Lucy said she’d have paid it off within a couple of years
Lucy Barwick was sick of paying £1,600 a month for a three-bedroom flat(Image: Tom Wren/SWNS)
A young woman revealed how she saves £500 on bills a month – after ditching her flat and moving into a 48ft houseboat. Lucy Barwick, 28, was sick of paying £1,600 a month for a three-bedroom flat with her former partner in Bedminster.
The wholesale operator was looking for a “viable option” with space for her and her cat Mr Biscuits. She took out a loan to buy a dark green and white houseboat, which cost more than £100,000, and moved into the boat in May 2024 with her former partner at Bristol Marina.
But after they broke up Lucy decided to keep the boat as it was “affordable enough” for her to keep living on it. Despite Lucy “loving” her boat life, she experienced freezing weather, had to learn how to empty the toilet and refill her water.
She said she has so far saved “a lot of money” and explained how she used to pay £1,100 for bills and rent, while on the boat she is only spending £600.
Lucy said: “I can still afford to live here on my own whereas I couldn’t afford to live by myself on a flat. The community is so nice I know all of my neighbours and financially I am better off here if I had bought a flat because here I can fully pay my loan off in a couple of years and there’s no 30-year mortgage.
“I wasn’t a boat person as such, but it is really livable and manageable – I love it, it is my home. The location is really good as well. If I was looking for a flat in this area it would be potentially smaller than the boat, it would be £2,000 and I couldn’t get my head around that.”
Lucy Barwick was looking for a “viable option” with space for her and her cat Mr Biscuits(Image: Tom Wren/SWNS)
When Lucy moved to her three-bed flat she was spending £1,200, which was the top end of her budget. But then it went up to £1,600 within three years of her living there, she said.
Lucy added: “We were looking to buy in the Bedminster area thinking there is no way we can afford a (postcode) BS1. We were looking at flats that were £300,000 and they were so uninspiring – some of them didn’t even have windows.
“We saw this boat on Rightmove, so we thought if it would be a viable option for us and it worked out. The narrowboat was ready to live in and they only repaired the walls and added their furniture in.
“We had to get rid of quite a lot of stuff. We were moving from a three-bedroom flat into a one-bed boat.
“It made us reassess what we actually need. We accumulated stuff over the three years.”
Despite moving on to a boat 48ft long and 12ft wide, Lucy says it is not “much different” from living in a flat.
Lucy Barwick inside her boat home(Image: Tom Wren/SWNS)
She said: “For the first three months I was waiting for it all to hit me and think ‘what have we done’. But actually whenever I have people over they say how much it feels like a flat.
“I always say that we can do much more on the boat than we could with the flat because we have got an outside space – the roof is basically our garden. We can have people over for barbeques and things, which didn’t use to be an option. “
However, Lucy explained how she has to keep on top of maintenance, as problems like rust can highly damage boats. She also had to adapt to the weather changes she feels on the boat.
Lucy explained: “In the summer it’s quite nice because it is generally quite cool because of the water. In the winter it can get cold overnight, it can really chill out and it can cool down.
Lucy said she saves £500 on bills a month(Image: Tom Wren/SWNS)
“When the temperature drops in the morning you can really feel it. Emptying the toilet is a weekly task and you have got to get used to it, especially in the winter. I have always managed to do that when the weather is not too bad. There have been times I have forgotten to refill the water tank and then the shower starts flustering and that’s not great.”
She hasn’t learned how to move the boat and hasn’t turned the engine on yet. But it is not something she is hoping to do in the near future.
“It sounds like a great idea being able to take your home away, but for me when we moved on, we moved on thinking this is relatively static. I just love my boat life,” Lucy said.
