Happy Friday, friends! And I am feeling extra happy this morning! Of course, I’m here to share my first giveaway of the month with you. But I have to tell you the incredible news I received last night: The Year of Less hit the Wall Street Journal Bestseller list! Ahhhhh! Even in my wildest dreams, I didn’t think that would/could happen. I am so grateful to everyone who has read it, shared it with others, and supported me throughout this journey. It takes a community of people to make this type of thing happen, and I’m so thankful you are part of mine!

Since we’re on the topic of community, I have to tell you that this giveaway feels like the most important one I’ve ever done here. Over the years, I’ve given away more than a dozen books through the site, but this bundle is special because they have all been written by women I know in the personal finance space. Erin paved the way for us last year, and then Chelsea, Lauren, Liz and I released books earlier this year. I’ve just been anxiously waiting for Kristin’s book to come out, so I could put us all together + share our work with one lucky person!

So here’s what’s up for grabs:

• 1 copy of Broke Millennial by Erin Lowry
• 1 copy of Get Money by Kristin Wrong
• 1 copy of Meet the Frugalwoods by Elizabeth Willard Thames
• 1 copy of The Financial Diet by Chelsea Fagan and Lauren Ver Hage
• 1 copy of The Year of Less (not seen in pic)

All you have to do is answer the question below and enter your info to sign up for my newsletter! And you can get some extra entries if you follow me on Instagram and/or share the giveaway with friends. :)

While the messages within these books are fairly universal, I’m limiting the giveaway to North Americans only—partially because of the financial content, and also because shipping is expensive y’all!

I could go on and on, and gush more about each of these ladies . . . but I know you want to get to the giveaway, so I will leave this message to them: I am so grateful for your friendships. Our blogs/websites/freelance work helped us connect for the first time, and our books have taken those connections to another level. (Because omg, how does publishing work!? I’m so confused/stressed out. Please send help!) Thank you for sharing what you’ve learned, opening up about your struggles, and putting your best work on these pages. xo

Now get that money, friends!

In the first quarter of this year, I did 85 interviews about The Year of Less. By the end of April, that number will have crossed the 100-mark. More than 100 interviews in four months about one book. First, let that sink in for a minute. Take a deep breath and imagine talking to more than 100 people (most of them strangers) about your book and your personal life. How do you think that would feel? Strange, right?

Now, imagine if you were asked the same handful of questions in the majority of those interviews. It’s actually not surprising that it happens! People naturally want to know a few things: What was the hardest part of not shopping for a year? (Changing habits.) What did your family/friends think? (Most people didn’t care.) Did you regret getting rid of anything? (Nope.) And I’ve shared all of that stuff here with you before.

But there’s one question that keeps coming up that I don’t think I’ve written about. It’s asked in a few different ways, but essentially comes back to this: What is it like to shop now, after not shopping for two years?

I almost always start by saying that I hate it. I hate shopping. I don’t like any part of it, even when it’s for something I need. The only thing I like about buying stuff I need is how it feels to actually start using that thing once it’s in my possession. But I don’t like having to physically make the purchase. And that’s not because I hate handing over my money (I don’t mind spending money). It’s because I simply don’t find any joy in shopping.

Before going further, let’s break this down a little and discuss what my definition of “shopping” is. And this is actually fun for me to write about finally, because I’ve also found myself saying another thing over and over again in interviews, which is that I wish I had called the shopping ban something else. If I could rebrand it, I would probably call it a “browsing ban,” because that more accurately describes what it was. The goal of the shopping ban wasn’t to buy nothing and spend no money for a year. It was to stop mindlessly buying things I didn’t actually need and become a more mindful consumer. In order to do that, I had to stop browsing.

If you choose to browse, you will almost always find something to buy.
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Browsing, as an activity, can be done in person or online. It’s easy to describe why I hate in-person browsing so much now: it is physically exhausting. When I enter shopping malls and/or most stores, my senses feel overwhelmed. There are too many lights, too many people, too many smells, and too many sales signs and promotions. It’s simply too much. (Case in point: I nearly had a panic attack at the Toronto Eaton Centre, while trying to find a shirt to wear on TV.) And if I have to spend time trying things on or testing things out, I’m usually ready for a nap after. So, we’re all clear on why I genuinely really dislike browsing in stores now, right?

The feelings I have around online browsing are a little trickier to describe, only because it can sometimes be more difficult to notice that’s what you’re doing. Choosing to not browse stores in person is easy. You literally just don’t go inside. But we are connected to tools at almost all hours of the day that make it so online browsing is always at our fingertips; that makes it a little more difficult to walk away.

I’ll take one step backward and share what online browsing looked like for me before the shopping ban (which began in July 2014). It would usually result from hearing about a book, product, or brand that piqued my interest. From there, I would either click through the links placed in articles I was already reading or do a Google search, then find myself scrolling through a website for the next 10-20 minutes. This almost always resulted in making a purchase (at least, with books). And if I didn’t buy something right away, I often bookmarked it and looked at it a few more times, before finally entering my payment information and clicking “submit order”.

I want to riff off that last sentence and say this is one of the reasons I don’t save bookmarks anymore and it’s also why I don’t use Pinterest: because the more times we look at a product/offer, the more times we think about buying it. And the more we see/hear about something, the more we believe we either really need it or might get value from it, and then we will ultimately make the purchase. (Likewise, the less often we see/hear about something, the less likely it is we will ever think about buying it!) So, no to online bookmarks, too!

Now, I avoid visiting online stores unless I actually need something (and we can talk about what that looks like). I also avoid reading articles that I know are filled with lists (and links) of things I could/should consider buying. Product reviews? No, thanks! Makeup tutorials? Never. Haul videos? I wish these didn’t exist. I won’t even look at lists of which books I should read in a season anymore (but that’s mostly because I have enough at home + more on hold at the library). And that’s not to say any of these things are bad! Every product has a purpose. But if you spend your time learning about the purpose of each object, it’s easier to talk yourself into buying anything.

Unfortunately, even though I avoid visiting online stores, I still see ads all over the internet. The trick is to look past them, and that’s also easy (after lots of practice). I think the one thing that still “gets me” is seeing friends share pictures of the books they read/loved on social media. I always add those to my “want to read” list. But I don’t feel bad about that. As a writer, you should read—A LOT—especially in the same genre you want to write books in. What I have changed is my habit of buying books the minute I hear about them. That doesn’t happen anymore. I only buy a book when I know I’m going to read it right away, and only if my library doesn’t have it. (I’m also really good at decluttering my “want to read” list, which is a lot cheaper when it’s just a title written in a notebook vs. an actual book that I paid money only to let it collect dust on my shelf.)

So, those are some of my general thoughts on what shopping looks/feels like now, nearly four years after I started this journey to become a more mindful consumer. I’ve realized “shopping” could be swapped for the word “browsing,” and removed that from my list of hobbies. I don’t go into physical stores, unless I absolutely have to buy something. And I only visit online stores for the same reason. It’s never to browse. It’s always to buy a specific item. If I could sum up what the shopping ban did for my actual shopping habits, I would say that’s it: it taught me how to take the emotion out of it, so shopping is strictly a transaction now (as it should be).

The reason I added “as it should be” is because I want to make sure that when we talk about shopping bans, we acknowledge that we still have to buy things sometimes. And that’s ok! We don’t need to add more shame around buying stuff or spending money (there’s enough of that elsewhere in the world—and holy moly has there been a lot of it during this press tour). So, buy your stuff! I don’t care! I want to be really, truly, and crystal clear on this: buying stuff isn’t bad and spending money isn’t bad! So you are allowed to buy stuff and spend your money on whatever you want. I have just learned that it feels so much better to only buy stuff when you’re actually going to use it. Because the value of an object comes out when we actually use it—not simply because we own it. And that is how I shop now.

Since the shopping ban ended in July 2016, I have bought lots of stuff. Are you shocked!? Don’t be. That’s life! I bought some camping gear, a couple backpacks, snowshoes and poles. When I moved, I bought a new couch and rug for my living room (but I’m still living without a coffee table lol). I also bought a coat rack, and then got all the parts and put together an awesome DIY standup desk. I’ve bought lots of books! And I’ve even bought a few candles, along with an essential oil diffuser. The difference between the way I used to shop and the way I shopped for these things is that now I wait until I have genuinely felt the need for it. (And I’m a firm believer that something you want is also a need, if it fits in your budget.) So I have learned to live without things—and then when I’m done “living without it,” I buy it. No questions asked. No shame. I just buy it and start using it.

What does “living without it” look like? Well, sometimes it means living without a couch for three months or a desk for six months, while figuring out what you really need and want. Other times, it means living in a new home for four months, and eventually seeing that it’s not setup to give you easy access to a front closet, but a coat rack would help you get your wet rain jacket off the floor. And I just realized I haven’t said anything about clothing. In the past year, I have bought exactly five pieces of it—and only two were for regular daily life (a sweater + new hiking shoes). The other three were for a wedding + something to wear for TV interviews/book tour stuff. So, to this end, I don’t stockpile or buy multiples of anything. I simply buy what I need, when I need it.

The beautiful thing about the way I shop now is that I genuinely appreciate all of the things I buy. It was really easy for me to write that list of things I’ve purchased since the shopping ban ended, because I can look around my home and see everything—and that’s because I use them regularly, and am grateful for what they do for me/help me do. Old me didn’t appreciate most of the things I bought, because I did so for all the wrong reasons. The most common mistake was that I used to buy things for a more aspirational version of myself, but then never used them because the real me didn’t want to. In waiting to feel the need for an object, I know it’s something worth buying—and when I have the money, the real me buys it and uses it. There are no justifications and no shame. I just buy it and use it. Transaction complete. :)

What’s your relationship with shopping/browsing right now?

This is a follow-up to Chelsea’s initial post reflecting on her six-month spending cleanse. Based on the title, I can tell you it’s not quite the story you might think it will be. You can read the backstory here.

My first real temptation came six weeks into my six-month shopping cleanse. The first weeks were simple. Smooth sailing. Then came July, and Amazon Prime Day. This was it, I thought. My first test.

In the days leading up to the big day, I ignored the banner ads following me around the internet (damn you, cookies!). On the day itself, I didn’t falter. I didn’t even look at what Amazon was offering. I took advantage of the beautiful weather and took a book up to the rooftop of my co-op. Good job, I thought to myself as I settled into my lounger. Amazon who?

A few minutes later I looked up and—no joke—there was an airplane pulling a flying advert for Amazon Prime Day streaking across the sky. I had never seen that before, and I haven’t seen it since. But I didn’t cave. I laughed, and kept reading.

My next real temptation came in September, when I was back in New York City. I had spent six days in the city in June and departed with my resolve intact. But this September Sunday, I found myself on a subway car completely skinned with Madewell advertising. Madewell—home to my favourite jeans. A U.S.-only retailer that I visit religiously on visits to the States. But I didn’t need to!, I reminded myself. I had resisted in June, and I would resist again today. I stepped off the subway, walked up the stairs to the street, and was immediately confronted by a Madewell store, right in front of me.

Did I go in? Heck no! I marched right past, and carried on with my day in the Big Apple. And then I breezed right through the rest of the summer—no slips, no justifications, no problem. This is easy, I thought and said many times. I got this!

But then winter came.

Months of sunshine, barbecues, camping weekends and road trips behind me, I entered my annual season of hibernation. The Vancouver rains arrived, days got shorter and I found myself spending more time on my couch with my dreaded trifecta of consumerism—Netflix + wine + my computer.

In October, a boy disappointed me. Within an hour, I had ordered myself a shirt from Madewell. Just one! Not the end of the world. I shook it off and kept going. But by November, I’d slipped a couple more times. And on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it was game over. I bought two white sweaters, and raised the white flag.

I realized that it had been so easy to avoid shopping for those warm, adventurous weeks and months because I was happy, active and fulfilled by my life. There were no holes to try to fill with stuff, no spirits to lift. That, I realized, was the real root cause of my idle online shopping habit, and my occasional junk food habit, and my binge-watching habit, and probably some other habits too. I was using all of them as therapy, but inevitably ending up feeling worse, not better.

I don’t think I’m an addict, but I do know that I’ve continuously, despite my best efforts to change, behaved in a way that’s neither made me happy nor gotten me closer to achieving my goals—not unlike like an addict. And effective addiction treatment addresses not just the problematic habits and behaviours, but the psychological issues underlying them. That’s what I’m doing now, and that’s why I think this time, finally, something’s actually going to change. In fact it already has.

So, given my slip-ups, was my truncated shopping cleanse a failure? Absolutely not. As many people who have done a shopping diet, ban, cleanse—whatever you want to call it—will tell you, it becomes about so much more than money and stuff. Through this challenge I’ve achieved for the first time in a long time a level of genuine clarity about what I really need and want in my life. And guess what? None of it is available on Amazon.

I want less clutter—in my home and in my head. I want to feel in control of my finances, and my career, and my health. I want to feel well and balanced and strong again. I want to take a year-long round-the-world trip. I want to spend less time looking at screens and more time looking at people’s faces. I want to read more books, and finally write my book.

And the best part is that all of that is entirely available to me—not just some day, but by the end of this year, if I keep my eye on the prize. That realization has become a source of inspiration, and—even better—gratitude. I am so very, very, very fortunate to have the life I have, and the opportunities that open up to me on the regular. On January 1, I started a daily practice of writing down at least one thing I’m grateful for: big things, little things, sometimes material but mostly intangible. My promise to myself is that in moments when I feel like there’s a hole that needs filling, or my spirits need lifting, I will refer to my notebook of gratitude, not madewell.com.

