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Give the gift of Scratchers from the California Lottery. A little play can make your day. Please play responsibly. Must be 18 years or older to purchase, play, or claim. What could you do if you're basically stuck in a cycle that you're not very happy with? I guess the so-called rat race.

Don't have a lot of money, have some bills, but have some debt and don't have enough money to really make progress. Well, you could keep doing it, or you could, little by little, radically transform your life, sell your car, get rid of all your stuff, and move into a tiny house.

Would that help you achieve financial independence? Well, it worked for today's guest. Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. Thank you for being here. My name is Joshua Sheets, and today is Tuesday, November 18, 2014. Tuesdays are interview days on the show, and today I am thrilled to bring you an interview with Tammy Strobel, who is author of the blog RowdyKittens.com.

She's going to share with us her story toward financial freedom and how minimalism played a major role. One of the themes that I've explored a couple times on the show is basically the theme of requiring less. To me, that's a powerful theme that we don't talk about enough in modern society.

There's a famous quote. At the moment, I can't place who it was that originated it, but this simply said, "He is wealthiest not who has the most but who needs the least." So I've always been intrigued by minimalism, and that's why I've done an interview with Joshua Becker on the show.

Now, today, I'm thrilled to bring an interview with Tammy Strobel. Tammy has a really great blog that I've read for years at RowdyKittens.com. My favorite thing, she just has beautiful photographs, and I'm always amazed at the photographs she takes. She takes, these days, all of them with her cell phone, so it just blows my mind how she does it.

So that's what I enjoy. But she also has a really neat story about her transition and her financial plan and the things over the years that have worked and that haven't. She has written a book on living a life that is car-free. She's also written a lot about her and her husband's experience living in a tiny house, which is those little--you've probably seen them online--cute little wooden houses, but usually that go on a trailer.

Very small, a couple hundred square feet or a hundred and something square feet. Very small, very cute, though, usually. So she's done that. Now, the neat thing about Tammy is that she and her husband now own a car and have since moved from their tiny house. So hopefully we'll get a fairly accurate assessment of what it's actually like to live their kind of lifestyle.

So stay tuned at the end, though. We'll get to that at the end of the interview and share with you and tie together the financial concepts to show how the exact same wealth formula that we always talk about, the three-part formula, is what Tammy is exploiting in her situation.

I'm going to show how just several of our guests recently have pulled it together and are working that formula in ways that you would probably think seem contradictory. For example, the interview I played last Thursday was with James Wesley Rawls, author of Survival Blog, and he's talking about survivalism.

So how is it that a survivalist who is stockpiling stuff and a minimalist who is getting rid of stuff are applying the same principles? Well, stay tuned at the end of the show, and I will tie that together for you and just explain it in light of the three-part formula.

I want to make a quick note to all of you who are subscribed to the show or have been subscribed to the show in iTunes. After episode 99, which was last Friday, I broke the iTunes feed. If you are not receiving updates, it's a very simple fix. I apologize.

I made a mistake. Simple fix. Just unsubscribe from whatever program or app you're using. Search for my show again in the App Store or the iTunes Store or the podcast directory, and then click "Subscribe" again to the show. Then you'll be receiving updates. The old feed that your device is subscribed to no longer works due to a total mistake that I made.

So please make sure to do that. Help me spread the word. I lost every listener that was signed up in iTunes as far as a subscriber, and I would love all of you to find me again, so please help me spread the word. Here's Tammy. So, Tammy, welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast.

I appreciate you making time for me today. Well, thank you for having me on your show. I appreciate it. I have been a lurker on your site for many years, and there's something about having a beautiful site that I think will keep people coming back. I have a very non-beautiful site myself, but I've always enjoyed reading your site.

You have beautiful pictures, and it's just a very peaceful feeling. So I've enjoyed your site for years, but I'm thrilled to have you on to talk a little bit about some of the financial aspects of your journey. But thank you for doing such a good job over the years about publishing beautiful pictures and encouraging stories and just kind of sharing your story.

I really appreciate it, and I've enjoyed it as a reader. Well, thank you. That's really sweet. Thanks. I appreciate your kind words. Where I'd love to start today is, would you be willing just to share a little bit of your journey, you and your husband's journey, surrounding money, where it started, and how you were raised, kind of the money concepts that you have, and then some of the growth and changes that you've experienced over the past few years as you've started to pay more attention to your money.

So I'd love you just to share a little bit of your story. Sure. Wow. I'm like, where do I start? Well, you know, I'm really fortunate and super privileged in a lot of ways. I was raised, you know, kind of typical middle class. I had great parents. I had a lot of opportunity to travel and play sports and just, you know, do all kinds of fun things.

And so I feel like my parents instilled good values in me in terms of like work ethic and money management and things like that. But when I finished up college and went into graduate school, it was probably roughly like 2001, 2003, finished my BA and then my master's, I kind of got caught up into the work cycle.

I was working in the investment management industry. And it's kind of ironic because, you know, we were trying to help people manage their money. And here I was kind of falling into the trap of always going shopping, feeling like I needed a better car, more stuff, better furniture. And it just wasn't a good base zone to be in.

Plus, I had student loan debt. And so all that to say is the financial strains caused a lot of disagreements between Logan, my husband and myself. And so to address those issues, we decided to start to downsize our lives. And we started that process, I'd say, in like 2004 and kind of went into smaller and smaller living spaces.

