Gotta recognize his efforts but I feel it's somewhat misguided.
http://metronews.ca/news/calgary/1122664/calgary-urban-nomad-goes-nfa-no-fixed-address-to-pay-down-debts/Faced with mounting personal debt, Geoffrey Westlock came up with a drastic solution.
He decided to go NFA – no fixed address.
The 44-year-old has been living in an RV trailer in Calgary since May, in a deliberate effort to pay down $15,000 in debt he amassed as a film-school student.
Westlock now parks his truck and trailer in big-box store lots around the city, and calls himself an “urban nomad.”
It’s more economical than renting a room, or leasing a townhouse, he said, as his fixed expenses amount only to a phone bill,
a truck payment, and $122 every two weeks for the trailer.
“It frees up a massive amount of cash to pay down my debts,” Westlock said.
Originally from Vancouver, Westlock moved to Edmonton in 1997 before heading to Red Deer in 2008 to enroll in film school. He graduated in 2010 with a BA in Motion Picture Studies and $15,000 in credit card debt.
“I was paying minimum payments of $500 a month, and scratching my head,” he said. “I thought, ‘This is nuts.’”
He hatched the urban nomad plan as a solution to his debt.
“If I drastically reduced my lifestyle
for a very short period of time, I could get through this,” he said. “There’s no other method, other than to buckle down and somehow pay these off.”
Westlock said he makes use of truck stops and big-box store parking lots to park his truck and trailer. He said he was kicked out of a Costco parking lot one night but on the whole hasn’t had much trouble in other locations.
His plan is to keep it up until he pays off the debt, which he expects to accomplish by next summer.
Westlock plans to move to Toronto after that, to work in the film industry.
PQ:
“Near the end of my BA, I ran out of money and was living on credit cards the last couple of months. The bills piled up and before I knew it, I ended up maxing out my credit cards to the tune of $15,000.”
– “Urban Nomad” Geoffrey Westlock