£1,000 Paid Off This Month—But Is It Enough to Make Vanlife Real?

Welcome to the Freedom Diaries. If you're new around here, that won't mean much to you yet, but wait, Don't leave, I'll explain. If you've been around for a while, I'm sorry, I'm going to repeat. Myself. I lived in my van for two years. I am now back in the house because of circumstances. Well, financially speaking, basically, and I want to get back out on the road. I don't want to live At my house. I don't want to be tired. I'm a foster carer, and I just don't want that way of life. any more, and I'm documenting my kind of journey back to van life or freedom. Like van life is the the goal, or more importantly, the greater freedom of time, is the goal. Fostering is so exhausting in terms I've got to be with them 24/7. I can't, I don't have any freedom with my time. is the ultimate goal. If that comes in the form of van life, which is what I'm thinking right now, We'll just have to wait and see. Right now, a lot is happening behind the scenes—saving and paying. off debt and building income streams, making difficult decisions, all the boring bits beforehand the actual start of what I'm hoping will be the fun stuff. So this is just a bit of an update on whether I'm actually getting closer to that dream of greater freedom or whether I'm just sitting here complaining about it all the time. The good news is I genuinely feel like I'm making so much Progress. Even if I compare how I feel now to how I felt this time last month, I just feel so much more positive. about the potential and the possibility. This month I have paid off a thousand pounds of debt from the house renovations, which are just fantastic. I hate debt and I really want to get that paid off as soon as possible, leaving me with about £3,000 still to pay off, which I'm hoping I can earn at least £1,000 a month for the next three months. £3,000 is not a small amount of money. But obviously £4,000 is more. I've paid off £1,000, and I should be pleased with that. Every little bit that I pay off just feels like it's one less thing holding me back because the thinking about having debt and going back to the van just doesn't work for me. It's one step closer. to having options, and fundamentally that is about freedom, the freedom of options. not necessarily the freedom of being in the van. One thing that I am just so, so unbelievably pleased with it, and I hope this momentum continues. It's the food channel. It was only monetized recently. end of May, so as I'm recording this, that's maybe about two weeks ago, and it's really early days for but I'm gaining subscribers, I'm getting lots of views. It's already earned around £100, which is Okay, that doesn't mean £100 is a small amount of money in terms of my being able to quit. fostering full-time, but it's a start, and as I say, I'm hoping that momentum will just keep building. It's happening a bit faster than I thought it would, but I'm impatient and I want it to happen. happen faster. I don't know, but I know I just have to accept it for what it is and move on. Put in the effort and put in the work and see what happens. I'm also trying to build my Facebook page. page for the food channel. I have a Facebook page for this channel and I have one for the The Food Channel. I'll link them below if anyone's interested. I'm trying to build that. Because I've never been monetized on Facebook. I don't really understand Facebook monetization. My friend recently got monetized, and I was looking at their stats. Apparently, they don't earn that much. Anyway, yeah, I do have a Facebook page. I'm just posting any videos I upload regarding my food. I'm just posting to Facebook. I don't really understand it, but I'm doing it. No one seems to like me. No one seems to like me on Facebook though. I don't know why. Maybe they just haven't found my audience yet, but that would be nice if I could just have the content that I'm posted on YouTube on the food channel. I can just put it there—no extra effort, and I can simply upload it posted on Facebook and I can get paid twice. So that would be lovely if I can get that going and it's creating a ton of extra work for me right now, and it won't be a ton of extra work in the future to do that, but honestly, I just don't understand Facebook monetization. I could just keep Maybe I should try learning, or maybe I just need to push through the content and see. That would be Fantastic to get paid twice for the same content on two different platforms. That's the dream. Fan life is the dream. Right now I'm just so incredibly busy, like I'm making This sounds like I'm complaining. I'm not complaining. I'm working toward something, and I'm grateful. grateful and happy to be doing it, but I'm busy. I'm working on three videos for this channel. I'm doing three videos on the food channel plus four shorts plus looking after two foster children and everything that comes with it and just trying to stay on top of life, and then I also have something Sitting in the background. An old gaming channel, and I'm starting to question what I should do. With that. The thing is, it has 50,000 subscribers. It's still gaining subscribers now. I haven't posted on it. It's been years since I consistently posted on that, but it still earns. about £100 every month, which is just madness to me, that I just played some games years ago and I Get £100 a