Before I Leave You: A Few Pearls of Wisdom

It feels like a flip has been switched for me—something deeper has shifted that I’m confident will curtail some of my less functional habits. But I’m not relying solely on willpower.

Here are some things I’ve learned, and tactics I’ve adopted, to act as back up should my willpower ever falter, or in case I’m ever disappointed by a boy again (I will be).

• For 2018, I’m no longer banning shopping. But I’m not online shopping for a full year. I’ve decided to make an exception for a few functional items. I had to order a new battery and charger for my camera, and knock-offs on Amazon are way more affordable than going to a camera store. I can buy gifts online. And though I’ve resolved not to buy any more books until I’ve read the stack of unread ones on my bedside table, I’m making the odd exception (like, when your friend Cait writes a book, obviously you’re going to order that). But absolutely no clothes. A big problem in my previous life—you know, way back in 2017—was idle online shopping and ordering clothes that maybe would look good on someone’s body, but definitely not mine. I ended up spending way too much time (and I bill by the hour; time is money!) going to Pacific Centre and to the bricks-and-mortar shops of my favourite online retailers to return clothes, only to end up getting other stuff while I was there. Even worse, for stores like Everlane and Madewell that don’t have locations in Canada, I would convince myself that the clothes were ‘good enough’ and keep them, even though I didn’t particularly like them, just because returning them by mail was a (sometimes expensive) hassle. This year, I can shop for clothes, but only if I go to a store and try them on. Since I despise malls, chances are I will only go when I really need something.
• Adding to my ability to shop idly was the fact that Google Chrome knows my credit card number and would AutoFill it anytime I wanted to purchase something. I didn’t even have to get up to grab my wallet—a moment that may have shaken me out of my hypnotic consumer state. I’ve removed my credit card number from Google Chrome.
• But why not go even farther? I’ve used a Chrome extension called StayFocusd to block the sites that are my kryptonite. I literally can’t visit those sites on my Chrome browser. I can visit them on Safari, but having to switch to a browser I never use will definitely serve as a reminder that I’m going out of bounds.
• I got rid of well over half my wardrobe—another (somewhat counterintuitive) Cait Flanders suggestion that has proven so helpful to me. It’s amazing how much easier it is to get dressed when everything in your wardrobe is something you like, and that fits you.
• I’ve never been a thrift shop person. I’ve admired other people for their ability to find great things in thrift shops, but I’ve never been so lucky. But consignment stores are a different story. There’s a great consignment store within walking distance from my flat, with a style that’s very aligned with my own. When I wanted something pretty to wear for my Christmas party, I found a sparkly sequined top from Club Monaco (something I would never want to spend CM prices for, given that I do not have a sparkly-sequined-top life 364 days of the year) for $20. And you wouldn’t believe the compliments I got! I told every one of them that it cost twenty bucks, cause that’s just the kind of person I am.

In 2015, Chelsea (somewhat impulsively) quit her agency job to be a freelance writer/strategist/digital nomad, and she hasn’t looked back since. Her home base is Vancouver, but that’s just where she gets her mail. You can read more of her work at chelseaherman.com.

PRE-S: If you’re in London, I’m doing an event with Psychologies Magazine on May 8th and would love to see you there! This will likely be the only event I do while I’m in the UK, so I will happily stay to hangout afterwards. :)

Well, my friends . . . the time has finally come. This afternoon, I’m getting on a plane and flying to the UK for six weeks. That’s right: SIX WEEKS!

This trip has been a long time coming. I’ve been wanting to go to the UK since I graduated from high school, but immediately started my post-secondary education, then dropped out, moved out, got my first credit card—and you know the rest of that story. I had debt for most of my twenties, but started travelling (solo) as soon as I finished paying it off. Since 2013, I’ve gone on a lot of small trips. But aside from the road trip I did throughout the US in 2016, I have never gone on any BIG trips. After the girls passed away last May, I did a short 30-day shopping ban that helped me realize I needed something to look forward to. So I decided to save up and go to the UK for 4-8 weeks in 2018—and that’s exactly what I’m doing now.

I arrive in London on May 2nd and fly back to Victoria on June 13th. I don’t have much of an itinerary yet, because I prefer to travel with intentions rather than strict plans. That’s not the cheapest way to travel. Sometimes, it also causes more headaches or stress, because you don’t always know where you’re going to be (or where you’re going to sleep lol). But it gives you the flexibility to travel slow and say yes/no to whatever opportunities come up, and that’s usually my intention for most trips: to move slow and do what feels good. So I don’t know exactly where I’m going or what I’m going to do . . . but after pushing through the busiest 5-6 months of my life, I’m really looking forward to not knowing what my every move has to be.

Some other things I’m looking forward to:

• enjoying slow mornings (sip coffee, read, and journal in new cities)
• exploring bookstores and reading some books written by local authors
• walking + hiking everywhere my feet can take me
• but also, driving a car on the other side of the road! I’m determined to do this!
• taking pictures (and sharing some on Instagram)
• and making new friends :)

Oddly enough, I’m also looking forward to being outside of my comfort zone. Being able to travel by yourself is an incredible gift, but it also comes with unique challenges. I’m prepared for there to be a few tough days, or at least tough moments. I’ll probably get lost or lose something, crave normalcy/routine, and even get homesick once or twice. And knowing me, I’m sure I’ll cry a few times too. It always happens, so I’ve learned that’s just part of the experience. But if the road trip taught me anything, it’s that I also feel like my best self when I’m travelling. I feel lighter and more open (to new people + opportunities)—and I always come home feeling like a new person. I don’t know what the UK holds for me, but I’m excited to find out.

For those who live there, or who are simply curious, I do have a few plans/ideas:

• I’m not a huge fan of tourist attractions, but I’m going to the Making of Harry Potter studio tour on May 4th and I am SOOO RIDICULOUSLY excited about it, haha.
• I’m heading down to Brighton for the long weekend.
• I have an event in London on May 8th!
• I don’t really have any plans from May 9th-18th yet, so I think that’s when I’ll map out a road trip (maybe to South West England? or Wales?)
• After that, I’ll start heading north and visit friends in Manchester, the Peak District, Leeds and York.
• I think I’ll rent a car and do another road trip to the Lakes!
• . . . and then I still need to figure out where Scotland and Ireland fit into this. (And yes, I know Ireland isn’t in the UK. I just want to go, while I’m there!)

As per usual, I’m still travelling with just carry-on luggage. In fact, for this trip, I’m somehow packing even lighter than I did for a road trip last year. Everything fits into my Gregory Compass 40L backpack. And that was really important to me for this trip, in particular, because I won’t have regular access to a vehicle and don’t want to be weighed down at all. So it’s just me and my backpack. :)

I still have a few work tasks to complete at the airport today, before I sign off and get on the plane. However, the closer I get to my departure time, the happier (and more emotional) I start to feel. I booked this flight on January 9th and have used it as motivation ever since. Whenever I felt like I couldn’t keep working at the pace I was, I reminded myself that I only had to push through for a few more months or weeks—now hours—until I could go on this trip. It then became the marker for things I could say yes/no to. And it all worked! The Year of Less is out in the world! It was a WSJ bestseller! I have done 101 interviews about it and connected with so many incredible people this year! And now it’s time to take a break.

So I’m signing off, friends! I have a handful of incredible guest posts to share this month. (Think: incredibly honest and vulnerable. I’m so grateful to the writers for wanting to share their stories with us.) I will also pop in when I’m inspired to write. If you don’t hear much from me, though, you can always check my Instagram account and see what I’m up to! And know that I’ll be back this summer with new posts, new ideas, and a NEW PODCAST!

For now, I’m curious: Is there ONE thing you would recommend I do while I’m in the UK? I’d especially love to hear from locals, because I would much rather do something a local would do. Visit a certain coffee shop or bookstore, walk a particular trail, and so on. Just one thing. Thank you, my friends! I appreciate you all. :)

This is a guest post from my friend Britt. :)

The first time I truly interrogated the idea of abundance was when I was in graduate school in 2012. At this point, I had stumbled across tiny houses and the minimalist movement and it all made so much sense to me. Maybe it was being saturated in a higher education environment that urged critical thinking, but when I projected forward to what I thought my life would look like in 20 years, it did not include the traditional markers of success.

But when you tell your family (who generously helped pay for a portion of your education) that you want to essentially abandon any call to a high-powered (i.e. high-paying) career and want to build a tiny house, you can probably imagine what their reaction was like.

Of course, a high-powered career and living in a tiny house are not mutually exclusive, just look at the CEO of Zappos. But, in my case, I knew I wanted one because I didn’t want the other.

On the whole, or on the surface at least, my family is supportive of my ‘alternative’ lifestyle aspirations. Sometimes though, small comments here and there make me wonder if my dreams are good enough.

• “You’ll get sick of each other in that small a space.”
• “I don’t think you realize how small it will be.”
• “It’s not going to be a good investment.”
• “Do you even have plans or designs for it?”

My quick rebuttals to these comments are normally “No, we won’t”, “Yes, I do”, “That’s not why I want one” and “Exhibit A: My Blog”. I could write much more detailed posts dedicated to refuting each of these questions and comments, but that’s not a meaningful use of my time (nor would my family read them). If you have any sort of dream that is counter to the mainstream (a simple life, early retirement, a nomadic lifestyle, etc.), you probably know at least one person who has a knack for making your dreams feel small and not quite good enough. Even if, and sometimes, especially if, they mean well.

For me, ‘enough-ness’ has been something I’ve struggled with for years (or at least since elementary school). If there is a society upheld ideal, I’ve never quite felt like I’ve achieved it. I’ve never really felt smart enough, fit enough, strong enough, pretty enough, etc. This isn’t a pity party, it’s just the truth. I don’t really know where the feeling of lack came from, and, at this point, it honestly doesn’t matter.

Actually, that isn’t entirely true. I know exactly where my lack of enough-ness came from. My childhood, while wonderful in many ways was, oftentimes, filled with parental alcoholism and mental illness. As a young child, it’s hard to process those situations in the moment. I’m 27 now and I’m still coming to terms with all of it. And I’m sure I will be processing it for years. However, I’m not looking to lay blame. Ultimately, that won’t get me anywhere. What my childhood did leave me with was the sense that you might as well believe in your dreams, because no one else will. Obviously, this is easier said than done. Especially when there are entire industries that have been designed to make money off your sense of ‘enough-ness’.

It will likely come as no surprise to you that consumers in North America are sold the same version of what success and abundance look like. There may be some variation, but the general recipe looks something like this:

big house + fancy car + high-powered job = happiness/success/abundance

I want to make it clear that there is nothing inherently wrong with any of these things. If they are what you truly desire, that’s great! I think everyone should have a chance at the life they want, whatever that looks like for them.

However, since you’re here, on Cait’s blog, you are probably questioning this formula for abundance. Something about it might not sit right with you. You might not be able to put your finger on it, but you know it’s not for you.

What is more problematic than this equation, is the mindset that we are supposed to buy into. If we don’t want the ‘things’ in the equation, we’re not good enough (or we are made to think we’re not good enough). Our dreams don’t matter if they don’t fit into that narrow view of what abundance looks like.

But where does that leave you? If you aren’t buying (figuratively and financially) into this equation, what’s the next step?

Redefine it for yourself.

A dear friend and mentor of mine gave me this question to ponder during a retreat a couple of years ago. I think it sums up the idea of enough-ness perfectly.

“Others will tell you who they think you are, but if that doesn’t align with your gut or internal truth, how do you proceed in a way that is healthy for you?”

‘Others’, in your reality, can be family, friends, colleagues, or society as a whole. If any of what I’ve written so far has resonated with you, you can probably think of at least one person who imposes their idea of who you should be, onto you.

I can honestly say I’ve been pondering this question for years. What it has led me to is a reworked understanding of what abundance means to me (and no one else).

In my mind, ‘abundance’ are the things that bring you joy in life. I’m sure that’s different for every person reading this. It could be family, friends, experiences, health, etc. But, the fact remains, we can redefine it for ourselves if we want to —if our current definition no longer serves the view of what we want in our life.

What would an abundant, successful life look like to me?

• Being able to contribute something meaningful to the world.
• A modest home, filled only with things I truly love.
• Being able to spend my time doing what makes my heart feel full.

The bottom line I’m trying to get at here is that your dreams matter. Period. Whatever you want for your life, I promise you that it’s good enough. Not ‘good enough’ in the sense of settling. No, I mean ‘good enough’, in that your hopes and dreams are important.

No matter how big or ‘tiny’ they are.

Britt is the blogger behind Tiny Ambitions—an online space dedicated to documenting her journey to simplify her life with the ultimate goal of building her very own tiny house!

I’ve always wanted to be very independent. The ideas I had in my mind, I wanted to make a reality and whenever those dreams felt out of reach or taken away, I would find myself crushed and my confidence fading away.

A Little History

In college, I really wanted to study abroad. It was a dream of mine to live somewhere else. I wanted that experience more than anything. I struggled with my grades and wasn’t able to apply. I tried looking for other alternatives, but I was navigating it alone and kept hitting roadblocks. Studying abroad never happened. I eventually thought I was never meant to travel.

