A woman’s TikTok videos depicting the hardships of living in her vehicle have gone popular.
To conserve money and stay out of debt, Nikita Crump claims to have been living in her Honda Civic for the last two years.
After 1,000 days of sleeping in her vehicle, Crump told Insider that she had saved enough money to purchase a van.
For millennials who are interested in a nomadic lifestyle, living in a mobile home has become more alluring recently.
Nikita Crump, the inventor of TikTok, claims in her videos that life in her Honda Civic is anything but glamorous.
Crump, 31, told Insider that she had to work two jobs and struggle to make rent payments on her $450 monthly room at a home she shared with roommates in Sacramento, California, so she moved into her car in November 2019. (Insider was unable to confirm Crump’s address because she said she lacked the necessary papers to support her claim.)
In recent years, many individuals have lost their homes, mostly as a result of the high cost of living. According to a study by the National Alliance to End Homelessness published in 2021, 580,466 Americans were experiencing homelessness in January of that year. The same study discovered that the most costly housing was also located in the regions of the nation with the greatest incidence of homelessness. According to Bloomberg, rental expenses are rising at their fastest pace in more than three decades as a result of inflation, with the typical rent now above $2,000 per month.
In Crump’s instance, she admitted to Insider that she often missed meals in order to pay her rent.
She said, “I started living extremely paycheck to paycheck and had the everyday worry of using my credit card or falling in the negatives on my bank account.”
Crump thus said on a new YouTube channel in November 2019 that she had given her landlord notice and was relocating to her vehicle.
Crump said that at initially, she didn’t earn many YouTube subscribers. However, her following increased when she launched a TikTok page during the COVID-19 outbreak and started talking about the challenges she had, such as where to wash and park. Crump has 1 million followers on her TikTok page, while she has over 73,500 subscribers on her YouTube channel, where she posts lengthier vlogs, restorations, and advice videos. Additionally, she has an Instagram account with 122,000 followers.
The TikToker said that as of January 2021, she started earning enough money to support herself as a full-time content provider. (She ceased working at a butterfly farm in May 2021, according to her; she quit her retail job at TJ Maxx in July 2020.) Crump said that she earns money from views and streams on TikTok and YouTube, where programmes like the Creator Fund and Partner Fund reward individuals who have a huge following. She said that in addition to monthly subscription packages on Patreon, she also generates money from sporadic commercial sponsorships on these sites and Instagram. In her debut TikTok post dated July 2020, Crump suggested workable answers to the challenges she claimed to have encountered while living in a moving vehicle. The video, which has more than 7.5 million views as of Thursday, showed her washing her hair in public facilities when she couldn’t take a shower at her regular location, a Planet Fitness 24-hour gym.
Additionally, Crump recorded a video in May in which she explained how she utilises handmade reflective window coverings to block people’s views of the interior of her vehicle while it is parked. As of Thursday, 3.2 million people had seen it.
Crump revealed to Insider that she charges a Jackery portable battery during the day to power her gadgets. Through a compensated relationship, she produced a video about the product in May.
She noted that she keeps blankets on hand in the winter to be warm and spends more time outside or at cafés in the summer.
Crump claims that in order to maximise room in the car, she stores her clothing on the floor of the backseat using suitcase organisers from TJ Maxx.
Crump also revealed to Insider that she organises her items in boxes in her trunk. She said that since she has always been quite minimalist, downsizing was not necessary when she moved into her vehicle, but she still retains a few extra belongings in a storage facility.
