Using the €30,000 he had saved for a mortgage, Lawford designed and built a tailor-made tiny house – all without any previous construction experience whatsoever.

“It was a very crazy, arguably stupid thing to do, but it’s worked out very well for me,” he tells Katie Byrne on the latest episode of the Money Talks podcast. “It’s not been without its challenges, don’t get me wrong. It’s been extremely challenging, especially the initial build – it wasn’t impossible, but it was really difficult.”

If you’re new to the world of tiny houses, here’s the basics: they are generally smaller than 400 square feet, they’re environmentally friendly and they’re even portable.

“Compared to the average house in Ireland, it’s 70pc smaller per person,” Lawford says. “Compared to the average apartment, it’s 40pc smaller per person.”

Lawford didn’t just find a new way to live his life when he built his first tiny house, he ended up starting a movement in the form of Small Change, a community that pitches the diminutive dwellings as “a radical, sustainable and affordable alternative to traditional housing”.

So, how much money can one expect to shell out if they take this route?

“If you’re doing it yourself, you’d want to start with the figure of €40,000 in your head and go up, depending on the complexity,” says Lawford who spent a little over €30,000 on his first build – €24,000 on construction materials, €6,500 on a “massive” solar power system.

“Forty-thousand euro is conversative,” he adds, noting that the cost of building materials has increased significantly in recent years. “It’s going to be simplistic, but it really depends.” And what about potential savings? “I’m basically paying zero rent,” says Lawford. “I have no overheads. I have no mortgage.

My bills are tiny. I can live on €50 a week, easy… I spend a couple of hundred quid a year on electricity in the winter, and then I buy a bottle of gas, which does my hot water for showers and the sink – so that would be a total of about €300 off the top of my head.” For more on the dos, don’t, pros, cons, and costs of adapting to tiny house life, listen to the latest episode of Money Talks wherever you get your podcasts.