The Power of Resilience: Miss Mazuma

I read the book “The Boxcar Children” as a kid but Bianca actually lives in a caboose.  She also happens to have one of the more powerful stories of resilience and self reliance that I have heard in quite awhile.

I am a bit nervous to do this interview with Bianca because it is my first ever in person interview.  This means that unlike on conference call, I actually have to put on pants and maintain eye contact.  What a drag.  However Bianca is super easy to chat with.  We drink a couple of hot teas as a foot of snow melts outside the window at the awesome Mr Money Mustache World HQ.

“I’ve always been someone who likes coloring outside the lines,” she begins.

Bianca was a self professed deadhead in high school.  She followed the band around a little (even selling clothes and jewelry at the shows) and then moved out to Oregon for a stint after graduation.  As she looks back, she remarks that she always felt that she would be living some weird alternative lifestyle because that’s just kind of always how she has been.

Finding a Career That Fits

After moving back to the midwest, Bianca was scheduled into training to become a flight attendant.  Then September 11 brought planes crashing through the World Trade Center and jolted and changed air travel all together.  Her job was even placed on hold for a bit as a result before she was able to start.  Getting up to go to work is not all sunshine and rainbows but once she got into the groove she actually enjoyed the job each day.   

I tell Bianca that I would make a horrible flight attendant because I would inevitably swear at a dozen people in the first hour on the job and get fired.  She responds, “I think I’ve learned a lot from my mother, she can smile through anything.”  Bianca is talking about her job but over the course of our conversation this almost becomes a lesson or a life philosophy.  Let me explain…

Honesty, Reality, and Realty

In the mid 2000’s Bianca became interested in real estate.  She got her realtors license and started buying and renting properties at a pace of one property per year.  Bianca bought properties until she ran into the cliff that was the housing collapse and broader financial crisis of the late 2000s.  She found her properties underwater and she was holding $500,000 of mortgage debt with an annual salary of $40K.  What she had thought was going to be her rocket to financial success turned into an anchor. 

Honesty is important to Bianca.  In fact, friends have even called her out as “too honest” at times (is there such a thing?).  She tried to keep paying her mortgages.  Bianca even covered a couple of $5,000 special assessments on condos then worth pennies on the dollar so as to not “screw my neighbors.”  However, ultimately there was just not enough money there to pay with.  She went through a period of multiple years of short sales of all of the properties she had built up. It included 3 short sales plus signing her house over to her husband.  These short sales coincided with a divorce over the same time period.  She explained that over that time period it felt like there was a weight on her all the time.  Sometimes sitting for a long time in a hot bath was the only place that she could make herself feel warm and cozy.  

Don’t Call It a Comeback

After all payments and her last short sale was finally complete, Bianca explains that “Once it was over, I could Breath Like Nothing.”  She had more energy and started working double the hours that she had been.  She saved the majority of those earnings and purchased a small condo only 2 years later with all cash (you can’t get a mortgage for 4 years after a short sale).  She opened an investment account that has benefitted from this latest bull market run as well.  As of last year, only 6 years after her last short sale was complete, Bianca hit 25X her annual expenses invested to reach financial independence.

This is Just The Beginning

This is an absolutely remarkable financial story!  It would be easy to make this story the singular focus.  After getting knocked down, Bianca comes back stronger through hard work and never giving up.  However, there is a much more important story than finances that I heard during our discussion.  Because the truth is that when I met Bianca, I asked her to do this interview simply because today she lives an inspiring life that is uniquely hers.  I knew nothing of this past that may well have devastated most people.  And that may actually be the much more important yet harder story to tell.  Something about why she bounced back rather than bemoaning her fate.  Something also about moving beyond the past to honor the multidimensional person that she is today. 

Losing It All

On the road back, Bianca explained to me that, “The hardest part was losing it all.  But it wasn’t hard to pick myself up because I didn’t have another option.  I didn’t have anywhere to go, I didn’t have anyone to take care of me.  I didn’t have another option so I had to do it.” Did you ever consider declaring bankruptcy I ask?  “No it was hard enough for me to skip mortgage payments because it’s so against who I am.”   

As I talked to Bianca I I kept trying to get at how she persevered through a tough time where others may not have.  I offer that “the other options I’m referring to are just…giving up.  A lot of people do it.  I’ve known friends that lost it all and ended up on their parents couch.” “Yeah that was not an option,” “That never even occurred to you?” “No.  No I left my parent’s home as soon as I could and there was no way I was going back…You know if I was sick or if there was no other option… but the option is there to get off your ass and go back to work.  This is what I’ve been doing my whole life is working really hard.  I don’t have an education to fall back on.  It’s always been me grinding it.”  

My Only Option

It’s only after our conversation that I realized that I foolishly kept trying to tell Bianca that there was something unique about her and to describe to me what it is.  However, she views herself as just an average person who would do what anyone would in her situation. 

• An average person that found herself in debt over 12 X her annual salary but never considered bankruptcy or assistance. 
• An average person that worked double her hours, and reached financial independence 6-8 years later. 
• An average person that remains open, honest, and kind hearted. 

