Ways to Save Money Living Off-Grid in Portugal
- Alex Sully
- Mar 6
- 12 min read
You dont need a big income to live off-grid. You need resourcefulness, thick skin, and a willingness to do things the system told you were beneath you. Heres everything Ive learned about spending almost nothing after six years in rural Portugal.
By Alex Sully, WyldeRoots | As featured on Ben Fogles New Lives in the Wild
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Read my last post about the cost of living off-grid in Portugal https://www.wylderoots.org/post/the-real-cost-of-living-off-grid-in-portugal-what-nobody-tells-you-about-money-freedom-and-surviv : but people ask, how do you get the costs even lower?
The honest answer is that saving money off-grid isnt really about clever budgeting. Its about changing your entire relationship with stuff, comfort, pride, and what you think you need versus what you actually need.
Some of what follows will seem obvious. Some of it will make you uncomfortable. Good. Thats usually where the real savings are.
Grow Your Own Food (This Is the Big One)
This is the single biggest thing you can do to reduce your monthly costs. And most people massively underestimate how much food you can produce from even a small plot of land in Portugal.
The Portuguese climate is extraordinary for growing. Long seasons, abundant sun, mild winters in most of the country. You can grow year-round if you plan it properly. Tomatoes, courgettes, peppers, beans, potatoes, onions, garlic, herbs, leafy greens, squash. In summer your biggest problem isnt growing food, its eating it all before it goes off.
But seeds cost money, right? Not if youre smart about it.
Facebook has dozens of seed swap groups specifically for Portugal and the Iberian Peninsula. People share seeds from plants that have already adapted to local conditions, which means theyll grow better than anything you buy in a packet from a garden centre. Join every group you can find. Be generous with what you share and youll receive far more in return.
Your neighbours are your other secret weapon. Most Portuguese villages have older farmers who grow far more than they can eat. Offer to swap your surplus courgettes for their potatoes. Trade your tomatoes for their figs. This isnt just about saving money. Its about building the kind of community relationships that will help you in a hundred other ways over time.
And when you do need to buy vegetables, skip the supermarket and go to local markets. The quality is better, the prices are lower, you support local farmers, and you learn what actually grows well in your area. A bag of tomatoes from a market stall costs a fraction of what Pingo Doce charges for the same thing wrapped in plastic.
Turn Your Waste Into Free Fertiliser
Every scrap of food waste, every coffee ground, every eggshell is potential compost. Set up a basic composting system and within a few months youve got rich, dark soil amendment that would cost you money at a garden centre.
If you have neighbours with horses, ask permission to collect manure. Most people are happy to let you take it because it saves them the job of dealing with it. Horse manure composted properly is some of the best fertiliser you can get, and its completely free.
Look into biogas as well. A small biogas digester can convert organic waste into methane for cooking. Its not complicated to build, the materials are cheap, and it turns your food scraps and animal waste into free cooking gas. There are plenty of DIY designs online. Its not going to replace all your gas use, but it can make a real dent, especially in the warmer months when you need less heating.
Kitchen scraps, garden waste, animal manure, even cardboard and paper. All of it can go back into the soil. Once you start seeing waste as a resource, your spending on both fertiliser and waste disposal drops to almost nothing.
Stop Driving Everywhere
Fuel is one of the biggest ongoing costs in rural Portugal. At nearly two euros a litre, every unnecessary trip to town is money burned.
If your local village has a shop, walk or cycle there. Yes, its slower. Yes, you cant carry as much. But you save fuel, you stay fit, and you support the local economy instead of a supermarket chain. Those small village shops survive because locals use them. Be a local.
Plan your trips to town. Dont drive to Castelo Branco for one thing. Make a list, batch your errands, and go once a week or less. Better yet, coordinate with neighbours so one person makes the trip and picks up what everyone needs.
Get a bicycle. For anything within five or ten kilometres, a bike is free transport, good exercise, and infinitely cheaper than a car. In rural Portugal the roads are quiet enough that cycling is actually pleasant rather than terrifying.
