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!

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!

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

Laurie shared her first freedom story a few months ago - How We Are Moving Towards Location Freedom - and now she’s sharing a bit a of prequel to that story. Before pursuing location freedom, Laurie and her husband went through a bunch of ups and downs in their financial life. Here’s how they worked through those struggles and found a budgeting system that has created the financial foundation they needed to move towards location independence!

Digging A Financial Hole

I became a stay-at-home mom eleven years ago. When I became pregnant with our first son, I knew I wouldn’t want to go back to work. My job had covered 40% of our income and 100% of our health insurance. It was going to be a big obstacle for our finances, but this was the life we wanted and we were determined to make it work. Unfortunately, we didn’t cut our expenses as much as we needed and found our credit card bills slowly increasing each month.

To make things even more challenging, seven months later, my husband was laid off from his job. He received a three-month severance, but we felt completely unstable with our credit card bills, the search for a new job, and providing for our baby boy. It was an emotionally reeling time. I didn’t want to have to go back to work and leave our son in daycare and my husband was nervous about landing a job just to be laid off again.

Thankfully, my husband found a job a month later. It was a contract job with no benefits, but it paid 20% more than his previous job. We could make that work. And for a moment, we felt relieved – all our problems had been solved!

I wish that were the case, but the position ended up being a horrible fit for my husband. He felt like he was doing a terrible job and expected to get fired any minute. The stress was wreaking havoc on our marriage and we felt more out of control than ever. Each day my husband went to work to provide for our family, hoping that he wouldn’t lose his job once again.

Nine months later, this company laid off all their contractors. We were once again left without an income for the second time in a single year. Luckily, within a month of this happening, the original company that laid my husband off, wanted him back. This was a huge blessing. My husband returned to a job that he was good at, he now earned more income, and we had a little more stability.

Pulling Ourselves Out of Debt

My husband’s two layoffs changed our financial outlook forever. We wanted to be debt free, build a large emergency fund, and grow such a solid net worth that no job loss could ever inspire the panic we had lived through again.

As a stay-at-home mom who was not making any income, I felt helpless in our financial journey. When my husband was at his contract job, I found myself at the local Barnes and Noble and happened upon Dave Ramsey’s book The Total Money Makeover. I was intrigued by the title, opened the book, started reading, and was hooked. This guy was selling freedom from debt and uncertainty along with control over your finances!

We had $38,000 in debt (credit card & car loan, not including mortgage) and we needed a budget in order to pay it off. We started with paper and pencil and then we switched to an online tool, Mvelopes. Using an online budget was much easier and helped us become aware of how much we were spending in each category. We finally started cutting expenses:

• We cancelled the alarm system even though we paid a penalty.
• We cancelled our yard service.
• We stopped going out to eat as much.

While this online tool helped us make progress, we found that it wasn’t flexible enough for us. We would overspend in a category and felt like we were always playing catch-up. We needed to be able to move funds and start fresh each month. While we were able to pay off our $38,000 in debt and start growing our net worth, we still didn’t have a good budgeting system. We knew we could make even more progress if we could figure this out!

Creating A Solid Financial Foundation

Several years passed. Our second son was born and we moved to New Hampshire for a new, more stable job. In January 2017, we were introduced to You Need A Budget (YNAB) by Stephanie of Six Figures Under. Her family had used it to budget and were able to get one month ahead. This sounded like a phenomenal idea. And since I was now in a Master’s program, I could get the first year for free as a student. I signed us up and haven’t looked back.

YNAB has proven to be the change we needed in creating a budget that is flexible enough for our family. We’ve paid off a lot of recurring monthly payments and have a larger portion of our income available for saving. We still overspend from time to time (don’t we all!) but we are able to use our extra savings fund to pay for that expense. Transferring money out of our virtual savings is painful, so we’re less inclined to overspend and find that we do this less and less.

We are actively making progress towards getting one month ahead in our budget. We should hit this goal in December, allowing us to start 2019 off by budgeting a month ahead. When we make our budget for next January, we’ll only spend what’s available to us and fully save for our other goals - becoming location independent and traveling!

We made some bad financial decisions early in our marriage. We started off with a lot of debt, but we didn’t let that deep hole bury us. We were able to slowly pull ourselves out with tiny steps (even some missteps along the way) that led us to YNAB and creating a solid financial foundation. I want to encourage anyone reading: if you feel like it’s impossible, or if you can only take tiny steps forward, don’t lose heart! Over time, those tiny steps add up.

We want to thank Laurie for sharing her prequel. We are thrilled that she found YNAB and that it has helped her family find success in creating a budget! You can catch up on Laurie’s location independence story here, and visit her blog - The Three Experiment.

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

Do you find yourself ending each month wondering where all the money went? Do you find yourself coming home from a shopping trip with a feeling of excitement that lasts for only a few brief moments? Do you find yourself anxiously awaiting your online order to arrive, only to bury the precious item in the back of your closet?

Shopping can be addictive. And like any addiction, it is destructive and incredibly challenging to stop. First attempts may fail, but persistence can get you there.

Just ask Cait Flanders.

Cait’s book, The Year of Less chronicles her journey through a one-year shopping ban (which eventually extended to two years) - sharing her mindset, doubts, missteps, and triumphs.

Cait’s shopping ban was such an inspiration for us, that it led to our own Nothing New Year Challenge, which permanently changed how we view consumerism, money, and what’s important in life.

But don’t think this book is just about the shopping ban - that’s just one piece of Cait’s much larger story. She opens up about her history with addiction, family issues, career questions, and ultimately shares her pathway to self-discovery. Cait’s willingness to be vulnerable is refreshing in a world of carefully curated Facebook feeds and picture-perfect Instagram filters.

The Year of Less is much more of a memoir than a how-to guide, but that’s precisely what makes it such a powerful read. Sure, you’ll find lessons on money and shopping, but you’ll learn much more about life itself - developing healthy relationships, investing in self-improvement, conquering demons, and figuring out what really matters in life.

I highly recommend Cait Flanders’s book, The Year of Less. You’re bound to connect with Cait’s journey and you’re sure to be inspired by her persistence, her attitude, and her relatability.

Have you read The Year of Less? What did you think? What did you take away from Cait’s journey?

Have you ever felt your financial future seemed hopeless, that you were destined to struggle? Bailey felt that way, but she was determined to change her future! Here’s how she did it!

My Financial Family Tree

As I looked towards my financial future, I felt hopeless. I came from a family that had made poor financial choices for generations and I felt myself slipping down that same path. At just 21 years old, I was $25,000 in debt due to student loans, a car loan, a personal loan, and one maxed-out credit card. Would I be stuck in debt, following in my family’s poor financial footsteps as well?