Slowly paid off, you know, my student loan debt, the cars, any outstanding credit card bills we may have had. And thankfully, we didn't have huge credit card debt. But it still was, you know, we used credit cards as a crutch. So if we ran out of money, we'd be like, oh, we'll just, you know, charge dinner instead of just making dinner at home, that kind of thing.

So for me personally, I feel like minimalism or simplicity or whatever you want to call it, it's been really helpful for me in terms of mindfulness and how I see my finances today versus, you know, a young woman coming out of college and kind of getting caught up into what I thought other people thought I should be doing, if that makes sense.

It sure does. So, yeah. Was there a specific time that, like, was there a transformative experience, a transformative book, or was there just kind of a growing dissatisfaction that and a recognition of that that caused you and Logan to come together and say, we've got to change something? Was there a specific event or just kind of a generalized dissatisfaction?

Well, you know, it's kind of general dissatisfaction. You know, when I was working in the investment management world in 2003, 2004, you know, I realized, like, OK, I am so privileged. I've got this beautiful apartment. We have two cars. I'm married to the man of my dreams, but, like, I'm unhappy.

Like, what the heck? Like, something was very off. And so, I mean, I think that general sense of satisfaction started the conversations between Logan and I, and not only about money, but, you know, how we wanted to spend our time, who we wanted to hang out with, how we wanted to just be in the world.

And so, also, you know, we took a trip to Mexico and I saw a lot of poverty there, and that was very eye opening for me. So, you know, it's just a lot of things, I think, combined around that time period caused a big shift for both of us.

Where did you start? Oh, in terms of money management or stuff? I see them as intertwined. Where did you start, yeah, when you were pursuing Simplicity, how did you actually start the process? Well, it's funny because Logan was actually the one who suggested that we downsize to a smaller apartment so that we could save, you know, probably $300 a month and put that either toward our savings account or to pay off my student loan.

And I was like, no way. Like, I am not moving in. I don't want to give up my stuff. I was like, what are people going to think of us and the changes? And so, you know, from there, we had more conversations, a lot of talking, lots of pro/con lists.

And I decided, and Logan was just like, you know, let's just give it a try. We can start by, like, getting rid of stuff in our current apartment, which we did. And we basically cleared out our guest room of stuff, closed the door, and we're like, okay, we'll just pretend like we're in a one-bedroom apartment, see if we can do it, and then make our first big move, which we ended up pursuing about six months later.

But, yeah, it was just really a gradual process. And, you know, I feel like we live in such a fast-paced culture that's all about instant gratification. And so it's like, you know, Logan and I started talking about making all these big changes back in 2003, and now it's, you know, 2014.

And so that's quite a bit of time to make turnaround in terms of paying off debt, making lifestyle changes. And I think that's a good thing, because for me, taking things slowly and being really mindful about my decisions helped me stick with habits in the long run. So it sounds like the apartment was maybe the initial catalyst, and then you eventually, you did move, and then you just progressively moved through a series of smaller spaces?

Yeah, definitely. And so we started out in a two-bedroom apartment in Davis, California, and it was about, I don't know, 1,200, maybe 1,300 square feet, and it was just exploding with stuff, like kind of, I guess, typical in a lot of ways of Americans and their love of stuff.

But from there, you know, downsizing to 800 square feet and 400. Then we found out about the tiny house movement and decided to go even smaller and buy our own little house on wheels. So we lived in that for three years, and it's 128 square feet. We still have our tiny house, but we're actually--we just moved into town for the winter because of a lot of different reasons, but that's a whole other story.

Very cool, because I want to talk about the tiny house, because I think everyone I know who sees the tiny houses, I think they're just so cute, so quaint. Yeah, they're so, so cute. But it's hard to find someone who's actually taken the steps to live in one, especially a couple.

And the other thing is that when you see them profiled, usually it's--I would guess it's an overly idealistic presentation without kind of a rational presentation of, "Hey, this is what's awesome, and this is what really stinks." And so it's tough to find maybe a balanced presentation. Before we get there, though, what was the process like with cars?

Because I know that you wrote an entire book about being car-free. That was one of the first books of yours that I read. What was your process surrounding vehicles? Yeah, so I'm glad you asked that question, because selling our cars was a huge step in our process of paying off our debt, and I'm really glad we made that move for a lot of reasons.

Financially, we sold the cars, we're able to pay off our debt quicker, like specifically my student loan debt, which was about $25,000, $30,000, so a lot of money. And just, you know, we started cycling everywhere, and at that time we were living in Sacramento, California, which actually has really great biking infrastructure.

And from there we moved to Portland, which is another – Portland, Oregon, I should say – another fantastic town for cycling. And now we're back in Northern California, and we actually purchased a car in, oh, was it 2013 or '12? I'm so bad with dates. But anyways, we live in a rural area now with very crappy public transit, so having a car is kind of a must.

But all that to say, you know, if you live in a city that has, you know, good infrastructure for biking and decent public transit and you're able-bodied, you know, getting around by bike is a fantastic option, especially if you want to pay off your debt. Yeah. I remember when I first read your book, I had also read another one that I had found in the library.

I think it was like "How to Live Well Without Owning a Car." Oh, I love that book. It's really well written, and the interesting statistics that it profiles is just simply how much people – we spend as a culture on cars. And, you know, in general it's estimated that about 20 percent of our income we spend on vehicle transportation, and it comes out to something like eight grand a year for the average family.