If you can avoid owning a car entirely, you eliminate insurance, tax, maintenance, and fuel in one go. Thats potentially 200 to 400 euros a month saved. Not everyone can manage without one, but its worth thinking about how much you actually need to drive versus how much you drive out of habit.
Find Furniture, Clothes, and Materials in Bins and Skips
This is the one that makes people uncomfortable. Get over it.
In Portugal, house clearances are common. People die, families emigrate, houses get emptied. And an astonishing amount of perfectly good stuff gets thrown into bins, skips, and rubbish collection points.
Ive found furniture with nothing wrong with it except a broken leg that takes ten minutes to fix. Sofas that have dipped slightly but are otherwise fine. Clothes that are barely worn. Fabrics, curtains, cushions. Tools. Kitchen equipment. Some of it brand new, still in packaging.
Most Portuguese villages have a designated collection point where large items get left. Spend a bit of time checking these regularly and youll furnish an entire house for almost nothing. A sofa that costs 500 euros in a shop is sitting in a skip somewhere right now with a fixable problem that would take you an afternoon and zero euros to sort out.
Clothes too. The amount of good clothing that gets thrown away is staggering. If youre living off-grid and working on the land, you dont need designer labels. You need tough, practical clothes, and the bins are full of them.
This isnt poverty. Its resourcefulness. And once you get past the cultural conditioning that tells you everything must be bought new, youll wonder why you ever paid full price for anything.
Trade, Barter, and Build a Local Economy
Money is just one way to exchange value. Off-grid, youll quickly discover its often not the best way.
Trade surplus vegetables with neighbours for eggs, honey, olive oil, or firewood. Swap your labour for materials. Help someone build a wall and they help you fix your roof. Lend tools in exchange for borrowing a trailer.
Markets arent just for buying. Theyre for selling and trading too. If youve got surplus produce, preserves, or skills, bring them to the local market. Even small amounts of income or trade goods make a difference when your monthly budget is tight.
Building supplies are expensive new but constantly available second-hand through trading networks. Someone is always demolishing something, clearing a site, or upgrading their materials. Their old stuff becomes your project supplies for free or next to nothing.
The off-grid community in Portugal runs on favours, trades, and mutual support far more than it runs on cash. The quicker you plug into that network, the less money you need.
Collect Firewood and Heat for Free
If you have land with trees, you have free heating. Fallen branches, dead trees, and pruned wood all burn perfectly well. In Portugal, land management and fire prevention actually require you to clear brush and dead wood, so youre doing yourself and the community a favour.
If your property doesnt have its own woodland, talk to neighbours who do. Many landowners are happy for someone else to clear their dead wood because it reduces fire risk on their property. You get free fuel, they get safer land. Everyone wins.
Firewood takes time to collect, cut, and season properly. Start in spring for the following winter. Green wood burns badly and creates creosote buildup in your chimney. Seasoned wood burns hot and clean. Give it at least six months of drying time, ideally a year.
A good wood stove or fireplace insert will heat your home far more efficiently than an open fire. If youre serious about reducing heating costs, invest in a proper stove. The upfront cost pays for itself within one winter compared to buying gas.
Cook on Fire and Barbecue
Gas bottles add up. Every meal you cook on a wood fire or barbecue is a meal that costs you nothing in fuel.
In Portugal, barbecuing is practically a cultural obligation. But most people only do it in the tourist months. Flip that. Barbecue through autumn, winter, and spring when the fire risk is low and the weather still allows outdoor cooking. Summer is when you need to be extremely careful with open flames due to fire regulations and genuine danger. During the hot months, cook simple cold meals or use gas sparingly.
A basic outdoor cooking setup with a fire pit or simple grill costs almost nothing to build and can handle the majority of your meals for most of the year. Rice, beans, grilled vegetables, soups over flame. Its better food than anything you make on a gas hob and it costs nothing beyond the wood you collected for free.
Ditch the Phone Contract (or the Phone Entirely)
A mobile phone contract in Portugal costs 15 to 30 euros a month. Over a year thats 180 to 360 euros. For something you mostly use to scroll social media and receive spam calls.
