A Couple Turned a Van Right into a Luxurious Tiny Residence — See Inside
- Jan and Marie Koza are a pair who spent 60,000 euros shopping for and changing a Citroën Jumper van.
- They now dwell, 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 dwelling, 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 charge and another little issues,” Marie advised Insider.
The couple estimated they had been capable of do 95% of the conversion themselves, getting assist with issues just like the electronics.
The conversion value them a complete of 38,817.73 euros, or about $39,875, they stated, including that it took them about 10 months to finish.
“A van conversion could be less expensive, however we did not wish to hand over sure luxuries, like a bathe, a bathroom, and a top quality end with good paint,” Marie stated.
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“We wrote every little thing down as a result of we wished to current as sensible an image as attainable to the surface 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 fuel and provisions
Within the Canary Islands, the couple spent 173.03 euros on fuel and 870.39 euros on provisions every month, they stated.
In whole, the couple stated they spent 2,621.16 euros within the Canary Islands on “variable prices,” together with tolls and ferry fare.
They spent an additional 299.25 euros on mounted prices like utilities.
This introduced their whole spend there to about 3,000 euros, nicely above their purpose 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 being profitable via social media, they stated.
Since then, they have been working all day, every single day, they added.
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Now they’ve a administration staff that takes care of issues like collaboration requests, and so they stated they lastly may work a bit much less and felt a lot much less strain “financially, from our followers and from the platforms.”
They stated they invested every little thing they earned into journey and their work and that, over time, they’d been capable of cowl increasingly more of their journey prices via their social-media posts.
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The couple stated a very powerful elements for being profitable had been their YouTube views and Instagram-story views.
Additionally they earn via collaborations, picture and video assignments from firms, 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 associates, household, and construction
The couple stated it was tough not having the ability to see their family and friends regularly and that they lacked a structured each day routine.
They stated quite a lot of their time was taken up by mundane duties akin 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 night time, and buying.
“Issues like that, which when 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 stated.
The primary issues that they’ve to concentrate to are their water and electrical energy. They prime up their electrical energy with photo voltaic panels, they added.
“We feature about 95 liters of recent water, and that lasts us per week if we’re frugal, whereas our electrical energy lasts us two to 3 days if the solar does not shine,” Marie stated.
It is also tough to maintain up with issues like mail once they’re continually on the transfer.
“Relying on how vital the mail is, we both have it despatched to a registered deal with or, in pressing circumstances, to a campsite the place we’re on the time,” Marie stated.
They added that they’d needed to set up medical care whereas on the street, so that they took out long-term worldwide medical 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 might then use as a base from which they might proceed their travels.
