Lucy Barwick, 28, was looking for a ‘viable option’ with space for her and her cat Mr Biscuits
A savvy 28-year-old woman has shared her secret to slashing her monthly bills by £500 – by swapping her flat for life on a 48ft houseboat. Fed up with forking out £1,600 each month for a three-bedroom flat in Bedminster, Bristol, alongside her ex-partner, Lucy Barwick sought a more “viable option” that would accommodate both herself and her cat, Mr Biscuits.
Lucy, a wholesale operator, took the plunge and secured a loan to purchase a striking dark green and white houseboat, setting her back more than £100,000, and made the move onto the water at Bristol Marina in May 2024 with her then-partner.
Following their split, Lucy chose to hold onto the boat, finding it “affordable enough” to maintain as her solo dwelling. Despite her affection for her aquatic abode, she’s had to brave icy conditions, master toilet maintenance, and keep on top of her water supply.
She boasts significant savings, having reduced her combined rent and bills from £1,100 to just £600 aboard her floating home.
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.”
When Lucy moved into her three-bedroom flat, she was shelling out £1,200, which was already at the upper limit of her budget. However, within just three years, the rent skyrocketed to £1,600, she revealed.
Lucy said: “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 downsizing to a boat measuring 48ft by 12ft, Lucy insists the experience isn’t “much different” from living in a flat.
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.”
Yet Lucy revealed she must stay on top of upkeep, as issues like corrosion can seriously harm vessels. She’s also had to adjust to the weather fluctuations she experiences aboard.
Lucy said: “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.
“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’s yet to master navigating the vessel and hasn’t fired up the engine. But it’s not something she’s keen to tackle anytime soon.
“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.