How Elisabeth built a minimalist lifestyle with less stuff and more freedom / 75

When we think about “rich” experiences, it’s easy to assume they have to come with a high price tag. But this week’s guest, Elisabeth Frost, has built a life that challenges that idea in the best way.

Elisabeth is a lifestyle blogger, budget traveler, and longtime thrifter currently spending three and a half months traveling across Europe with her husband and two kids — carry-on only. In this episode, we talk about the systems and mindset shifts that help her family travel affordably, live more minimally, and make intentional financial decisions without feeling deprived.

We also get into the choices that helped Elisabeth and her husband pay off their house in just seven years, why she approaches secondhand shopping strategically, and the reminder we all probably need sometimes: spending more money doesn’t automatically create better memories.

✨ Episode Highlights ✨

• [02:10] What it’s actually like raising kids with a minimalist and frugal lifestyle
• [03:20] How Elisabeth’s family travels internationally on a budget
• [05:15] The first thing they prioritize when planning affordable trips
• [07:05] Why setting a hard accommodation budget helps them avoid overspending
• [09:15] The simple travel habits that save their family money on food and activities
• [12:00] How free museum days and off-peak tickets dramatically cut travel costs
• [16:10] Why some of their kids’ favorite travel memories were completely free
• [20:00] Elisabeth’s “everything needs a home” rule for thrifting and minimalism
• [27:00] The difference between thrift stores and consignment shops — and how to shop both intentionally
• [35:20] The biggest decisions that helped Elisabeth and her husband pay off their mortgage in seven years

✨ Resources ✨

• Elisabeth’s blog: The Optimistic Musings of a Pessimist
• Elisabeth’s Patreon community: Lighthouse Keepers

📩 Get The Finance Girlies newsletter: 
https://www.thefinancegirlies.com/newsletter

💻Visit The Finance Girlies website: 
https://www.thefinancegirlies.com/

💖Email us your money questions: 
hello@thefinancegirlies.com

📸Follow us on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/thefinancegirlies/

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Hey girlies, today's guest is Elizabeth Frost. She is an entrepreneur and lifestyle blogger living in rural Nova Scotia, Canada, where she writes about everyday life, gratitude, and her latest thrifted treasures. She is a devoted budget traveler who loves exploring the world for as little money as possible. And when we talked to Elizabeth, she was actually in Helsinki on an extended trip with her husband and kids.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

In this episode, we talk about what it's like traveling on a budget with two kids, Elizabeth's love of thrifting, and the steps she took to pay off her house at Nova Scotia in just seven years. Welcome to the Finance Girlies, a podcast for millennial and Gen Z women who are curious about money but have never quite felt at home in traditional finance spaces.

SPEAKER_03 0:48

We are Emily Backdorf and Cassidy Horton, podcast host, longtime friends, and finance writers for brands like AOL and Yahoo Finance.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Rather than giving you prescriptive advice, we talk about money the way friends actually do. Stories, questions, and a lot of figuring it out in real time. And as a reminder, this episode is brought to you by us. We have no sponsors, so if you want to support the Finance Girlies and earn our undying love and eternal appreciation, you can become an insider for just five dollars a month, or basically one dollar twenty-five cents a week. You'll help us keep the podcast ad-free. And you'll get one insiders only episode every month. We'll put a link to become an insider in the show notes.

SPEAKER_03 1:29

Okay. Elizabeth, first of all, thank you so much for coming on our podcast. The first question we have for you is what's been your experience raising kids with such a frugal lifestyle? Because Emily and I don't have children, but we have heard that when you have a kid, they end up with so much stuff, no matter how careful you are about it beforehand. So can you speak to what that experience has been like?

SPEAKER_02 1:50

Yeah, so definitely no doubt that kids attract stuff. Our family isn't immune to that. I think overall we live a fairly minimalistic lifestyle. So our kids have never had a lot of big, clunky toys that take a lot of space. Our son loves Lego, so we have a very healthy Lego collection. I think the bigger thing is just that frugality's kind of always been normal to them. So it's not something that we introduced, it's just how we live life. On my end, it's tricky because I am a minimalist, and so I would love to just take a garbage bag and get rid of a lot of odds and ends that mean something to them. But my kids are their own people and they deserve to have things that matter to them. So I think it's gotten a little easier for me as they've gotten older because they can make decisions a little bit more independently, so and they don't necessarily want to keep all the little things that come into the house. And there are a lot of things that come into the house, admittedly. But I don't know. I I don't feel like our kids have an overwhelming amount of stuff because that's just not how we live either. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 3:02

That makes sense. Yeah, totally. I I do have one follow-up question. So you're currently like we are recording this episode. You're in Helsinki at the moment. Correct. How do you typically travel? Like, are do your kids have a carry-on that they're allowed to fill up with stuff? Is it a normal size suitcase? Like how much stuff are they do they have with them to take to different places?

