WHEN Laura Greenland was furloughed in 2020, she worried about how she would pay her rent and manage debts if she was made redundant.
Just years later, she’s cleared her credit cards, saved £10,000 and set up a thriving business – all by living and travelling in a campervan.
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When the pandemic hit, Laura was working as a senior marketing manager for a global travel brand, where redundancy quickly become apparent.
At the time, Laura, 33, and her lifeguard and swimming instructor husband Karl, 34, were renting their home in Saltash, Cornwall.
“I was the main breadwinner for our household, so financially it was a big worry,” Laura told The Sun, as Karl was also furloughed.
“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 did come 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.
“Living in a campervan was my husband’s suggestion”, she said.
“We’d thought about it before but, because we were renting, we had a dog, we had jobs, it didn’t make sense.
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“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?’”
How they went about it
The idea turned out to be anything but reckless.
“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,” Laura explained.
At the time, Laura and Karl rented their home for £775 a month.
“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,” she added.
“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.
“We actually went a further 15,000 into debt, taking out a loan for the campervan, which was crazy,” says Laura.
“I’m not a risk taker so it was a huge leap of faith, but the whole plan was to massively streamline our expenses.”
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Laura and Karl viewed their loan as their first “micro mortgage”, having never been able to save the deposit to buy their own place.
She said: “We figured that, though we didn’t completely eliminate our running costs and we had to pay back the loan, the difference to renting was that we actually had an asset.
“So rather than spending £2,000 a month and having nothing to show for it in our rental place, we would own the van, which would retain value.”
Coming to the end of a 12-month tenancy on their rental, the couple bought their 2006 campervan with the loan money and spent another £6,000 on credit cards converting it.
They changed the gas supply to LPG, which was much cheaper and cost them around £15 for a 6-week supply, put solar panels on the roof, upgraded the wifi so that Laura could work while they were on the road, added LED lights and refitted the bathroom.
As a result, their living costs would reduce 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.”
‘We cleared the debt while travelling’
The pair spent 18 months travelling, mostly around the southwest of England.
“We did wild camping because the whole idea was to save, save, save, save and try to get ourselves out of this pickle,” she said.
“We also did a work exchange for three and a half months in Dorset in summer 2021, where we ran a little campsite that was only open on the weekends.
“We had a free pitch and facilities and would just do a bit of work on the weekends for them.”
With their massively reduced outgoings, Laura and Karl managed to pay off the bulk of their loan and all the other debts during this time,
At the same time, Laura built up her marketing business Ebb, Flow & Grow from the van – and this year, she achieved a six-figure turnover.
She said: “It started out as a freelance marketing consultancy that has developed into a bigger business.
“I’m a creative business coach and I sit at the heart of the business, with two freelance team members.
“We also run retreats, something that’s new for us for this year.”
Their van life came with its challenges, but they were outweighed by the positives.
“We could cook, albeit on a smaller scale, and the benefit of a tiny space is that it was very warm in the winter.
“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.
“We were very immersed in nature.
“If I needed peace and quiet to run the business and take Zoom calls, Karl would take our dog Bear out for a walk,” says Laura.
“We lived in a shoebox for a year and a half with a German shepherd – and we survived.”
Laura and Karl sold the van last November for £28,000, clearing the remainder of the loan in the process.
“This saw them with money leftover to kit out the unfurnished annex they moved into in Devon – in which they still live unconventionally on a work exchange, looking after a holiday letting for around 15 hours a week for the owner.
She said: “We don’t have rent or utility bills, which is a godsend, and means I’ve been able to invest in the business.”
Laura said she can’t ever imagine returning to conventional living.
“We’ve done this for three years and I don’t see us going back. Life’s more fun this way, not to mention debt free.”
If you’re earning income as a small business, it’s important to get clear on your rights.
If you earn more than £1,000 extra a year, you’ll need to pay tax on your earnings.
How to get help with debt
Buying a van isn’t a suitable option for all households with debt.
If you are looking for general help and advice to help you manage your debt, there are a number of charities and organisations that may be able to help:
You can contact National Debtline on 0808 808 4000, StepChange can be reached on 0800 138 1111, while Citizens Advice is also available on 0808 800 9060.
Whatever you do, important to not bury your head in the sand as it’ll only make the problem worse.
We’ve also rounded up popular ways to clear debt.