I didn’t want financial hardship to shape my story or continue to be a branch in my family tree. I dreamed of getting married someday, of meeting my person, and creating an amazing life together. I didn’t want to bring “financial baggage” into that life. I wanted to change my family’s story, eliminate my debt, and create a new path for a brighter future.

Making Changes

My dream gave me hope and a vision. It gave me the motivation I needed to work towards eliminating my debt, but it wasn’t easy.

My first full-time job in Human Resources barely paid above minimum wage. There was no way I would be able to get out of debt, let alone pay my rent at my current income. I knew that if I wanted to change my financial future I needed to change my circumstances. So I set out to change course!

I gave up a lot in order to pay off my loans:

• My Independence: I moved in with my mom to save on rent.
• My Fun: I cut out extras like entertainment and travel.
• My Time: I took on a part-time job working at a bookstore on evenings and weekends.

It was hard - super hard. I was working a total of 55-65 hours a week and found myself completely exhausted. I remember arriving home from a 12 hour day in tears from pure exhaustion. The only thing that kept me going was reminding myself that it would all be worth it when I was debt-free.

I wasn’t perfect about being frugal (it’s not easy) either. Some months I would get distracted from my goal and go over budget. This would cause setbacks. I could have beat myself up over it, but I accepted that I wasn’t perfect and gave myself the grace I needed to move forward in paying off my debts.

Each month I was able to pay off my debt little by little. After a year of this I had paid off $14,000! I was making progress towards my debt freedom dream. I figured it would take me another year to rid myself of this baggage and then I would then be ready for the next phase of my life!

Gaining A Partner

Plans never go the way you expect - the way you plan them to go. I had wanted to become financially successful on my own, before meeting my future husband, and definitely before getting married. But that wasn’t God’s plan for me. I started this journey on my own, but I was meant to continue down this path with a partner.

Andy entered my life a year and a half into my debt freedom journey. We clicked perfectly and planned to say “I DO” a year after we met! I wasn’t going to be debt-free by June 2016, but we were ready to start our life together.

Beyond still having debt, we didn’t have the cash for our wedding and decided to take out a loan for our big day. I don’t recommend this and I agree that this isn’t a good financial decision, but we were considering a lot of other factors than finances (namely, Andy’s military career.) As we became husband and wife, we walked into more debt, but we were going to tackle it as a team.

We worked hard together. Since I struggled with finding full-time, professional employment after our wedding, I worked two part-time jobs for 4 months. At times, I worked as many as 80 hours per week. (Talk about exhausting!) In addition to his busy work schedule with the military, my husband took care of things on the homefront so that I could focus solely on work. Our teamwork paid off, literally - haha. Less than eighteen months into married life, we made our last debt payment in November 2017.

My New Family Branch

When I started this journey, I felt hopeless in following my family tree in financial struggles. It took a total of three and a half years to change my branch in the tree, but the journey has been totally worth it. I sleep better at night, no longer worrying about bills or debt. Andy and I are living in a lovely little cottage in Iowa with our dog and cat. We are building up a six month emergency savings fund, have the financial freedom to freely give to those in need, and start traveling - things I never imagined possible!

No longer do I feel hopeless or destined for financial distress. Andy and I have created a new family branch together. One that is bright and full of hope. We are currently dreaming of taking an international trip to Europe or the Caribbean (we haven’t quite decided yet where we’ll travel). And who knows what will be next for us! All I do know is that debt no longer has a hold on me, my future, or my family tree. There is hope, there is light, and there is success in this branch!

Thank you to Bailey for sharing her story! We love that she she persevered through the tears and that her and her husband were able to take on their debt as a team and create a brighter future for their family! We can’t wait to see what they pick - Europe or Caribbean?!

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

It’s time for another spending report! We spent a lot this month on getting from point A to point B - gas for our road trip to Florida, maintenance and insurance for our car, and two bikes (one for Jaime and one for our oldest daughter).

I’ll give some personal updates first and then we can dive into our full spending report.

Personal Updates

We had another action-packed month. The girls finished up the school year and within an hour of leaving class, we were on the road to Florida for our summer road trip.

With summer in full swing, we’ve been busy with water balloons, soccer balls, and science experiments. Add in summer school (the fun kind) for the kids and afternoon camp and we’ve been even busier than the school year.

That said, it’s been a good kind of busy - the kind that leaves you tired at the end of the day and a smile on your face.

One of the really fun things we picked up this month was a fully-functioning air hockey table that a neighbor put by the curb. The girls are becoming air hockey experts and Jaime and I are trying to keep up :)

My job search is progressing - I’ve had conversations with a number of companies and am making progress on a few promising positions. I anticipate we’ll have clarity within the next 1-2 months on where I’ll be headed for my work day and what our finances will look like going forward.

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 we just hit our spending threshold to get 50,000 bonus points - that’s $500 in travel!

Spending Summary - $8,749.27

In June, we spent a total of $8,749.27 - quite a bit more than our monthly target of $5,000. Almost all of this was travel-related (both our family road trip in June and paying ahead for parts of our 10-year anniversary trip in July).

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

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

And here’s a breakdown of each category:

Side-Hustle Income Summary - $250.00

Jaime and I made a bit this month from the blog (and the connections its made for us). Our $250.00 is a combination of income from our Freedom Series sponsor and from freelance writing. You can see our Work With Us page for the full list of opportunities we have.

How Was Your June?

How was your spending this June? We had a lot of seasonal expenses hit this month and some big investments in our health and travel. Everything was in alignment with our values, so we feel good about it even though it was a higher-spend 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!

I’m so excited to have Ellen from Uncommon Dream share her family’s Financial Independence story! It’s amazing the dreams you can accomplish when you live frugally!

Our Frugal Beginning

Michael and I have always lived on the frugal side of life. We chose to buy a low cost home close to work, paying off our mortgage in two years. We even sold one of our vehicles (keeping a single old paid off car) and traveled by foot or bike as much as possible.

We’ve always worked hard and found ways to have fun without spending a lot of money. We would take our sweet dog for hikes, have friends over for game night, travel to visit family a few times a year, and stay up too late binge watching shows like The Wire or Breaking Bad.

Living frugally allowed us to live off my teacher salary (even after fully investing in my 403b) and invest Michael’s salary into index funds at Vanguard. Michael was really excited to see our projected retirement date as we saved his income. He would spend hours working on a spreadsheet he created and then pull me over to update me on our progress. This helped me get on board with the financial independence thing and showed me how high spending months impacted our projected date.

After seven years of marriage and living frugally, we achieved financial independence. We were both happy with our jobs, and had a baby on the way; so we decided to keep working and saving. Once we welcomed our son into our arms, our focus started to shift more toward parenthood. We found ourselves questioning our current lifestyle and talking about how we wanted to raise our family.

