A MAN revealed how he and his wife can afford only working two days a week after quitting his job to work on a caravan park.
Lewis, 35, quit his previous mental health job to work as a park warden after seeing an opening ad on Facebook.
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The couple revealed they now spend just £330 a month living in a caravan after they “didn’t want all our money going on bills“.
In April 2023, they sold their three-bed home in Lancaster, Lancashire, for £130,000 and purchased a £30k campervan to travel around the UK in for a year.
When their funds began to dwindle, the pair found jobs at the site through a Facebook group and have since upgraded to living in a £15,000 caravan.
With no rent or bills to pay due to their pitch on the site being included in Lewis’ job as a campsite warden, they save a full wage each month and estimate they will have saved £8,000 this year by October.
Rachel, a cook, said: “We got a campervan in March 2022.
“We were going away every weekend when we could and I just didn’t want to come home.
“We had some savings and decided to sell up and do a year travelling around the UK.
“Last year we got our jobs as wardens.
“Literally anyone could do it, you can pick up a caravan for £1,000 and pick up a job.
“We’ve got the caravan and a massive field to ourselves.
“The job is March to October so you get four months off.
“We will probably have saved about £8,000 for this year.
“We’re only half an hour away from Snowdonia so we tend to go there a lot. “We have days out in Anglesey, and I love wild swimming so we’ll go to local beaches”.
They decided to sell their home after initially going down the family route.
Rachel said: “We had a miscarriage, then a stillbirth, then tried to conceive for two years and couldn’t.
“You have to have been trying for two years before they send you down the fertility route, but after the two or three years we’d had enough and wanted to enjoy life again.
Rachel was previously a chef at a local hospice, and Lewis was a mental health support worker, finding their new jobs last year through a Facebook group.
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They both initially worked one day a week part-time, but after discovering it was more of a one-person role, Rachel moved on to become a chef at a local cafe.
Rachel said: “It involves doing reception and check-ins, most of it is maintenance like strimming and weeding, and cleaning the facilities.
“This year now I work in a local cafe two days a week, and Lewis still works as a warden two days a week.
“Sometimes we think, should we go to different campsites and travel around a bit more, but we’ve got it cushty here.
“We live off Lewis’ wage in season and save my wage, and then we’ve got that to travel with.
“We each earn £1,000 per month.”
With such minimal overheads, the couple are spending just over £300 each month.
Rachel said: “We don’t pay anything for rent or bills as it’s included. It’s just gas for the cooker we pay for, that’s £8.75 per month.
“For our laundry we have to go and do that on site, that’s £12 per month”.
The monthly food shop is the couple’s biggest outgoing at an average of £240 per month.
Rachel said: “We are lucky to have five days off per week.
“The downsides are not actually being able to travel between March and October.
“You’ve got to go and fill your water tank as there’s no running water and empty the toilet.
“But you just get used to it.
“The pros are the freedom it gives us.
“Being able to have all this spare time to go hiking and exploring, just living out in nature I love it.
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“I know some of our friends say they couldn’t do it because of the small space.
“In our house, we had a man cave, I had a spare room for a walk-in wardrobe but we just got used to the smaller space, it’s all worth it.
“We sold most of it and were just left with the minimum amount of clothes we needed for the van.
“My dad, Chris, died last year and he left us a bit of money so we used that to buy the caravan”.
The couple are careful with their money, never spending more than Lewis’ wage each month and sometimes choosing to park up on the roadside in lay-bys or carparks, rather than paying for a campsite when they travel on their days off.
“We’re going to keep doing this as long as we can.
“Eventually we see ourselves going up to a static caravan, but I can’t see ourselves ever going back to house life because we’d have to get full-time jobs.
“I think we’ll keep doing this forever.”
Rachel and Lewis’ monthly costs
The couple’s monthly costs have reduced by £1,000
Rachel and Lewis’ previous monthly costs now:
Rent/bills: £0
Gas: £8.75
Laundry: £12
Food: £240
Phone contracts: £60
Caravan insurance: £10
Total: £330
Rachel and Lewis’ previous monthly costs as home owners:
Mortgage: £500
Council tax: £130 Water: £30 Gas and electric:
£70 Subscriptions (like Sky, Netflix, and Amazon): £100
Phone contracts: £60
Food shop: £240
Takeaways: £200
Total: £1,330
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