly and easily filter all of my receipts and compare the category totals against my spreadsheet budget.

I broke my project into 7 different categories.

Once I had my 7 categories created, I started to tag all receipts with one of the categories and it made keeping my expenses organized throughout the process a very simple task.