To Move Or Not To Move

We were living in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas. While it’s a great place for many people, it just wasn’t for us. We had moved there from Olympia, Washington for Michael’s work with the plan to stay 2-3 years. We would often talk about where we wanted to move to next, where to put down roots. We’d be out walking our dog at 10pm, sweating in the summer heat, and go back and forth between moving back to Washington (where Michael wanted to go) and Baltimore (close to my brother). We just couldn’t come to an agreement.

One weekend we took a little getaway to a cabin overlooking the Palo Duro Canyon in West Texas. We worked together on our five year plan and had something of an epiphany. COLORADO!

If we moved to Colorado, we could be in a beautiful area with a lot of other family perks:

• Close to Michael’s extended family (Michael’s aunts, uncles, cousins, and his grandfather).
• A short flight from Michael’s parents in Texas.
• Within driving distance of my dad and stepmom in Arkansas.
• A reasonable flight away from Baltimore!

It’s one thing to make a decision, it’s another to make the move. Despite settling on Colorado as our destination sometime in 2012, we didn’t get there until 2016. I became pregnant with our second child and we realized that moving would need to happen now or not for a few years.

While a good friend of ours was visiting over Thanksgiving, we took my one year old to the park and brainstormed over our lives. She was looking to move from New York out west for a change of pace. Michael and I were hesitant to leave Texas and our support system right before having our second child. Our talk resulted in a whirlwind of a plan:

Michael and I would buy a house in Colorado a couple months before my due date, and she would move in with us for a few months, helping us make the transition to a two kid household.

I drove home pretty giddy to share our thinking with Michael, but we didn’t take the leap right away. There were a lot of back and forth moments. One week we’d tell ourselves no, that’s crazy! Other weeks we’d decide we were going to do it no matter what. Ultimately, we felt very strongly about moving before our daughter was born.

We flew out to Colorado in January 2016 and bought a house that weekend (we were very lucky). Our house in Texas sold within 24 hours and above our asking price. By the first week in March we were moved into our new home in Colorado. Our daughter was born exactly two months later!

Leaving our life in Texas came with another change. We decided to take advantage of the financial independence we had gained before our kids were born. We started co-parenting full time while working on passion projects on the side (such as FI Clubs).

Michael finds himself working about 70 hours a month (this happens to cover our expenses and allows us to continue saving). This allowed us a lot of flexibility in our life and we started talking about the things we wanted to do when we both “retired”. We had always dreamed of traveling abroad again.

But, yikes, we now have two very young kids! Who travels with little kids? As it turns out, we do.

Ecuador & Beyond

Michael and I met at a language school in Mexico back in 2004. We both speak Spanish and would love for our children to acquire some authentic bilingual skills as well. With that in mind, we spent a lot of time deliberating on where to travel.

Michael had used a site called TheEarthAwaits.com to find the safest, cleanest, most affordable Spanish-speaking locations to choose from. We eventually decided on Cuenca, Ecuador.

We put our house up on AirBnB, and spent an awesome three months in Ecuador during the winter of 2017. We met some really wonderful people during that time and decided to return to Cuenca for the winter for 2018. Our lifestyle there was really pretty normal. We walked everywhere, drank beer with friends, and took short trips to beautiful parts of the country. We enrolled both of our kids in a local preschool where they were immersed with native Spanish speakers for 3-4 hours a day.

We’ve been back in Colorado for about two months now and are enjoying time in our community, working on house projects, and spending time with friends and family. Along with enjoying our time back home, we are talking about taking a longer international trip. Our friends Chad & Kari have inspired us to take a bigger leap!

This time, we are looking at a longer stretch of time. We’re talking about slow traveling Latin America (starting in Costa Rica or maybe Colombia) for a full year and a half beginning in January. We may stay in one spot if we fall in love with it or we may try out a few different cities and countries. We’ll then return home to Colorado in time for our son to start kindergarten, enrolling him in a local bilingual elementary school that has a great reputation.

Life is still busy with balancing parenthood, doing work that fulfills us, taking care of our home, building our life in Colorado and traveling. These past two years have been full and crazy, but we wouldn’t change it for the world.

Thank you to Ellen & Michael for sharing their story with us! We love how frugality enabled you to save, become financially independent, and raise your little ones in your values! We wish you the best and can’t wait to hear more about your slow travels in the future!

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

In the personal finance space, the phrase 9-to-5 often gets treated as a four-letter word. Everyone seems to be looking to escape the 9 to 5, whether that be through early retirement or a leap to entrepreneurship.

I’ve been lured by that thinking as well, but through a year of mini-retirement, I’ve come to recognize and appreciate some of the things that a 9-to-5 provides.

Before the internet police come in and fill up the comment section, I’m not saying you can only get these things through a 9-to-5. There are lots of ways to get these; for some a 9-to-5 is a great way to get them.

Community

When I was growing up in the suburbs of Minnesota, we had a high concentration of families in our neighborhood and the kids spent a lot of time hanging together in the backyards. The parents would get together, play cards, talk about parenting, and support each other when they needed help.

Our neighborhoods used to be our communities.

One of my good friends and I were talking about this recently and he remarked how much more of that community is now found through the workplace.

I certainly found this to be true. My coworkers were the people I spent the most time interacting with every day. We came to know one another on a personal basis, supporting each other and developing real friendships.

While peoples’ connections with their companies seem to be decreasing, their connections with their co-workers seem to be on the rise.

When you leave the 9-to-5 for entrepreneurship or retirement, you’ll find life is a whole lot quieter. That may sound idyllic for some, but even introverts like me need socialization for a healthy life.

Team-based Learning

I consider learning to be one of the most enjoyable parts of life.

Being in a 9-to-5 provides a great opportunity to learn from the community around you. You may have the benefit of learning from the 40-year-veteran of the industry. You may be able to develop new and creative approaches with your peer. Or you may have your perspective changed by an insightful intern.

Being around people with a diverse set of backgrounds and experiences puts you in a position to learn things you’ll have trouble doing through blog posts, tutorials, and courses. The powerful dynamic of direct personal interaction can’t be oversold.

Impact

As an entrepreneur and blogger, I’ve had the honor to reach a number of people. But there’s only so much you can accomplish as an individual or a small team. When you’re a part of a bigger team (with a bigger vision), you can take advantage of the compounding effect of diverse talents to reach a larger audience in bigger ways.

In my old career, I contributed to the development of safe and effective medical devices - ones my own family members have relied on. There’s a great feeling that comes from being a part of a business or project that makes the world around you a better place.

In the last year, I’ve worked hard to spread the word about our app, Thrifty, but have come to realize that sales and marketing isn’t my strong suit. Without that skillset, my ability to help people get their finances in order has been limited.