In my senior year of college, I wanted to buy my own car and my parents surprised me with a red SUV. I was really excited, but a part of me also felt like a growing experience had been taken away. I wanted to have to go to a car dealership, figure out how to navigate that situation (Chris said he would go with me), and come out on the other side, even if that meant a loan.

When I became a personal trainer, I thought I would pursue a full time job with a PT specific company. It was a bit daunting to think about navigating - creating a resume, going to an interview, etc. But it was the next step and I was going to push through and make it happen. Then my parents opened up a gym where I could help manage, personal train, and hold classes. It was awesome, but in the end I wanted (and needed) my own identity, something that I created and wasn’t handed.

I probably sound completely ungrateful. Maybe spoiled. And I won’t fault you for judging me. I am grateful (and spoiled), but I also need to be me. I need to know that I can do things on my own. That I am strong. That I can make my dreams a reality. That I can persevere through the tough times and find success on the other side.

Gaining My Confidence Back

My confidence has been lacking for a long time. You can ask Chris - I’m always talking about how I can’t do something. When I became a stay-at-home mom and left the world of personal training, I put all my energy into my little ones. Their identity became my identity.

I remember when N was about to go to Preschool and I panicked - All three of our kiddos would be in school soon. We need to have more babies! Chris went white in the face when I said that, haha. We didn’t need more babies. I needed my own identity.

I needed to find me again. I needed to gain my confidence back and start pursuing my dreams. That’s when I started remodeling our house. I didn’t have the skills, but with Chris’s support, I took it one step at a time and figured it out. My confidence grew a little and our house transformed.

I also started decluttering, realizing that I didn’t need to fill the void I felt with stuff. We saved money and we found that our home was too big. We talked about downsizing and Chris stepping away from his corporate career to pursue his own dream of working for himself. And if we could make an income remotely, then we could live where ever we wanted. I had always dreamed of experiencing life somewhere else and never thought that would be an option. And now it might happen!

Chris and I are here, working on Keep Thrifty every day (well, 5 days a week) and love what we do. Chris gets to work on growing his coding skills, and talk finance. I dreamed up our Freedom Story Series, put it out there, gotten the chance to meet so many awesome people, and am starting to network with companies that bring you awesome tools to help you accomplish your dreams.

I’m being me. I’m dreaming, pursuing, not giving up, and building my confidence. My dream of living somewhere else is in the works and Chris is by my side, supporting and navigating with me.

I shared a bit of our journey and our plans for location independence with Laurie at The Three Year Experiment. Check out it!

This is a guest post from my friend Jennifer. Thank you to Penny from She Picks Up Pennies for inspiring it! :)

I’m a first-generation American. My mother was born in Hong Kong and she came to America with my grandparents when she was just seven years old. Like many immigrants, my family came in search of a better life and they were willing to work very hard to make it happen.

And work hard they did.

By the time I was born, my grandparents had opened a small Chinese restaurant, where they worked from open to close every day, 365 days a year. Almost every childhood memory I have of my grandparents is of them in the restaurant, my grandfather cooking in the back and my grandmother serving in the dining room.

There were no vacations and no holidays for my grandparents. They would even work on Christmas Day; I remember watching them get up from our family dinner to cook and serve the paying customers seated nearby. To this day, I’ve never known anyone to work as hard as my grandparents—except perhaps my mother, who raised three children while going to school and juggling two jobs.

With these role models, it’s probably no surprise that I learned the value of hard work early. By age 10, I was spending most of my free time at my grandparent’s restaurant, and by age 16, I’d picked up a second job while studying full time (a trend that continued throughout my college years).

I was proud of myself and being a hard worker became an important part of my identity. I was always the first to volunteer for extra work and the last to leave the office each night, and I lived this way for most of my adult life.

I’m sharing all of this because I want it to be clear: I know what hard work looks and feels like.

But as I’ve grown older, I’ve started to question the way our society values hard work. Too often, it’s not viewed as a means to an end. Instead, it’s considered a virtue in and of itself. Those who work hard are “good” and those who don’t are not.

Many of us, myself included, have prioritised “hard work” over our relationships or even over our own health and as a new mum, these beliefs don’t feel right anymore. My daughter is only seven months old, but of course, I’ve already started to think about her future.

Here are four things I won’t teach my daughter about hard work and what I want her to know instead.

I won’t teach my daughter to always “give it your all.”

There was a time when I would write “I’m a hard worker and I put 100% into everything I do” on all my job applications. I thought it was an admirable quality and from the positive nods I used to get from recruiters, I’d say I wasn’t alone in thinking so.

But a lot has changed and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that always “giving it your all” is not sustainable. We have limits to our time and energy and we must be intentional about how we invest ourselves, or we risk unintentionally sacrificing the things that matter most.

Instead of teaching my daughter to put 100% into everything she does, I’ll tell her that everything in life comes with tradeoffs. (As the saying goes, you can do anything you want but you can’t do everything.) She’ll need to learn to prioritise and make mindful decisions about what’s really worth the investment of her time and energy, and not blindly devote herself to every task or project in the name of being a hard worker.

I won’t teach my daughter that being busy and exhausted is normal.

Growing up, all the adults I knew were busy and exhausted, so I thought this was simply part of being a successful adult. I actually couldn’t wait to be “busy” and once I started working two jobs at 16, I’d tell people how tired I was with a smile on my face because I thought it was something to be admired.

Of course, the novelty wore off pretty quickly, but I continued to take on as much as possible and push myself to the brink of exhaustion. (I remember driving home at 1 am, after working two long waitressing shifts back to back, and physically holding my eyes open with my fingers to stay awake.)

As ridiculous as this sounds to me now, I had normalised this lifestyle. I truly thought it was the only option (when in reality, I was a victim of lifestyle inflation and could have easily worked less by reducing my cost of living).

Unfortunately, working less never crossed my mind because, as an impressionable young adult, this isn’t what I saw others doing. No one I knew was choosing to intentionally slow down but I’ll make sure my daughter knows this is always an option.

I won’t teach my daughter to “work hard, play hard.”

One of my biggest gripes with how our culture views hard work is the implied message that more is always better. The expression might be “work hard, play hard” but let’s face it — the underlying message might as well be “work hard, so you can afford to spend more.”

I’m not anti-spending and if my daughter wants to own or do nice things, that’s up to her, but I’m going to teach her to be a mindful consumer. I don’t want her to be an emotional or reactionary spender as I once was, buying expensive shoes after a long day because “I deserved it” or splurging on expensive holidays because I was desperate to escape my life.

Instead, I’ll tell her it’s ok to prioritise rest and self-care when (or even before) she needs it. She doesn’t need to push herself to her limits before she deserves a break.

And finally, I won’t teach my daughter that hard work leads to success WITHOUT also having a conversation about defining “enough” and what it means to be successful.

I know this post might lead you to believe that I’m against hard work, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. I truly believe hard work is necessary for success, but I take issue with the way we spread this message.

You can’t have a discussion about hard work leading to success without also talking about defining “enough” and what it means to be successful. Without this balance, you are setting yourself up for a lifetime of discontent.

I’ve been there myself; in my twenties, I had a good job, I owned my own townhome, and I lived a comfortable life—but I never felt satisfied. A voice inside of me kept telling me to work harder and whenever I stopped to rest, I felt guilty.

Looking back now, I can see I’d set myself up for failure. I’d never defined what success meant to me, so it didn’t matter how hard I worked, I was never going to achieve it and this is the problem with how we discuss hard work. I want my daughter to know that hard work is a means to achieve something that matters to you, not a constant state of being.

On a final note, I couldn’t end this without acknowledging how grateful I am for how hard my grandparents and mum have worked to give me a better life. Of course, it’s a privilege to be able to consider the role hard work plays in our lives and for some, it’s a case of survival, not choice.

Just make sure you’re not giving away your choice when you don’t need to.

Jennifer is the blogger behind Simply + Fiercely and author of Mindful Decluttering, a free guide and workbook to help you finally clear the clutter for good.

It’s May, which means college graduations are taking place across the country. The transition out of college and into your first job can be challenging, as new opportunities and new responsibilities are quickly put in front of you.

That’s why I thought it would be a great time to put together advice from myself and my amazing network of personal finance peers for all the new graduates out there ready to strike out on their own.

We’ll break out the pointers into three major sections - Employment/Income, Savings/Investments, and Budgeting/Spending.

I really encourage you to read all three sections. Personal finance is holistic; mastering any one of these while ignoring the others is going to give you much poorer results than doing your best at all three.

Fair warning, though - there’s a lot of information below! It may be a good idea to tackle one section of the post at a time :)

Employment & Income

There are lots of resources out there on how to make great resumes and cover letters and how to nail that interview, so we won’t cover those here today. Let’s fast forward a bit and say you’re in the wonderful position of having one or more offers in front of you and you’re trying to figure out which job to take.

Pick the Right Job

If you’ve got multiple offers, don’t just make your decision based on the salary. Here’s why:

1. If the jobs aren’t located in the same city, it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison because the cost of living in each city could be different. I remember when I was graduating from college, I had an offer in Chicago that was 10% higher than my job offer in Madison. After taking the cost of living into account, the two ended up being roughly the same in terms of how much I’d have left after expenses.
2. Salary is just one piece of the puzzle. You should also compare benefits; if Job A has a killer healthcare plan, that might save you thousands of dollars a year. If Job B has a better retirement plan, that could tip the scales.
3. Beyond the financials, look at the “squishy stuff.” Which job has a better path for advancement? Which job has a team and leadership that you can learn from? Which job will better train you in skills that are transferable should you choose to change jobs later on?
4. Finally, remember that your first job likely won’t be your last. If you take a job and it’s not a good fit, that’s ok. You have the chance (and the right) to try something different.

Negotiate Your Starting Salary

In the process of picking your job, I’ll also encourage this: negotiate your starting salary. I know that can be intimidating, but raising your starting salary can have a big impact on your long-term earnings.

If you have other job offers with higher numbers, use those as leverage. The conversation could go like this:

Working here would be my number one preference. I think this place is a great fit for me and I know I’ll bring a lot to the position to help you be successful. That said, I do have some competing offers with higher salaries. Is there room for negotiation in the salary you’ve offered me?

Phrased this way, you’re not saying that you’d turn down the existing salary, but you are advocating for yourself to get something better. It doesn’t hurt to ask - the worst they can say is no. If that’s what happens, then you can choose whether or not the original salary is good enough.

Always Do Your Best

Once you’ve got that job, work hard and do your best. When getting your first job, the things that determine your salary are your degree, your GPA, and what potential the hiring manager sees in you.

After that, you’ll find out that those things very quickly lose their importance. Your raises, promotions, and anything else all come down to one simple factor - what value you provide to the company.

There will always be someone who has a better name, better connections or more God-given talent; the only thing you can do about it is outwork them.
Michael Dinich, Your Money Geek

But Don’t Burn Yourself Out

Let’s not misconstrue that last one as a suggestion that you should work 90-hour weeks though. Burnout is real - I’ve experienced it firsthand - and it can be detrimental to your health and your career.

Here’s something important to remember: good companies don’t measure their employees by their inputs (like how many hours you work); they measure employees by their outputs.

Find ways to optimize everything you work on. Look for things that you have to do over and over again and find ways to automate or simplify them. If you can get done in 35 hours what someone else does in 50, you’ll be able to work a 40-hour week and still provide more value to your employer.

Read Your Benefits Handbook

Employee benefits make up about 30% of your paycheck. But if you don’t know what they are, you can’t be sure you’re getting all 30%.

Most benefits handbooks are written in overly-formal language, often bordering on legalese. But it’s in your best interests to hunker down and read each section so you can understand all of the benefits your employer offers you.

So, read your handbook. Then read it again. For areas you don’t understand, ask your human resources department or your manager. Ask friends or family members who have been in the workforce a while what everything means and see what makes sense for you.

Savings & Investments

OK, now that you’ve got that job picked out and know what to do once you get there, what should you do with those paychecks as they start coming in?

Everything in this section will center around a fundamental principle of personal finance:

Pay Yourself First

What does that mean? It means that you should be setting money aside for your longer-term goals before looking at your expenses. The easiest way to do this is to start with your very first paycheck; once you get accustomed to spending a certain amount of money, it’s a lot harder to scale back.

Saving and investing early in your career can drastically improve your finances when you’re looking to retire (and earlier). Investing $5000 a year starting at age 27 (with a 7% return rate) could lead to a $1 million nest egg at retirement. Starting just five years earlier at age 22 bumps that number to over $1.4 million!

Further Reading:

• Everyday Benjamins has a great article on the benefits of saving and investing early

Convinced? Ok, let’s take a look at the ways to pay yourself first.

Understand Your Retirement Benefits and Take Advantage

Does your employer offer a 401k retirement account program? If so, there’s a good shot that they also provide incentives for you to contribute.

Many employers will match the money that you contribute to your 401k either on a dollar-for-dollar basis or a 50% basis. This is free money, but you only get it if you invest in your 401k.

Let’s take an example. Say you make $30,000 a year and your employer offers to match 50% of the contributions you make (up to a maximum contribution on your end of 8%).

• If you put in 4% ($1,200), your employer will kick in another $600.
• If you put in 8% ($2,400), your employer will kick in another $1,200.
• If you put in 12% ($3,600), your employer will kick in that same $1,200 because you’ve exceeded the matching limit.