And it's not only the direct cost, but it's also the indirect cost of the vehicle. And so if you can downsize that or eliminate it, it's definitely worth considering moving to a place where there is maybe easier public transportation options, more bikeable, or if you don't live in one of those places.

So I live in one of those places where it's not – we just don't have any kind of infrastructure that works, and I live in the biggest – I think it's one of the biggest counties in the country, and our life is very spread out. So I have never found any way to be without a car, but we downsize from two to one, and that was a really, really great decision.

But we don't often – because we live in such a car-centric culture, we don't often consider, "Is there a way that I could adjust my circumstances to remove this $8,000 a year bill from my life?" Yeah, and it's so – you know, like with the cars at first, I really didn't want to let go of them, because they're convenient, right?

They're easy to get around in, but when you really look at the cost savings, it's pretty amazing. And now, you know, Logan and I share one car. We bought it used. It's a little Ford Fiesta. It runs great. But we knew that we would have to do that when we moved back here, and that was a very conscious choice, and we want to be close to family at this point in our lives.

So, you know, there are tradeoffs and benefits to everything, but definitely, even going car-like is fantastic. So it's cool that you're able to do that where you are. It was – I mean, I just – I can't stand the time involved with having the thing worked on and doing the – you know, changing the oil and all the rest of that stuff.

I remember a couple times I was sitting on Saturday morning sitting in the dealer – in the tire place, having new tires put on the car, and I'm just thinking, "Why am I wasting my life sitting here having these tires put on the car?" And especially when you're running two cars, and I'm the one who's responsible for doing the maintenance and kind of taking care of those things, and it just – I just can't stand the time involved.

But that's – I mean, I'm not – each people or person can make their own choice, but it's just interesting. In the U.S. American culture, you're almost viewed as radical if you think about doing something else, whereas throughout most of the world, the car is a luxury, and I don't have any desire to tell people what they should or shouldn't do as far as, "Well, the rest of the world is a luxury, so therefore you've got to view it as a luxury." I don't care about that.

I care about you just simply making a conscious choice while being aware of all of the options, and I often think – I often look here in my area, and I've worked with some Spanish immigrant low-wage-earning people in South Florida here, and I'm amazed at seeing how much of their income they save and they send back home to their family to support their family in their country of origin.

And you think, "Wait a second. You're earning this relatively low wage doing this entry-level, straightforward, basic laboring job, and you're able to live on this tiny percentage of your income and send the majority of it back home? How do you do it?" Well, one of the ways usually is avoiding the ownership of a car.

Another way is usually avoiding the ownership of a house, and then you get to changing your methods of eating, and when you do that, it's relatively easy to live on less. Now, if people want to live – if people want to own a car and own a house and do it for luxury lifestyle purposes, fine, cool, go for it.

It's your money, it's your life, do it how you want. But I never – when I was a kid, I never considered not buying a car. I wasn't that smart. I just followed the standard American path of, "I need to get a car." Yeah, and I mean, I'm kind of the same way in terms of my stepdad, Malin, who passed away a couple years ago.

He was a businessman. He owned Chevron stations and really into cars, and so I kind of grew up around that culture of – and cars are great. They're great tools, but I think at least for me, that shift came when I started seeing the car as a tool and really looking at how expensive they actually are to run.

And just having that mindfulness is really, really huge, and I love the story about the folks you've worked with as well. It's so neat to be able to see people who aren't making very much money then save so much and then give back to their family. It's really incredible.

Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing I like about adjusting the context of the conversation is that by doing so, you can probably make more practical decisions. Example, if I were running a farm and I'm hauling tractors and horses around my farm or ranch, I'm not going to do that with a bicycle trailer.

I'm going to have a big four-wheel drive pickup truck because that's what I need to haul this massive trailer around. But that's very different that if I'm commuting in and out of work every day and I'm 20 miles out in the suburbs and I need a big pickup truck to stroke my ego and show everybody what a big macho man I am.

And so by readjusting it, we can make a more intelligent decision about what's an appropriate tool for ourselves instead of having to keep up with what other people think is their love for a car. I just don't care. I tell people if you want to have fun and buy a fancy fast car or a big one, cool.

Go for it. I support it. But I don't care and I don't want to spend my time maintaining that stuff. So tell me about the tiny house and tell me the process of deciding because did you – was it with the idea of saving money? Because I got to imagine if you were renting a small apartment, I mean it probably didn't save you much money to move to the tiny house.

Was it about the financial aspects of it or was it about the lifestyle? I think a little bit of everything. We discovered tiny houses in 2007. It was actually New Year's Day. Logan and I were at home. It was late. It had just like the clock had clicked over to the New Year.

We were surfing the internet, geeking out and Logan found a video featuring Dee Williams and her tiny house on wheels. We had already started shedding tons of stuff and at that time we were in an 800 square foot apartment. It was really nice and we just – we really fell in love with this idea of little houses and the idea that maybe we could save a little bit of money.

But even more than that, we were really intrigued with the lifestyle and we wanted to – like once we saw Dee's house, we were just hooked. Like it was so cute and we thought, "Oh my gosh, this would be perfect. Like we could tow it with us when we moved, maybe save some cash." We lived in the house full time for three years and we actually just moved into Wairika, California last week and now we're in a small cottage in town.

