We work just two days a week and live on £330 a month – we wanted to enjoy life again
Rachel Hale, 39, and her husband Lewis, 35, traded their three-bedroom house for a caravan on a Welsh campsite – slashing their monthly bills to a fraction of what they once paid and freeing them to work just two days a week.
But the decision to leave it all behind came after years of personal heartache.
"We had a miscarriage, then a stillbirth, then tried to conceive for two years and couldn't," Rachel says.
"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."
For Rachel and Lewis, that meant travel, the outdoors, and stripping life back to what really mattered.
Selling up and hitting the road
In April 2023, they sold their £130,000 home in Lancaster, Lancashire, bought a £30,000 campervan and spent a year travelling the UK.
"We were going away every weekend when we could and I just didn't want to come home," Rachel says. "We had some savings and decided to sell up and do a year travelling around the UK."
When their funds started to run low, they found jobs as campsite wardens through a Facebook group. They now live in a £15,000 caravan and settled into full-time life on a site in Anglesey in March 2024.
A life with minimal costs
Lewis' job as a campsite warden includes their pitch, so they pay nothing for rent or bills. "Literally anyone could do it," Rachel says. 'You can pick up a caravan for £1,000 and pick up a job."
Lewis and Rachel – who now works as a cook in a local café – each work just two days a week. "We live off Lewis' wage in season and save my wage, and then we've got that to travel with," Rachel says. "We're only half an hour away from Snowdonia so we tend to go there a lot. I love wild swimming so we'll go to local beaches."
With no mortgage or household bills, their monthly outgoings are just £330. That includes £8.75 for gas for the cooker, £12 for laundry on site, and £240 for the food shop – their biggest expense.
Adjusting to small-space living
The couple admit there are downsides – like not being able to travel between March and October (when the site is open), filling up the water tank themselves, and emptying the toilet – but say the benefits far outweigh any cons.
"The pros are the freedom it gives us," Rachel says. "Being able to have all this spare time to go hiking and exploring, just living out in nature – I love it."
They've also adapted to living in a smaller space after leaving behind their three-bedroom home. "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."
Rachel's dad, Chris, passed away last year and left them some money, which they used to buy their caravan.
Careful spending and future plans
The couple never spend more than Lewis' wage each month and Rachel says, "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," she adds.
Rachel and Lewis' monthly costs:
Rent/bills: £0
Gas: £8.75
Laundry: £12
Food: £240
Phone contracts: £60
Caravan insurance: £10
Total: £330.75
Rachel and Lewis' previous monthly costs as homeowners:
Mortgage: £500
Council tax: £130
Water: £30
Gas and electric: £70
Subscriptions (Sky, Netflix, Amazon): £100
Phone contracts: £60
Food shop: £240
Takeaways: £200
Total: £1,330
Additional reporting by SWNS.
Read more about money-saving tips:
I spend just £22 on my weekly food shop and make 12 healthy meals (Yahoo Life UK, 5-min read)
We saved over £20k on our dream wedding — this is how we did it (Yahoo Life UK, 8-min read)
I only spend £260 a month living off-grid in a shipping container (Yahoo Life UK, 6-min read)
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