SPEAKER_02 3:25

Carry-on only. So yeah, we have four carry-on suitcases for the four of us, and we each have a book bag, and that's it for three and a half months. So it's um tight living. But the most effective way to travel around. So we we did um a one-week road trip. It was about 24 hours of driving, 2200 kilometers. And there's no way that we could have done something like that with a rental car if we'd had full-size luggage. So because of how we want to travel, we really do have to travel very lightly. And it's the only way that we travel. Like we never we never check bags when we travel. So the kids are used to that, but we have to be pretty selective about what souvenirs we pick up, that's for sure. So everything that we've collected along the way has been very small and compact.

SPEAKER_03 4:13

You mentioned like traveling for three months. Is that typically your cadence? Like you'll go out and travel for three months.

SPEAKER_02 4:19

No, not at all. So so normally we we call a little rural town in Nova Scotia home. So if you guys are in the US, probably most of your listeners are in the U.S. It's kind of southeast of Maine, where we are in Canada. So we live there. This is a really unique season of life. So we're gonna be in 15 countries in less than four months.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 4:41

So we're in Helsinki right now for about a month, but we've actually already spent a whole month in Vienna already. So tomorrow's the halfway point of our trip overseas. But we've gone to like so many, so many other countries, and we still have lots to go. So my husband's Portuguese. He was raised in Canada, but he's worked internationally his whole life. So we're in the process of getting dual citizenship for our kids, and international travel is just something that we really valued as part of their education. And this specific year was kind of the last easy window we had to do something like this as a family. So our daughter's 15 and finishing up grade nine, which at least where we live in Canada is a bit of a transition year. So after this, it would get a lot harder to step away from the school system for a period of time. We'll be back, we arrive back in Canada in June, and then she'll be able to finish out high school as per normal in Nova Scotia. So definitely not the norm.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Yeah, yeah. So let's talk a little bit more about travel because I think a lot of listeners will be curious about how you manage to make such big trips happen. So when you're traveling on a small budget, what is your starting point when you are thinking about planning a trip?

SPEAKER_02 5:57

Always the flights. The flights always come first, at least for us. My husband travels a lot for work with Air Canada. We don't have a lot of options for airlines where we're flying out of in Nova Scotia. So he has airline status with they're called the Star Star Alliance Group. And that gives us access to these special rewards with Aeroplan. So that's just Air Canada's reward system. So we're able to stretch our points quite a bit further than sort of normal. So we'll come up with a few destination options and then we usually just pick based on costs. So a couple of years ago, we wanted to go to Portugal over the kids' spring break, but the flights were really expensive. So we plugged a couple of other destinations in, one of them being Paris, which was another spot we'd wanted to go to. And we ended up getting round trip tickets for 550 Canadian. So that's about 400 US. Your exchange rate is a lot better than ours. And um the retail value of the same tickets was about $7,000. So it was a no-brainer for us. It was like, okay, I guess we're going to Paris for spring break, which was awesome. Not a bad, not a bad destination. Um, and we ended up going to Portugal another time when the tickets were cheaper. So I actually break this down quite a bit further on my blog. So for Paris, Barcelona, and Portugal, I have posts that break down the exact cost of each of those trips. So what we spend on flights, accommodations, food, activities, miscellaneous, all that sort of stuff. So if anybody listening to this is interested in a few more specifics, that's a really good reference point. But flights are the biggest thing we leverage in terms of savings. And then after that, it would be accommodations. So we try to balance a good location with a good price. So we don't want to be too far out of the downtown core, but we're happy to stay slightly outside of the center if we're close to good public transit. And that usually comes with really big cost savings. So when we're looking for accommodations, we'll always look for access to trams or subway stops.

SPEAKER_03 8:01

Okay. So it sounds like transportation might then be like the third one. It's like, what is our location in relation to public transportation? So we're not like renting a car potentially or getting Ubers and things like that.

SPEAKER_02 8:13

Yeah. Yeah. So we'll pick the flight, we'll get a destination, and then we'll bring up, you know, booking.com or we'll be looking at hotels or Airbnb and look at a few options in within our price point. So that's another thing that we usually do when we're looking for accommodations, is we'll set a max budget, which you can do in almost any of those programs when you're looking for. So it can be hard to turn down what looks like a really great apartment if it's come across your radar. But if we've set a cap and we never see that perfect apartment, we don't know it exists. So we usually have a pretty hard cap for our budget. And then we look within that, and that's when we'd factor in, you know, maybe there's two or three places that we can get that are within the price point that we're looking for. But one of them is a kilometer from a subway stop and the other one's 200 meters. Um, and in that case, we would be more likely to pick one that's that's more conveniently located to public transit.