If you have WiFi at home through a mobile hotspot or a neighbours shared connection, you can make calls through WhatsApp or similar apps for free. Buy a basic prepaid SIM for emergencies and top it up with 10 euros every couple of months.
Or do what some people out here do and ditch the phone almost entirely. It sounds radical, but when you live somewhere with no signal half the time anyway, youre already mostly phoneless. Making it intentional rather than accidental saves money and, more importantly, removes the single biggest distraction from actually being present in the life you moved here to live.
Skip the Lawyer When Buying Property (With Your Eyes Open)
This one comes with a massive caveat: its risky. But its an option, and people should know it exists.
In Portugal, property transfers happen through a notary. The notary handles the legal process of transferring ownership. A lawyer adds an extra layer of protection by checking for debts, liens, planning issues, and ownership disputes. That protection typically costs 1,500 to 3,000 euros.
Some people, particularly those buying very cheap rural land with clear ownership, skip the lawyer and handle the process themselves with just the notary. If the property has a single owner, no debts attached, and the title is clean, the risk is lower. If there are multiple owners, inheritance complications, or any ambiguity about what you can build, skipping the lawyer is genuinely dangerous.
Im not recommending this. Im telling you people do it. If youre considering it, at minimum get the certidao from the conservatoria do registo predial yourself and read it carefully. Understand what youre buying, who owns it, and whether theres anything registered against it. If anything looks even slightly complicated, spend the money on a lawyer.
The Most Creative Off-Gridder I Know
I have a friend here who has taken frugal living to an art form. He does odd jobs for food. Not for money. For actual food. Someone needs their garden cleared, he does it for a bag of vegetables and some eggs.
He also flipped the Workaway model on its head. Instead of having volunteers come and work for him while he provides food and accommodation, he does it the other way around. People come to stay, and they bring the food. They buy groceries for the household as their contribution, and in return they get a place to stay and complete freedom to relax. No work required. He gets fed, they get a cheap holiday in rural Portugal. It works for everyone.
And he runs a side income from auctions, selling things he finds in bins, house clearances, and items people leave behind. Furniture, tools, household goods, clothes. Things that cost him nothing to acquire, cleaned up and sold for small but consistent amounts.
Is it for everyone? No. Is it a dignified income stream by conventional standards? Probably not. But hes living off-grid, hes debt-free, hes happy, and hes answering to nobody. Which is more than most people with proper jobs and mortgages can say.
More Ways to Spend Almost Nothing
Once you start thinking this way, the ideas multiply. Here are more that work in rural Portugal.
Make your own cleaning products. Vinegar, bicarbonate of soda, and lemon handle almost every cleaning job. A years supply costs less than one bottle of brand-name kitchen cleaner.
Collect rainwater. Even if you have spring water, rainwater collected in barrels is perfect for watering gardens and saves your main supply for drinking and cooking.
Learn to preserve food. Pickling, fermenting, drying, and bottling let you store summer surplus for winter months when the garden produces less. A glut of tomatoes in August becomes passata that lasts until March.
Mend and repair everything. Sewing, basic woodwork, welding, plumbing. Every skill you learn is money you dont have to pay someone else. YouTube is a free university for practical skills.
Use natural light. Design your days around daylight and you barely need electricity for lighting. In summer Portugal gives you light until nearly 10pm.
Batch cook and dont waste food. Cook large quantities, eat leftovers, use every part of every vegetable. The less food you waste, the less food you need to grow or buy.
Share subscriptions and services with neighbours. One internet connection shared between two or three houses. One Spotify account. One bulk order split between families.
Forage. Wild plants, mushrooms, fruits, and herbs grow abundantly in rural Portugal. Learn whats edible, whats in season, and whats growing on your doorstep for free. Blackberries, figs, walnuts, chestnuts, wild asparagus. The land is generous if you know where to look.
Keep animals if you can. Chickens for eggs. Goats for milk. They eat your scraps and garden waste and give you back food you would otherwise be buying every week. Eggs alone saves you a fortune over a year. And theres something about walking out your door in the morning and collecting breakfast that no supermarket will ever compete with.
