We ditched UK life to build a cabin in the wilderness…we lived in a tent for months and only spend £100-a-week
A FAMILY say they have no regrets after quitting Britain to build a £30,000 wilderness cabin despite living in a tent for months.
Scott and Scarlette Rawlings say they now only spend £100 per week after ditching the nine-to-five grind in England to raise their toddler 7,000 miles away in South America instead.
Scott quit his office job while Scarlette gave up being a restoration workshop supervisor for their dramatic move “off-grid”.
They have now finally completed their DIY cabin surrounded by forests in a remote part of Chile.
But Scott had to spend five months camping in a tent while constructing their new £30,000 home.
Scarlette and their son Lucas, aged one at the time and now three, stayed with relatives nearby.
Scott had been toiling 50 hours each week as a quarry firm assistant manager.
But the couple, both 33, opted to sell their family home in Skipton, North Yorkshire, and move to South America.
They set off in September 2021 when they bought a £32,000 five-acre plot of forest land 20 minutes from the town of Paredones, in the country’s O’Higgins region.
Scott says he was inspired to live off-grid after travelling the world for six years in his twenties and then struggling to readjust back to life in Britain.
He used a £50,000 profit from selling their house to buy the land and build their new 860sq ft, two-bedroom cabin.
Now he plans to start making and selling furniture to earn money to support his family.
But their off-grid lifestyle has already reduced their monthly spending to £400, paying only for food, gas bottles and petrol – with no other bills or mortgage costs.
He told how back in the UK they were spending about £2,000 each month on mortgage repayments, bills and food.
Scott, originally from Kippax in Leeds, said: “This lifestyle is so much cheaper.
“We pay £400 a month on food and fuel and we hope to reduce this by 50 per cent in the next year when we start growing our own things.
“It’s definitely on the top of our list to grow and the climate here is fantastic for that.”
The Rawlings have their own chickens and make their own compost.
They hope to soon buy pigs and grow their own produce so they can reduce their food outsourcing.
It took Scott five months to build their “basic cabin”, with its pair of bedrooms, a large balcony and a roof is covered in 10 solar panels and one lithium battery to power their home.
Their shower is in the forest and powered through a gravity water tank and small boiler heated with a gas bottle.
Scott said: “People think it is all very fancy but it is very basic.
“For me the concept of living off-grid is not paying for your utilities and having no mains, water or electrics into your house.”
‘THE BEST THING I HAVE EVER DONE’
Remembering his former life back in Britain, Scott said: “I was contracted to work 38 hours but I was working 50-hour weeks and they were long, hard days.
“In my industry people seemed so depressed and not happy to be at work and it was grinding on me.
“I also found it hard to settle back into a normal lifestyle in the UK after travelling for six years and meeting lots of different people.
“Being in management I was just stuck behind my desk and I was working with a lot of people that weren’t happy.
“It seemed like a waste of life. I don’t want to sound rude but it just seemed like a waste of time and life to me.
“By the time we paid our mortgage and our bills we literally were just looking at your payslip thinking, what is the point?”
And he urged more people to pursue the “off-grid” dream.
He said: “The next few months are going to be hard but trying to make money anywhere remote is hard – but I would absolutely encourage people to live this lifestyle.
“It’s not easy, there are always things to do, but hands down there is more to life than the rat race and we are normal working class people.
“This is hands down the best thing I have ever done in my life and if it fails we’ll just go back to the grind – but I hope it works out.
“For me it is amazing raising our child without smartphones or tablets and raising him in nature.
“He’s three years old and not scared of anything.”
Another couple told earlier this year how they built a tiny house together in remote desert landscape in the US state of Arizona.
Elsewhere, a single woman living off-grid in woodland cabin in Ontario, Canada, revealed the odd meat she uses to make lasagne.
Another cabin dweller described how she learnt to chop wood and build her own ice rink.