SPEAKER_03 9:13

Are there things when you're traveling that you are always willing to spend money on? Like, where do you find that most of your money is going to outside of lights and accommodations?

SPEAKER_02 9:25

I feel like it's probably a pretty even split between things like food and activities. Food ads up so fast when you're on the road. And it's it's one of the areas where we save a lot of money, I think, because we tend to make a lot of our own food or we'll bring our own snacks, or we'll buy grocery store food, for example. Like maybe we're not able to come up with a picnic ourselves, but we'll go to a grocery store instead of a restaurant and we'll pick up a prepared sandwich or we'll pick up fruit or things like that there. But food and activities, there's always some splurge that we're gonna make there. We're always looking to maximize the experience without overspending. And I think that if you put a little bit of intention into it, it's actually pretty easy to have a good balance with that. So back to our trip to Paris, one of the things that we really wanted to do was go to Disneyland Paris. So I'd never been to Disney in my life. Our kids have never been to Disney. So we wanted to go to Disney, which is never going to be a cheap outing. But if we went Tuesday through Thursday, the tickets were basically half the price of weekend tickets to Disney. And so we were on vacation. We weren't working around anybody's school or work schedules. And so we went during the week when the tickets were much less expensive. So it wasn't a cheap day by any stretch of the imagination, but we made a decision that made it very budget friendly. A lot of places in Europe, too, you're able to bring food in with you. So when we went to Disney, we took picnic lunches with us. We bought a little bit of food there, but very minimal. Thank goodness, because the food was so expensive within the park. So we spend money, we splurge, but even in the splurging, I feel like most of the time we're we're trying to find a little bit of a budget edge to things.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

I love the tip of just bringing food everywhere. That's something my husband and I try to do when we travel too. Especially, I find that like if you can eliminate even just the and it's hard to do, but if you can eliminate like airport meals, that's like a good chunk of your daily spending that it just it adds up so fast. So I love it's good to know that in Europe, a lot of places allow you to bring your own food and snacks because that is a huge cost savings. Yes. Yeah. So in addition to what you just mentioned with you know, cooking food, picnicking, that kind of thing. And then what you mentioned about your husband's air airfare status, what other travel habits have saved you the most money over time?

SPEAKER_02 12:05

One of the first things I do when I'm planning our itinerary is to do a quick Google search of when certain museums are going to be free, because at least in Europe, but I know this is the case in North America and in in some areas at least as well. There are usually days where entry's free. In Rome, for example, we timed our visit to the Vatican museums for the last Sunday of the month. We happened to be there the last Saturday of the month, or the last Sunday of the month, um, because entry was free that day. So I think tickets were normally 30 or 35 euros a piece. So right there we managed to save 60 euros. So I'll base itineraries around opportunities like that for cost savings. And we've done a lot of those free museums or days where the entry fee might be reduced. So, for example, here in Helsinki, there's a well-known science and technology museum. And I was researching it a couple of hours ago because I want to take my kids there. And Thursday evenings, the ticket prices are half the cost of what they would normally be. So it's like, okay, well, I guess next Thursday night we're gonna go to the science and tech museum. So I do that a lot, and that saves a lot of money.

SPEAKER_03 13:15

I feel like I'm getting a very clear picture of the mindset that you have going into a travel experience. And I really like what I'm hearing. I mean, first and foremost, the thing is like what I am learning is that if you just take the time to research a little bit, and if you're like, this is an experience that I 100% want to have, let me see if there is a way that I can have the same experience for maybe a little less money or potentially free or potentially half off or whatever, then you're still able to have the trip that you envisioned, but then you're not spending nearly as much money on it. And I can see already how all of these things, like choosing your destination based on flight prices, and then setting a hard cap for accommodations before you even start to look and you know, bringing food when it makes sense, like how all of these things kind of compound into this situation where you are able to save, I would imagine, literally thousands of dollars when you're traveling as a family, uh, than you would if you like didn't have this mindset, didn't do this research, and were just like, we're gonna pick the destination, it'll cost what it costs. It's fine. I feel like the way you think about it is so smart.

