A woman who was left stressed out about money before her house was repossessed has finally found peace after deciding to live by the coast in a £6,500 van.
Charlotte Bradman, 42, who now lives in Cornwall, had to drastically downsize and uproot her life after two failed relationships scuppered her plans for a stable home.
She bought a three-bedroom townhouse in Keighley, West Yorkshire, with her former partner more than two decades ago, but hefty mortgage repayments on her interest only loan meant she was left needing three tenants and a full-time job just to get by.
The lack of financial stability led to her being too scared to even check her bank balance and eventually, the home was repossessed.
She told MailOnline: ‘I used to bury my head in the sand about bills and money because it upset me, it stressed me out, it gave me anxiety.
‘Instead of checking my bank account, I would just take cash out of the ATM and knew there was a problem when it stopped coming out.’
Charlotte finally snapped after she was dumped over the phone at the same time as working for the NHS during the Covid-19 pandemic and having to support her heartbroken friend whose husband had died of terminal lung cancer.
She ‘ran away’ and hit the road in a grey Citroën Relay van which she had bought for £3,000 in her twenties.
She spent an additional £1,000 converting it so she could live with just the basics – a portaloo and a hob – before later upgrading to a £6,500 white Vauxhall Movano.
Now, Charlotte works for a sauna company and only has to pay around £200 a month for her portable home, adding that she finally feels free after years of experiencing burn out.
Charlotte Bradman, 42, who currently resides in Cornwall, had to drastically downsize and uproot her life after two failed relationships scuppered her plans for a stable home
Charlotte has the freedom of travelling wherever she wants to, although she stays mainly in Cornwall
Charlotte’s cosy bedroom set up with limited clothing and items to keep her space clean and tidy
Her van-life journey started when she had to foot very large bills each month to keep a house running with her ex-partner.
The pair had shelled out on a £114,000 three-bedroom with an interest-only mortgage, which tends to cost more in the long run.
Their relationship shortly broke down and her ex decided that he no longer wanted to pay for a mortgage and moved in with his mother, leaving Charlotte to come up with creative ways to help fund their house.
She decided to rent out rooms to tenants, but rising energy costs meant that she was still shelling out around £1,000 in bills each month and the property was still in negative equity.
Charlotte’s former partner wanted to put the house on the market eight years after they bought it but because of the outstanding mortgage cost, they could not sell it.
She said: ‘I just rang him because it was cheaper than instructing solicitors and said “Listen, we can’t really sell it, I understand you want to get the name off the mortgage but it’s in negative equity and we would owe the bank a lot of money.
‘We bought at the wrong time and that’s unfortunate”.’
Her ex stayed in the house and moved in with his ex-partner, but the house got repossessed after just three months and the bank sent her a bill for £30,000 – despite the couple paying £60,000 in interest over the years.
Charlotte was forced to sell all of the belongings she had collected over the years such as vintage furniture, books, art and clothes.
She ‘ran away’ and hit the road in a grey Citroën Relay van which she had bought for £3,000 in her twenties
Charlotte decided to start living in a van after her housing plans fell threw with an ex who dumped her over the phone
Charlotte works for a sauna company and only has to pay around £200 a month for her portable home, adding that she finally feels free after years of experiencing burn out
Charlotte’s small but cosy living space which includes a sitting chair and a small kitchen with a fridge
Charlotte currently resides in Cornwall but van life means that she can move anywhere she wants to
She then moved to Lancaster to pursue a Master’s degree in creative writing and moved in with her new flame who happened to live in a caravan at the time.
Things seemed to be looking up until he ended things with Charlotte and over the phone right before they were due to move down to Dorset.
The ‘out of the blue’ break up also came three days before one of her close friends lost their husband to terminal lung cancer, which led to her helping arrange a funeral and supporting her during her darkest days.
‘There was no space to look at the breakdown of my relationship because I had to be fully present for my friend who was experiencing such tremendous grief,’ Charlotte said.
She was working for community nurses at time when the Covid-19 pandemic was at its height and she added: ‘It became too much for me, I just couldn’t do it,’ later describing this time as ‘one of the hardest periods in my life’.
Charlotte headed for the coast in her grey Citroën Relay van which she had bought for £3,000 in her twenties and decided to convert it to a living space, costing an additional £1,000.
She currently pays £200 a month for living costs which includes van insurance, road tax and fuel.
She added: ‘Because I had been under so much stress for such a long time, supporting my friend while she was going through her grief, which is fine because it was a privilege that I could do that for her, but after two or three months that was it, I thought “I’ve got to get out of here”. I packed the van with the essentials, got rid of everything and hit the road. I ran away!’
It only had basic necessities for living with a portaloo and a hob and Charlotte had to go without a shower, oven, power sockets or fridge when she first started out.
She would often shower wherever she could in gyms, leisure centres or at her friend’s house. Trips to Wetherspoons allowed her to charge her phone and laptop while occasionally tucking into a curry as a treat.
But while the uncertainty would scare some, Charlotte never worried about her lack of amenities.
‘I think less is more,’ she said. ‘The less clutter we surround ourselves with, the freer we are. It just clears your mind.
