Couple halve price of residing by transferring right into a van

A pair have halved their residing prices by upping sticks and transferring right into a van – travelling the nation for £1k a month. Wedding ceremony photographers Heidi Elliot, 22, and Julian Nevin, 31, drive up and down the nation to jobs, by no means having to splash out on lodging.

They are saying they earn £26,000 – the equal to the common UK wage – over a marriage season, which they then use to fund journey within the winter months. Heidi, from Guildford, and Julian, from Epsom, moved within the 2018 Mercedes Sprinter in Could 2021.

They purchased the car for £25,000 and spent an additional £8,000 refurbishing it – and say it now prices simply £1,250 to dwell in. Julian mentioned: “We dwell within the van so we will journey the place we would like after we need. We don’t actually funds; we’re simply doing it for our love of freedom.

“Residing within the van remotely full-time permits us to journey to weddings extra simply as our major work is weddings everywhere in the UK.”
The couple say they spend £625 every monthly, totalling £1250, and that they might be spending a minimum of £1000 extra monthly to lease a two-bed in Surrey – in addition to gasoline prices and inns for after they journey up and down the nation to weddings.

With the funds they save, they use some cash to deal with themselves to the occasional takeaway or a keep at a campsite the place they’ll use water and electrical hook-ups unrestricted. The couple met in 2019 after they have been each working for a world faculty pictures firm and had each been assigned to the identical mission in Singapore.

Lockdown struck shortly after they’d each returned from Asia they usually discovered themselves residing within the UK with Heidi’s household.
They each knew that vanlife was one thing they’d at all times wished to do sooner or later and lockdown supplied the proper alternative.

It took round a yr to finish the van whereas they each labored to fund the conversion, with Heidi taking up a task as a cleaner and Julian as a courier. Now, they dwell with their two canines – Jack Russel’s Milly and Mabel – and spend two days every week engaged on their initiatives and ending up edits on marriage ceremony photoshoots.

All through the week, they journey throughout the nation attending weddings and on their days off they go for lengthy walks and benefit from the areas they discover themselves in. Heidi mentioned: “We met by a world faculty pictures firm the place we might get allotted jobs around the globe.

“We knew of one another throughout the firm earlier than assembly in Singapore after we have been despatched out on a job collectively. On the finish of the season we went travelling round Asia collectively for 4 months after which we got here again to the UK and stayed with my household.

“I at all times wished to dwell a extra different life-style the place I wasn’t working mounted hours every day – we each at all times had the dream. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are our mounted working days – we get up round six, have breakfast and let the canines out, make up our seating space and work away till lunchtime.

“We often end round three after which go for a protracted stroll with the canines. On days after we’re not working, our plans are very fluid and we have a tendency to only determine what we need to do – we all know what’s across the space that we’re in however don’t plan out our days prematurely.”

The couple plan to go to Europe of their van over the winter months and are hoping to spend three months in Greece earlier than coming again to the UK for the marriage season. There are even plans within the pipeline of delivery their van over to South America to proceed their travels.

Julian mentioned: “We’ve not had something loopy occur whereas we’ve been on the street as usually we’re fairly distant or park in secluded areas and take a look at to not disturb anybody. We’ve simply been to Northumberland and each single bay was white sandy seashores – we known as it the ‘Cornwall of the North’.

“I travelled round Australia in a van for 3 months in 2014 and knew it was one thing I wished to do extra of alongside the road. I actually get pleasure from travelling, exploring and adventuring, and within the van we will make these decisions extra typically – all the things stems from a love of journey.”