Gold Rush’s Parker Schnabel Reveals What He ‘Spends’ With His Mining Millions (Exclusive)

Parker Schnabel likes to live a simple life.

The Gold rush star spoke to PEOPLE about what his life is like as a successful gold digger – and reality TV star – at just 30 years old. Thinking back to the biggest splurge he made with his millions, he says it doesn’t come to mind much.

‘No way [splurged]”, he admits. “I don’t even have a house, except the one on the mine site, so it’s quite the opposite. I’m now living on a friend’s couch in LA. I don’t live here, but I’m only staying here for a few weeks. I don’t really spend a lot of money on physical possessions or things like that.”

For Schnabel, the greatest asset of success is his ability to bring people together. As an “experiential person,” he says most of his big expenses involve activities with loved ones.

“I’ve had great experiences,” he says. “On Friday I took my dad to a World Series game. So that kind of thing is – that’s a splurge for me. If I’m going to spend money, it’s traveling with friends. Every year I try to take our crew, the mining crew, on a trip and do fun things. One year we went on a big hunting trip, the next year we went to Vegas for three days. I’m a big fan of really solid shared experiences and that’s probably where I spend the most money.”

“Of course I’m a big spender at work,” he jokes. “They often take my credit card away from me.”

Schnabel says family is very important to him and credits them for a big part of his success. He says he’s seen them work hard since he was a little kid, and that’s where he gets his strong work ethic.

“I grew up in a family where my great-grandfather came to Alaska, my grandmother joined him in 1937, my father was born here and all three of them were building a life from scratch,” he explains. “So that’s what I grew up with. My father has a very big influence in my life. He is 69. He still gets up at 4:30 every morning and goes to work.”

Looking back on his fondest memories growing up, Schnabel recalls a summer before he left Gold rush that he spent a summer on the mine site with his grandfather.

“He cooked for me every night,” Schnabel remembers. “Every night we would sit down and he would actually spend a surreal memory, so over the course of three months he gave me a complete history from the first memory he could remember to the present day.”

“Sometimes it took a year or two years in one night, and sometimes it took a week to get through it for a few days,” he says. “It was one of the most special things. Unfortunately it was all just oral, there was no record of it at all. That’s probably one of my biggest regrets. It was a very special time that he and I were very close.”

Never miss a story: Sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Gold rush airs Fridays at 8 PM ET on Discovery Channel, while the entire series streams on Max.