As I’m applying for jobs now, one of the biggest areas I’m looking at is the impact of the work I’d be doing based on the team I’d be with. Will my work be directly benefiting my friends and family? Will I be helping to enable others who do great work? Or will I be pouring my time and energy into developing luxuries and splurges?

I think you can guess where I want to head :)

9-to-5 Has Its Benefits

While the good ol’ “day job” gets a bad rap, it’s important to remember that there are a lot of non-financial benefits of working a standard job.

As you consider your future career and what you want your retirement to look like, keep these items in mind. If they are important to you, make sure to find a way ahead of time to ensure you can still achieve them no matter what path you take.

Chris and I have a goal to eventually travel to Europe (after we visit all 50 states - 3 more to go!). So when I heard that Millionaire Mob found a way to travel to Europe twice a year with his wife, I had to hear more! Here’s his story!

Discovering Our Love Of Europe

When my wife (girlfriend at the time) and I were in college, we studied abroad in Florence, Italy. This is where we fell in love with Europe’s culture and history! Walking along those ancient cobblestone streets were unbeatable. After spending all that time in Italy, we knew we wanted to return to Europe as often as possible.

When I graduated from college, I landed a job in investment banking. This allowed me to make a healthy income and support our love of travel, but after five years, the job was taking a toll on my spirit - the long hours and high pressure environment was burning me out. Realizing I needed a change of pace, I hung up my suit and left my job to pursue my passion in a more relaxed environment.

I took a steep pay cut to work in a more engaging, small team environment where I’m focused on energy investing. I love it. I don’t feel like I’m at work. My hours are much more manageable and I get to meet other energy professionals around the U.S. Work can still be stressful, but if it didn’t have some stress it wouldn’t be exciting.

While I took the pay cut, my wife has been working her way through law school to avoid student loans. Our monthly bills and expenses add up fast on my income, leaving little cash available for travel. We didn’t want my lower income to hold us back from the travel we love. So we decided to look into travel hacking and found a way to travel to Europe twice a year on our small income.

Travel Hacking To Europe & Beyond

We recently traveled to France, taking the opportunity to trace both of our family’s heritage. We had so much fun and learned that my wife’s family was from all over France. We even got to visit some of her long lost relatives! It was an amazing experience and I definitely recommend exploring one’s family roots! You never know what you will discover!

While this trip could have cost of thousands of dollars, we were able to stay in Paris and the South of France for free via credit card hacking. We used our Chase Sapphire Reserve and Delta Skymiles credit cards.

Discovering our own history in France was amazing, but we love taking in all the different cultures that traveling to Europe offers. That’s was makes Europe such an exciting place to travel - so many different cultures in close proximity to each other!

When my wife and I said “I Do” a year ago, we knew we would travel to Europe for our honeymoon. We took advantage of Europe’s diversity and easily hopped from one country to another! Naturally, we returned to Italy, sharpening our Italian communication skills. Then flew to the Netherlands and tried to learn Dutch. It was a crazy experience. Let’s just say the culture of Italians is a lot different than the Dutch. Luckily, one similarity is that they both have amazing cheese… We love cheese, haha.

For our next trip, we are stretching beyond Europe and flying to Japan. I racked up enough points through credit card hacking and manufactured spending that our round trip tickets only cost $3.20!

I love how travel hacking has allowed us to continue to travel. While travel hacking can be complicated, it doesn’t have to be. Credit card hacking can be simple - try opening one credit card like the Chase Sapphire Preferred and earn the bonus with the minimum spend. This card is great for starters. Manufactured spending is even easier - you can fund a new bank account with a credit card and hit your minimum spending requirement instantly.

Our Retirement Dream: Living In Europe

While we love that we are able to travel twice a year, we would love to be able to extend our travels in the future. Living a carefree life in Europe is at the top of our list every time we talk about our dreams and goals.

Right now, work and school take up most of our time, but we are hoping that this investment up front will allow us to retire early (in our 40’s). We are hoping that when that happens we can split our time between the U.S. and Europe!

Retirement, let alone early retirement, is hard to work towards when you don’t have a large gap between your income and expenses. In order to help with that, I’ve started focusing on a few side hustles: freelance consulting, blogging, ecommerce, and travel photography. With these side incomes, I’m able to invest in saving for our dream.

How I’m Investing For Our Dream

There are a lot of options for investing, but I’ve found dividend growth investments to be the most rewarding. I focus on investing in undervalued stocks. This way I’m able to receive additional income (yearly payouts) while also seeing stock values increase over time. You can see my portfolio and follow our investing journey here. I also created a guide to help others build a successful dividend portfolio!

My wife and I are a long way from reaching early retirement, but I’m glad that we’ve started the journey now. So far, I’m happy with our investing success and bi-annual travels!

Thank you to Millionaire Mob for sharing his journey! I’m officially interested in manufactured spending and intrigued by Dividend Investing! We wish you and your wife the best as you work towards early retirement and traveling the world!

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

Today we’ve got something new at Keep Thrifty - our first reader case study! One of our readers, Alex, reached out with the situation below. I’ll provide my response and some commentary. I encourage all of you to provide your thoughts in the comments section as well. Our collective wisdom can certainly provide Alex with some direction and hopefully help him make a thrifty decision!

Here’s Alex’s situation:

I inherited a house, sold it, and netted 338,000. I maxed my Roth IRA out at 5500. And stashed enough away into emergency reserves. Now I have 300,000 to invest. But I am grappling with using half of that to purchase a 300k house. I don’t have the income to finance 80%. Typically houses don’t yield as much as long-term stock investments. I own 2 vehicles outright and I am debt free. I’d be interested in your perspective.

After talking with Alex further, I got clarification that the home purchase would be for personal use, not for rental income.

My Analysis

First off, kudos to Alex for maxing out his Roth IRA and topping off his emergency fund. The tax benefits of a Roth IRA are definitely worth taking advantage of if he wasn’t already getting there. Ensuring he’s got a healthy emergency fund is a wise move before any major investing.

That leaves us with the big question of buying half of a house (financing the rest) versus investing the amount (presumably in something like passive index funds).

Let’s take the home purchase on first.

The Case For Buying a House

If Alex’s goal has been to get into personal home-ownership, I certainly see the allure of putting a portion of the inheritance toward home ownership.

In Alex’s part of the country, $300k can easily get him a 1700-square-foot home (or more) with a pool and a great location.

Financing $150k with 30-year mortgage rates in the low 4% range would give a monthly payment of about $700-$750, which is a fraction of comparable rents in his area for similar houses.

Getting into a situation where he’s building equity and having a nice living situation for low monthly cost certainly has its appeal.

