Building Freedom: Michelle from Frugality And Freedom

In 2007, Michelle found herself in Kathmandu on a charity travel trip supporting eye surgery for those in bustling Nepal.  She was in her early 20s.  Michelle still vividly remembers what the colorful city looked like and, in particular, how it smelled.  Standing next to the river, the deceased were being burned at a funeral ceremony on the opposite bank.  It was one of those sort of travel initiation experiences that either makes you think about doing a beach vacation next time or makes you want to explore more of our world.  

Six months earlier, Michelle had been working an admin job that didn’t have much of a future.  After this trip in 2007 until today, Michelle has travelled internationally at least once every year.  She has been to over 40 countries.  She hopes to see every country in Europe and has seen 27 so far.  Random fact: did you know that if you visit Italy and see San Marino and the Vatican City, you technically have been to 3 countries? I know this now after chatting with Michelle 😉

Part of what makes Michelle’s story so fascinating to me is that she has built a career that is conducive to living a personalized lifestyle and she has adopted an interesting balance of life now and life for her future self as well.

Financial Independence Now

For Mr Life Outside The Maze, it was once that I reached financial independence that I grew empowered to change my thinking and decision making.  However, I grew curious about the question of whether one could experience the benefits of financial independence before actually hitting a specific $ number.  In other words, if one had a financial plan that she was sure would get her to FI and was fully dedicated and certain that she would get there with extra time, could one experience the benefits prior to ever reaching that number?  Then I met Michelle…

Michelle joins our video call smiling from a coffee shop in New Zealand.  “Hello from Friday Morning,” she says 20 hours ahead of me.  “The future looks good.”            

A Career of Festivals

Michelle discovered events planning and arts festival organization as a career.  She started by volunteering in her early 20s just to get some free tickets to a festival in South Australia where she is from.  However, because Michelle is a total rockstar, this led to a 3 month work contract, then another, and has been her career ever since.  

While this career fits her well, Michelle didn’t want to be like some others in the industry.  Many embraced the “starving artist” mindset, trading security for the lifestyle of working in exotic locales and putting on interesting experiences, but living paycheck to paycheck and not saving money for future.  Michelle started investing modestly in her mid 20s around 2010 (10-15%) for a little security and to safely afford her annual trips. Then she discovered the financial independence movement around 2012 where many were saving 50% or more and investing in index funds, building lives of freedom and travel with work being optional.  This “changed everything” for her.

Financial Independence & Balance

In her first year of putting energy towards financial independence, Michelle was working two jobs and adding on side hustles. She was doing everything that she could to maximize income and minimize spend.  After a year of this, she realized that she loved the goal but her day-to-day did not feel happy. 

 “If you are not going to enjoy the journey, what’s the point?” asks Michelle.  “You can save all the money in the world but if you are going to be miserable while doing so, that’s not good for your mental health, your physical health, your relationships, and so on… If you are going full tilt to hit a number but are disliking your everyday in the meantime, what is to say you are going to have the experience to maintain a level of happiness afterwards?”  “People keep in line with the habits that they have built.”

Coast to Financial Independence

After over a year of crazy-ness, Michelle had overworked herself and took 6 months off in 2013 to travel Europe – her first “mini-retirement”.  She then returned to work, but with a different focus. Michelle included more balance between her lifestyle now and preparations for her future.  She continued to save and by 2017, Michelle had nearly reached half of her lean FI number.  She figured that if she simply leaves her index fund investments untouched, she will hit a lean FI number in around 10 years through returns and compounding.  

Effectively, she front loaded her savings.  Rather than race to some sort of imagined finish line, Michelle is changing her thinking now.  She no longer needs to save additional money for FI. As long as she makes enough each year for her current expenses, she can “coast” to FI.  Now working 6 months per year allows her to cover living expenses and trip costs (with a modest surplus).  Michelle tends to think in terms of “chapters” in her life, with various “seasons of travel.”     