Living in the tiny house has been fantastic and we're still going to use the space on weekends. When spring comes, we'll probably reassess like do we want to move back to the tiny house full time or stay in the cottage. I don't know, but the reality of living in the tiny house is different than I had imagined.

Of course, you don't know what it's going to be like until you actually do it. There are risks as well as rewards when it comes to living in a tiny house on wheels specifically. I'm definitely stoked that we made the decision to buy the house and that we've lived in it, but at this point in my life, I don't know that I want to move it again.

Unfortunately, I think one of the biggest downfalls with tiny homes on wheels is they are not legal in most cities in the US. Where we're parked now, it's on my in-laws' ranch in the county and so we're legal. That makes me feel really good because we ended up moving to Chico, California last year and we actually got in trouble with the zoning and planning department because you're not allowed to camp in city limits in the city of Chico and that's kind of how they saw the little house.

The planning folks were super nice, very, very helpful, but we would have had to put basically $20,000 into the property that we were renting and into the house to make it legal and to stay in the city. We didn't buy the house for that reason. It would have been silly to do that, particularly on property we were renting.

So anyways, all that to say is that I think tiny houses on wheels are great, but I also feel that they're really idealized online and in media coverage too, but they're risky. Also, even when you think about RV living in most cities, you cannot reside in an RV full time.

There's usually like gay restrictions or you have to be in a specifically zoned area to be in an RV in a city. So, sort of a tangent, but I just want to bring that up because I think it's important for people to be aware of that risk. And Logan and I knew that going into the whole tiny house thing and it's been quite the adventure, but you know, as I found out, moving the house is stressful.

Like it's not as fun as I had imagined it would be. I've had some pretty big health issues over the last couple years. I have a bad back and in the winter, it's really hard for me to get up and down the loft ladder. So, you know, life changes and with living simply, I think it's really important to be flexible and to create a life where you're resilient so that you can make the changes you need to make for your daily life and being happy and all that good stuff.

Yeah, it's interesting because I notice a trend continually because I always focus on solutions and one of the things that I find personally frustrating is you find solutions for certain things. People say they want people to have a supposedly, we're supposed to have policies that are going to encourage people to live more ecologically friendly lives, to live in a more, what's the, lower your carbon footprint.

You're supposed to live in a more natural way that's beneficial and has more space. And so, people often look to the government as the solution for the problem and I've found that all of the solutions usually, the problem for the great solutions that actually work is usually a system of government.

And because I could see communities of, especially for single individuals, one person, I mean, how great would it be to have a community of tiny houses right inside of a city where people can bring their house, they can take it or whether it's a community or RV, how much of a lower cost, lower impact, more ecological option would that be except we've got to zone it out because we don't want the trailer trash to take over our town.

Yeah, and it's just, it's ridiculous because that's such a stereotype. I mean, like, it's just not cool. But, you know, the nice thing is like you've got places like Portland, Oregon, really tiny house friendly. They're trying to work with folks who want to live in these tiny dwellings on wheels.

And, you know, also like there are code is in place for a reason. Like, I think sometimes it can overreach, but, you know, most of the planners are really nice people and they want people to be safe in their dwellings and safe when you're telling like something down the road, right?

So like all that stuff is there for a reason. But I also think like you're saying, like, how can we create like these little communities so that we're more environmental environmentally friendly and all that, that kind of stuff. But yeah, it's definitely challenging. And I think with tiny houses, it's just going to be like a process.

And I think things will change over time, but it's definitely, it's not always easy dealing with the zoning laws. Why did you decide on a tiny house instead of an RV? Well, the tiny house, like the biggest reasons, one, they're freaking cute. Like I just, I love the architecture of the little houses.

I love the wood, the way it smells on the inside. And also, we built our tiny house for all season living. Whereas in RVs, typically like, you know, you don't want to live in an RV when it's like 10 below or 20 below. Like it's just not insulated well.

And with our tiny house, for example, over the last couple winters, it's been pretty cold. We had like minus 10 degree weather, which is super cold for here. But we stayed warm in our tiny house because it's well insulated with, we used a wool insulation for the house. However, everything else froze.

So like, you know, we have our water line similar to an RV where it's a hose. It's not like, you know, a larger dwelling where the lines are really well insulated and stuff like that. So, you know, having to do walking water and then the gray water system totally froze up during the winter.

So there were, while the house was warm, there were other challenges that we had to deal with during the winter that took more time than we envisioned. With all of these changes that you made, downsizing and, you know, downsizing the size of your dwelling, lower, eliminating your car at one point, what, in addition to just simply being able to pay off debt, what other like changes or transitions did this allow for you in terms of career and business options?

Oh, gosh, a lot. I, because we were able to pay off our debts and actually have a savings account, I was able to leave my day job and start my own business. And basically now I'm teaching e-courses, I do writing and photography full time, and I've been doing my own business thing for the last four years.

And I don't know that I would have taken the leap of leaving my day job had I not started to simplify my life. And, you know, also like you don't have to leave your day job either if you like it. You know what I'm saying? Like, like tiny houses, I feel that entrepreneurism is very romanticized on the Internet.

And, you know, it's just like anything, it's hard to run your own business, just like it can be hard to work for a nonprofit or a private company. But anyways, it's definitely been a really fun adventure kind of doing my own thing, being my own boss. And I think the other thing which is more important is just having the time and the flexibility for my family.