Make your own bread. Flour is cheap. Yeast is cheap. Bread from a bakery is not. A basic sourdough starter costs nothing and produces bread for years.
Buy nothing new for a month. Then try two months. Then see how long you can go. Youll be amazed how little you actually need to purchase when youre creative about alternatives.
REVISED MONTHLY BUDGET (Off-Grid Portugal, Frugal Mode)
Food and supplies: 50 to 150 euros. Down from 200-350. Growing your own covers most vegetables from spring through autumn. Seed swaps and neighbour trading fill the gaps. Markets for what you can’t grow. Foraging adds free fruit, nuts, and herbs. You’re mainly buying staples — flour, rice, oil, coffee, meat if you eat it, and the odd thing you can’t produce yourself.
Gas for cooking and heating: 0 to 30 euros. Down from 50-100. Firewood collection eliminates most heating costs. BBQ and fire cooking through autumn, winter, and spring replaces gas for the majority of meals. Biogas covers some of the rest. You might keep one gas bottle for convenience but you’re barely touching it.
Vehicle fuel: 0 to 50 euros. Down from 80-150. Walking and cycling to local shops, batching town trips, coordinating with neighbours. If you ditch the car entirely this goes to zero.
Vehicle insurance and tax: 0 to 50 euros. Zero if no car.
Phone and internet: 5 to 15 euros. Down from 15-30. Prepaid SIM, WiFi calls, shared internet with neighbours. Almost nothing if you go mostly phoneless.
Property maintenance and repairs: 0 to 30 euros. Down from 50-100. Bin finds, traded materials, second-hand supplies through the community, and doing all work yourself.
Solar and water maintenance: 10 to 30 euros. Roughly the same — some things just need replacement parts.
Health: 0 to 100 euros. Same — depends on public vs private.
Cleaning and household: Near zero. Vinegar, bicarb, lemon. A year’s supply costs about 10 euros.
Total realistic range: 80 to 400 euros per month.
Compared to the standard off-grid budget of 450-900, that’s potentially cutting your costs in half or more.
The extreme low end — 80 to 150 euros — is genuinely achievable if you grow most of your food, have no car, collect firewood, cook on fire, and live within a strong trading community. That’s roughly what my friend operates on.
The more realistic middle ground for someone who still drives occasionally, buys some food, and keeps a basic phone is around 200 to 300 euros a month. In a country where the average person in Lisbon spends 1,100 euros before rent, that’s a different planet.
The catch is always the same: these savings cost time and effort instead of money. You’re not spending less because you found a coupon. You’re spending less because you changed how you live.
If you want to know more about how to move off grid in Portugal, read my guide ..
The Real Secret to Spending Less Off-Grid
The real secret isnt any single tip on this list. Its a shift in mindset.
In the conventional world, time is money. You trade your time for wages, then trade those wages for convenience. Faster food. Easier transport. Ready-made everything.
Off-grid, the equation flips. You have more time than money, so you invest time instead of cash. You walk instead of drive. Grow instead of buy. Fix instead of replace. Build instead of order. Collect instead of purchase.
Its slower. Its harder. And its more satisfying than anything Ive experienced in 50 years of living, including running a company that turned over 85 million pounds a year.
The irony is that the system we left behind is designed to make you spend money. Every convenience, every shortcut, every time-saving product exists to extract cash from people who are too busy earning it to realise whats happening.
Off-grid, you step outside that loop. And once youre out, you see it for what it is. And you never want to go back.
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Alex Sully is a transformation coach and internationally published photographer living off-grid beside the Rio Agueda in Mosteirinho, Portugal. He has been featured twice on Ben Fogles New Lives in the Wild, broadcast in 42 countries. He runs WyldeRoots, a nature sanctuary offering transformation coaching, nature immersion, and honest guidance for people ready to change their lives.
Want to see this life for yourself?
Explore the WyldeRoots Nature Sanctuary at wylderoots.org
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