SPEAKER_02 14:25

Yeah, it definitely, and it doesn't, it doesn't have to take a lot of extra effort. It wasn't any harder for us to go to Disney on a Tuesday than it was for us to go to Disney on a Friday, but the cost was half. And I think sometimes too, we go into it thinking, well, if it costs more money, it has to be a better experience. So when we were spending a month in Vienna, one of the things I really wanted to do was go to see this light show in a famous church there called the Votive Church. And my daughter and I went, and when I was researching stuff online, I was willing to splurge and pay for the most expensive tickets, but I didn't really want to. And then I read some of the reviews, and everybody was saying the best seats are actually in the cheaper section. So you're further back in the church, but it means that you have the perspective of the entire church in front of you, where the expensive tickets are right at the very front, and you you actually have a very limited range of view. And so I was like, this is amazing. Not only am I getting the cheapest tickets available, but I'm actually getting the best experience too. Going to Disney, it's a lot less busy on a Tuesday than it is on a Friday, and I save money. So I I think sometimes people go into experiences, especially if it's a vacation, where they think, oh, well, if it costs more money, I should probably opt for that, that choice. Where I look at it and I try to balance the two. I mean, sometimes, yes, spending a little bit more money, you are gonna get a better service or a better product or a better experience. But a lot of the time that's not actually the case. So yeah, we go into it. I would say that we plan intentionally because we want to travel responsibly, we want to spend our money wisely, but we also want to have a really great time. And so I think that with a little bit of planning, we can get the best of the best of both worlds. And a lot of the things that we end up enjoying are free. So I'll look up things based on interests in our family. So we went to Barcelona a few years ago, and my daughter loves cacti. So we went to this huge cactus garden and it was so cool and it was free. Um, my son's 11 and he loves fancy cars, like loves fancy cars. So we'll go to like a high-end neighborhood or, you know, in every European city, there's some street where there's like Gucci and Louis Vuitton, and we don't buy anything there, but we'll sit on a bench and watch really expensive cars go by for free. And my son would do it for hours. Like he loves it. It's one of his favorite activities. If you asked him what his favorite thing we did in Paris was, he would say Disney first, and second, a very close second, would be watching cars. And it cost us zero dollars at any point to watch any of the cars. My husband and I really love impressionist art, especially Van Gogh. And so when we were in Paris, we took a train to Auvergne and we just got to see the landscapes that he painted at the end of his life. And it was really meaningful. We all loved the trip. And the only thing we spent money on was buying a pastry for everyone. Like there were no entry fees, it was included in our public transit pass. We took a picnic lunch. So it was this super special memory, but there was almost no cash outlay.

SPEAKER_03 17:33

Yeah, this is kind of reminding me. We interviewed someone on our podcast a few months ago, and she has a daughter who's maybe like four or five. And at the start of 2026, she was asking her daughter like what she wanted to do more of this year. And her daughter responded with, I want more cuddles and I want more free samples from Trader Joe's. And she was like, Okay, both of those are done. And I I think to your point, it's just such a reminder that if you have the financial means, and even if you don't have the financial means, I think it's so easy to be like, I want to spend all of my money on my kids so they have all these experiences. And it's such a good reminder that sometimes the things that are free, like going to a fancy neighborhood and looking at the fancy vehicles is really what's gonna delight them the most and stick with them the most, you know, when they're adults. And so such a good reminder that you don't have to spend a ton of money.

SPEAKER_02 18:28

And if you do like really big, exciting experiences every day, they're not as special either. And so we try to we try to have a couple of days. I mean, the it's a little different now because we're here for such an extended period. It's kind of we're living life. This isn't a this isn't a a vacation that we're just doing life in Europe for three and a half months. When you're on vacation, even even then it's nice to have a day where you don't do anything extravagant at all. And then if you do something really cool, like again, I keep coming back to Paris, but it's just such an iconic place. And it was one of the places that we took our kids. And we went to the top of the Arc de Triumph at sunset, and it was amazing. We were there when the Eiffel Tower turned on, and that stands out as this really big moment. But then the next day we kind of just wandered around the streets and didn't do anything spectacular that would that would stand out in in any particular way.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

This is reminding me, I have a friend who um she has done a couple of long-term trips with her family, and she has three kids. And they did, I think a couple of years ago, they did like three months in the UK. And of course, they did all these like, you know, fun, special outings every once in a while, but a lot of days they just like wandered around the parks in the village they were staying at, and like walked into town for a meal and just like enjoyed living there. And I think that was so much of the um like highlights of their trip. So that is such a good reminder. Switching gears a little bit, we know that you are a really big thrifter, so we have to ask you about it. Casty and I often joke that a lot of the items that end up in our own goodwill piles are often items that we've actually thrifted from goodwill. So it's like, you know, we bring them home and then we bring them back. So do you have a system or strategy when you go thrifting? And how do you make sure you're bringing home an item you'll actually use and enjoy? Okay.

