WHAT A RIDE
We ditched our flat to live in a Citroen van – we’ve saved £60k of rent money but reality was scarier than we imagined
Couple were threatened by yobs armed with bats
A COUPLE who ditched their flat to live in a Citroen van saved £60,000 worth of rent money but the reality was scarier than they imagined.
Maths teacher Keely Emerson and her husband Philly Emerson left their apartment in Leytonstone, London, to live in a van, saving themselves £1600 per month.
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The hard working couple decided to make the drastic move after they became fed up of the rat race.
They snapped up a Citroen Relay 2011 camper van for £3,500 in June 2019 which they christened Martha.
The couple then spent another few thousand on sprucing up the motor before they moved in.
To break even on the cost of buying their van, they had to sell almost all their possessions to start their life from scratch, living in the back of their camper van.
However they did not envisage how challenging it would be sleeping inside van parked up on a London street.
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Keely, 26, said: "We lived very stealthily on the streets of London. We had no windows while living there and would pull up late at night, no lights, no talking, just sleep and then move on.
“Unfortunately, we were maybe too stealthy because thieves would think we were a work van.
"We would frequently have attempted robberies for people who thought they were going to get tools but instead got two people.
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“We had almost weekly robbery attempts, from as simple as checking handles to trying to crowbar the door.
“We also had our van graffitied whilst we were sleeping, our tyres slashed, and one time, in a nice area of London, a group of locals arrived with bats to intimidate us off their street as they had
seen us pull in and hop through into the back.
“We know friends who lived in the area who said they (the locals) have a street WhatsApp, and if they see vehicles they don’t like the look of, they would all message about it.
“We meant no harm to anyone, but we still had to drive away to safety before our van got attacked.
“We lived in London for a full year in the van. Even with all the crime we experienced and things we witnessed on the streets, we fell in love with the simple living and decided we wanted to keep
doing it long term.”
To pay for everything, the couple continued to work full-time for the year until they fell in love with this minimalist living.
“After the first year living in the van, we fell in love with the simple lifestyle, enjoyed weekends in Brighton by the sea, and wanted to be close to nature,” Keely said.
“We wanted to live simply and in touch with nature, so we quit our jobs and left London and started life on the road.
“We have lived in this van ‘Martha’ full time for over four years now, and she is our full-time home.
“We have taken her all around Europe and all the way across to Turkey.
“I cannot recall how many miles we had covered in the van, but what I found interesting was that after one year of full-time travel, we did fewer miles than we did the previous year commuting in our car
from our flat in London.”
The couple moved from their original home in Lurgan, Northern Ireland, and after a spell in Australia, they then settled in London. But now they have returned to Australia after falling in love with the country.
Keely gives online maths tuition to students in the UK while both of them are working to build their YouTube Channel ‘Philly & Keely’ with an average of around 16k views a video.
They share their challenges and gratifications of travelling in a van through their channel.
For two years they did not make any money through YouTube, but they have now started to make some revenue off of their videos.
She said: “We are basically full-time on Youtube now, the first two years, we didn’t make any money, but this is the first year it's started to create an income, but still nothing compared to our London salary.
“The first year in the van, we earned our London salary, which helped us save.
“For the next two years, we made 1/10th of what we made before, and now it’s probably about 1/6th, but we have minimal outgoings and can choose to travel slower or buy cheaper food if we are having a tight month.
“In the four years of not paying rent in London, we have probably saved over £60,000 on rent and bills.
“But we haven’t earned only a fraction of what we did before, so we probably have the same money at the end of the year, but we get to do all these cool adventures, so we feel like we have lived a lot more than we would before.
“Hopefully, as YouTube continues to grow, we can maybe even end up with more net positive at the end of the year, but that’s not why we make videos. We are happy to live with less and be conscious of our choices.
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“One day, we would love to buy a little plot of land and live in a small home and grow our own veggies, the ultimate way to be connected to nature and live a simple life.”
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