Chapters Of Life & Seasons of Travel

Michelle is relatively frugal.  In May, for example, she spent a week eating on $2 per day.  She has also front loaded her savings as previously mentioned.  Because of these, she was able to “semi-retire”; now working half the year and taking the other half off since 2017 at age 33.  This is the freedom of pursuing financial independence for Michelle.  

Chapter MMXVII: European Edition

2017 marked the beginning of her semi-retirement and Michelle celebrated with 6 months of European travel.  Travelling alone has been awesome for when you just want to spend a whole day working on something in a coffee shop, choose your own itinerary and eat at the places you want to.  However, it also means that when your possessions get stolen from your hostel in Spain, it all falls on you to deal with the local police (yep that happened).

Chapter MMXVIII: Travelling The USA

From mid-2018 to mid-2019, Michelle travelled through 20 states of USA, living off of $55 per day for a year.  She kept her costs low with cheap or even free accommodation in hostels or housesitting, plus getting around by bus or train. She got a “working holiday” visa and interspersed working in festival operations for a few tiny events including the Sundance Film Festival and South By Southwest.

Chapter MMXIX: Amongst the Kiwis

Michelle is currently a few months into an 8 month event management job in Auckland, New Zealand. She is exploring the country via mini-breaks on weekends.  She then plans for another season of travel, this time a “chapter” in Canada for summer 2020 .

What Has Changed Over The Last 12 Years?

“Let’s see. 12 years ago in my early 20s.  Huh, I was such a wee young thing,”  laughs Michelle.  She describes being on a default life trajectory where you go to college and then down a well defined career path, plus perhaps settle in a relationship and eventually buy a house.  Michelle had been a star student in high school, but struggled with motivation in college.  She was studying accounting as a possibility and while the coursework was okay, Michelle saw the future ahead and asked “is that all there is?”  She withdrew from studies and worked a handful of admin jobs while trying to find a career that lit her up; booking that tour to Nepal on a whim to shake things up.

Today, 12 years since that trip when she caught the travel bug for good, Michelle says: “I am quite a different a person than back then”.  She has seen so many options in life.  She has read voraciously and become part of the financial independence, digital nomad, and minimalism communities among others.  As Michelle points out, they are all similar in that they are about creating your own lifestyle and about freedom.  She envisions a Venn diagram where so many of these sub-cultures and communities overlap in interesting ways, each bringing their lessons about possibility in life.  To this end, Michelle started a website aptly titled “Frugality and Freedom” just this year.  In addition to writing about her story there, she also seeks to build up and unite the Australian financial independence community, including by highlighting local blogs and events through her regular Australian FI Weekly email series.           

Changed By Travel

Travel has given Michelle a personal resilience in difficult situations.  After all, if she can get a decent night’s sleep on some airport bench in a foreign land, encountering a daily setback in her own country hardly seems a big deal.  She has travelled the world solo.  She has become an events expert dealing with everything that hits the fan.  After creatively designing her own life and making it a reality, Michelle’s confidence is palpable.  Fear yields more to possibility every year.  Michelle describes a comfort in the knowledge that she will survive anything that comes her way. 

What’s Next?     

For the foreseeable future, Michelle seems excited to live out this life that she has created, with a nomadic lifestyle and a balance of work and travel experiences.  In 2020, she is interested in exploring location independent freelancing as an event planner and writer, with the possibility of being able to work even more flexibly from anywhere that has a wifi connection. 

Keeping up long term friendships back home can be challenging after being abroad for some time.  Hence, Michelle has also committed to doubling down on these ties with lifelong friends back in Australia over the coming years.  If life is a block of marble, Michelle plans to “keep trying to chip away” toward her ideal life.

If you would like to follow along, check out FrugalityandFreedom.com, @frugalityandfreedom on Instagram, or @FrugalityFreedm on Twitter.  

Also feel free to check out more in this series of discussions with those living personalized lives that look very different from the norm.