SPEAKER_02 20:29

So one place that we thrift regularly has a return policy. Um, it's probably not widely available at at many thrift stores, but some thrift stores do have return policies. So that's something to consider. If you buy something, you know, you might have a two-week window. The store that we shop at a lot has a two-week window, but there's another store we occasionally go to that has a 30-day return policy. So that's that's one thing. So sometimes when we buy, when we make a decision, it doesn't actually have to be a final purchase. More generally, I guess I approach secondhand shopping, which to be honest is most of my shopping. I approach it as lower stakes, I guess. It's obviously real money and we're spending real money. But if something doesn't work out, I just don't feel quite as guilty. And if there's something that I'm gonna return, there's a goodwill place in our town that we go to a lot or a nearby town that we go to a lot that when you take in um a bag for donation, you get a 20% off coupon. So I don't go out of my way to, you know, buy something I'm not gonna use. But if I pick up something and it's like, oh, this doesn't work, or maybe I bought something for the kitchen and it doesn't actually fit into the drawer like I thought it would, I don't lose a lot of sleep over it. And I will take it back to the place where I'm gonna be able to get a 20% off coupon. If it's something like clothes and I don't end up using it a lot, I could take it to a consignment store and then potentially make money on it. Or I'll often exchange clothes with um a couple. My friends who are also thrifters, so we'll we'll we'll hand things back and forth. One of the few dresses I brought to Europe is actually one that a friend gave to me, so I paid zero dollars for it. Overall, though, I'd say that most of the time when we buy things, we have a place for it. So my guiding rule for how to be a minimalist is that everything that comes into the house needs to have a place to go. So it needs a home. So I want to know where an item's gonna live and how it's gonna fit into our life before I buy it. Obviously, it doesn't always work. My son had his heart set on this like little gulf structure thing that my husband insisted he would never use. And I was like, oh, but he's so excited about it. We should let him get it. And it was $5. And it sat in the basement for the last six months. Like he never used it. So we don't like I don't get it right all the time. And I didn't have a good place for that to live, and that's why it is living in our basement, and I need to take it to like a consignment store to get rid of it. But I think it's easy to see something in a store and then fail to imagine like where it will go in real life in your house. So I try to go through that process before I get to the checkout. So it's like if I'm buying a mug at a store, it's like, oh, I'm gonna know I have space on my shelf for the mug. Or if I'm buying clothes at the store, I'm gonna know I probably have a need for this in my wardrobe.

SPEAKER_00 23:21

That's a really good rule, one that I need to adopt, I think. I'm not like a huge shopper, but I will say I've I I don't think I've ever thought that through before making a purchase, but it's it's really smart.

SPEAKER_02 23:34

My house doesn't look immaculate by any stretch of the imagination, but I can get things looking relatively neat relatively quickly. Like it can go from chaos to looking fairly orderly quite quick because everything has a space. And I think that really helps when making buying decisions because I know where everything goes. And the other key is to have a couple junk drawers. So if there isn't a set place for something to go, I do actually know where to put it because it's gonna be in one of those handful of spots in my house that I've designated. Like I have a bin in my storage room that I put things in that I need to go through. And so I think that it helps that I like to be organized. Um, and that's just my personality. It's just, it's just how I've always been. It's not something that I've done properly or improperly. It's just how I am, how I'm wired. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:31

Yeah. Okay. In that same vein, whenever you walk into a thrift store, do you have certain parts of the store that you beeline to first? You're like, whenever I go in, this is where this is the spot I'm checking out first. And I do, so I'll give my answer after yours. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 24:46

Ugh, I love to look at mugs. I almost never buy them, but I love to look at mugs. I don't know, they're just such a comfort look for me. And I love to look at blankets, much to my husband's chagrin. Like, I'm really careful about almost everything I bring into my house except blankets. I just don't think there could be too many cozy blankets in a house. And so I always look at the blankets because I'm looking for like that perfect blanket. And I always look at the mugs, and I rarely buy either, but I do like to go look for those. Usually I feel like when we go to a thrift store, we're looking for something specific. So again, back to this trip, like the kids and I all needed raincoats. And so we went to the thrift store. Like that's what we were looking for. So in the months leading up to our trip, it's like, okay, we're gonna keep our eye out for for raincoats. So there's usually a a short list of things that we need or we want. And the thrift store is basically always our first point of contact. Like we're gonna check a thrift store first. We needed an extra um carry-on suitcase that was expandable. And the first day my husband went to a thrift store and was looking for it, he found one. So it's not always, you know, it's not always the case. And if we hadn't found one, we would have bought one new. It's not the end of the world to have to buy things to buy things new. But it's, I don't know. I think we I usually have a list. There's there's always a running list. And with kids, there's always something they need or they want. Every year, living where we do in like having such distinct seasons, the kids need a lot of different clothes. So I'm always looking for like my son needs a new snowsuit, or his he needs new mittens, or there's just always something. There's always something on the list that I'm that I'm kind of keeping my eye out for. What about you? What's your go-to?

