Living in the bus — daily life, travel, financial, health, parking
This is one of those questions that comes up the second someone mentions living full-time in a vehicle. Your family asks it first, and then strangers on the internet ask it in a way that sounds a lot more like a warning. (See our guide on How Do You Get a Mailing Address Living in … Read more
If you’re looking at buying a school bus to convert, you’ve probably stared at those massive fuel tanks and thought, “What’s it gonna cost me every time I pull into a station?” Fair question. I had the same one. Filling up a full-size school bus costs between $200 and $700 depending on your tank size … Read more
This is one of those questions that kept showing up everywhere when I was researching bus life, and I think it’s because people want a number. They want someone to say “you can last exactly 14 days” or whatever. But it doesn’t work like that. The real answer is that a well-built skoolie with a … Read more
If you’ve got kids and you’re thinking about bus life, this is probably the question that keeps you up at night. I know it was for me. You can figure out plumbing and solar later, but your kids being safe while a 30,000-pound bus is rolling down the highway? That needs to be answered first. … Read more
If you’re thinking about bus life with a family, this is probably the question that keeps you up at night more than anything else. Not the plumbing, not the parking, not even the driving. It’s whether your kids are going to fall behind. Most bus life families homeschool, and honestly the options in 2026 are … Read more
This comes up way less often than you’d think in the bus life community, and that’s kind of a problem. Everybody talks about solar panels and floor plans, but nobody wants to talk about what happens when you get sick 400 miles from your doctor. The short answer is that most full-time bus lifers handle … Read more
This is one of those questions that kept coming up every single time I was reading through bus life forums and watching build tours. You’ve got this big beautiful bus that gets you from place to place, but once you’re parked somewhere, you’re kind of stuck unless you want to fire up a 40-foot school … Read more
So you’ve got this big beautiful bus, and now you need groceries. Or you want to catch a movie. Or you just need to run into a store for five minutes. The question that hits everybody at some point is whether you can actually park this thing in a normal parking lot like a regular … Read more
This is one of those questions that comes up way more than you’d expect, and it deserves a straight answer because the people asking it don’t have time for fluff. Yes, you can absolutely live in a bus on a fixed income or Social Security. In fact, bus life might be one of the best … Read more
When I first started looking into getting my skoolie, laundry was one of those things that seemed like a bigger problem than it actually is. I mean, you’re living in basically a very small apartment on wheels. Where are you supposed to wash your clothes? But once I started digging into how people actually handle … Read more