month from it, but I'm starting to look at that channel and think I should do something. With that, I have a channel there with 50K subscribers. I should probably tap into it. I've got an audience. It's already monetized. It earns money as it is, but the problem is that I used to do a lot of sims stuff. on that channel, and I just don't know whether the audience is still there for that kind of content. I don't know whether it's worth my time. I don't know. I did try about a year ago flipping to doing some different games were there, and the audience just didn't watch, so I'm not sure. I'm not sure what nothing else about that, but I feel like I already have a channel with 50k subscribers. I feel like I should do Something, but then I think, when? You're already stretched pretty thin. There's only so many hours. during the day. Sometimes I feel like I'm literally doing nothing else with my life other than, again, which I'm fine with. I don't have any social life or anything like that. I'm literally just fostering, taking care of the children, editing videos. If you saw my day in the life video, My days just start at six, when I begin editing and taking支援 with the kids and other things. I finish up around half past 10, 11, and all of it is focused solely on creating content and doing Things like that, yeah, it's a lot, so honestly, I'm not sure when I'd fit in playing the game and all that stuff. but then maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way, because maybe the question isn't, do I have time? I think we can always make time for things. Maybe the question is, can I afford to not do them? something with a channel of 50k? I feel like I probably need to figure that out, so I've been toying with what on earth to do with that channel at the moment. Throughout all of this, one thing I've realized that when you're in your early twenties, no debts—hopefully no debts—but when you're twenty, No debts, no responsibilities, or anything— you can have that freedom. By the time you're, what am I? 42? No, I must be getting old. 43? I don't even know how old I am. That's when you know you're old. I think I'm 43. but by the time you reach this age and have all these responsibilities and commitments, If you want freedom or options, the ability to choose, it doesn't just appear—it's built. and it's built through a lot of tedious work, paying off debt, creating income streams, and making sensible choices decisions, being consistent when no one's watching. That's where I am right now, and I think it's an Interesting thing to document this, because I don't feel like people show how they get to that. It's always just, oh, I've bought a van and I'm going off, and I feel like it's just interesting. to see some, well, I would find it interesting, I think, anyway, of someone's journey to be able to get there and I just think it would be nice for me to look back on and have these videos of like, Look at how hard you worked for this and things like that—I don't know. So yeah, this is freedom. diaries. I'm going to do them regularly with a little update on where we are or where I am. Guess. Are you on this journey with me? But yeah, where I am right now, you know, getting back to life that I want to lead. I do think in terms of income; I'm not necessarily saying that I want to quit fostering because I do love fostering, I just don't want that exhaustion. I don't know if I'll Talk about it in another video, but I could do some respite fostering where you just look after a child. for about two weeks, and if I could do that a couple of times a year, that would just help, you know, build, have that bit more income coming in. If I can't earn it all online or by Other means—that's definitely still an option for me. So where does that leave me? £1,000 paid off a debt, £3,000 left to go, wonderful. The food channel started to earn money, which is just brilliant, and it's got a lot of momentum at the moment. The gaming channel is a big question mark that I need to figure out, but that's earning me £100 a month and I definitely feel closer closer to van life than I was two or three months ago. I'm not as close as I'd like to be, but I'm definitely Close there. It's going to take time; I'm just going to have to accept that. So what do you guess? What would you do in my situation? Would you launch that gaming channel? What would you do? What do you do with a channel that has 50,000 views? Because I usually just post a lot of stuff like sims, like I said, Sim stuff on it. I don't know the audience, I don't think people play. It was like Sims Future. It was mobile-related stuff, so I don't think the audience is necessarily there. Maybe I could Give it a little test by starting to put out a few videos, and see if that increases it. See if I can get the watch times from there. I don't know, what do you think I should do? I need advice. Anyway, thank you so much for watching the first episode of Freedom Diaries. I will see you in the next one. Next one. I don't know if there'll be another talkative one in the van or whether I'll manage to Get out somewhere. Someone said that in your videos when you're out and about. Yeah, because I'm doing what I love. I mean, I'm in the van right now. I'm just on my driveway. I don't really love this. It's okay, I'm in the van. But anyway, Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you soon. Bye.