SPEAKER_03 26:30

I am a sucker for the homeware section, just in general. Like the I want to look at the wall art. I want to look at the I know the pottery, the like plates and bowls, the little trinkets. I'm like, I need to see what speaks to me. And I have noticed with myself, usually if I bring home a a little trinket for my house in whatever form, I will end up cherishing it and loving it. And I have zero regrets. But the thing that I get hung up on time and time again is clothing. To the point where I have almost told myself, like, we're not even gonna look at the clothing in a thrift store anymore because I feel like my success rate with actually thrifting a piece of clothing and loving it to the end of its use is so rare. I think there's something about it that hooks me in the store. And maybe it's the fact that like this is the only one there. And if I don't buy it, someone else will get it. And it's kind of unique. And I also, like my friends like to say, I kind of have like a grandma chic aesthetic of sorts. And so, you know, what better way to find some some grandma chic things than at a thrift store? And so I think I get so hung up also in the fact of like this thing is so cool and it feels unique and I love it. And then I bring it home and I wear it once or twice, and there's something about it that really aggravates me. And so it goes back into the goodwill pile.

SPEAKER_02 27:48

Yeah, clothes is a tricky one. Clothes is the tricky one, and I think our fashion sense sounds very similar. My daughter says that I look like Laura Ingalls, so I think I think we get along great. I I think clothes is are really hard, especially for a woman. Um, and I think that not all thrift stores are created equal. So I'm not sure what the options are where you are. But for example, there's one big thrift store where I go to get most of my home, like home decor, um, where we get the suitcase. But I almost never buy clothing there. It's too overwhelming. They have a really big selection, they don't actually have a place you can try the clothes on. And I get almost all of my clothes, because almost all my clothes are thrifted, at this little hole in the wall thrift store that I absolutely love. And it has a much more limited selection, but it's where, it's where, it's where I go. So I'm not trying to convince you to change your your attitude towards thrifted clothes because I totally get it. But I also think that sometimes different thrift stores are good for different, for finding different things.

SPEAKER_03 28:58

Okay, I'm glad you bring this up. I recently, I mean, this might have been the weekend before last. Needed to go to UPS. And I went into UPS and I noticed there was a thrift store next door that I had never heard of before, never heard of the brand, didn't know it was there. So I was like, I'm gonna pop in here. And I was looking at their clothing and was very impressed. Like I they had really nice dressing rooms, so I tried on some stuff. Come to find out it was actually a consignment shop. Um, but I did end up getting a few things from there, and time will tell because they just entered my wardrobe. But so far, I'm like, I really like these things. And I remembered thinking even while I was in the store, it feels like the selection is really good. Like they've kind of weeded through a lot of things, and it's like a little bit more expensive than you would if you were shopping out of Goodwill or something, but it also is still, I mean, you're keeping clothes out of the landfill, you know, you're buying secondhand still, and it's cheaper than it would be full price.

SPEAKER_02 29:57

So and if you're spending the money the little bit extra and you like it enough that you wear it all the time, then it's a much better return on investment than buying something at Goodwill that you're not end up gonna end up using. Consignment's a great way to go too. It's usually that one notch above the quality's higher. You pay a little bit more in terms of like the buying price, but I've found some really nice pieces at consignment stores before too.

SPEAKER_00 30:23

Yeah, I second that. Where I used to live, there was a nice consignment shop nearby, and I even tried bringing some of my old clothes there to consign and some I say like I had a 50% success rate. They they turned some of them away. So I I do appreciate I mean, obviously, then those went to the thrift store, but I appreciate that being a little pickier about what they take in because I'm the same way. Like a thrift store clothing section just overwhelms me. I tend to stay away and like the two of you go straight to the homeware section. Everything's so pretty.

SPEAKER_03 31:00

I know.

SPEAKER_00 31:02

Yeah, yeah. And I I'm a sucker for like things to go in my kitchen, you know, like I guess some of the most recent things I bought. A set of bowls, set of plates. I think honestly, a thrift store is like the best way to get those kinds of things because like I don't know, eventually you might get tired of the same dish we're using day in and day out, and it can be really expensive. So getting something fun at the thrift store is I don't know. I love I love it.