But having some appeal doesn’t necessarily make it the right move. Let’s check the flip side.

The Case Against Buying a House

Alex is currently renting and it seems to be working ok for him. Putting his money into a personal home has a number of limitations that are worth considering.

First, there’s liquidity. While Alex has built up his emergency fund (which is a big help here), homes aren’t very liquid. If Alex finds himself in a situation where he needs to move or needs to free up more money, he’s going to be in the position of selling his home under pressure.

In the case he needs to sell, Alex may not get the price he wants in the timeline he’s looking for and could risk getting a lower sale price and/or being unable to sell in time for his needs altogether.

Second, there’s return on investment. Typically, people comparing real estate investing with stock investing are in the business of real estate rentals. Rental properties have monthly cash flow and the chance for value appreciation over time.

A personal home doesn’t have true monthly cash flow, so the investment upside is limited to value appreciation. As the experts will tell you, most home value appreciation is due to inflation anyway, so as an investment strategy, home-buying is a pretty poor choice.

Another Option

One of the items Alex highlighted in his scenario was the fact that he’s debt-free. The fact he took the time to mention this lets me know that this is something he’s proud of and is valuable to him. It sounds like Alex wants to get into home ownership at some point, but his $300k home idea would be a step in the wrong direction.

Whenever presented with two options that you don’t love, it’s always worth exploring if there are other options available. Fortunately, there’s another option here that I think is worth considering.

My big question to Alex was, why a $300k house?

As I mentioned earlier, $300k would buy a 1700-square foot house in Alex’s area. With 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and a pool, Alex would be living the high life.

With just a minute of searching, I was able to find an 1100-square foot home with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms (but no pool) listed for $150k. By sacrificing a small amount of space (and his own personal pool), Alex could buy the house outright, still invest $150k into index funds, and get the best of both worlds.

He’d have no rent payment, no mortgage payment, and know that he should be getting a good return on investment from stocks over his 40+ year time horizon.

With his reduced monthly costs, he’s in a better position in case of job loss or other financial hardship and having $150k in passive investments working for him should ensure he’s got a liquid secondary emergency fund.

My Recommendation

Were I in Alex’s situation, that’s the route I’d go - buying a smaller place outright and putting the rest into investments.

That said, a lot of this has to do with my personality. I’m not a fan of debt but want to be a homeowner as a part of my pathway to complete payment freedom.

If Alex is open to taking on more debt or is comfortable renting for the long-haul, putting a higher share of the $300k (or all of it) in passive index funds is the strategy that is most likely to bring higher returns.

What Do You Think?

What would you do if you were in Alex’s situation? Do you have an Option D that I didn’t think of? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below!

P.S. I’d like to give a big thanks to Alex for reaching out with his scenario. If you have a scenario you’d like to hear our thoughts on, sign up for our newsletter below and let us know!

Going to college and getting a degree doesn’t guarantee you to a job offer. What do you do if you find yourself in this position? Amanda found herself jobless after college, here’s how she found her own path to success!

My Pathway to Success Disappeared

All my life, I had a simple formula, a simple direction to follow. I was told to go to college, get a job, make money. Simple, right? I followed this path somewhat blindly. I didn’t really think about the future, I just did what I was told to do.

When I graduated, I faced a different reality. It was 2010, the economy was suffering. No one was hiring. I found myself with no money, no prospects for gaining an income, and no skills (or so I thought).

I found myself in the middle of an existential crisis. My pathway literally disappeared. Everything I had been told to do in order to be a successful adult no longer applied. I started suffering from panic attacks and a total lack of direction and purpose.

I spent my first six months after graduation in a dark place, unsure of how to move forward. Luckily, during this time, a friend handed me The Art of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebeau. It was this book that helped me realize that there is more than one path in life. I didn’t have to live the way it had been prescribed to me. I could make my own decisions, including working for myself or traveling the world. I could design my own life.

I had no idea what I wanted my life to look like or what I wanted to do, but for the first time I realized that I had the power to create my own path.

Creating My Own Financial Path

After reading that book, I took a chance and looked into freelance writing. I had always wanted to be a writer, maybe I could get paid a little to write while I look for a full time job. One of the writing gigs I landed was looking for personal finance articles. Unfortunately, I knew nothing about money, but I told myself:

“Whatever dream life I come up with in the future - it’s going to cost money, so I better figure it out. If I get paid for these articles, then I’m getting paid to research personal finance topics and teach myself.”

And so began my obsession with learning about money! As I wrote articles from my research, I shared my own financial journey on my blog and eventually landed a full time job as a recruiter.

During my day job I interviewed people for jobs within Fortune 500 companies. I was literally spending my days with people who’d been laid off and had no money. To top it off, the companies were also in a financial bind because they were trying to recover from the economy. This opened my eyes to the reality that working for someone else doesn’t mean you have financial security. I stayed in this job for two years while my blog and freelance gigs were growing.

While I was thankful for my full time work, I was becoming burnt out. I wanted to quit my job and turn my blog into my full time income. I just wasn’t sure how to make this happen! In December of 2013, I hired a business coach to help me monetize the brand I had worked so hard to build. I think I literally paid her my entire emergency fund at the time to take this risk!

This was a really hard leap to take. I feared that I wouldn’t make the money back, but I pushed myself to get over my fear and change my mindset so I could move forward. The risk paid off and I quit my job six months later!

That success was followed by writing a bestselling book, rebranding my business, coaching others, landing corporate writing gigs, and then landing influencer campaigns. It’s been five years; I love what I do and am earning four times more than when I was a recruiter.

How I did it without being frugal

The idea of scrimping, saving, and living frugally never inspired me. I tried it, and it only got me so far. I want to have fun and own nice things. I also like paying for convenience. For me, gaining financial security is all about my income. If I want something I can’t afford, I just figure out how to make more money to pay for it! This is how:

First, Be Intentional: I’ve always been clear about what things matter to me and what don’t. I don’t care about owning a car; but I love healthy food, fitness classes, and getting a massage once in a while. I don’t spend my money on the things I don’t care about.

Second, Grow Your Potential: Once I landed my job, I was still living with my parents. This allowed me to dump the money I made into my business, allowing it to grow and earn more money.

Third, Take Risks: If I wanted something - like to visit a friend in Mexico (which I did) - then I would force myself to find the money. I’d take small risks (book the plane ticket, put something on a credit card) to force myself to find the money.

With time, I started to realize I can earn whatever I want because there is no limit to my earning potential whereas there is only so much I can save before life starts to suck. I’ve also used credit card points (haven’t paid for a flight in years) and would AirBnB or crash with friends.