My stepdad, Malin, had a massive stroke in January of 2012. And for the next five months, I divided my time between my parents' house in Red Bluff, California, and then in Portland, Oregon, where we had our tiny house park. So I was going back and forth and helping take care of him.

And he couldn't, the stroke kind of, basically he couldn't do anything. He was cognitively impaired, physically impaired. So just having that space in my life and the time to really be present for my family was huge. Like, I don't have any regrets when it comes to like being able to take care of my dad and being with him as he passed.

If I had still been in the investment management industry, I couldn't have been there for my folks in that way. So for me, doing that kind of thing is far more important than what kind of job I have or what kind of dwelling and just having the time for the people I love is huge.

Right. Right. What's striking to me is, it seems like it should be such a simple, like everyone, all of us should have this ability to be with our family, especially in difficult times, to work on ventures that we think are interesting. But in our society, you have to step off of the treadmill and see through it in order to buy, in order to buy, not buy, in order to create that disconnection to regain control over life.

And that's what I find so valuable about your experience and about your story is that the, my opinion is that the things that really matter to many of us are relatively simple. If you work with retirees and you ask them what are the things that they want to do, they will often name two things on their list.

These are almost universally number one and number two. Number one is spend time with family and number two is travel. But my observation has been that they don't often mean travel. What they mean is have a little bit of new adventure in their life. Very few kind of traditional mainstream retirees seem to go, and although some buy the motorhome, many people don't live in it full time and just go travel, travel.

Many people don't go to Europe for years at a time. Some do, but many don't. But it seems like what retirees want is time with family and varied experiences. But time with family doesn't cost anything. You need the time though and the awareness to make space. You can work a full time job and still have plenty of time for family.

It's just a matter of how you choose to use the time. We all get the same amount of hours and minutes in the week. I think it's really the simple pleasures that make people the happiest and really investing in your experiences and your relationships are going to make you happy.

That's really what the research shows as well when you look at positive psychology and the studies that have been done in relation to happiness and money and all that kind of stuff. I should have mentioned, you wrote a book called "You Can Buy Happiness and It's Cheap." So you're an expert on this topic.

Well, I'm always learning, so I don't know if I would qualify myself as an expert, but thank you. What impact has photography had on your connection with daily life? It's been huge for me. Photography in some ways, I feel more comfortable sharing my photos versus my written work and books and on the blog and things like that.

I've been taking photos since I was a little kid, but it wasn't until we started to simplify our lives that I got serious about photography again and really made it a daily practice of just making the space to go out for a long, slow walk and to really observe my surroundings and take photos of the details and landscapes that interested me.

I don't know, I just really love capturing the beauty around me and making the space to notice that kind of stuff. Photography has also been a really great healing tool for me. After my dad died, I was really depressed. I struggled with grief. It wasn't easy, it wasn't fun, but I think it's important to talk about that stuff because, at least for me, by simplifying and shifting my focus towards creative outlets like photography and writing, I was able to cope with the sadness instead of running out to the mall and trying to fill that hole with stuff because it's not going to work.

I'm always going to have a little hole in my heart and I'm going to miss my dad. I miss him every day, but I try to honor his memory by taking photos, by sharing my work with my readers and being kind to others. I don't know if that answers your question, but photography is definitely a huge part of my life.

It's just always been inspiring to me. I think it's growing in the Instagram culture that we live in. I can't help but think of that parody song about we take pictures of silly stuff and make it look cool on Instagram. When I look at your photographs, they're just such silly day-to-day normal things.

Yet, there's something about a photograph that, more so I think than a video, that just captures a moment. I've often admired photographers for their ability to stop and just appreciate the beauty of a moment, the beauty of an ordinary thing. It's almost become a funny – I know your book was called My Morning View and there's a number of pictures of a cup of coffee.

It's funny how different it is to actually stop and appreciate a cup of coffee and appreciate perhaps the friend that you're sharing it with or appreciate the alone time versus slamming coffee in the car on the way to a commute. There's something about the ability of a photograph and a skilled photographer to capture the moment that just always connects with me.

I find it inspiring to inspire me to slow down and appreciate the simple pleasures of life. Yeah, and I think that's what's so cool about photography. With my Morning View series, I started that project out of really deep sadness. I wanted to find a way to honor my dad every day.

He loved coffee. He loved being outside. Now I take a photo of my Morning View, which always includes my coffee cup and whatever I see that particular morning. It might be a landscape or my cat, whatever. It's a meditation for me and a way to just give my dad a thumbs up and to appreciate his memory.

Just by doing those little things, it really brings a lot of joy and happiness into my life and hopefully my photos make other people smile too. I'd like to finish with just asking a question about your business. You don't need to share anything that you don't want to share, but I'm fascinated.

Meaning I'm not going to ask you how much money you make unless you care to say. It doesn't matter to me. I'm just interested in the process. This is a compliment, but don't take this as a negative. In reading your writing over the years, I've always been fascinated because you seem like an ordinary person who just sat down one day to plunk some things on the internet and then kind of chronicle their journey.

But somehow you've followed through and written all of these interesting blog posts, created all these beautiful pictures, written a couple of books, and you've figured out a way to parlay this new economy that we live in, the internet economy, into a way to support yourself that doesn't require you to do investment management.

Was this intentional? Did you design it from the beginning? Was it accidental? How was the mixture? And I'm sure you've worked very hard at it. I've never met someone who has achieved success that didn't work hard, but it just seems so almost organic. Was it organic or was it...