SPEAKER_02 31:33

And sometimes you can find really high quality stuff too. Bottom of the barrel pricing. Yeah, it's great. It's like a treasure hunt. We treat it like a treasure hunt, totally. Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_00 31:42

So, what's something you never buy new anymore because thrifting has replaced it?

SPEAKER_02 31:46

We try to apply that secondhand first mindset across the board. So pretty much everything, I guess, other than underwear, we will buy secondhand. Clothes for our son, almost exclusively, they're bought secondhand. I legitimately don't think I've bought him a single pair of brand new pants in his entire life. So he's 11 and a half. Seriously. Like I don't think I've ever bought him a pair of pants. I've bought him two pairs of shorts, brand new. I know that because they were part of his like soccer uniform, but I don't think I've ever bought him a pair of brand new pants in his life. Mentally scanning through his wardrobe right now and and coming up completely empty of anything in his wardrobe, literally anything in his wardrobe that isn't second hand. Or hand-me-downs that he's got from somebody else. Like even his shoes. Like we went to a consignment store before we came to Europe and we found them a brand new pair of Nike shoes for $20. And it's like sold. That's great.

SPEAKER_00 32:43

That makes so much sense to me for kids because they need new sizes every year.

SPEAKER_02 32:49

Yes. Yeah. And a boy, like he wears through the knees of his pants so fast. It's getting a little bit better now, but there was a season of life where every couple of weeks another pair of pants, like the knees would be gone in them. And so I just couldn't stomach the thought of buying something new. Our daughter's 15 and she's now babysitting and making some of her own money. And so she's she likes to thrift, but she also likes to pick up a few pieces new. So that's that's different because for most of most of her life, it was like we just all of our clothes were secondhand. But for her birthday this year, one of the things she wanted to do was go to the mall with her friends. And so that was really fun and it's exciting to see her enjoying those sorts of things, but it's it's still a mix. And I would say overall shoes are probably one of the harder things to find secondhand in good shape, especially if they're something like sneakers, because you want them to be in really good shape if you're doing a lot of walking or running or things like that. So I would say probably our footwear is 50-50, but in general, our clothing, like our son's pretty much 100%. Probably the rest of us are about 80% secondhand. Yeah. So that'd be the main category would be clothes, probably for us.

SPEAKER_00 33:59

Wow, that is impressive.

SPEAKER_02 34:01

I'm not claiming to be a fashion model though, either. So it's Well, I'm not either. I'm wearing the same clothes on repeat for three and a half months, so I'm not gonna win any fashion awards.

SPEAKER_03 34:13

But also, we've seen some of your outfits on your blog, and they look great. Whatever you want to do. Well, you might think so.

SPEAKER_02 34:19

My daughter definitely doesn't. She wrote this like she wrote a guest post on my blog a couple weeks ago about like top five. I do these segments called top five, bottom five, and I'll like rank different things. So she did a top five, bottom five about me. And she one of her bottom five was that my fashion sense could use some work. And she said something about like, I looked like I walked off a cover to a fashion magazine from as old as you can go back. And so I'm taking that as a compliment. It's like, hey, if you think I look like I walked off the front of a fashion magazine, I have done my job. But so I think it's a veiled compliment. But she she just thinks I dress like, I don't know, old fashioned.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

That's hilarious. And I'm definitely gonna read her guest post.

SPEAKER_01 35:04

Okay, yes. I'll send you the link to it. It's it's it's it's quite yes, it's quite funny. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:10

Love that. Also brutal. You gotta love how honest kids are. Even when you don't ask them to be. I didn't ask. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:22

That's so funny. Okay, switching gears just a little bit. We also know that you paid off your house in seven years, which is so impressive. So can you talk us through kind of what that thought process was like when you decided, okay, we're gonna get serious about this and pay this house off early? And then like what were some of the big decisions or trade-offs that made that possible for you?

