'We Ditched NYC for a Tiny House and Now Save Over $1,000 a Month'

I was born and raised in Long Island, New York. My spouse, Leo, was born in Buffalo, but we met when they lived in Connecticut. We began dating in 2015 and decided to move in together in 2017. So, during that year, we found a studio flat to rent in Forest Hills, Queens.

We were paying $2,000 a month for the space and the flat contained one room with a bed. There was a kitchen on the other side of the room and a small entrance to the bathroom. Despite the space being very small, the storage in the studio flat was great. I noticed that I was happier moving into smaller spaces, because it forced Leo and me to communicate, and we also had to go outside to enjoy things.

Moving into a rent-controlled apartment in New York

A few months prior to our lease ending in 2018, we began looking for other flats to rent out of curiosity. We stumbled upon a three-bedroom rent-controlled apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn. We were lucky to find a rent-controlled apartment as they are very rare. These types of apartments don't allow the landlord to drastically change the price of the rent, so Leo and I signed the lease and agreed to pay $1,650 monthly.

In New York City, if you find a rent-controlled apartment, it's generally unusual for it to be kept in a nice condition because the landlord typically isn't getting much rent for it, so they might not put as much effort into renovating.

When we walked into the apartment, my spouse told me that we couldn't do this. They said, "There's no way." But I was convincing them, saying, "Imagine it with new paint." The apartment was a little dated and the floor and the tiles looked cheap; only a part of it was painted, so it was not an aesthetically pleasing place to live in. But I felt we shouldn't let the condition of the flat bother us, because the price was very low. I knew that we would be able to change some of the things that we didn't like.

As soon as Leo and I signed the lease, we began repainting in the evenings. We put a lot of effort into renovating the place because we knew that we were going to stay there for a few years. For the first few months, we continued to put $2,000 aside for rent, so that we'd have $400 left over to change the floors and repaint the whole house. But the experience in staying in the rent-controlled apartment wasn't too great as there was hardly any storage space or power outlets in the bathroom.

My love for Tiny Houses

Over the years, I had been fond of minimalism and downsizing. But that wasn't always the case. When I lived in Long Island, I was renting a two-floor house with a full basement. I gradually just grew into the space. So, when Leo and I decided to rent that first studio flat in New York, it was so it would force me to get rid of all my stuff.

In 2016, I became more interested in learning about minimalism and that's when I saw tiny houses gaining popularity. I started seeing the connection between the two. And of course, like many people, I watched many shows about tiny homes.

I began talking about the idea of owning a tiny house with Leo, and I had never let the idea go. After moving into our rent-controlled apartment, I began doodling a little layout of what I wanted our tiny house to look like, and eventually, I started saving up money to build one. At that point, Leo realized how serious I was about owning a tiny house.

I'd tell them that for the layout, I didn't want the house to feel cramped. I wanted it to have an open space, and I also wanted to make sure we had a lot of head space in the house. After watching many shows and doing much research, I took the elements of tiny houses that I liked, such as the clever ways of building storage, and I decided to change the elements that I didn't like. For example, tiny houses are usually eight and a half to nine feet wide, but I wanted ours to be 10 feet wide.

After convincing Leo to save up for the tiny house with me, we began brainstorming the reason why many people may leave tiny houses. Usually, the ceiling is a big factor. Lucky for us, neither of us is tall, so we didn't need to worry about the ceiling too much, but we left open space and windows. Another reason may be that people decide to have kids and move into a bigger house due to the lack of space. So, we planned to create extra space in the bedroom so that we could have a crib and room for a toddler.

When Leo and I wake up in the morning, the most important part of our day involves sitting down and having tea and coffee together. So, we decided to put a big couch in the tiny house, along with an oven and a full-sized fridge, because we love cooking.

Funding the Tiny House

Due to being laid off from my previous job because of the pandemic, I had the option to use my retirement funding. So, I took out $82,000 from my retirement fund. We viewed it as a way to use money from ourselves, with the plan to pay ourselves back as the years progress. Leo and I also saved roughly $60,000 together to cover the cost of the builders.

While we were saving, I came across a tiny house company in Pennsylvania that builds tiny houses from scratch and we decided to sign a contract with them in October 2020. I sent them all my graph paper drawings of the layout that we wanted, and they started building it in January 2021. Leo is a design director, so they helped when it came to the functionality of the house.

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The house was delivered to us in April 2021, so it took roughly four months to build. When I saw the tiny house for the first time, I was emotional. It was exactly how I had envisioned it. I had wanted a nice-sized house where we could host our friends and our family, and I had been thinking about tiny houses for several years and I'd constantly imagined what they would look like. To be able to walk into something that we had created ourselves was powerful. I think for us, it was one of those big moments where we thought, we can accomplish big things together.

Saving Money for the future

After researching different tiny home communities across the U.S., we decided to move the house to a tiny house community in Mills River, North Carolina, because we could legally park it there. We also liked the access to outside space and proximity to downtown AshevilleWe rent the land that the house is on and only pay $600 a month, and we hook up to their electricity and water. It has been a great experience because we now save over $1,000 a month compared to what we paid before in rent in New York.

One of the big reasons we wanted to move into a tiny home is to save money. I'm interested in early retirement. So, Leo and I view the tiny house as a vehicle toward that. Our goal is to continue to save at least half of what we bring in every month, so we could potentially retire early in our early to mid-40s.

Tiny houses are unique, and we've found what works for us.

Shannon and Leo Honeywell live in their tiny house in Mills River, North Carolina. You can find out more about them here.

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

As told to Newsweek associate editor, Carine Harb

Correction: 09/12/2022 at 04:43. Details of the monies saved and withdrawn from retirement funds have been updated, as well as the dates construction began on the the Honeywell's tiny house.