I’m loving my life in Miami. Every day I get to wake up to a view of Biscayne Bay and do work that I love. Running my own business has been a dream come true - a dream I never realized I had. And I’m excited to continue down this path. My next goal is to become a seven figure business, helping others create their dream life, and booking a trip to London to visit a friend!

Thank you to Amanda for sharing her story! I love that she took small risks and found the money to be able to follow through on her dreams. I look forward to watching Amanda continue to thrive in entrepreneurship and taking that trip to London!

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

Young & Full Of Fear

I’ve been dreaming of traveling internationally for a long time. When Chris and I got married we traveled to the Dominican Republic for our honeymoon. We stayed at an all inclusive resort and never left the premises. That was 2008 (I was 23 years old) and I was terrified of going out on excursions or walking off the resort to explore the rest of the island. I guess it didn’t help that when we took the bus to our resort we passed men in the trees and on the streets with rifles in hand. That scared the shit out of me (excuse my language).

I had read many stories of people leaving their resorts in foreign countries only to end up with life threatening illnesses or disappearing. To say that fear ruled my decision making at the time is an understatement. I even refused to step in the ocean! (Do we look young in this picture, or what! That’s me after half a bottle of wine! haha)

I loved our honeymoon, but living in fear is no way to live. There is so much more to life! As I’ve grown up, I realize that so much of life is out of my hands, that I have to live my best life without regrets. I have to smile, laugh, do silly things, and take risks. I don’t want to refuse to get on a plane because I’m afraid it’s going to crash. I don’t want to be afraid of visiting Europe because there may be a bomb on a train. And I don’t want to refuse to eat fresh fruit in a third world country because I may ingest something that will make me sick. That doesn’t mean I want to be reckless. I want to research, learn, explore, and have faith that everything will be an amazing!

Picking Costa Rica

When Chris took his one year mini-retirement, we decided to stay in our town and live life, but when we talked about possibly extending the retirement a second year I wanted our family to take an adventure! I talked Chris into living in Costa Rica for nine months!

Why Costa Rica? Honestly, I don’t know. I wanted to go somewhere tropical with warm winters. Costa Rica just stuck out in my mind. I was determined to figure out all the logistics. I researched towns, schools, homeschooling, cost of living, border runs, health insurance, and even signed up for Trusted Housesitters to see if we could house sit instead of renting!

In the end, Chris wasn’t ready to take such a big leap. He needed to get his feet wet first. We canceled our idea of living in Costa Rica for nine months but agreed to travel to Costa Rica for our ten year wedding anniversary!!!!

I had no idea where in Costa Rica to go. I did a random google search for a small resort near the beach. Google directed me to The Harmony Hotel. I instantly fell in love with the small boutique hotel located in Nosara, CR. After further research, I learned that Nosara is a small surfer/yoga beach town with dirt roads far from any major city! It was perfect! I told Chris and we booked it right away!

Ten Years Older & Throwing My Fear To The Wind

Getting off the plane in Costa Rica was surreal for me. I was so excited to be exploring a new country with my husband! After navigating customs, we took a 2.5 hour shuttle ride to Nosara, walked up to our hotel with our 2 backpacks (I love being a minimalist!) and were greeted with mint lemonade (so yummy). Chris even surprised me with a bottle of red wine and a plate of brownies waiting for us in our room (My husband knows me well!).

Our Lazy Days: The next four days were spent wandering the dirt streets, walking the beach, lounging by the pool, and playing a board game each evening in our room while snacking on the most delicious homemade chocolate peanut butter treats from the mini bar! We loved soaking up the sun and enjoying the slow pace of Costa Rica together!

Our Excursion: I told Chris I wanted to go zip-lining while in Costa Rica and toss my fear to the wind! That is something my 23 year old self never would have done! It was a crazy adrenaline inducing adventure that bonded Chris and I with the other people on the tour with whom we are now blessed to call friends! When we returned to our resort my adrenaline crashed and I passed out hard on a lounge chair by the pool!

Amazing Eats: We loved the food in Nosara! We ventured out on the dirt roads and stopped at different restaurants. We grabbed awesome pizza at Pura Pizza run by a true Italian, had an amazing salad at Cafe de Paris, and ate the yummiest vegan friendly dishes at Robin’s Cafe. Chris even fell in love with the local dish - Casado (rice, beans, chicken, and fried plantain, ordering it for dinner three different nights.

Exploring Beyond: One day we tracked down a Tuk Tuk so we could explore Central Nosara. Our driver happily dropped us off and agreed to pick us back up in an hour. We visited the local supermarket where we had to leave our bag in a locker outside, walked the food isles on the main level and wandered the upstairs filled with shoes and household supplies! Our driver picked us up an hour and a half later right where he had dropped us off!

Before we knew it, it was our last day in Costa Rica. The rain came and we relaxed in the open air lobby listening to the rain while drinking coffee and sketching up designs of our little white shack. It was the perfect way to end our stay in Nosara - relaxing and dreaming of our future!

Slowing Down In Order To Dream Together

Traveling to Costa Rica started as my dream. I wanted an adventure. I wanted to explore and face my fears.

But when you are married your partner may not share your dream. Chris didn’t want to navigate a nine month trip in another country like I did.

This was really frustrating. I even questioned if we could keep moving forward together. We had been married for nine and a half years! Were we starting to want different things out of life? This question made me sad. The thing I wanted most out of life was my husband.

Knowing that, I gave up on a nine month trip to Costa Rica. I was devastated, but I didn’t want to push us to do something that we didn’t both want! When I let go of that dream, Chris offered the idea of going to Costa Rica for our ten year wedding anniversary! I was ecstatic about this and had our hotel picked out and booked within 24 hours! (Yes, I’m super spontaneous!)

We entered this adventure and ten year celebration really thankful. I was thankful that Chris was willing to explore Costa Rica. Chris was thankful that I made the trip a reality! This only strengthened our love for each other!

To make things even more exciting, Chris fell in love with Costa Rica just as much as I did. Now we both want to return for a longer period of time with our girls! What started as my dream is slowly becoming our dream - which is way better! I just had to wait for Chris’s vision to catch up to my own so that we could create an even better vision together!

Traveling to Nosara, Costa Rica was about celebrating our marriage. A marriage where we put each other first and slow down for each other. In doing so, we found ourselves wandering the beautiful dirt roads, overcoming fears, and looking forward to a future that includes a family adventure to Costa Rica in the near future!

We fell in love with Nosara because it warmed our hearts, forced us to slow down and face our fears, and reminded us that an adventure is best taken when Chris and I are a team!

We’ve got an awesome freedom story today from Claudia at Two Cup House. They found their way to debt freedom and are now on their way to achieving the financial freedom they dreamed about back in 2015!