SPEAKER_02 35:45

Biggest decision was buying well below what the bank said, quote unquote, we could afford. So the home that we live in now is actually the first house we've ever owned. So before that, we lived in a small apartment for many years. And it was so small that my husband and I moved our mattress into our entryway slash office slash living room every single night for two years so the kids could have their own space. So I guess you could also say buying below our means was a big decision. But then also waiting in a small apartment where we had to move a mattress every night was also a really big trade-off. So in the moment, those were some, those were some tough years. We were really crowded living in that apartment as a family. And my husband and I were both working from home at the time as well. When we bought a house, we chose a house that needed some work, but we were really intentional about what renovations we decided to take on and when we did them. And then I guess the other big piece that's a bit against conventional advice is that we aggressively paid down our mortgage. So we made lump sum payments whenever we could and we really treated it like a guaranteed return on investment. So we heard lots of advice about you're better off investing and stretching your mortgage out. And I guess mathematically that can make sense. But for us, being mortgage-free was a priority. Mentally, I just like the neatness of having it done. And now it gives us a different level of flexibility, reduced risk, and just a lot of peace of mind. And now that it's paid off, we can ramp up our traditional investing. So it wasn't an either-or, it was more about sequencing, and we just chose to pay off our mortgage aggressively from the get-go. And now we can invest more aggressively.

SPEAKER_00 37:33

My husband and I are just getting into the process of shopping for a home for the first time. And I'm finding it difficult to um to figure out like how much space we need. And obviously, we also want to buy something below our means. We're not comfortable getting in over our heads at all. We're pretty, I would say, financially conservative. But we did, I'll tell you, tour to house this past weekend that we were we went the in and thinking like this house is adorable, it's so cute, perfect location. It's it's a little small, but like we can make it work. I will admit, after the tour, we were like, nope, too small, can't make it work.

SPEAKER_02 38:17

If you think that after a 30-minute tour, then I can guarantee it is definitely too small.

SPEAKER_00 38:22

Yeah. So I guess it's balancing, like, you know, shopping below your means, but also being realistic about what you need and what your your needs will look like in the future too.

SPEAKER_02 38:34

Yeah. Yeah, it's not a one size fits all decision. And obviously a lot of people don't have the flexibility to pay it off as quickly as we did. And I'm sure many people would love to be able to do that. So we recognize that it's a privilege to be able to have done it that quickly, but we did make a series of decisions beforehand and a series of sacrifices beforehand that that sort of paved the way for that.

SPEAKER_00 38:55

Yeah, totally. Um, moving the mattress this Oh man, that is a big sacrifice.

SPEAKER_02 39:02

It was a it was a it was a lot. It was a lot. And then toward the end, we just got so tired of it that we'd sometimes just leave our mattress. But it was like it was in the the layout of the apartment was such that there was kind of this master room that you would open the door into the apartment and our office, our living room, and our entry were all one big room. And so we would sometimes just leave our mattress there. And you know, somebody would come over for something, and there's our mattress. It was it was it was a season of life, and I can kind of laugh about it now, but it was it was one that I was very happy to to put behind me as well. And I never ever take for granted that my mattress can stay in my master bedroom on its bed frame now. I I'm so it's so happy. It's the little things, like not having to move your mattress every night.

SPEAKER_03 39:52

Yeah, totally. Before we wrap up, is there anything that you want to plug? Where can people find you if they want to hear more about you and follow along?

SPEAKER_02 40:02

Yeah, so I write a lifestyle blog. It's a bit of a mouthful, The Optimistic Musings of a Pessimist, but the title kind of tells you a lot about my personality. And I also have a Patreon community, so it's called Lighthouse Keepers, and it focuses on practical ways to build more gratitude and joy into everyday life. But I also try to keep things authentic and honest. So it's like, yes, we're working together as this community to promote joy and gratitude, but we're also honest about the realities of everyday life that hard stuff happens. So and those are the two areas that people can find me online.

SPEAKER_03 40:43

Yeah, amazing. Yeah, Emily and I love the name of your platform.

SPEAKER_02 40:47

It's yeah, yes. I am I'm kind of a reformed pessimist, but it rears its ugly head a lot. So this week both my kids were sick, and my husband was at the office, and we're, you know, just kind of settling into a new city. And I was like, I'm ready to go home now. I don't want to do this anymore. And I I could feel all of the like pessimistic thoughts coming back into my head. But thankfully, everybody's on the mend now, and we got out today and got to explore a little bit of the city, and I'm feeling much more optimistic. So yeah, I talk about both sides of the equation on my blog.

SPEAKER_00 41:21

Yeah, yeah. Well, we hope that the rest of your trip is wonderful and memorable, and we can't wait to read about it on your blog. Thanks so much. It was great to talk to you both of you.

SPEAKER_03 41:33

Yeah, you too. Thanks again for coming on. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 41:36

Yeah, anytime. That's a wrap on another episode of the Finance Girlies podcast. Nothing in this episode is meant to be taken as financial advice.

SPEAKER_03 41:47

Please do your own research and talk to a professional if you need advice. If you like this episode, consider leaving a review. Better yet, send the show to a friend who might enjoy it too. Love ya. Bye. Nailed it.