The key here is to think of that money as a bonus, but that bonus is only contingent on you doing something that we’ve already established is good for you - paying yourself first.

In the example above, if you simply pay yourself first with at least 8% of your salary, you get the equivalent of a 4% annual bonus from your employer!

Sunburnt Saver agrees that starting early and saving through a tax-advantaged retirement plan is best: “You’re already used to living on little and honestly won’t notice 10% being invested for you. It reduces your tax burden (this will matter, I promise) and will help you get a big head start on saving for retirement.”

Pick Your Investments Wisely

You don’t have to be a finance guru to invest wisely. In fact, the biggest finance guru out there (Warren Buffett) says the simplest strategy is the best - investing in index funds.

An index fund is an investment that tracks what the stock market (or another asset class) does in general. Over the long haul, the stock market has a great track record of going up. At the time I wrote this, there hasn’t been a single 20-year period of the S&P 500 (which has been around since 1871) where the stock market lost money.

Given that you’re just getting out of school and normal retirement is ~40 years away, you’re probably good to get started.

Note: there are no guarantees in the market; past performance is not a predictor of future performance. For past performance numbers from above, see this awesome calculator from DQYDJ

The reason Index Funds are so popular with Warren Buffet and others (like me) is because they have very low fees. Whenever you buy a fund, you’re paying someone to manage that money, but index funds tend to be significantly cheaper than others. Whenever you’re dealing with compounding interest, small amounts can be amplified into big ones, so minimizing your fees is critical.

Further Reading:

• PFGeeks has a great article on how expense ratios affect your investments

Pay Off Your Debt (ASAP)

If you’ve got student loans, credit card debt, or car loans, it’s time to start paying them down aggressively. Minimum payments may get you debt-free eventually (if you don’t accrue new debt), but the amount of money you waste in interest could cripple your finances.

There’s no bad way to prepay debt - just a good way and a better way. Find any extra money you can and apply it to either your highest interest loan (the better way) or the lowest balance loan (still a good way) that you have.

To learn more about these methods of paying down your debt and how much money you can save, check out my post on Debt Snowball vs Debt Avalanche.

One of the magical things you’ll find about paying off debt is the amount of freedom in your finances once the debt is gone. If you’ve been paying 50% of your income toward debt, you’ll feel like you got a 100% raise once you’re done paying it off!

Further Reading:

• The Frugal Gene paid off $20,000 in student loans in just 8 months while working part-time.
• Zero to Thrifty shares a personal case study on saving, tithing, and paying off debt
• Our Financial Path shares numerous debt payoff success stories
• Method To Your Money graduated college debt-free, but the tactics he used can help even if you’re graduating with student loans.

Automate Your Savings & Investments

Set up direct deposit of your paychecks with your bank. And if your employer’s payroll system allows it, split each paycheck into different buckets. Consider funneling a portion off to a “debt payoff” savings account so you’re not tempted to spend it.

You can do the same for establishing an emergency fund. If you put aside just $8 a week for an emergency fund, you’ll have $400 saved up after a year, which puts you better off than the 46% of Americans that can’t handle an unexpected $400 expense.

We set up a savings account for everything - emergency savings, travel, home remodeling, kids savings, the list goes on. We do our banking with Capital One 360 because they have reasonable interest rates and make it ridiculously easy to set up new savings accounts. At one point, I had my paycheck getting split into 5 different accounts to “pay myself first” and work toward my financial goals.

Seller At Heart recommends putting $100 from each paycheck into a side savings account that you don’t have a debit card for. That way if you need the money, you’ll have to go to the bank and wait 2+ days to get the funds transferred. The inconvenience will prevent you from spending it unnecessarily.

Budgeting & Spending

If you’re still with me at this point, I know you’re going to be successful - it takes a lot of patience to dive this deep into a money article!

Let’s talk about budgeting and spending, but we’ll start with a couple questions.

Did you live like a king or queen in college?

Probably not.

Did you still have fun?

Probably so.

This is an important lesson to remember. Your income and living situation in college probably wasn’t luxurious, but you still found happiness and joy.

As you transition out of school and into the working world, there will be a lot of temptation to succumb to “lifestyle inflation.”

Avoid Lifestyle Inflation

Lifestyle inflation is when you find yourself spending more because you make more. If you can avoid that trap, your raises and promotions can help further your long-term financial goals instead of just getting you an extra scoop of ice cream whenever you go out.

Your spending and income should only be loosely related - in that your spending should be less than your income. When your income goes up, it’s a great opportunity to pretend like that never happened and instead funnel more into savings and investments.

Some amount of increase is realistic; after all, your life is going to change. Someday you may have kids, buy a house, or travel more. You might want to sleep on something other than a futon. But remembering that you can live on less and still enjoy yourself is a powerful, freeing mindset.

Save it Before You Spend It

One of the big consumer traps that trips a lot of people up is getting in the habit of buying things on credit (either through a credit card or through a loan - AKA financing). Even when the purchase is at 0% interest, this is dangerous. Here’s why:

It’s a reversal of the money timeline. Buying something on a credit card today and then paying it off at the end of the month can lead you to spend money before you’ve earned and saved it.

Life is dynamic and you don’t know what the future will hold, so the safest course of action is to live by a simple rule:

Save it before you spend it (Tweet this )

If you follow that one little rule for everything in your life (except maybe getting a mortgage for a home), you’ll have a whole lot more security!

Make a Budget

If you know what your income is and you know what you want to set aside to pay yourself first, then you’ve got the remaining amount for your budget.

Creating your first budget can be hard. After all, how do you know how much you’ll be spending on stuff?

The answer is that you probably won’t.

Your first budget will be imperfect. You’ll overestimate some expenses and likely underestimate many more. You’ll forget about the random things (like annual car insurance) and be taken off-guard by the unexpected (like being asked to be a part of someone’s wedding and having to pay for a dress or tuxedo).

But the best thing you can do is to create a crappy budget and then improve it from there.

Every month, you’ll better learn your spending needs and habits and will be able to refine your estimates. After a full year, you should have a good sense of where you’re at and your confidence will grow after that.

When creating your budget, it’s helpful to break things down into categories. Here are the ones I recommend starting with:

• Charity
• Clothing/Shoes
• Eating out
• Education
• Entertainment
• Fitness
• Gifts
• Groceries
• Healthcare
• Hobbies
• Household care (cleaning products, etc.)
• Pets
• Services (haircuts, life insurance, etc.)
• Shelter (rent/mortgage, renters/homeowners insurance, etc.)
• Transportation (car, gas, auto insurance, public transportation, etc.)
• Travel
• Utilities

Track Your Spending

A budget is great, but if you don’t track your spending, you won’t have any accountability.

There are tons of ways to track your spending, and you just have to pick what’s right for you:

1. Track on paper or in a spreadsheet on your computer
2. Use Thrifty, the money tracking app we made. It comes pre-loaded with all the budget categories I listed above and you can create your own as well.
3. Use Personal Capital, an automated expense and investment tool

As you track, you’ll find out what your spending habits are - both the good and the bad. Look at the categories that take up the most of your spending and see how you can improve. Most likely the big three are going to be shelter, transportation, and food.

Let’s take a look at how you can save on each.

Saving on Shelter/Housing

Remember what I said earlier about living on the cheap in college but still having a good time? Yeah, the whole thing about lifestyle inflation.

Chances are, you spent at least part of your college career with roommates. It’s tempting when you graduate to feel like you “deserve” to live on your own, but that is going to come with a hefty price tag.

When I graduated college, a one-bedroom apartment would have cost me $750 a month in the Madison area. Instead, I got three roommates and we rented a 2500-square-foot house with 4 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms, paying just $375 a month each.

That’s a savings of $4500 a year!

In addition, those roommates and I split utilities and had a built-in support network if we needed any help from each other.

Further Reading:

• Rich Miser saved money by living in an urban gentrification area
• Winning Personal Finance experienced wins and losses from buying a condo

Saving on Food

Personal Finance for Beginners nailed this one:

When you start working a 9-5, it’s tempting to go out for lunch with coworkers every day or grab dinner on your way home from the office. Without a budget, it’s easy for your food spending to spiral out of control. It’s important to create a budget/goal for food spending and learn a few basic tips, like buying in bulk, learning how to cook, and setting aside time each week to meal prep!

If you’re looking for ideas, PF Geeks has a list of 46 recipes that you can make for less than $2 a serving.

Saving on Transportation

Do you already have a car? Great! That means you don’t need to lease or buy a new one.

You may even explore whether you need a car. Are you in a place with good public transportation? The license, insurance, and maintenance of a vehicle may be an unnecessary expense.

If you do need a car and don’t currently have one, don’t be tempted to use your newfound purchasing power to get an extravagant ride. Cars, by-and-large, provide the same function whether they cost $3,000 or $300,000.

If you need a car to get to and from work, to visit family, to run errands, and go out with friends, buy something that will perform the function of doing those things. Anything beyond that is a status symbol, and those status symbols can drain your bank accounts.

As Winning Personal Finance points out, your car could be costing you millions

Further Reading - Other Personal Finance Tips for New Graduates

If you’re looking for more ideas, check out these other great resources to help you get started with money after graduation:

• Guy on Fire’s 8 Ways to Crush it After Graduation
• ESI Money’s Financial Advice for New Graduates
• What Debt Discipline wishes he knew about money when he left college
• Moneylogue’s 8 tips for college graduates
• Free Money Finance’s Graduate’s Guide
• Married With Money’s Best Financial Tips for Beginners
• Smile and Conquer’s 10 Steps to Organized Finances

Parting Thoughts

Phew - That was a ton of information! There’s a lot to take on here, so I’d like to leave you with a few parting thoughts.

Understanding everything you need to know about money as a new grad is no easy task. Turning those into practice is even harder. You’re going to have slip-ups and mistakes and that’s ok.

You won’t be perfect with your finances, and that’s OK

Try to do something every week to improve your financial situation. Learn from your mistakes and keep an eye on the goal.

Oh yeah, that reminds me of an important one. What is the goal anyway?

Don’t make the mistake of thinking money is the goal. Money is a tool to help you achieve the goal. (Tweet this )

Money is necessary and it’s a powerful tool to open up doors in your life. But it’s not the end-game. It won’t give you everything you want and you won’t get to take it with you when you die.

Use your money to help you live a fulfilled life, focused on your relationships, your passions, and serving a higher purpose.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help

Money is complex and there’s a lot to learn. So don’t be afraid to ask for help. We’ve all been there. I didn’t understand compound interest until my dad explained it to me. I didn’t know the difference between a 401k and an IRA until I dove into the details and picked my coworkers’ brains.

If you have questions or need help, find me on twitter or leave a comment below. I’ll do my best to give you an answer or find someone who can.

Congrats on your graduation and best of luck in this next big phase of your life!

What advice do you have for new graduates that you wish you had known? If you’re a new grad, what money questions are keeping you up at night that we can help with?

Shawn from Freedom 33 has an awesome freedom story about remembering his dream, pursuing a new life, and to riding the bumps waves along the way!

Living The American Dream

I grew up in British Columbia, Canada, living a relatively normal childhood. When I finished high school, I took a gap year backpacking across Australia and SE Asia. It was an amazing experience, spending my days learning how to surf and going scuba diving. It was a dream year and I found myself wishing I could live somewhere warm where I could spend more time on my new found passion, surfing.

However, I returned home and got down to ‘real life’ in Canada. I started University, eventually getting my degree in biology at the age of 27. I settled into my adult life, met a girl, bought a house, and worked away in my career. I moved forward in following the American dream, settling for the Canadian surf scene over an hour drive away from my home in Victoria, BC.

Pushed to Question My Life

Then everything changed. My live-in long-term girlfriend decided our relationship wasn’t working and moved back home to England. Instead of working through and healing from that break-up, I patched up my feelings with an intense, fast-moving new relationship. Ten months later, I was single again and left to deal with my emotions.

This led to a lot of self-analysis and ultimately getting real with myself. I thought I had been happy with the American Dream, but I came to realize I wasn’t happy at all. I didn’t like being house poor. I didn’t care for my career, lifestyle, or some of my friends.

I found myself on a path of self-discovery. I learned to let go of things I couldn’t control. I learned to self-validate rather than seek external validation. I remembered my dream life, but didn’t know how to make that happen.

I was stuck in a mortgage and couldn’t afford to change my career. I was already near the high-end of my potential pay-scale and I wouldn’t be able to match that at a new job. This led me to start thinking outside the box.

Making The Trade

Could I sell my house, break even, and get a fresh start? I started looking at the housing market and realized I stood a good chance of turning a significant profit. Selling my house became a no-brainer. With that decision made, I asked myself what I really wanted to do. Maybe travel around New Zealand? While considering my options, I decided to take an impromptu vacation to Baja California Sur near Cabo San Lucas. A friend of mine had owned a small place there and suggested I might like it. I ended up staying with a friend of hers, who was also a bit of a real-estate hustler. Before long, I found myself with a new opportunity.

I could use the income from the sale of my house to build a small duplex in Mexico. This would allow me to be debt-free, earn a modest rental income, and live simply with easy access to good consistent waves!

That became my grand plan, but life is full of unexpected waves. As I was in the process of building and paying for the duplex, I could see that the numbers weren’t going to work out as magically as I had hoped.

Right around this time, I got the chance to return to an old job as an Environmental Coordinator at a fly-in/fly-out mine. I would work three weeks on (at a remote location in Northern Canada) followed by three weeks off. My employer would cover room and board and most of my travel costs.