Building Normal Debt

When you graduate from college, you find yourself eager to live a grown-up life. You start your career and start spending all your money to create that picture of what you think life is supposed to be like. The student loans you have - you can just pay the minimums. No need to sacrifice your ability to make that perfect picture a reality! Bring on the home mortgage, new cars, and awesome furniture.

That’s what we did! We financed our college education, landed jobs in stable fields, bought new cars, a house (1,500 square feet & remodeled it), furniture, and ate out all the time. We were living the normal American life with over $200,000 of “normal” debt.

• Credit Card Debt: $16,515
• Mortgage: $156,013
• Student Loans: $36,079

Realizing We Didn’t Want Normal Debt

About ten years later in April of 2015, we found two blogs that got us thinking differently. John and David of the Debt Free Guys paid off a ton of debt and Carl of 1500 Days was pursuing financial independence so he could quit his job – both were (and continue to be) inspiring for us.

We had dreamed about getting out of debt. Then our eyes opened to the possibility of downsizing to a lower-maintenance home and traveling the US to visit all the national parks.

While we had the inspiration, we weren’t on a fast track to change. We experienced some health troubles that made us realize how short life could be. Fortunately, the health issues dissipated, but our desire for financial freedom didn’t. We didn’t want to wait around to see if our health issues resurfaced. We would have to make change happen NOW!

Achieving Debt Freedom

Inspired by 1500 Days, we decided we were going to pay off all of our debt and achieve financial freedom in 1,500 days. If this plan sounds half-baked, that’s because it was. At the time we made this decision, it was April 2015 and we had more than $200,000 in debt!

We forged ahead with our half-baked plan. We needed to get out of debt fast! Our first step was to eliminate our mortgage. We put our house on the market and planned to pay for a tiny home with the equity from the sale. Our second step was to pay off the rest of our debt. In order to do this, I applied for a full-time job and Garrett spent a lot more time on his commission-based sales job. We also cut expenses, including food and utilities. Every little bit helped us save more money to pay off our debt faster.

We listed our house and while we waited for the sale to go through, we worked on paying off our credit card debt. After six months, we were credit card debt free, but hadn’t been able to sell our house. This was frustrating as we were excited to move on. So the next month, we took out a small mortgage and moved. It was another six months before the house sold and an additional six months before we were completely mortgage free. With a lot of dedication, in March of 2017 we paid the last of our student loans and became officially debt free two years after we started this journey (about 730 days).

Tackling Complete Financial Freedom

The second half of our dream is to become financially free. Since paying off all of our debt, this dream has evolved. Instead of focusing on retiring early, we are focusing more on doing work that matters and spending more time outdoors. Right now we are trying to balance enjoying this life and creating the flexibility that financial freedom affords.

For now, we are loving our tiny home and have adapted to it quite quickly. Sure, it has its challenges, but every housing situation does. Living in a “tiny” house is a dream come true because it’s low-cost, low-maintenance, and affords us tons of time to spend outdoors hiking and kayaking.

As we look to the future, financial freedom or having enough money to make a change in our lifestyle is still the goal. We’re constantly trying to make smarter decisions on how we spend our money and time so that we can work less, earn more, and travel in a location-independent fashion. I know that we’ll get there, maybe even within our half-baked 1,500 day goal (about 300 days left to go).

Once we reach financial freedom we’ll be free to focus more on our passion projects and then who knows what will happen!

Advice For Others Jumping Into Lifestyle Changes

Enjoy The Journey: One thing I wish we had done differently is focus more on enjoying the journey. We’ve had a blast so far, but there were times that we worked tons of extra hours to get to debt freedom faster. Sometimes it’s OK to slow down and enjoy the view.

Find Your Tribe: Personal finance bloggers inspired us to dream big and pushed us to take action, so without them, I don’t think we would have made the progress we’ve made. An added benefit is that bloggers who were our accountability partners throughout this journey have become good friends.

Thank you to Claudia for sharing their journey with us. It’s amazing how much you can change your life when you find the inspiration, create a plan, and start making the necessary changes right away! We’re looking forward to seeing you accomplish complete financial freedom and checking off the rest of your national parks list!

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

Our mini-retirement was an incredible year of travel, family time, and personal growth. Beyond the amazing experiences we had, we learned so much about ourselves, our dreams, and where we hope to direct our lives in the future.

But taking a year off of work doesn’t come without a cost. Was it worth it?

Let’s take a look at the numbers and you can be the judge.

Planned Mini-Retirement Budget

Before we started our mini-retirement, we analyzed our spending in Thrifty to get an idea of what we’d be spending. We used the data from two years of spending, along with our projections about how our spending in Mini-Retirement would be different to come up with a detailed budget for the full year.

Our mini-retirement budget totaled up to just over $60k ($60,206.88 to be exact).

Changes In Course

A proper budget reinforces your priorities through a financial plan (Tweet this )

Our original budget captured our intentions and priorities for the year. As the year progressed, we had two opportunities arise that fit our goals and were worth deviating from the budget.

Had we known of these ahead of time, we would have built them in :)

First, we bought land in our town. A low-cost piece of land (roughly 40% the cost of most other lots) was listed in our area with the benefit of no deed restrictions. That meant we could build a small, cozy home of our dreams in the community we love. We jumped on the opportunity and happily got the land at the listing price.

Second, we decided to travel to Hawaii. This was one of 4 states we hadn’t visited yet as a family and we were looking for a way to break out of winter in the midwest. We loved the aloha spirit we found there and the trip gave us clarity on the life of travel we wanted to create.

Actual Mini-Retirement Spending

Because our land purchase is a non-depreciating purchase and helps us toward payment freedom, we don’t include it in our actual spending. We think the same way about principal payments on a mortgage.

Here’s the detailed comparison of what we planned to spend with what we actually did, excluding our land and Hawaii trip spending.

Excluding our Hawaii trip and land purchase, we were about $900 over budget. Adding in our Hawaii spending and our total spend for the year was $69,966.48.

A couple notable lessons from our spending and budget:

• We forgot to include the pro-rated property tax from the sale of our home in our original budget - that was about $3,000 of expense.
• We didn’t realize how much less we’d spend on transportation. Without a daily commute (even though it was only 8 miles), we saved a bunch on gas. This also led to savings on maintenance as well!
• We put $2,000 in an unassigned category in our budget - this gave us flexibility for unexpected purchases, like buying Jaime and our oldest daughter bicycles, etc.

Total Mini-Retirement Cost (Cash and Net Worth Impact)

So, the total cost for one year of mini-retirement for our family was $69,966.48.

Or was it?

One way to look at the cost of the mini-retirement is to look at the total spending for our year. But another way would be to look at the impact on our net worth.

After all, during this year, we did earn some freelance income, received a payout from my old employer, and our investments continued to grow.