Did you make it seem that way? No, it's organic. I mean, it's still organic in terms of... I don't have a business plan. I have a general sense of where I'm going probably six months out at different time frames. I just try and be really flexible with the projects I take on.

And when I left my day job, I had no idea if this venture would be a success or completely bombed, but I knew if I didn't try it, I would regret it. And so when I left my job in January of 2010, I mainly made my income from e-book sales and a lot of freelance projects, whether that was writing for organizations like AOL or just doing very simple web design for clients.

And then it's evolved over the years to where now I'm teaching e-courses, selling books, doing the photography thing. And when I started out the first year, I think I made like $20,000 and that was before taxes. And slowly each year it's grown a little bit more. And so last year I made, I think it was $38,000 after taxes.

And so for me, that's a huge success. Like I'm not getting rich, but I can pay my bills and I can save money and I can take many adventures in beautiful Northern California and be with my family. Like it's amazing. And I hope my business does well next year and that I can continue to thrive.

But if it doesn't, that's okay. Like I know I can go out and get a day job if I have to do that. So yeah, I don't know if that answers your question, but I just, I guess, you know, I really want to help people through like my writing classes, through photography and really through like teaching about simplicity and mindfulness.

And if I can do that, then I feel really good. Yeah. It's just such a cool story to me. And I see it as integrating many of the themes that I talk about on my show every day and getting yourself in a position where you can take the leap and kind of embracing the adventure of it.

And there's something about, I think it sounds oftentimes, I chuckle because it just sounds so frou-frou to say embrace simplicity and mindfulness. But yet there is a very important theme in that that seems to be, that I've noticed, that I've often struggled with. And my wife has helped me hugely to kind of slow down and appreciate the moment and appreciate the circumstances of where things are.

And I, I don't know, maybe that's why I've always been drawn to some of what you wrote because I'm probably not your target consumer. But I'm often, you know, I'm often drawn to those things that I need help with. And certainly one of those is slowing down and just enjoying the moment and then not having everything perfectly planned out.

I'm very much a planner. And here's how everything's going to be. This, this, then this, then that, then the third thing. And I've got steps 99, you know, 1 through 99 figured out before I take step 1. And it's a learning process for me to learn to kind of let go of some of that need for control, which is often an illusion of control, and just enjoy the process without knowing where the end game is.

Yeah. And you know, I think that's, that's really true for everyone. One, like, I always tell people, like, this whole idea of simplicity and mindfulness, like, it's a constant work in progress. Like, I don't have all the answers, you know, I'm still working on it. And I think that's just part of life.

But I do feel like doing my own business, it's freaking hard. And it's challenging. Like, I never know how much I'm going to make every month. Like, I don't have a salary, right? Like, you know, I make enough, but I have to be careful with savings and all that stuff.

But on the other hand, it really like what you're talking about, like the lack of control and uncertainty, kind of just puts it right out there for you to just be like, you know what, I might not make as much money. I might not make as much this month, but maybe next month will even be better.

And that's okay. Like, usually things work out. And I don't know. It's definitely an adventure for sure. Final question. You wrote a whole book on finding happiness through simplicity. If somebody were listening to this interview, and they were working on coming from a financial perspective, they're trying to improve their own financial situation.

And they recognize that by adjusting their lifestyle, they can have more margin in their finances, which may allow them to achieve their goals faster. Do you have some wisdom as far as how you would encourage someone to go about building their own plan? Oh, gosh, I think if you're just starting out, at least take a step back and look at the big picture.

Like, that's what Logan and I did when we started this journey, we kind of broke down different facets of our life, like career, family, our marriage, volunteering, you know, like, kind of just really looking at the big picture. And also thinking about like, our own mortality, like, when we're 80, if we make it that far, like, are we going to be happy with how we've lived our life?

So I know that it's kind of overwhelming to do that. And it's not going to happen. Like, you know, in a quick sit down over dinner, it's going to take time to sort through the big picture. But I think it's really important because it's going to determine your direction.

You know, like, not everyone wants to live in a tiny house, for example, like Logan and I did. And that's fine, right? Maybe you want to buy like a 500 square foot cottage, and that's part of like your long term plan. That's awesome. But you've got to kind of set those goals and, and, and it's one intention, and then go from there.

And then kind of looking at the practicalities of like the budget and the financials and how you want to get from point A to B. So starting with the big picture, and then breaking it down into tiny micro actions, is, was I should say, and still is very helpful for both Logan and I.

And I guess kind of that's like the best advice I have for like those first starting out. Well, I'll make sure to post links to some of your articles where you've written about some of these topics. And the tiny house is super cool, by the way. Thank you. We love it too.

What's so funny, I don't remember which site it is. But what's funny to me about the age of the internet, my wife often makes fun of this, is that the internet has somehow brought the ability to put attention onto something that for all time has been just normal and not admired.

Like the idea of living in a shack, a little tiny wooden shack, was never something that people aspired to. But the ability of a beautiful photograph and an idealized lifestyle on the internet, and all of a sudden tiny houses are cool. And I think they are legitimately cool. But we always chuckle when we're driving around town and we see a tiny house and I always say, "There is a tiny house from before tiny houses were cool." Totally, it's just so funny.

I mean, like, you know, and just like we live in such an amazing time. And also, you know, it's so important to like, take a step back and be able to be like, "Wow, I'm so privileged. Like, I can choose to make this crazy lifestyle choice and it's a choice." Like, not everyone has that choice, right?