I had been miserable in this position in the past, but now it seemed like a godsend, even though I was nervous about being pulled back into my old life! I did a little mental accounting and figured I would only need to work for about six months. I decided it was worth it and took the job.

Ten months later, I was still at the job, failing to meet my financial goals. I knew I had to dig deeper and find a way to improve my accounting. This was sort of a ‘get real’ financial moment. I really wanted to have my full-time life in Mexico and needed a real plan to make that happen ASAP in a sustainable manner. I turned to my spreadsheet and got to work on my expenses and making an updated budget.

My duplex is now built, fully paid for, and bringing in rental income that pays for my day-to-day bills and living expenses. I spend about $150 (Canadian dollars) per week in Mexico and about $200 every six weeks on travel for work. At this point I could quit my job, but I’ve decided I want to invest a little more in my future. If I work another year even, I can achieve complete financial freedom.

As I work towards living in Mexico full time, I’m dreaming of adding to my AirBnb empire in other foreign surf locations, meeting my wife and starting a family, adopting a few dogs, and having more free time to visit my parents as they get older.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying the time I do have in Mexico, fostering pups (sometimes finding them forever homes in Canada), and having my parents come visit!

Advice When Trading in The American Dream For Your Own

• Never waste a good crisis: When things are going smoothly it’s hard to implement any change and disturb the peace. However, when you have nothing to lose, it becomes a lot easier. Take advantage of this.
• Know Your Why: I knew I wanted a different life and I needed to figure out why first. Then the how became easier.
• Spend Time Thinking About Your Dream: Mohammed Ali once said - What you’re thinking about, you’re becoming.
• Stay Strong When Others Don’t Support You: When the people you love don’t support your lifestyle changes, its easy to let them convince you that you’re crazy and to stay in your current life. My father and I didn’t speak for months when I made my decision. One thing I’ve learned is that most of the time, the way people act has much more to do with them than it does with you.
• Be patient: It takes a while for these types of goals to really take shape. Find a way to stay positive through the transition.
• Live and Learn: You don’t have to have everything figured out in the beginning. Take steps, learn from the successes and failures, and keep moving forward.
• Create a solid budget: I had tracked by expenses and had a budget, but I would miss certain things (whether by a psychological quirk or paid with cash). This left me with gaps in my budget and was why I ultimately needed to get really serious about tracking all of my spending.

Thank you to Shawn for sharing his story! We are excited to follow his journey over the years and wish him the best as he settles more into his life in Mexico. And ladies - he’s single :) And if you want to reach out to Shawn, you can find him on twitter @freedomthirty3.

Do you have a freedom story you would like to share? We would love to hear from you! Submit your story here!

Just for fun, I spent an hour the other day digging through the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditure Survey. I wanted to see if there were any interesting things I could learn about how Americans from different backgrounds spend their money.

Yes, I’m a blast at dinner parties.

While I found a lot of interesting information, most of it was fairly common-sense. People with high incomes save a higher proportion of their income, all while spending more on just about everything. There was only one surprise I ran across.

There was one category in the entire set of BLS data that high-income people spent less on - tobacco.

For reference, here’s the data I pulled/computed:

These numbers can be a bit deceiving though. I don’t have any evidence that higher-income smokers consume less tobacco product than lower-income smokers.

Since the table shows the average across all households (including those without tobacco consumption), the most likely reason for the difference is that fewer high-income people are smokers.

We all know that smoking isn’t good for your health. To amplify things, it’s not good for your finances either. How bad is it?

How Much Does Tobacco Use Really Cost

To keep things simple, we’ll ignore incremental healthcare costs and just look at the cost of the product.

Let’s say our subject smokes one pack of cigarettes a day at a cost of $6.43 per pack.

Using the MNY Future Value of Money calculator, we can calculate what that daily cost could be worth over the long haul. If the $6.43 a day were invested instead and got a 7% annual growth rate:

• It’d be worth $34,000 after 10 years
• It’d be worth $100,000 after 20 years
• It’d be worth $230,000 after 30 years
• It’d be worth $485,000 after 40 years

That’s right - a 40-year smoking habit would be worth nearly half of a million dollars. And that’s assuming prices don’t go up (which they usually do).

If You Don’t Use Tobacco

A good percentage of you that have made it this far don’t have tobacco as a part of your life and are wondering what you can do with any of this information.

I challenge you to think about what habits you have that are costing you on a daily, weekly, monthly basis (Tweet this ) .

Some of those habits - like a gym membership - might be good for you. But if you dig, maybe you can find an unhealthy habit that’s costing you health and money. Here are some ideas:

• Eating out for lunch with coworkers instead of bringing food from home
• Snacks from the vending machine
• Soda habits
• Excessive TV/Movie watching time (with a streaming service)
• High alcohol consumption

For any of these, you can use the MNY Future Value of Money calculator to convert those habits into their dollar value and see what you could be missing out on.

This kind of thinking helped me give up soda, switching to coffee instead. Beyond saving a bunch of money, I also feel healthier and happier!

Resources to Quit Smoking

If you are a tobacco user and are considering quitting, here are some great resources to get you started. Your wallet and your health will thank you!

• American Lung Association
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• smokefree.gov

Hi friends! My trip to the UK is already halfway over! I’m learning so many things that I want to share, but am going to keep exploring the topics until I return in June. For now, here’s another guest post—this time by my friend Rachel. It is open and honest and deeply personal. But I also think it’s something many can relate to—and it includes some great questions to ask yourself before buying clothing, at the end! x

Seven years ago, I was a brand new high school graduate incredibly excited to start my next adventure at university. I had decided to live on residence in my first year and tried to prepare myself for independent living. I couldn’t wait for a little sanctuary of my own. I thought I was ready to take care of myself. Unfortunately, like many first-year students, living alone my eating and lifestyle habits changed for the worse.

I couldn’t be bothered to find time to eat well between classes, papers and keeping in touch with friends both old and new. Over the next six years of my education, I found myself using food as a tool to procrastinate, a treat for doing work I didn’t want to do or as a comfort when I felt alone or stressed out. I was so focused on doing well in school that I didn’t take time to exercise or sleep. Self-care was put on the back burner while I focused on grades. Unsurprisingly, the pounds slowly packed on. When I graduated from my post-graduate program, I was 90 lbs. heavier than the girl who was so excited to start university seven years ago. I was about to embark on the next phase of life and I didn’t want my own wellness to come last anymore.

I’ve started a journey to focus on my well-being and I’ve found myself faced with something I never had to think twice about before: clothes. Let me preface this by saying I’m not an advocate for weight loss, weight gain or any sort of “healthy” diet. Instead I want to share my journey to mindfulness when it comes to shopping for clothes at any weight.

Shopping at My Heaviest Weight

When I was at my heaviest weight, I struggled to find clothes I felt confident in that fit my new body. I was also in a new phase of my life, starting my first “grown up” job as an intern at an insurance company. My current wardrobe of sweatpants and leggings wouldn’t work at this organization and I was in the mindset that so many of us get into—I felt I needed to look the part to feel the part, especially as an intern wanting to make a good impression. The week before my first day I went shopping looking for business attire.

It was an eye-opening experience.

I was kind of worried, as I headed to the mall knowing I had gained some weight, but I decided to grin and bear it. I ventured into stores I used to frequent and found a very limited selection of items that fit. Anything that caught my eye was typically too small or too tight, even in the largest sizes. In the change room I struggled to get clothes on, asking my mom to find a bigger size, feeling exhausted. The thought of spending even more time looking for things I liked that also fit and feeling embarrassed in change rooms was overwhelming. I started buying anything that fit, whether I actually liked it or not. I wanted to be done with shopping, so I spent money on multiple items of clothing that didn’t make me feel good, simply because they were the right size.

When I started my internship the following week, I may have looked the part in business attire, but I certainly didn’t feel the part. I was wearing clothing that didn’t give me confidence. I felt like an imposter playing dress up in clothes that didn’t express who I was or what I wanted to say about myself as a young professional woman. I’m not one who believes in following trends or that an abundance of clothes is necessary for happiness, but I do think what you put on your body should express who you are and give you confidence—not the opposite.

So here I was, trapped with a wardrobe I hated that I had spent money on, all because I was frustrated and overwhelmed with shopping for my changed body. Looking back, I wish I had taken more time to do research and find stores that carried clothes for women of any size, places where I could take the time to find pieces I actually liked. If I had invested time instead of buying the first thing that fit, I would have felt more confident in my changed body.

Resisting the Urge to Binge Shop

Fast forward to a year later and I’ve lost 23 lbs. so far. I’m finally taking the time I deserve to focus on my mental and physical health by eating nutritious, whole, plant-based foods. I’m working with a registered dietician at my doctor’s office and my number one goal is to be healthy. I’m trying to be more conscious of the foods I consume, why I’m eating them (am I hungry or bored?) and making space in my calendar for walks in nature and enforcing a semi-strict bedtime. I’m no longer an intern and I’m working at a great company that values work/life balance.

These have all been positive improvements in my life and I feel good to have gotten back on the right track. But I’m still stuck with the same old problem: clothes.

I’m at a point in my journey to health where my clothes are getting loose and I’m feeling the urge to hit up the mall and load up my cart, simply because things will fit better. It’s an interesting juxtaposition to where I was a year ago, when the only reason I bought an item of clothing was because it fit. Now, I want to buy things because I know I’ll have choices. This is a battle I’ve been having internally and I know as I continue to lose weight it will only become more difficult.

Enter Mindfulness

This entire journey has taught me the importance of mindfulness when it comes to making purchases. Looking back, I wish I had done things differently, but this was an important lesson to learn. I’ve always thought of mindfulness as an important part of gratitude, but I never thought to let mindfulness influence how I behave as a consumer. 

At my heaviest weight, I was making purchasing choices out of fear and insecurity. I was spending money on clothes I didn’t necessarily like which also made me feel shame in my spending habits. I felt crushing negative energy from these choices when it didn’t need to be that way. There are retailers who sell clothes for plus size women, some with physical locations and many online. There were options I didn’t know I had, and if I had taken the time to do some research, I could have empowered myself to make purchasing decisions that I felt good about. 

I want to change my mindset by taking a mindful approach to shopping now that I’ve lost weight. I’m doing my best to wear the clothes I have until they are too big to stay on. My boyfriend’s mom is a seamstress and can take in a few items so they’ll last longer. I know I’ll need to buy new clothes eventually, but I want to make sure I get the most out of these pieces. Wearing these now will give me more time to make mindful decisions when I have to buy clothes in the future. 

It’s unbelievable how much there is to be mindful about when it comes to shopping! As I head into a weekend away, I realize I have almost no casual clothes to wear that fit. Working two jobs, 6 days a week means I’m almost always wearing business casual attire. Realizing this has helped me recognize a need in my wardrobe. Now when I do decide I’m ready to buy new clothes I know to look for a few casual pieces that are made well. 

Another way I’m hoping to be mindful about shopping in the future is by looking at quality and construction. I’ve spent too much money on fast fashion that wasn’t made to last. I’m hoping I can find some quality, ethically-made hidden gems at thrift stores. I’m also going to ask myself four questions before I make a clothing purchase:

1. Do I actually feel good in this? 
2. Am I only interested in this for a fast fashion trend? 
3. Does it seem to be well made? 
4. Will I get my money’s worth out of this piece? 

I hope by approaching each purchase with these questions in mind, I will feel good about the money I’m spending. In preparation for when I do need to buy new clothes, I’ve been cleaning out my closet and getting rid of items I’ve had around since high school that have been taking up physical and emotional storage in my life. I’m ready to move on from the past and embrace this next journey, with the help of empowered purchasing decisions. 

At 25 years old, Rachel is still figuring life out. She currently works a 9-5 as a marketing coordinator at a charity, with a side hustle in real estate. She’s passionate about animal rescue + putting her hands to work by creating. She lives just outside of Toronto with her rescue dog and two rescue cats. Her number one goal is to move to the country. As for a blog—she’s working on it.

Chelsea from Mama Fish Saves had a dream to be able to work from home, pursuing her passion of spreading financial literacy, and having the location independence to buy a small homestead. Sounds awesome! Here’s how Chelsea and her husband changed course with a mini-retirement and are making this dream a reality!

Days Spent In The Office

My work took up most of my time. I was an investment manager at a hedge fund, working long hours (often 60+ hours). This left me with less than 30 minutes each day during the week to see my young son.

My husband was, and is, an amazing stay-at-home dad, which did provide me some comfort that our son was getting lots of quality parent time. But I missed him like crazy and struggled with feeling like my job didn’t serve a greater purpose.

About a year before pursuing my dream to work from home, I started a family finance blog. That tacked on an additional 20-30 hours of work a week. Luckily, that was all completed while my little guy was sleeping.

Then I became pregnant with our second son and faced some major back issues. I would go through multi-day periods where I couldn’t stand upright and spent the second half of my pregnancy only allowed to sit or stand in 15 minute increments. Because I was pregnant, they couldn’t do imaging or provide medication.

The pressure to continue to sit at a desk and operate at the highest level at work brought all my struggles with the purpose of my career to the forefront. We were also hyper aware of my difficulties with postpartum depression after having to return to work once my first son was born. We weren’t keen to go through that again.

We had saved 50%-70% of our pretax income since I started working post college. With all that savings and the extra push to pursue a different life, we started to strategize how we could make a change.