‘Living in the van reduced my financial outgoings to a bare minimum so suddenly I didn’t have this pressure on me to work full time in a job I didn’t necessarily want to do or that interested me,’ she added.
‘Suddenly, I didn’t have to do these meaningless jobs because I didn’t have a mortgage to pay, I didn’t have council tax or bills, or gas or utilities, just van insurance and road tax. Having that level of financial freedom is immense, it’s massive, and so few of us have it these days.’
Charlotte grew up in a household that valued material goods. Her parents – who divorced when she was 14 – would work six days a week with the goal of buying material things like Range Rovers and speedboats but she said it was all an illusion of wealth because it was ‘all loans’.
She currently funds her lifestyle by working a minimum wage job at a sauna company in Cornwall
Charlotte has a cosy bedroom set up with a bed next to the van’s window and a curtain for privacy
Charlotte says after a long shift she will ‘throw herself in the sea’ and have a paddle around before having a cold shower at work
The former mortgage advisor says she had a difficult childhood and felt as though she ‘never had a safe space’ growing up, especially when she watched the house she had worked so hard to keep in her twenties get repossessed by the bank.
‘There was nowhere safe that was all mine that I owned that nobody could take away from me,’ she said.
‘I just wanted somewhere safe I could lock the door, nobody could hurt me and that nobody could take away from me.’
Charlotte added: ‘It’s not financially viable in this day and age for someone who is in a minimum wage job who is working 40 hours a week, they cannot run a household on a single wage. When you’re paying for your car, your internet, your phone, all of the utilities and council tax, it can’t be done.
‘You would just be existing, not actually living. You’d be working to exist for a roof over your head. I’d done that for so many years working jobs that made me ill. The stress of trying to make ends meet was making me ill.’
She currently funds her lifestyle by working a minimum wage job at a sauna company in Cornwall, but admits she does not often check her bank account as it brings back emotional thoughts.
‘That is from the days when I would be terrified to check my bank because I didn’t want to know what was in there because I knew it would be bad,’ she said.
‘There’s been times where I’ve had to smash up the dining room table to put in the living room because the gas had run out and we were in the middle of winter and we were freezing. Hand to bl**** mouth. ‘
A year and a half ago, Charlotte decided to upgrade her trusty Citroën for a newer £6,500 white Vauxhall Movano.
In her first van (not pictured) Charlotte had to go without a shower, oven, power sockets or fridge when she first started out
Charlotte believes it is important to reconnect with nature, which she believes van life has helped her do
She spent £3,000 on converting it to have solar panels, diesel heater, a composting loo and a fridge – but she still has no shower.
Instead, Charlotte says after a long shift she will ‘throw herself in the sea’ and have a paddle around before having a cold shower at work.
But if the weather is challenging, she will use the water she has taken from a local tap to wash herself the old fashioned way – with a flannel and a bucket inside her van.
‘I probably have a shower, a proper hot shower, every two weeks at my friend’s house. She lives in a cabin on some land, completely off-grid and has a nice gas shower.’
To keep warm in the winter, she will sometimes use a diesel heater or layer up with 100 per cent wool jumper that she picked up at a charity shop for £5.
However, she checked into her local Travelodge while spending her winter in Yorkshire where temperatures dropped to as low as minus 14 degrees last year in the fear that she might freeze to death.
She admitted to checking into her local Travelodge while spending her winter in Yorkshire where temperatures dropped to as low as minus 14 degrees last year in the fear that she might freeze to death. Above: Her living space, kitchen and bedroom rolled into one
To keep warm in the winter, she will sometimes use a diesel heater or layer up with 100 per cent wool jumper that she picked up at a charity shop for £5
A year and a half ago, Charlotte decided to upgrade her trusty Citroën for a newer £6,500 white Vauxhall Movano
Her low living costs mean that Charlotte can afford the little luxuries in life that she would not have been able to afford otherwise.
The vegetarian spends £80 a week on her food shop because she buys all organic produce.
She prioritises wanting to ‘look after her body’ and eating an anti-inflammatory diet after medics suspected she had endometriosis.
‘That is where my money goes on really good quality food, fresh whole foods,’ she said.
Charlotte can also afford to pay for a private health policy, which means that she can be seen by doctors quicker, as she has seen first hand how much strain the NHS is under.
She said: ‘I’m not on a drain on the NHS so that people that have less money than me that are in the same position I was however many years ago [can be seen]. They are the people that need the NHS.
‘It didn’t feel right to use those services when I can support my own health outside of the NHS.’
When asked what advice she would give to people wanting to quit the rat race for a freer life living in a van, Charlotte said: ‘Get rid of everything that is not essential for your survival or essential for you to thrive. Get a van, look at YouTube vans on how to convert it, get excited and get on the road.
‘There are so many ways other ways that people can live and we have no idea what options are open to us until we look.’
She has since authored the book ‘The Happy Nomad: Live with less and find what really matters’ to help others embrace living a fuller life with less belongings.
The Happy Nomad by Charlotte Bradman out now RRP £10.99 (Yellow Kite)