Like, so it's definitely, definitely interesting for sure. Right. I often struggle with what type of tone to create from the podcast because many things are so idealized within a Western culture that if you actually live with them in a non, you know, I've lived out in the boonies in a shack in a third world country for a period of time.

And I'm telling you, it's a lot more comfortable to have a house. But yet, so there's such a balance between idealizing other people's lifestyles while appreciating your own and then making a conscious choice about what you want to do. It's a real balance. For sure. And a challenge. Tammy, thanks so much for coming on.

Rowdykittens.com, is there anywhere else that you want people to pay attention to you and what you're doing? I have a great fun class that's coming up in 2015. It's called A Simple Year. And it's a simple, I think it's simpleyear.co. But if you just go to rowdykittens.com, you'll find the link to that course.

But yeah, thank you so much. It was a great conversation and I appreciate your time. Absolutely. And on your class, you, real quick, let's make sure that we plug it in case anyone's interested, you're doing that with a number of other leading simplicity advocates, right? That's a group project, so that could be a really neat opportunity for people to get involved in the community surrounding these themes, right?

Yeah, definitely. We had over 400 people in last year's course, and it was so fun. Really, really awesome folks. And just, it's a 12-month class, and we explore topics like decluttering, work, mindfulness, and more. So yeah, definitely check it out, and I hope folks will join in. I will.

Tammy, thanks for coming on. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Have a great day. Cool story, huh? As we talked about in the interview, I think it's probably useful to have a discussion with people who can accurately look and say there are good things and there are bad things about every situation in life.

I find my personality is such that I tend to go towards the extreme examples and just extol the virtues of certain things. I love the idea of the tiny houses, and so I'm prone to simply just say, "Oh, it's the greatest thing in the world. It's the greatest lifestyle in the world." But there are obviously drawbacks, and there are many ways that a traditional house, such as most of us would live in, is going to be far superior.

And there are advantages to owning a house with property out in the country, and there are advantages to owning a little condo in the city. So, hopefully, we can look at them rationally and get the closest to what we're looking for. I want to close up today just by mentioning and reaffirming and just talking about and pulling some examples from Tammy's story with regard to the three-part formula for wealth.

And so, for those of you who are new to the show, I go back to this again and again and again, that there are only three things that we can affect in order to build wealth and build lifestyle that we desire to build. Number one is our income. Number two is our expenses.

And number three is what do we do with the difference between those two things. That's it. So, anytime you're listening to a story, what I'm going to encourage you is think about what's working and what's not working in their situation and which of these three levers is this person pushing on.

Depending on where the person is in life, if somebody's sharing with us a story about their success or about their failure, you're going to look to see what is the problem, and the problem is going to be in one of these three areas. Either the problem or the solution is in income, either the problem or solution or it's in expenses, or it is in what's happening with the difference between those two numbers.

And so, every story can be fit into that, at least that I've ever found. And again, I didn't make this up. It just simply exists, but I never really heard anyone talk about it until finally one day this clicked in my head. But the most optimal, fastest results will come from adjusting all three of these things and optimizing all three of them.

But it's likely also that the results are going to come – most of us aren't going to be able to do all three, at least not at the same time. So, it's going to happen in one or two of the different areas. So, in Tammy's story, what you'll see or what you saw is that she and her husband didn't talk much about their income.

She didn't say she had a remarkably high income. It sounded like they probably just had maybe a middle-of-the-road average income. But middle-of-the-road average income and middle-of-the-road average expenses don't lead to a lot of financial abundance. So, the first thing that they changed was expenses. So, little by little, she told the story, downsizing their house, getting rid of stuff, downsizing, downsizing, downsizing.

Then, concurrent with that, she invested in her business. So, what she chose to do with the difference between those two things was take that and get out of the money cycle, where instead of working her job, she could have just said, "I'm going to keep on working my job at the investment company.

I'm going to spend less money and I'm going to invest the difference in stocks." That would be perfectly valid. But it would have taken her longer to achieve the lifestyle that she was doing, doing it that way, than to achieve it with starting her own business. So, now she started her own business.

She hosts some classes. She makes enough money to support her lifestyle. And is that financial independence? Is it financial freedom? Well, she doesn't have one boss. She doesn't work for one company. So, although it's not financial freedom in the sense that's truly passive in the idea that my investment portfolio pays for all of my lifestyle expenses, and I just sit back, put my money in index funds, and sit back and live off of the growth, it's certainly a better lifestyle than what she was experiencing with her corporate job.

So, the point is by lowering expenses, keeping the same income, and then investing the difference between the expenses and the income, investing that difference into a business, she and her husband have created lifestyles that are more in line with what they're looking for. And that seems to be working for them now.

Now, on that basis, they can continue to work on their financial plan. They can continue to increase their income if they want to. They can decrease their expenses if they want to, and they can continue to invest in other things. That's always the choice that we face. And they very well may make the decision, "You know what?

We don't need to increase our income much beyond this. We value our free time. We're not concerned about tripling our business revenue." And that's entirely their prerogative. Now, if you notice, flip that, and I like to use, I like to parallel these examples with James Wesley Rawls. So, if you listen to a survivalist view of financial planning, which was Thursday's show, if you listen to the survivalist view, what you see is what is a survivalist doing?