How We Decided To Make A Change

My husband and I have modest taste. We didn’t buy expensive cars, we bought a house at less than half the value we were approved for, and stuck to lower cost hobbies like hiking and gardening. I also made a strong income and used YNAB (You Need A Budget) to budget every dollar I made since college. This helped us to consistently save 50%-70% of my pre-tax income.

I discovered the early retirement movement a little over a year ago. With my income and our lifestyle, I realized we were rapidly approaching full financial independence. I could have stayed in my career 4 or 5 more years, until I was 32 or 33, and have been retired! This was awesome, but I love working and am far too high-energy to ever do the full on early retirement game. What I really wanted was the opportunity to spend more time with my young kids and to do work that fulfilled a purpose and helped the community.

The stress of my current career environment and wanting to live by our values pushed us to make a change now instead of in 4 or 5 years. We took a closer look at our budget to see where we could cut and what things would look like if I left post maternity leave.

Our math determined that my last bonus (in investment management, this is over two-thirds of your annual pay) and pay through maternity leave would give us enough assets to live on for 2 years, including healthcare costs. I could take a two year mini-retirement, focusing on my kids and working to build my blog and freelance business into a full time income.

Our retirement savings would stay on autopilot. If my new venture never provided enough to continue to contribute to that account, we would still be able to early retire around the age of 45 if we desired.

My Worst Case Scenario

The biggest challenge in pursuing this dream was swallowing the risk we were taking. We would go from this massive income cushion to zero cash flow. The blog was, and is still, in the red and I had never done any freelance writing before.

We were able to push through because of the opportunity the risk offered. And we also knew we had a safety net. If it worked, I would have been home with my boys through their earliest ages and would have developed a business in line with my passion.

If I fell flat on my face (worst case scenario), we weren’t leaning on our retirement assets for this business development period anyway. I maintain a large network in the investing world and my husband has his Masters in Engineering & Construction project management as well as a large ship captain’s license. Either of us could get back to work quickly.

Our Mini Retirement Life

I left my job in December 2017 and my son was born January 16, 2018. His brother turned 2 in February 2018. Our lives are a bit intense and I am still transitioning from the rigid world of an old school hedge fund environment to completely controlling my own schedule. Sometimes it is pretty daunting!

What I’m most surprised about is the number of opportunities presented to you when you no longer have a traditional job. In the last 5 months I have become a regular contributor to Forbes, was accepted into a completely free MBA program, and created the #WomenRockMoney movement that provides a community for women to advance their financial literacy and learn from each other.

We also sold our home outside of Boston and will be renting a home for the next two years closer to my mom in Connecticut. (And two doors down from one of my husband’s best friends!)

As we move through this mini-retirement, my next goal is make our dream of buying a small homestead a reality. We believe the food system in this country is broken in a way that is hurting our health, creating large amounts of waste, and greatly damaging the environment. A homestead will allow us to live by our values and give us the chance to spend more time outside and connected to our food sources, intimately understanding what we are putting into our bodies.

Our hope is to pay cash for our homestead. We have already started researching potential locations across Connecticut, Vermont, and upstate New York and will be saving up! Selling our house outside of Boston put us at around 60% of our goal and we are working hard to add to that dream! In creating our mini-retirement financial plan, I assumed no income from my blog or freelance writing. As such, 50% of whatever we make will be added to funds for after our 24 months, and 50% will be put towards the homestead goal.

A Note For Anyone Considering Entrepreneurship

Believe in yourself and trust your cushion. Even though we still have over a year and a half for me to develop my business, I have moments of panic that we are going to go broke.

The transition to entrepreneurship is real and scary. Moments of panic are normal. Prepare for this and make sure you are okay moving forward before you dive in.

Thank you to Chelsea for sharing her story! I can’t wait to hear how the mini-retirement progresses and the homestead dream develops!

Do you have a freedom story you would like to share? We would love to hear from you! Submit your story here!

The world likes to assess you based on your finances, or what they think your finances are, based on your lifestyle. If you live in a nice neighborhood, wear expensive clothes, or have an impressive job title, the world tends to view you in a better lens - as someone they would want to spend time with and befriend.

If you have a green thumb and garden to save money while your best friend eats out all the time - can you maintain that friendship without stepping on each other’s toes? Can you choose to spend your money differently than the people around you and still be friends? Or do you need to find a community that fits your financial style?

Andrew and Jaime think that finances and friendships should be able to mix. That we can look past the superficial and embrace each other for who we are, allowing amazing friendships to develop! Here are some of our thoughts and stories.

Jaime (a personal story)

Last month, Chris and I hosted our bible study group. We were a little self conscious about welcoming everyone into our little apartment.

We are the only family in the group who lives in a small home, let alone an apartment. There are a lot of nice homes in our neighborhood and we aren’t living on one of those streets.

We also don’t have the nicest of furniture. We’re talking an old futon and Ikea chair we bought on craigslist and a hand-me-down chair that my parents gave us to use.

To say we were nervous about being looked down upon is an understatement. Luckily, we had a great discussion full of laughs. I pulled out a kids table with a tray of cheese, sausage and crackers (few bottles of beer too). It was a great evening. Our home may be a humble abode, but we all had a great time.

Andrew (a personal story)

Last year, Annelise and I moved out of a large apartment in a fancy, amenity-rich building where lots of our neighbors had high incomes and lavish lifestyles. We moved into a much smaller apartment in an old row home, and our rent was significantly lower.

When we moved, Annelise pointed out to me that her portion of the rent amounted to the least she’s paid for housing since she relocated to DC in 2010. She’s paying less to live now than she did in her mid-20’s. That’s pretty crazy to think about! It isn’t often that people choose to deflate their lifestyle as they get older.

The move didn’t diminish our quality of life at all – our apartment is on a beautiful tree-lined street in one of DC’s most attractive neighborhoods. But by most metrics, our move would be considered a step backwards. While our peers are upgrading their lives by moving into larger/more expensive homes as they get older, we’re doing the opposite. Instead of adding space and filling it with expensive things, we subtracted space and got rid of many things.

From the outside looking in, it might look like we are adjusting our lifestyle down due to financial struggles. In actuality, we are making intentional decisions about how we want to deploy our money so that we can live the lifestyle we envision for ourselves. This includes creative pursuits, travel, and an opportunity to leave the workforce at a significantly younger age. We don’t want to be slaves to our jobs in middle age, so we are making decisions today that will give us the freedom and flexibility we desire. Barring unforeseen circumstances, we are on track to obtain full financial freedom by our mid-40’s.

If You Have Different Incomes + Lifestyles

Jaime’s Thoughts: I think a lot of friendships start with a common ground in finances. You may be co-workers, live in the same neighborhood, or send your kids to the same ballet class. You find that you have a common lifestyle with similar financial backgrounds and bond over those similarities.

It’s great to get to know people you can relate to and these relationships can turn into great friendships. As the years go by and we grow into the person we are meant to become, our financial path may change.

This might include going back to school, leaving corporate America/union job, or maybe the business you were in or running collapses. All these changes lead to handling your finances differently than before. Sometimes with those changes friendships end as you have less in common. Sometimes they persevere - those are amazing friendships - the ones that support and love outside of our financial situations.

We’ve been blessed with a friendship that has continued as we’ve made our crazy financial + lifestyle changes. As we went into mini-retirement mode and scaled back on our spending, we still enjoy each other’s company and are excited for each other in our own journeys!

Andrew’s Thoughts: I have lots of friends that share my interest in financial independence, because I’ve been an active member of the FI community for awhile. My closest friends and family do not share this interest, though. They have varying incomes and lifestyles, and they aren’t as motivated by the idea of saving aggressively or clamping down on their lifestyles. The factors that sustain these friendships and relationships have nothing to do with money or lifestyle choices.

My close friends and family know about my pursuit of financial independence, and they know that I’m here to help them with any money questions/issues they encounter. But they have to come to me because I’m not going to give unsolicited ideas, advice, or feedback (although I often made the mistake of doing this earlier in my journey).

Maintaining Balance Despite Financial Differences

Andrew’s Thoughts: Our culture focuses on social activities that revolve around spending money. Because of this, it can be challenging to balance a healthy social life with reasonable spending. I live in a vibrant city, so most social outings with friends include bars, restaurants, or some form of entertainment that comes with a cost attached to it.

I also come from a large family that often celebrates birthdays/holidays with big meals out and gifts. My siblings and I are close in age, and we all like spending time together. Because there are so many of us, there are always invitations and ideas floating about, and the activities can be expensive.

This can be tough to navigate, and it’s something that I struggle with. It’s difficult to say no without feeling guilty, or worrying that my family thinks I’m being a cheapskate. There have been times in the past that I’ve caused tension by letting money stop me from partaking in family activities. I’ve found that communication and providing attractive alternatives works really well to help alleviate this.

It’s important to be intentional with how much you are willing to spend in these categories every month. Tracking how much you’ve spent can help decide what to say yes/no to. For example:

• If you are comfortable spending $100/month out at restaurants and bars, and you’ve committed to 3 occasions in the coming month, it’s a good indicator that you need to push back and say no to any further opportunities.
• It helps to have cheaper options in mind, such as a picnic, free cultural event, or a potluck-style meal at someone’s house. I recently caught up with my parents over lunch, and they suggested a few restaurants to meet at. The assumption was that we would be eating out. But I’m crunching down on my dining out budget this month, due to some other big expenses. I suggested we have a simple lunch at home, and it turned out to be just as enjoyable as going out (if not more so). The important thing is spending quality time together, and this doesn’t have to cost money.
• I’d also say it’s important to make this agreement with yourself, but it’s equally important not to let it consume you to the point that it makes it painful to do anything at all. That could put a damper on your relationships in a hurry. As with anything in life, moderation is key.

Jaime’s Thoughts: Maintaining balance when you want to spend your money differently can be tricky. For us, Christmas is a really good example.

Christmas time used to be a big spending season for us. We had dollar amounts to spend on each family member (on each side of the family). The funny thing is, as you grow up, you have your own money to spend on the things you want. So what do you get each other?

Sometimes we made lists and sometimes we would take a guess. The lists took the meaning out of the gift and the guess was usually wrong. We found all this to be stressful and inconsistent with our values. We wanted to change this, but we we didn’t want to upset anyone.

Eventually, we reached out to our family members and said that we would like to pass on getting gifts and just wanted to focus on enjoying our time together. In the same vein, we wouldn’t be purchasing gifts, but we didn’t ask our families to stop gift giving as a whole (that’s not for us to decide).

It was nerve racking to express ourselves, but our families respected our request. It’s important to speak up in a loving way when something doesn’t fit your financial values. The balance is in finding a way to ask for what you need without requesting others to live like you. When you are able to do that, respect and understanding can usually find their way in.

Having an Open Heart + Mind

Andrew’s Thoughts: I have many friendships that have lasted despite largely differentiated lifestyles. It’s sometimes challenging to understand the decisions some of my friends and family members make, especially when they express frustration or anxiety about their financial situation. So it’s not always easy to be a quiet observer.

In situations like this, it’s important for me to remember to separate my thoughts and observations from the relationship or the person. We might not always see eye-to-eye and it’s OK to have disagreements from time to time. I’d argue that something is probably wrong if you pretend everything is perfect. Frustration and disagreements are natural and to be expected in any human relationship.

Many times, my friends and family are happy with the decisions they make, even though I might not fully understand them. In these cases, I try to learn from it, and understand what is driving them. That can only help me be more open-minded and understanding towards others.

For example, my sister has a completely different outlook on lifestyle than I do. However, it works for her and her family, so rather than judge it, I find it admirable. She and her husband have always wanted a large house with ample property, and they like to dedicate time and money to decorating and fixing up their home. It makes them happy, and their happiness makes me happy. What works for me might not work for someone else, and I try to remember this.

Happiness is the key to healthy friendships and relationships outside of the context of financial or lifestyle decisions. As long as my friends and family are genuinely happy, deep down I don’t care if they make decisions that I struggle to understand.

Having friends that don’t think the way I do (or believe the same things I do) helps me keep an open mind. It serves as a reminder that there’s no single right or wrong way to do approach something.

I never considered a difference in opinion, in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
Thomas Jefferson

Jaime’s Thoughts: We are all trying to live our best life, whatever that may be for each of us. And whatever that best life is (or looks like), it will definitely include finances.

Some people want a big home to host friends and family while others want to spend their money traveling the world. Others may focus on a super thrifty lifestyle in order to invest in early retirement. Any of these options can be good, you just have to follow your heart and push out all the clutter, negative comments, and comparisons.

When you start following your unique path, you find a joy that you can never find when letting the world’s opinions lead you. I’ve also found that when you focus on yourself, you find a more open/less judgmental mind towards others. What’s right for you, isn’t what’s right for someone else.

When we have an open heart and mind when it comes to our own and other’s finances, we find ourselves in an uplifting community. One that encourages and celebrates, instead of tears down. And with that mindset, amazing friendships can flourish!

What do you think? Can you mix friendship and finances?

We want to thank You Need A Budget for sponsoring this inspirational story!

Have you been financially strapped to the point of maxing out your credit card, finding yourself unable to pay for something in a time of need? One of our readers, J.C., found himself in this situation during a family vacation!

Our Broken Story

Two years ago my wife and I had no freedom dream. We didn’t even have an emergency savings. What we did have was a broken down truck with a camper attached, and no way to get home.

