Hey there!
Lisa here. Here is our inaugural post. Will and I are officially empty nesters and have been for about 6 months after our last kid living at home moved out. And after that move, we made a move too. Well, we bought a van to build into a camper van. Currently, we are 5 weeks from finishing our lease and getting out on the road as empty nesters. But I am getting ahead of myself.
Introduction
If you found this page, and you don’t already know us, let me give you a little introduction. My husband, Will, and I are two nurses who raised their kids in Southern California until they all left off to college and beyond. We are a blended family and we had our kids young, so we are not your average empty nesters, retirement is still a ways away. We had one last kid who was set to move (internationally), and then the pan demi* happened. So in 2020, two of our kids moved home and we did the same roller coaster some of you have all been on. We had college from home, work from home, front line workers, baking, jigsaw puzzles, hiking for our sanity, etc. Around that time a few things coincided. The first was that my husband built a platform bed to put in the back of our Subaru for camping. We figured this way we could get away, off-grid and socially distance for a night here or there. Then one kid moved out for work and grad school in Northern California. The other kid was waiting for permission to move internationally for college. And all around us, the housing market was booming.
And then I was offered a remote work job in my nursing field.
We had already been talking about our future plans before the pan dulce*, and a camper van was one of them. It was in our 5-year plan. Our current situation included a mortgage, student loans, a car payment, and all of the stuff a married couple acquires while raising kids. The camper van was five years off because we had a pay-down debt plan that was on our plate first. But things looked uncertain. Would the economy crash in the panini*? And would our home lose a lot of value like it had in 2008? Back, in 2008 we ended up paying a mortgage on our house that was more than our house was valued at. At it took 7 years to recover.
In a matter of weeks, we made a decision and listed our house on the market. We sold our home in Southern California, paid down all of our debt, and we moved to Washington state. I kept working the remote job and my husband found a part-time job. From there, we helped our last kid move across the border. Now we were officially empty nesters.
Now we could buy the van.
For the last couple of months we’ve been working on the van, turning it into a camper van while saving up money and working at our day jobs-all to get ready to get out of the road. In 5 weeks, our short term lease is up and we are moving in. We will be sharing our journey here and on our YouTube channel (coming soon!)
What do you want to know about?
*AKA Pandemic if you haven’t figured it out yet.
I’m so excited to follow along on your journey!!
Thank you! We are so excited too!
Does the van have 4 wheel drive? What year is the van?
It’s a 2013 Ford. It does not have 4 wheel drive, which would probably come in handy in certain places!
What do your kids all think of the van & your plans? What are you most nervous and/or most excited about?
The kids seem like they easily accepted it, none of them have acted like they thought it was strange. Although they did see us watch tons of vanlife youtube, so they might have thought it was inevitable.
Will is most excited about the unknown. He’s a little more inclined to wing it than I am and figure things out as we go.
I am most excited about seeing different places and all of the hikes we are going to go on.