A Couple Turned a Van Right into a Luxurious Tiny Dwelling — See Inside
- Jan and Marie Koza are a pair who spent 60,000 euros shopping for and changing a Citroën Jumper van.
- They now reside, work, and journey the world within the van, aiming to spend 1,000 euros a month every.
- They advised Insider how they financed their lives on the street.
That is an edited, translated model of an article that initially appeared on Could 8, 2022.
Jan and Marie Koza have been residing, working, and touring the world in a transformed Citroën Jumper L3H2 van since November 2021.
The couple have visited Spain, the Canary Islands, Portugal, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, England, Wales, Eire, Scotland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.
“We paid 20,105.38 euros for it, which included the registration payment and another little issues,” Marie advised Insider.
The couple estimated they have been in a position to do 95% of the conversion themselves, getting assist with issues just like the electronics.
The conversion price them a complete of 38,817.73 euros, or about $39,875, they mentioned, including that it took them about 10 months to finish.
“A van conversion could be less expensive, however we did not wish to surrender sure luxuries, like a bathe, a bathroom, and a top quality end with good paint,” Marie mentioned.
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“We wrote every little thing down as a result of we wished to current as real looking an image as doable to the skin world,” she added.
Each Jan and Marie are content material creators and journey bloggers, and so they share their experiences of van life on Instagram and YouTube.
They spend most of their cash on gasoline and provisions
Within the Canary Islands, the couple spent 173.03 euros on gasoline and 870.39 euros on provisions every month, they mentioned.
In whole, the couple mentioned they spent 2,621.16 euros within the Canary Islands on “variable prices,” together with tolls and ferry fare.
They spent an extra 299.25 euros on fastened prices like utilities.
This introduced their whole spend there to about 3,000 euros, effectively above their objective of 1,000 euros an individual a month.
They’re each self-employed content material creators
Across the finish of 2017, the couple determined to focus on getting cash by means of social media, they mentioned.
Since then, they have been working all day, on daily basis, they added.
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Now they’ve a administration staff that takes care of issues like collaboration requests, and so they mentioned they lastly might work a bit much less and felt a lot much less stress “financially, from our followers and from the platforms.”
They mentioned they invested every little thing they earned into journey and their work and that, over time, they’d been in a position to cowl increasingly more of their journey prices by means of their social-media posts.
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The couple mentioned an important components for getting cash have been their YouTube views and Instagram-story views.
In addition they earn by means of collaborations, picture and video assignments from corporations, and their on-line retailer, the place they promote digital merchandise like picture and video filters.
They make some additional income from Google AdSense and affiliate commissions.
They miss their buddies, household, and construction
The couple mentioned it was tough not with the ability to see their family and friends frequently and that they lacked a structured day by day routine.
They mentioned quite a lot of their time was taken up by mundane duties equivalent to washing dishes, filling the van up with recent water, discovering locations to empty sewage, doing laundry, choosing out a spot to camp for the evening, and procuring.
“Issues like that, which if in case you have an actual residence, aren’t time-consuming and you do not have to consider a lot, are very time-consuming and exhausting for us,” Marie mentioned.
The principle issues that they’ve to concentrate to are their water and electrical energy. They high up their electrical energy with photo voltaic panels, they added.
“We stock about 95 liters of recent water, and that lasts us per week if we’re frugal, whereas our electrical energy lasts us two to a few days if the solar would not shine,” Marie mentioned.
It is also tough to maintain up with issues like mail once they’re continually on the transfer.
“Relying on how necessary the mail is, we both have it despatched to a registered handle or, in pressing instances, to a campsite the place we’re on the time,” Marie mentioned.
They added that they’d needed to manage medical care whereas on the street, in order that they took out long-term worldwide medical health insurance, which permits them to make medical appointments wherever and get reimbursed.
The couple’s long-term plan is to construct a tiny home in Germany, which they may then use as a base from which they may proceed their travels.