We had just gone camping with our two teenage boys, on a vacation we had no business taking in the first place. We had been limping along the interstate and pulled over in a mall parking lot. I got out of the truck to find it pouring out power-steering fluid. Insistent that I could fix the problem, I began to investigate the source of the leak and determined it was the power-steering pump. I found a replacement and set about making repairs.

That’s when the Waltons appeared out of nowhere and offered their assistance. Remember The Waltons on TV? As a kid I always remember the Waltons taking in travelers and helping them in their time of need. Well, this couple was our modern day Waltons. They provided mechanical assistance, transportation, and entertainment in an attempt to get us heading once again towards home.

My attempts at fixing our truck failed. We were exhausted and decided to call it a night and get a hotel room. In the morning, the Waltons were there helping us. My mother and step-father even drove down to lend a hand!

I was determined to get the truck running again, but my second attempt failed. We had work in the morning and still no working vehicle. With no other options left, we called to have the truck and camper towed to a repair shop (they wouldn’t look at it until the next day) and proceeded to rent a car to get us home.

This should have been a simple transaction, but of course it wasn’t. We had funded our trip with money in our checking account and some of my wife’s savings. The car rental company wouldn’t take cash, check, debit, or first born child (just kidding). They needed a credit card payment and ours was maxed out. Thankfully, my parents were able to bail us out.

Needless to say, we drove back home on fumes…financially, physically, and mentally. I was absolutely horrified at what I had allowed to happen to my family. I felt singularly responsible for our financial situation in every regard. I never wanted to be in this situation again. We needed to repair our finances!

Repairing Our Financial Life

My wife had been on me for a while about our looming financial issues and creating a budget. Being the stubborn, hard headed person that I am, I dragged my feet on the whole thing. I guess you could say when our truck broke down, I realized that she was right.

Once the dust settled on that rolling disaster, my wife and I started to rethink our finances. We did a bunch of research, eventually landing on You Need a Budget (YNAB).

This became the glue that put our finances back together. We now account for every dollar and give each one a job. We know our true expenses and plan for them. We have a cushion in our accounts to roll with the punches and are able to make adjustments when needed. We are aging our money (this is part of the magic of YNAB) and finally feel in control of our finances.

Life is beyond different for us now. The financial stress we used to feel on a daily basis is gone. We have 5.4 months worth of emergency savings. Our mortgage is our only debt and we are making additional monthly principal payments. We are even starting to focus on additional savings and investing!

Let’s be clear though…this was not easy. It has required a lot of time, effort, and sacrifice. However, YNAB has been a huge part of the process. I can honestly say that there is not a day that goes by without YNAB being a part of our financial journey - from immediately entering transactions to planning for the future. YNAB allows us to financially see where we’ve been, where we are, and where we need/want to go.

Not only are my wife and I a financial team now, we are providing for our family in the way we had always wished, along with educating our boys for their financial futures. With the financial security we now have, we are also finally free to dream.

That’s right, we now have a freedom dream, working towards becoming financially independent and retiring early!!

Two years ago we couldn’t imagine feeling this blessed. We’ve made huge progress in just two years and I’m confident we are capable of so much more. When you set the stage for good things to happen it seems that even better things follow. My wife will graduate with a doctorate in nursing at the end of this year. We are creating side hustles, living a minimalist lifestyle, conquering consumerism, and developing a wealth building strategy!

Sure, there are always challenges, but life planning, keeping your eye on the ball, and moving in positive forward steps (every day) changes everything.

PS. As for the Waltons, they remain very good friends of ours. God bless them!!!

Thank you to J.C. for sharing his story! We are so excited that they found YNAB and it helped them take control of their financial future! We can’t wait to see what happens for them in another two years!

Do you have a freedom story you would like to share? We would love to hear from you! Submit your story here!

Another month come and gone. Let’s look at how our family did on spending, earning, and savings. But first, let’s start with some personal updates.

Personal Updates

To say this month was intense would be an understatement. As the timeline for our one-year mini-retirement approaches the 12-month mark, I’ve been having some issues with anxiety.

Anxiety to the point of panic attacks.

I’ve realized over the last year that the stress of entrepreneurship is more than I’m able to handle at this point in my life. It was hard to come to this realization, but it’s also been a bit of a relief once I was able to admit it.

That’s left us with the big question of “what’s next?” when it comes to our income and it feels like we’re finally circling in on an answer.

I had thought at the start of this mini-retirement that my back-up to entrepreneurship would be finding a remote job as a software developer. As I’ve gotten closer to it though, I’m realizing that there are some significant things about a co-located 9-5 environment that I’ve really been missing.

I always said that I loved the people I worked with at my old job and that I loved the products I worked on, but things went deeper than that. I felt like I was a part of a bigger mission - especially working on designing life-saving medical devices. I felt like I was a part of a community; I had co-workers that were more than just peers - they were friends. I had structure to work with and I was able to make a difference using my talents.

Entrepreneurship has been a hell of an adventure. I’m not giving up on it altogether - I’ll still have some side projects here and there (like MNY). Remote work as a software developer sounded great, but I’m feeling called back to the world of medical devices.

I’m ready to get back to work in a more stable environment where I can put my skills to use, make a difference, and be a part of something bigger. I’m ready to get back into an office job in my old field and put my leadership and systems engineering skills to good use!

I’ve started reaching out to my network to see what opportunities are available and am excited to see where this all leads.

As we get this whole thing figured out, you’ll hear more about the journey here :)

With all of that, let’s look at how the month went for us financially.

How We Track Our Spending

We’ve been manually tracking our spending for the last 2.5 years and it’s helped us make a big improvement in our spending habits.

I couldn’t talk Jaime into loving spreadsheets, so I created a web app for us instead. Once we had it for ourselves, it was a logical next step to put it online for anyone to access.

In the spending summary below, you’ll see screenshots straight out of our Thrifty account.

If you’d like to learn more, check out Thrifty and sign up for a free 7-day trial.

How We Manage our Money

We’ve been using Capital One 360 for our checking and savings accounts for years. We’ve been really happy with their ease-of-use and interest rates. For travel rewards, we’ve been using a Capital One Venture Card and should be hitting the spending threshold to get our signup bonus soon!

Spending Summary - $5,522.95

In May, we spent a total of $5,522.95. Our mini-retirement budget for the year is $60,000, so we were a bit over our monthly average target of $5,000, but things are still looking good.

Here’s how we’ve been trending on our spending:

Next, let’s take a look how we spent by category this month:

And here’s a breakdown of each category:

Side-Hustle Income Summary - $2500.00

Last month, Jaime and I launched our Work With Us page to give us an avenue for some side-income.

This month, we both had big victories here.

• I got paid for two freelance calculator projects (three calculators for ESI Money and one for Your Money or Your Life).
• Jaime got paid for two sponsored freedom stories. She found an awesome way to keep the spirit of the freedom stories pure while giving us a chance to get paid a bit along the way. We have two stories sponsored by You Need a Budget - one that came out last month and one that will come out later this month - featuring individuals that used YNAB to help them achieve a freedom dream.

Savings Summary - $7.85

We’re now a full month into our experiment with Acorns and based on rounding up our transactions on our normal credit card, we had $7.85 invested into our account this month.

We like what we’re seeing with Acorns so far - it’s definitely a non-intimidating way to get started with investing. We’ll give you more info as we get deeper in.

If you sign up for Acorns here, they will invest $5.00 for you! Almost as good? They’ll give us $5.00 too :)

How Was Your May?

Overall, we’re doing really well with keeping our spending on-track with our mini-retirement budget. Just one more month to go - we’ll give you the full report next month!

Don’t forget to check out Thrifty, the app behind all the pretty screenshots in these reports. You can get your own tracking started for free with a 7-day trial!

Hi friends! My six-week adventure is coming to an end. I’m spending just a few more days in Ireland and London, then I’ll be on a plane and back home next Wednesday! I’m so grateful to everyone who wrote guest posts for me while I was gone, but I’m especially grateful to Ann who surprised me with this one. You might remember her first post on paying attention. This one feels even better (probably because I really needed it myself). x

Cait’s European adventures have had me thinking a lot about bravery recently. Mostly about how much I admire her for taking this trip and how I could probably never be that brave and how somewhere inside some dark part of me, I’m uncomfortably jealous of her. I keep telling myself how I could never save the money and book the ticket and get on the plane by myself and go on this grand adventure with just a backpack and some dear friends scattered across the globe.

But watching Cait’s travels through the lens of Instagram isn’t the truth. It’s my perception of it.

I admittedly don’t know Cait all that well. I’ve been a total fangirl and cheered on her success from afar over the last few years, and when I finally worked up the courage to reach out to her, I found she was just as kind and wonderful and normal and human as I hoped she was. And she could also be scared to death, like I feel most of the time. She taught me that by posting about crying in a ball on a hike at the exact moment I was sitting on my couch thinking, “Gah, I wish I could be brave like that.”

Cait isn’t the only one making me think of bravery lately. A few months ago, I found myself on the side of Highway 1 in Northern California, a couple of hours south of my new life in San Francisco. I was looking at Bixby Bridge, a concrete behemoth that sits a cool 260 feet high. I felt sick looking at it, and I felt even sicker when I saw a teenager dangling her legs over the edge and lazily smoking a cigarette. My first instinct was to call the cops and get her down from the ledge. To be clear, there wasn’t even a ledge. Or a walking lane. She had illegally (and I imagine calmly) walked up the bridge next to the speeding cars, and my law-abiding jaw dropped just thinking about it.

As I watched this teenage girl get smaller in the rearview mirror, I thought (again) how I could never be that brave. I’m not brave by any stretch of the imagination. I refuse to jump off anything even remotely high; I hate swimming in the ocean because I don’t know what’s beneath me; I get major anxiety when I drive on the highway; and I sometimes get terrified when my boyfriend leaves to teach high schoolers that something bad will happen and he won’t come back. The list sadly goes on.

All this obsession and jealousy and fear have made me realize bravery has changed for me over the years. Sure, it sometimes looks like a teenager lazily defying death and giving me heart palpitations as I beg my boyfriend to let me call the police to come save her. But it also looks like packing up the U-Haul and moving across the country last July when all that was waiting for us was five friends and one job between the two of us. It sometimes looks like connecting with strangers because you just have this feeling you’ll be friends and maybe you need some more friends in your life. I’ve had days where I let myself feel brave just by getting out of bed in the morning, because the world is scary and we don’t have a lot of say in it.

I guess bravery has become quieter for me lately. It’s not as overt or showy as it once was—or like it was that day on Bixby Bridge. Things like having a hard conversation with my boyfriend, or asking my new neighbor who seems nice to go on a hike, or even emailing Cait once upon a time to tell her I liked her blog, makes my heart race and my palms sweat just as much as jumping off the double dock into the lake used to when I was a kid.

And as much as I’d love to have more of a devil-may-care attitude where I walk out into the world totally fearless and unflappable, I’ve realized it simply isn’t in the cards for me. I’ll never be the one to jump off something scary and high into the water for fun. I’ll never jump out of a plane because I like the freefall. I’ll probably never tour Europe alone. And I’ll certainly never smoke a cigarette 260 feet above rushing water.

Back in January, I resolved to be braver in 2018. I was tired of feeling anxious all the time. I was tired of worrying that someone had died every single time my mom called before 8am. If I’ve learned anything over the last six months and over this past year in San Francisco, it’s that bravery is an incredibly hard thing to measure. It’s not a finite number of pounds to lose or a $10,000 raise at work, like other New Year’s resolutions I’ve made. 

And because I can’t technically measure it or cross it off my neatly organized to-do list, I’m giving myself permission to think of it in a new light.

Because leaving the people and places you love is brave. Moving 3,000 miles away from your family is brave. So is loving someone and choosing a life with them, knowing something bad can happen to any of us at any moment. So is calling your friend when you need to apologize, forgiving yourself for your mistakes, forgetting your pride, grappling with shame, and putting yourself out there. My bravery may be quieter these days, but it can still make my ears ring and my heart beat a little faster from the sheer power of it.

Ann is a writer based in San Francisco. You can connect with her on Instagram @anndesaussure, especially now that she’s learned not to check it ten times an hour.

I’ve got an awesome freedom story for you today from Kelsey. She’s passionate about helping college grads change their money mindset with daily tips and step-by-step action plans to get unstuck and set up for a lucrative financial future while enjoying their daily life. Here’s her personal student loan freedom journey!

My Adult Freedom

As I stepped out of my college graduation cap and gown, I felt the freedom of entering my adult life.

Having grown up in Maryland and attended college in Delaware, I was heading into my new life in a new state. I was starting my career in sustainable energy systems and ready take on the world. Bring on the the downtown life, the cocktails, and new friends! I was twenty-two, didn’t know a single person, and off to Connecticut. Hello world! I’m coming for you!

I jumped into my new life head first with an impractical apartment near downtown (far from work), went to the bars as often as possible, and never limited myself on those fancy expensive drinks. I splurged on eating out, makeup, clothes, jewelry, new furniture, and taking trips to visit friends. I never thought twice about how much I was spending because my checking account never went in the red.

Overall, I was being responsible with my money and in some ways frugal. I didn’t upgrade my college kitchen gear - 3 mismatched plastic plates, 5 forks, 2 spoons, 1 muffin tin. I even cooked for myself one day a week that included the occasional vegetable! I always paid my rent on time and got a roommate. I was even automating 10% of my income to a savings account and putting 5% in my 401k.

