With average Silicon Valley rent for a one-bedroom apartment of $2,790, a 24-year-old software engineer has built up a $100,000 portfolio in 16 months from savings off of living in his converted Ford box truck.
Breitbart News first started following “Brandon S” (he does not want to use his real name) last year when he started publishing the “Thoughts from Inside the Box” blog, which chronicled his adventures of living in the parking lot at Google’s Mt. View headquarters.
Brandon’s blog is hilarious and soon had an avid set of followers eager to learn about such topical issues as “the implications of not having a nearby bathroom” and “Truck Tech Home Improvement.” But “Thoughts from Inside the Box” hottest attraction is Brandon’s real-time “Saving Clock” that continuously updates his record of saving that equaled $25,967.70 after 1 year, 4 months, 4 weeks, 1 day, 20 hours, 28 minutes and 26 seconds of living in a box truck.
Silicon Valley millennials may make better wages than most of the rest of America, but they are economically crushed by the area’s notoriously higher cost of living, especially the egregious cost of housing for young adults.
According to an analysis from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, found that multifamily property valuations in the San Francisco Bay Area are now 85 percent above their prior 2007 peak valuation. As a result, over 49 percent of Bay Area renters are “cost-burdened” by rents that exceed 30 percent or more of their income and about half that percentage are “severely cost burdened” with rents that exceed 50 percent of their income.
Brandon lived in Google’s parking lot for almost a year in his truck that was slowly customized to feature a sunroof, bed, coat rack, dresser and lots of storage bags. Things were going great according to Brandon, until his talking-up on his blog the advantages that he and dozens of other Google employees were enjoying as tech hobos got too much publicity from national media, like Breitbart News.
Facing pressure from the local city zoning authority, Google managers told Brandon and his other parking lot posse to make off-campus living arrangements. Since then, he has moved around the local community, trying to make sure he doesn’t get rousted for the box truck looking like criminal or terrorist activity. Brandon best describes his abode:
“Box trucks are well-suited to a wide range of activities. Need to make an area more sketchy? Park a box truck there and watch the surrounding property values plummet. Worried you don’t own enough things covered in graffiti? Buy a box truck, they’re magnets for impromptu community art sessions. Got some stuff to move? I know seven satisfied customers who can testify that Brandon’s Ad Hoc Moving Service™ comes in handy on occasion. Box trucks are great for hauling crap around…just not in the literal sense.”
Brandon recently told the San Francisco Chronicle that his invested “Inside the Box” savings “nest-egg just passed the $100,000 mark a few weeks ago.” He said that he is enjoying his unconventional life, and has made no plans to move out of the “box.”
You can follow Brandon’s eclectic life style at: https://frominsidethebox.com/
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