I'm not sure if the allure is necessarily the bohemian way of feeling poor. I think much of it has to do with the minimalism of the experience. The ability to pack up and move on at a moments notice has 'starting over' feel to it, which can be quite nice. Kind of like refactoring crufty code.
A guy I know recently bought a van, and you nailed it. It has nothing to do with patio11's comment, and everything to do with the 'minimalist' experience you describe. He says it's an experiment - maybe he'll get tired of it, but it's something he wanted to try, and has the cash to spend on it (the van was not cheap). I can't say I would be interested in that variety of experiment myself, but "to each his own".
I think you mean "deleting code and starting from scratch". Refactoring code involves making changes to existing code in order to optimize it - I don't think it's analogous to packing up and moving on.
Refactoring code can also include making the code comply with "Don't Repeat Yourself", which would include removing a large amount of code and replacing it with references to a single function, etc. It also includes removing deleting dead code, another thing relateable to minimalism.
