Although I love the Hovel books by Elizabeth West and the Good Life TV programmes, there is one major flaw in both their lifestyles- Lack of Income.
So out of curiosity while I was fiddling about working out next years budget, (blog will appear about this some time) I wondered what would be the minimum we could live on if we still lived here but didn't have the campsite and smallholding businesses. ( I like playing with numbers and obviously have too much time on my hands!)
We would have to pay the Council Tax, the Water bill for the house, Dentist, Optician and prepayment prescription costs. We could manage with secondhand clothes but would need shoes and underwear. There would be some sort of electric bill even if we used as little as possible and did every bit of cooking in the wood fired Rayburn. We would still need to buy food and seeds to grow our own vegetables. I don't think I would like to be without house insurance. Living here we would need the computer and phone as we are too far from the library or a phone box. It would be very difficult to manage without a car too, although we would only need a small cheap one if we didn't have the smallholding to run. Could we do without TV? Probably but I wouldn't want to. There would still be expenses for bathroom and cleaning etc.
So I added all those up and came to about £800 a month.
That's with no extras. No gifts for other people.Nothing over the very, very basics. Worst of all NO MONEY FOR BOOKS!
So it's a good thing we have got the smallholding, the campsite, the chickens and a bit of savings.
