A COUPLE saved £10,000 after moving into their car and went from paying £300 a month in bills to completely rent and debt free.
After being furloughed in 2020, Laura Greenland, 33, was worried about how she would pay her pricey rent and manage debts if she was made redundant.
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Just years later, she cleared all her credit cards, saved thousands and set up a thriving business – all by living and travelling in a campervan.
When the pandemic hit, Laura was working as a senior marketing manager for a global travel brand and the idea of redundancy was becoming normal.
At the time, Laura and her lifeguard husband Karl, 34, were renting their home in Saltash, Cornwall.
Laura told The Sun about how worried she was when Karl was furloughed.
She said: “I was the main breadwinner for our household, so financially it was a big worry.”
“I threw myself into launching my own business.
“It was a real panic response, but I figured, even in a pandemic, people would still need marketing support, especially because marketing teams were being disbanded.”
By June, redundancy came knocking for Laura, who was given three months of her £35,000 annual salary as a payout, and the couple decided to take drastic action.
She said: “Living in a campervan was my husband’s suggestion.
“We’d thought about it before but, because we were renting, we had a dog, we had jobs, it didn’t make sense.
“But one day, he said ‘We should talk about the van plan again’. He obviously caught me on a reckless day and I thought ‘Alright, why not?’”
The idea turned out to be a pretty smart move.
Laura explained: “We called it ‘the campervan plan’ and put together a spreadsheet with numbers and data to figure out if this completely crazy idea actually made sense on paper – and it did.”
At the time, Laura and Karl rented their home for £775 a month.
She continued: “And then obviously we had council tax and all of our utilities on top of that, so we were paying £1,500 a month to keep the roof over our head without food bills and other costs like broadband.
“We also had hefty credit card repayments of several hundred each month, which was really just interest on the £12,000 we owed, plus we had two cars on finance.
“We were just treading water for the longest time.”
Yet to get their plan off the ground, they first had to get into more debt to buy a van.
Laura revealed that they went into a further £15,000 of debt after taking out a loan for the campervan.
Despite the crazy decision Laura is surprised she ever actually went through with it.
She continued: “I’m not a risk taker so it was a huge leap of faith, but the whole plan was to massively streamline our expenses.”
As a result, their living costs reduced to less than £400 a month, including van insurance and breakdown cover.
Just two months after they started the camper van plan, the couple hit the road, Karl having left his £16,000 a year job and Laura by now earning around £2,000 a month from her marketing work.
She said: “The day we walked out and locked the door behind us, we realised we didn’t actually have a house anymore.
“It was truly terrifying, but also liberating.
“We drove over into Plymouth and handed our keys back to the estate agent and that was a very weird feeling, but it was wonderful.
“We then went down to one of our favourite beach spots in Cornwall for the first night and I remember being ecstatic.”
The pair spent 18 months travelling, mostly around the southwest of England and with their massively reduced outgoings, they managed to pay off most of their debts.
Their van life wasn’t always rosy however and they faced some major issues.
She said: “On a typical day, we would wake up wherever we had parked and have to look out the window because we would forget where we were.
“It was intense and there were times when it would have been nice to have more personal space, but you literally have the whole world on your doorstep.”
The couple sold the van in November 2021 and made an impressive £3,000 profit.
They also ended up with £10,000 in the bank and Laura’s business Ebb, Flow & Grow made a six-figure turnover.
Now they live rent-free in an annex that wasn’t being used and don’t pay any utility bills.
Greenland said: “It’s a godsend and means we can keep saving.
“We’re feet to the floor with saving more, and should have multiple five figures in the bank by the end of this year.”
When asked if the pair would ever return to a “normal” life Greenland felt pretty strongly about the choice.
She said: “I don’t see us going back to a more conventional way of life.
“As things continue to progress with the cost of living and the sheer expense of trying to get on the property ladder in the UK, we’re looking to get another camper van next year for exploring overseas.
“Our lifestyle is fun and exciting – not to mention debt-free.”
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