What Is Skoolie Life? Is It Actually Worth It?

To put it simply, skoolie life is affordable living and the freedom to roam and adventure on your own terms. The freedom to pack up and go while taking your tiny home on wheels and your most-loved belongings is unconventional but it often answers a calling or need to live outside the box and experience the world from a different perspective.

Living in a school bus conversion appeals to people from all walks of life who have a desire to travel and explore: families, pet parents, single persons, couples, retirees, digital nomads, and more. You can also choose to experience your skoolie life as a weekend warrior, part-time like a snowbird or be a full-time nomad.

Our family of five spent seven months converting a retired school bus into our dream tiny home on wheels that we lived and traveled in full-time for six months from Florida to Maine and back. Now, we have our school bus conversion parked in long-term storage with plans to turn her into a short-term rental.

In those six months of living on our skoolie, we reconnected with family and friends we hadn’t seen in years, visited so many new places, made new acquaintances, and sparked something we had been missing since the pandemic lockdown forced us into our homes in 2020. For our young children (1, 3 and 4 years old at the time), they still had a place they could call home and still talk about our adventures in the Hildebus to this day.

Hildebus school bus conversion parked on the waterfront in the evening in Glouchester, Massachusetts — Glouchester, Massachusetts

Photo of a mom, dad and three young children posing on a side walk on a rainy evening in Massachusetts. — Glouchester, Massachusetts

History of skoolie life

Converting a school bus into a dwelling has been around for as long as school buses have been around, and has really burst into the mainstream spotlight with a positive “glow-up” in the past 10 years as the tiny home movement has exploded.

Building a school bus conversion used to be a simple way of living and traveling, made memorable in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the American hippie movement. These days, you can find really basic and affordable school bus conversions all the way up to high-end custom tiny homes.

Are skoolies worth it?

Yes. Skoolies are worth it if you are looking for an alternative and affordable home that is customizable though assigning an actual dollar value can be difficult since each school bus conversion is unique. Some people spend months or years building out their tiny home on wheels before moving in at completion, like we did – 7 months! Others choose to demo the interior and build as they can afford to while living aboard. In both cases, a housing need is solved and adventure begins.

As far as assigning a value like you would for the purchase and sale of a traditional class A RV, that is a rather difficult assessment to make since every skoolie conversion is unique. In most states, there is no standard building code that applies to how a skoolie is built and it is up to the owner to decide what finishes they wish to install and the quality of work they will perform.

In our case, we built a mid- to high-range skoolie. We purchased our retired school bus for ~$4,500 in 2021 and put in $45,000-$50,000 between the demo, repairs, framing, electrical, solar, plumbing, paint, and custom finishes like quartzite countertops, tiled backsplash, vinyl flooring throughout, propane range, mini stove, 12V fridge and freezer, and more.

You can read the full upgrades to our HildeBus skoolie in this blog post.

See our skoolie video walkthrough tour here.