Our net worth actually increased by 1.55% during our mini-retirement! (Tweet this )

So, in one way of looking at it, we actually made money during our mini-retirement.

That’s the power of investing, friends. All those years of savings are paying off with financial momentum!

Our net worth certainly would have been much higher if I had continued working and making contributions to our investments, but it’s amazing to think that we made it through the year with our net worth increasing!

Was It Worth It?

Through the mini-retirement, I got a chance to try my hand at entrepreneurship, which had been a lifelong dream. I discovered what parts worked (and which parts didn’t) for me and ultimately decided that heading back into the workforce was the right fit.

As a family, I got to take my kids to school and home almost every day, volunteer more in the classroom, and do a bunch of travel (a road trip to the northeastern US, two weeks in Hawaii, a trip to Florida, and our 10-year anniversary trip to Costa Rica).

Now, I’ve landed a remote software developer job that I’m super excited about. This job should give us work-life balance and flexibility to travel, all while letting me pursue a career path that I’ve been excited about for a long time.

As one of my good friends coached me (during one of my more stressful moments in the job search), “If you spent the last year and figured out what you really want in life, you’ve gained something that most people will never achieve. That’s worth every penny.”

We plan to stay in our community in Wisconsin, build our tiny white shack and focus on building a life focused on faith, positive family routines, and lots of adventure.

So yes, this year was absolutely worth it. We’ve got an exciting vision for the future and are so excited for the next chapter in our life!

Note: I wrote this post June 6, 2018 sitting at my computer in the kitchen while my husband was in bed in the middle of a nervous breakdown about our financial future. I needed to put my thoughts to paper. I needed to write down my lack of fear so that I could share it with my husband in the hopes that my faith would lift him up. At the time, we didn’t know what our life would look like on September 4, 2018 - life is good, everything worked out. But first - the prequel, the hardship, the darkness before the light:

A Naive Little Girl’s Dream

When I was a little girl, I never thought about money. I thought about things I wanted, things I enjoyed, but I never related it to money. Maybe I was naive. Actually, I know I was. I always have been - looking at the world and seeing potential without seeing the struggles that may lie beneath those amazing visions.

When I was about 6 years old, my family rented the lower level of a home. It was a modest house that my parents turned into their home. I remember dancing in the living room with my mom to an Amy Grant song and holding barbie fashion competitions with my family. I remember cuddling up to watch Full House and the coziness of the comforter my mom made for my bed. It was a wonderful home full of love. It never dawned on me that we might be poor.

My parents were struggling financially. My dad had dreamed of running his own grocery store and he was finally granted his wish. We moved into this little white home and my dad opened his grocery store! I remember being at the grand opening and seeing the excitement on everyone’s faces, but the joy of a dream fulfilled didn’t last. The business struggled and before long, the reality that this career path was falling apart hit hard. With three little girls to care for, rent to pay, and food to put on the table, I can’t imagine the fear my dad felt when he closed the doors to what was supposed to be the answer to his success.

At some point during this season in my family’s life, I remember turning to my mom and saying, “Someday, I want to live in a little white house with the love of my life.” I meant it with all my heart and my mom’s response didn’t make sense to me. She said, “Ok, Jaime. Just know that having some money makes life a lot easier.”

I tossed my mom’s response to the wind. Who needs money! All I need is love! That was the smartest and most naive thought I’ve probably ever had. My dream was simple and filled with all that is truly important in life. If only life were that simple. As I’ve grown-up I still hold true to my statement, but I’m starting to understand what my mom was trying to tell me twenty-six years ago.

Still Naively Confident

A year ago my husband had a stable job while I was home with our three daughters. We had a nice house and more than enough money to live on. We had a comfortable life, but we wanted the dream.

We dreamed of Chris working on his own business from home and having more time for family adventures. Summer of 2017 we made the leap to make our dreams a reality - Chris left his job, we sold our home, and moved into an apartment. I couldn’t have been more excited for our future. We even found land where we could build my dream little home, nicknamed The Little White Shack.

Money wasn’t a concern when Chris left his job. We had more than enough cash from selling our home. Our finances weren’t a concern for me. Making our dreams come true had taken center stage and I was ready to forge ahead.

While my naive self has been able to stay positive, my husband has found himself consumed with worry. Losing his stable paycheck hit him harder than he thought it would. In order to combat his concern, he started working around the clock to make his business successful. His hard work hasn’t created the outcome he had wished. He is feeling defeated and questioning if this year was a mistake. With three little girls to care for, rent to pay, and food to put on the table, his fear of failure has completely overtaken him.

I try to comfort my husband. I tell him, “We are OK. Everything will work out. Good things are coming.” I wish my words had more impact, that they would allow him to catch his breath and relax. Instead, he responds, “I wish I felt that way, but I feel like our money is disappearing. I need a job. I want a career I will find success and purpose in.”

I sit here, in this moment, and my mom’s words come back to me - that money makes life easier. I think back to the struggles my parents went through and I look at the struggle my husband is going through. And I think - Yes, having money (an active income) does make life easier. And while my heart is breaking for my husband, my naive self is still strong.

Filled With Faith

I may be naive, blind to the realities and struggles of this life, but I still believe in our dreams, even as they are crumbling. I still believe that love (not money) is the answer. I have faith that everything will work out, that we will still accomplish an amazing work/life balance and have amazing family adventures. I am confident that everything will come together.

How can I be so confident in our future? How am I able to move forward and not worry?

To be honest, I feel completely helpless in moving forward in our future. I have no answers. I don’t know which way to go. I’ve tried to plan a nine-month adventure in Central America. That path crumbled. I’ve tried to embrace our cold winters. I’ve crumbled. Chris tried entrepreneurship and crumbled. Chris tried to go back to his old work to find out that his old path no longer existed. I’ve tried to move our family to Florida, but I couldn’t make it happen. We’ve wanted to build a home, but a lack of a W-2 form prevents us from getting a mortgage. Everywhere we turn we hit a dead end.

I don’t know where our family is supposed to go. I don’t know what my husband is supposed to do or how to make him feel better. I literally don’t know where to turn. The paths we’ve tried to walk down don’t take us anywhere. I’m tired and don’t have the energy to try another path. The only thing I seem to be able to do is be still.

And in this stillness, I am finding comfort and hope. I’m realizing that I’m not naive, but full of faith. I have faith that everything will work out, that God is using this struggle, this fear of our money fading away, to strengthen us and lead us toward an even better path.

Now then, stand still and see this great thing the Lord is about to do before your eyes!
1 Samuel 12:16

I have faith in God’s love and in His plan for our life. I may not know what He wants for us, but I know it’s going to be great. And with this knowledge, I’m able to persevere and patiently await the path that will lead to our dreams coming true.