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The potential impact of moving to Portugal and building an Earthship on my costs of living

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@revisesociology
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I was very excited to read @eco-alex's news that he's now got $37 000 towards building a model Earthship in Portugal.

The model he's working towards just sounds truly evolutionary in its approach to assisting people to overcome the cost of living crisis.

The general gist is that @eco-alex is working on an Earth Ship design package that can be built for an extremely cheap price (somewhere around $40K ATW, and I think that's all-in for land, regs and materials).

An Earth Ship is designed to provide climate control and energy needs passively, so that means zero utility bills, and combined with a water source, growing your own food and a no or low mortgage, given the cheap building cost, then we're talking about a very low 'basic expenditure' outlay, practically all you need to do is find yer beer money on top!

Once they've built the first Earth ship successfully then they're planning on offering an 'assistance package' which involves helping people to find land, deal with the bureaucracy of building and the actual building.

The place where this is happening is around Penamacor, north central Portugal, quite close to the Spanish border.

NB In case you think $40 000 sounds like a fantasy price, which it might do if you're living in Northern Europe, check here were actual houses are listed (so presumably you can get 5-10% off easily enough) for under $40K in the region.

By extreme coincidence I've had my eye on this region for several years as a potential place to buy land, long before I came across the eco-villages project, and the fact that this is now becoming reality in that region has just solidified my desire to move out there.

What I'll probably do is phase in a move as follows:
  1. Rent my house out, rent a flat somewhere in central Portugal.
  2. Buy some cheap-ish 'farm' land, start going through building regs (this I will need help with).
  3. Sell house, buy a Yurt, move onto the land, start building.
  • Alternative phase 3 if I can't get 'regs' - on 'virgin land', sell house, buy a land with an actual property on it and then get permission to build an Earthship, or failing that, reno it as earthshippy like as possible.
  • Alternative if I don't like Portugal (unlikely, but you never know) - just come back to the UK, sign on the doll and watch reruns of Bargain Hunt and Homes Under the Hammer.

Excitement of the whole eco-building community saving people and planet in Portugal aside for one moment, the economics of the whole transition also looks very enticing>

A cost-of-living comparison of 'staying in the UK' with three transition phases:

I find this quite motivational, as my cost of living comes down with every phase - NB I can't quite cover my mortgage with the rent on my house (you know, agency, tax man, they all take their cut, but that's on an 15 year mortgage (8 left) which is my choice).

The headline totals for monthly costs of living in different phases are:

  • Stay in the UK - £1500 a month
  • Rent house in UK, rent in Portugal - £1300 a month
  • Rent house in UK, move onto land - £950 a month
  • Sell house, live on land in an Earth ship - £600 a month

What's clearly obvious from the above is that it's my housing costs that are making the biggest difference, about 75% of the difference moving from staying in the UK to Earth ship Living in Portugal.

A clearer breakdown?

What hopefully becomes clearer from the above is that a lot of my 'disposable expenditure' I'm holding equal in different scenarios. What mainly changes with 'Earthship Living' is the cost of, well, basic living: housing and utilities.

NB I anticipate they'll be some minimal cost with maintaining solar panels and water filtration systems. So I've factored this in!

Final thoughts

I'm looking forward to getting building, in the meantime I need to practice hard on my chillaxing as life is going to pretty sweet in Portugal!

If you want to find out more, then check out this post by (and follow) @eco-alex - you can also support the project by buying Eco-village coin - they're priced at 4 Hive each and there's a buy-back planned once the project starts making money, details in the linked post!

Maybe see you in Portugal, BYO Hammock.

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