Another tip too – let’s say you find your dream vehicle on Craigslist, you can send out a “traveling mechanic”. We did this when we bought our van because when we drove out to go buy it, the battery was dead, there were mice living in it, it was a mess. Since it wasn’t drivable, we had to drive all the way back home without the van (whomp whomp) and wait for the seller to replace the battery. It was about a 3 and a half hour drive (both ways).
So before we headed out there a second time once she replaced the battery, we decided to send out a traveling mechanic to help us avoid running into another large issue before making the full day trip there and back again to MAYBE come home with a van. We are so happy we did this! It was somewhere between $200-$300 for it, but he did such an elaborate overview of the van for us. He was probably out there for about 5 hours checking everything you could possibly check on the van, taking photos, videos and more. He then sent us a very detailed report with every tiny bit of information he could. It definitely helped with peace of mind as well before we finally made the trek to finally purchase our new home.
We highly recommend looking into doing this. We feel like if your comfortable with that, it dramatically opens up your options of where to look for a vehicle, because you won’t be beating yourself up if you travel 5 hours for your new vehicle, since you’ll already know exactly what you’ll be getting, instead of some surprises we’ve known other people to run into (We had a buddy fly from Missouri to Colorado for a rig and the only complaint was “the side doors don’t open”. When he got there, it turned out the van had been t-boned and the entire side was bashed in - hence why the doors wouldn’t open.)
Best of luck to you! The fear is very temporary. Once you finally make the jump, it very quickly turns into excitement! Hang in there!