Well, a survivalist is taking income that they're earning currently, and they're trying to focus on setting aside assets and materials and goods that are going to provide for the needs of life. So, by stockpiling food, by stockpiling or providing for means of production, you're able to lower the expenses.

So, you're buying the means of production and/or stockpiling the expenses and buying and lowering the expenses. Additionally, a survivalist who's concerned about the end of the world as we know it would usually be concerned about income. So, he's creating a new income source. For Rawls, that might be – well, he writes books, so he makes money off of his books.

That might also be the fact that he has a dairy cow, he has a farm. So, he has the ability, we're in a transition from one set of normal, whatever, from today's society to some different changing, shifting iteration. Then, the idea is to be able to handle that transition fairly seamlessly.

But if you do that, if you have the means of production to provide for the needs of life so that you don't need to have so many expenses, and if you've adjusted your income to where it fits what you would transition to at that point in time, and you've wisely invested the difference into – usually a survivalist is going to invest into the means of production, but they're going to do that more in a physical sense.

That's exactly the same thing that Tammy did. She just is investing the means of production, the difference between her income and expenses. She's investing that – excuse me. I get tongue-tied. She's investing the difference between her income and expenses into the means of production, but she's focusing on financial means of production, into the business.

But she has the needs of life. A tiny house replaces the need for her to pay rent, or it was when she was living in the tiny house. Eliminating the need for the car eliminates the need for that expense, or at least it did while she was in that situation.

So, the work that a minimalist is doing and the work that a survivalist is doing, they have different outlooks on life. A survivalist would be very uncomfortable because the weak spot in the financial plan for a minimalist who doesn't have any of the things of life is that they're entirely reliant on the normal functioning of society.

So, for example, if you live in a tiny house, it's going to be difficult for you to have enough food, where if there's a winter storm, you get through it. Now, I'm sure that you can fit some, and just because you live in a tiny house doesn't mean you can't have food stocked up.

But you're going to necessarily be more constricted than someone who has a big barn that they can put lots of food in. So, my point is just simply to share this concept with you and share this model with you. And when you're listening to people's stories, ask yourself, "What are they doing?

How are they achieving it? Is it income?" Because many times this is what happens. Somebody has an average expense level. Think of, who was it, Justin, Root of Good. He says, "I just got an average middle-class lifestyle, but I make more than the average, and I save the difference." And his investment plan, I think it was index funds.

So, all he's doing, keeping expenses fixed, but having a relatively higher income, and investing the differences in traditional portfolio investments. Some people don't have a high income and never have a high income, but they're very, very skilled with their expenses. So, they lower the expenses. Some people are very skilled with investment returns.

The difference, the fastest route and the fastest path is going to be to optimize all three of those things. And again, tackle them one at a time. If you're in a problem situation, look at your situation and say, "Is it realistic? Do I have an easy means for me to go to a higher income?

If not, move to expenses. Is it easier for me to cut expenses?" For most people in our society, it's probably easier to cut expenses than to increase income. But if you do them concurrently, then you make a much bigger difference. Then you look and say, "Well, what's the difference?

What should I do with the difference between these things?" If I'm poor, it's likely because I'm in debt and I am paying the interest, the difference between. I'm spending more than I make. Expenses are higher than income. And now I'm paying interest. That's a problem. That's a verdict to poverty.

You're going to be poor if you continue that plan. But on the flip side, some people even who wind up fabulously wealthy, think of people who go through an IPO process, building a company and selling it and then cashing out at the IPO. What do they do? Oftentimes, they don't have much income.

They probably don't have that many expenses. But they put everything on creating the difference, creating that delta, that growth of the rate of return of their investments. If the business succeeds, they are able to succeed and cash out handsomely. I hope that's useful to you. I find it to be a very useful mental model that I think consistently about.

Again, the fastest results are going to come in optimizing all three. But notice I say the word "optimizing." For some people, walking away from a high-income position is a better choice. I made that choice. I decided the income is less important to me than the lifestyle. But what allowed me to do that same thing, what allowed Tammy to do it, is control over expenses.

So consider some of this and figure out, kind of look at your situation through that lens. And hopefully, this will help you. I trust it will. I like the variety and I like finding the principles that can be applied in each of these situations. That's it for today's show.

I thank you for being here. I hope you enjoyed this one. Up early in the morning, recording this and releasing this one. I go out pretty early today. Tomorrow, this is episode 105. If you need any show notes, links to Tammy's blog, etc., check the app on your phone.

Make sure that you're subscribed to the show. You can find today's show notes at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/105. Tomorrow, I think I'm going to continue with the college planning series. On Thursday, I will be releasing an interview with David Downing from Australia. He wrote a book called "Radical Immediate Retirement." I think you'll find that interview interesting.

It's an appropriately radical topic for the show. So make sure to subscribe to the show and tell your friends who may be subscribed in iTunes and are saying, "What happened to Radical Personal Finance? We didn't go away. Joshua just messed up his feed redirect." If you benefited from today's show, consider joining my membership program.

That's how I plan to pay the bills around here as we get this going. So far, I think I've had 13 people sign up, so that's pretty exciting. I thank you to each of you who have signed up. I would be thrilled if more of you would continue to do that.

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This show is intended to provide entertainment, education, and financial enlightenment. Your situation is unique, and I cannot deliver any actionable advice without knowing anything about you. This show is not, and is not intended to be any form of financial advice. Please, develop a team of professional advisors who you find to be caring, competent, and trustworthy.

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