I was rocking my adult life. I made great friends and the guy I was crushing on asked me out! All my efforts in spending money on my social life were paying off! That is, for the first six months of my adult life.

Adult Responsibility Hits

Did I forget to mention that I had $28,000 in student loan debt? I hadn’t forgotten, but I had a six month grace period before I had to start making payments. When January 2017 came around, I logged in to make my first payment and was smacked in the head. Why did I owe $31,000?

My dad had tried telling me, but I didn’t listen to him. During those six months of grace, I was actually racking up interest! Crap!

In my defense, I had tried to create an auto payment system after I started my job, but it didn’t let me. I took this as not needing to pay yet, and moved on instead of trying harder to get my auto payments set up. Oops!

I made my first payment of $700 (pure interest), finally set up my auto payment, and moved on with my life. As the months ticked on, I was trying to keep up with the lifestyle I had created, but seeing those $700 sucked out of my account every month was getting to me. By November I was ready to try something different.

Then I found out about high yield savings accounts (earning 1% interest instead of 0.01%) through Pinterest. That seemed like a smart switch! I created an online high yield savings account, filled out my information, and transferred in $6,000. Then I remembered the last time I made a financial decision and ignored my dad’s advice - I ended up $3,000 in the hole. So I called my dad and asked for his advice:

• My Dad: “Well what’s the interest rate on your student loans?”
• Me: “I don’t know, I have different loans, the lowest is 3% and the highest is 7%”
• My Dad: “Why don’t you put the $6,000 to your loans? You’re going to lose way more money in interest than you gain from the 1% from the bank”.

This was EYE OPENING. I knew interest was annoying if it was taken from you and good if it was given to you, but I never actually thought about what it was and how it worked (This is why we need personal finance courses in school!). I left my conversation with my dad and created a new plan. I was going to pay off every last dime of my student loans as quickly as possible!

Paying Off My Debt

I had already started making changes in my spending. While I enjoyed going out, the drink prices were crazy and my boyfriend was over the bar scene. At work, my clothes always got dirty (hello engineering job) and the other girls didn’t wear makeup. I found myself no longer buying clothes for work or spending hundreds on make-up. These changes helped adjust my spending habits and focus more on paying off my loans!

I had $20,000 in debt left. I took a look at my bank accounts for money just sitting there, not growing or working for me. I found $5,000 I could transfer out of my checkings and into my student loans.

After my high yield savings money hit the new account, I transferred $5,000 of that money right out and into my loans (keeping $1,000 in savings). Boom, I was halfway to debt freedom!

I calculated that if I saved like a maniac, I could pay the remaining $10,000 plus interest off within the next 4 months. In order to do this, I created a strict-ass budget. I got paid every two weeks and decided to create a bi-weekly budget, refreshing my numbers every two weeks with my EXACT expenses. Here’s what my general budget looked like:

• First Paycheck:
  • Bills: rent, electricity, internet
  • Groceries: $150 (me & boyfriend)
  • Personal Needs: shampoo, etc
  • Social Life: drink with friends, etc
  • Left Over Money: DEBT PAYOFF
• Second Paycheck:
  • Bills: gym, student loan payment
  • Groceries: $150 (me & boyfriend)
  • Personal Needs: toilet paper, etc
  • Social Life: attend wedding, etc
  • Left Over Money: DEBT PAYOFF

I created my two-week budget, making sure that I always had money left over from my paycheck to put towards my student loans. During the two weeks, I tracked my spending every day and then calculated my actual left over money at the end. I divided my left over money by 14 to create daily loan payments. Every morning I logged into my student loan account and made that payment!

I know I could have paid the full amount in one lump sum, paid a blind $20 a day, or just upped my auto payments, but making the daily payments helped me create a healthy habit. I made my payment first thing every day. When I pay off all my debt, I could keep doing this, making payments to investment/savings accounts instead!

This wasn’t easy and at times I wasn’t as strong as I wanted to be. Let me just say one word - Target. Need I say more? One day I walked in with a plan to spend a $15 gift card on a $10 calendar and walked out with $45.37 of merchandise and my gift card forgotten at home! Ugh! And this is one of many budget hurdles I’ve gone through!

My daily habit is what kept me going when I was feeling depressed, defeated, or when the tears were streaming down my face. Eventually, I started seeing real progress and paid off the last of my debt on April 5, 2018, less than two years after starting my job!

Now that I’m debt free, I’m continuing my daily payment habit and putting money in savings/investments in order to pursue financial independence. Right now there is nothing I want more than financial freedom. Even though I’m far from my goal, I love knowing that I’m working towards it every day!

Thank you to Kelsey for sharing her story. We love her strict-ass bi-weekly budget and how she conquered her student loan debt! We wish her the best as she continues sharing her thoughts at On My Way To Happiness and works towards FI.

Do you have a freedom story you would like to share? We would love to hear from you! Submit your story here!

Our family is currently on a road trip to the beautiful town of Venice, Florida. As such, we don’t have a normal update for you this week, but we thought you might enjoy seeing a few pictures from our trip so far.

Enjoy the photos!

That’s all for now. We’re still traveling through Saturday, so we’ll have more photos to share in the near future.

We hope you’re having a great week - God bless!

-Chris and Jaime

Michelle from The Classy Simple Life had been walking the same path for years until she was forced to change course. She found herself facing new challenges that broke her down so she could grow into a healthier life. Here’s her story:

The Humdrum Path

I spent over a decade following an ordinary path. I thought it was the road I was supposed to be on. I was married, had a good job in corporate sales/marketing, and a full home life. But after sixteen years, I realized that this humdrum path was crumbling.

I was exhausted, burnt out, and the stress was starting to negatively affect my health. My marriage had ended in divorce. I had to sell my cluttered home. I was days away from having a nervous breakdown. I couldn’t go on like this. I needed to simplify my life. I needed a change. I just didn’t know how to get off this path and onto a different one.

The Unexpected Path

Instead of finding a new path, it found me. In the Fall of 2015, I was laid off. I hadn’t planned for this and found myself having to quickly throw together a survival plan. Luckily, I had recently paid off my car loan and had at least $1000 in an emergency savings fund. I was forced to cut my monthly budget drastically from $5k to $1k!

In order to make this happen, I sold my home and rented a room with family in exchange for helping around the house with cooking meals and cleaning. I cut my Starbucks habit in half, stopped going to restaurants, got frugal with my groceries, started repairing my possessions instead of replacing them, and sold the things I no longer needed.

Finding myself without a job was a kick in the pants, but I needed it. The Universe was telling me - Hey lady, it’s time to live a simpler, stress-free lifestyle. Even if I wasn’t prepared, I was starting down the path of a classy simple life. At least I had my termination pay and small emergency savings to help me get started.

Becoming An Entrepreneur

I had always wanted to work for myself and this seemed to be the best time to give it a try! I took a turn down the path of entrepreneurship and started my blog. For the first time I was my own boss and made time for my health and wellbeing. It was great, or so I thought.

Entrepreneurship is challenging and progress can be slow (really slow). As the months ticked on, I found myself struggling mentally. I didn’t think this would happen, that the loss of my career would hit me so hard, but it did. It was a huge blow to me! I had worked for 16 years, was super successful, and had never been laid off before. For the first time, I felt like I wasn’t successful. I needed to find a way to pick myself up, even just a little bit.

I ended up finding some relief by getting a part-time job. I know, this seems like a backwards move, but sometimes what seems backwards is just a side step. I was lonely working at home all day. I needed more community in my life and I found that in a part-time job at a coffee shop. This became a sanity saver and has brought me a lot of other positives - extra income, great connections, and health benefits.

I wish I could say that from that point on, things became easy, but life never moves in a smooth line. After a few months of feeling good, my grandmother passed away. This hit me hard. I found myself more depressed than before and started leaning on old bad habits to get through the sadness.

I found myself questioning whether the path I had taken was the right one. What if I had made a huge mistake? Was I good enough? Could I get this business off the ground? I stopped looking at my successes and only looked at my failures. It was awful. I began to feel like I was never going to be successful.

By late 2017, I was mentally exhausted and had enough with beating myself up. I decided it was time to once again pick myself up. I turned to daily affirmations and reminding myself to think positively. I started doing yoga and meditation (life saver!). I turned to self-help books and motivational videos. Women like Danielle Laporte, Oprah, and Gabrielle Bernstein became my coaches for getting past it all.

I also re-evaluated how to move forward in my business. I created a regular routine for myself. I now schedule when I write, take photos, and do admin work. I even set aside my Sundays for self-care so I don’t run myself into the ground.

While my part-time job is awesome for my finances and having a social working environment, I knew I needed more support in my entrepreneurial journey. I tend to find myself stuck in the planning stage and not taking action. I joined a local mastermind group for female entrepreneurs and it has been just what I needed. They are kicking my butt!

Looking Back, Looking Forward

These past few years have been challenging. I expected to go straight into entrepreneurship, not supplementing with a part-time job. I thought I would be filled with energy, not crushed by depression. Sometimes I look back on 2017 and feel like I wasted a year of my life, but I needed to go through that hard time and allow myself to heal.

Along this path I have become tenacious and persistent. I’ve found a strength that I never knew I had. I’ve taught myself to focus on my wins, recognize the abundance I have, and find gratitude in the simple things in life. I’m healthier than ever and continuing to slowly grow my own business.

And as my income increases, I’m looking forward to adding a little travel back into my life - maybe even living and working from anywhere in the world!

Thank you to Michelle for sharing her story! Chris and I can relate to so much of the same struggles. We are so happy that Michelle found a way to work through life’s crazy challenges and we can’t wait to hear where this path takes her!

Do you have a freedom story you would like to share? We would love to hear from you! Submit your story here!

As we pulled up to the parking attendant’s booth and I took out my credit card, my daughter called out from the back seat with a tone of frustration:

“Great, now we have to waste our money to park here?”

I asked her to hold on to that thought as I finished paying the $22.00 for our parking space at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom. I was a bit surprised by her comment, but as a parent, I could recognize a teaching moment when I saw one.

As we wound our way through the parking lot, I asked my daughter whether she was excited to be going to Disney World. As you’d expect from just about any 6-year-old, the answer was an enthusiastic yes.

I asked if this road trip was something important and valuable to our family. She nodded.

I asked if this was more important to us than some of the other things we’ve chosen not to spend money on. She smiled and I knew the message had gotten across.

Our $2,400 “Waste” of Money

We spent 10 days this month road tripping from Wisconsin down to Florida and back. We stopped at parks, playgrounds, and restaurants. We stayed with family, went to the beach, and swam in the pool. On our way home, we spent a day at Disney World, meeting princesses, riding flying elephants, and spinning in teacups.

All told, the trip cost us $2,400. That may seem like a big chunk of change, but for the memories we made and the time we got to spend together as a family, it was worth every penny.

We didn’t finance this with a loan, or credit card debt - we had the money set aside for the whole trip before we booked our first night.

This trip (and all of our trips) was the result of intentional savings so we could intentionally spend on what’s important to us (Tweet this )

How We Could Have Actually Wasted $2,400

Saving up $2,400 for a trip may seem daunting. But breaking things down into pieces, it’s $200 a month.

Even that may seem daunting, but here are the things we’ve chosen to forego that make a $2,400 annual trip possible:

• Cable TV ($60/month)
• Netflix ($8/month)
• Amazon Prime ($13/month)
• Eating out for lunch on work days ($5/day * 20 days/month = $100/month)
• Drinking coffee instead of soda ($32.50/month)

Boom - that’s $213.50 a month, or $2,562 a year in savings that can fund a trip.

And when I compare the joy, memories, and fulfillment that I’d get out of a 10-day family road trip to what I’d get out of watching more TV and eating/drinking things that are less healthy, the winner is clear.

Spending money on what’s important to you isn’t a waste - it’s precisely what you’re supposed to do.

Yes, you have to cover the necessities first, but after you clear that bar, the best way to utilize your money is to identify your priorities and put your money where your heart is.

How to Know if You’re Wasting Money

A few years ago, we didn’t really know where our money was going. We weren’t accruing new debt, but we also got to the end of every month wondering why our paychecks had disappeared.

We knew we had to start tracking our spending to see what was eating up our money. So, I developed Thrifty and we’ve been tracking every penny since.

We discovered that we’d been spending $3,300 more each year on food. We saw the money we were sinking into home updates.

As we dug into our spending habits, we started seeing waste everywhere and knew we could do better.

We had dreams we wanted to accomplish but felt financially limited. What we hadn’t realized was that we were our own biggest barrier.

Over the last three years, we’ve worked hard to eliminate the waste so we can redirect our money to our true values. Family adventures, investing in our relationships and being healthier in what we consume (both food and entertainment).

If you have a dream you want to accomplish but feel like you can’t get there, it’s worth looking first at your situation and seeing what you can control. You may not be able to negotiate a 50% pay raise tomorrow, but maybe you can find one bad habit to eliminate that frees up a bit of your budget.

So, start tracking, keep dreaming, and don’t be afraid to eliminate some waste.

Join Me for #TomorrowTalk

Related to this topic, I’ll be the guest for #TomorrowTalk this week - a twitter chat where we talk about tips and tricks for saving for your family vacation. Get on Twitter at 8PM EST on Thursday, June 22nd to join the conversation!