I will offer that perhaps the phrase “this is my only option” may have been the very self talk that helped her through the hard time?  The ability to accept what is and then get to work and “smile through anything,” may be in and of itself a powerful behavior for taking control of one’s life.  Stoicism is a buzzy philosophy these days around Silicon Valley and Tim Ferriss seems to talk about Marcus Aurelius on the daily.  However, it occurs to me that Bianca may be exactly what a stoic looks like.  

Nice Caboose!

When I first met Bianca a few months back we were in a crowd of people and she was a stand out.  The most gregarious and open person there, even though she is a self described introvert.  She talked to everyone about how she lives in a caboose turned tiny house which was just a gold mine of double entendres.  But I’ll ignore those easy jokes asking what her caboose is like or how big it is (ok maybe I won’t but in fairness she made these jokes first and I am just repeating so don’t kill the messenger).

Tiny House Talk

It all started as a sort of “what if we did this”, talk.  Bianca saw that there was a group of cabooses (or cabeese if you will) that had been turned into housing close to a beautiful lake in the midwest.  She joked about buying one with friends over a few drinks.  “How hilarious would it be if we all had cabooses?”  Then a few months later she saw that two were actually listed together for sale.  She convinced a friend to buy the adjoining one and they plopped down $36K a piece for maybe the most bargain piece of funky real estate that I’ve ever heard of.  

Whenever she and her friend are there together in the train cars, “we just giggle our asses off because we think it’s so funny that we are living in cabooses,” Bianca chuckles.  I joke with her that if I had a caboose I would wear a railroad engineer’s uniform at all times.  She lights up and reveals that she actually has the overalls, the hat, the whole get up.  

Building a Train

So many people came by to visit the cabeese that Bianca is actually working to join the board.  It’s the first step in reviving the caboose community itself as well as the beginning of a project that is more long term.  Two other friends have also purchased cabeese and they are working on maybe getting a whole train of like minded folk going if everything stays on track 😉  It has become a mini community and rumor has it that a full conductors outfit may have been recently discovered in one of the newly purchased cars.  I am super curious to follow along and see if this experiment turns into something more.

Make Meaning or Money

When Bianca hit her FI number last year, she scaled back her work hours.  However, she plans to continue to work her job until 2022 when she will qualify for full flight benefits for life.  This could mean endless access to free flights.  Think of the adventures!  

I ask Bianca if anything has changed since hitting her financial independence number.  As someone who has worked loads of hours over the past half decade, Bianca explains a challenge of transitioning to a more work optional mentality.  “I am still wrapping my brain around it.”  “If I never have to work again does that make my mind relax a little bit more?  Maybe, but I’m not there yet.  I’ve just crossed this threshold and I feel like I need a huge buffer around it.  It’s not that I need money.  It’s that my brain needs to have time and space to really feel comfortable with it.”

With her scaled back hours, Bianca has been able to travel to be there for friends more and has also been able to take some other unique adventures. 

Adventures Cross Country

Last summer Bianca took a 6 week road trip across the USA with her dog Bubba:

She turned her old CRV into a bedroom on wheels tearing out the back seat and putting in a sleeping platform.  There were even pulleys and curtains involved to make it all work.  She travelled over 6000 miles and had fun seeing America from the ground as opposed to crisscrossing it every day at 30,000 feet.  Bianca often stayed in hotel parking lots because they expected out of state cars and had a level of safety.  She joined a national gym membership to be able to cheaply and conveniently shower in pretty much any town she visited.  She could even get a workout in if she felt like it (she didn’t 😂).

Her route took her from Chicago to the tip of Florida and then all the way out to the California coast crisscrossing America as she went.  Along the way Bianca met so many women who thought her adventure sounded awesome but lamented that they could never do that for one reason or another.  She loved being the example that of course you can do it.  Bianca took time to stop at every roadside attraction from Cadillac Ranch to huge dinosaurs or giant arrows in the ground.  Along the way she met up with friends and even fit in some time in wine country.  Pretty swanky for a car living adventure.  

On The Way

When Bianca first told me that for exercise walking is her thing I was kind of thinking, isn’t walking everyone’s thing?  Then I learned that she is talking about 500 miles of walking over 23 days.  Bianca has hiked the Camino De Santiago in Spain several times.  Apparently, she walks like Forest Gump runs.  In fact, we were delayed in having this chat because she had just returned from another short visit to Spain where she spent a few days on the trail.

Bianca explains that it’s an awesome feeling to have everything you need on your back.  You spend all day walking and just thinking.  Meeting up with others on the trail is also an adventure because everyone has their stories.  Bianca shares that you learn to take it as it goes because things don’t go as planned.  On this most recent visit for example it rained almost the whole time.  The first day Bianca ever hiked the trail she woke up at 5am to get an early start.  However, she didn’t know that the sun doesn’t rise in the winter there until 8:30am.  This meant she spent three and a half hours walking in darkness by herself.  Sometimes you just need to be able to take it as it comes.     

Next Real Estate Crash

Recently, Bianca was on a panel with a 20 something real estate investor who had just bought her first property and was praising the power of leverage.  The people in the audience were new to real estate and they were hearing this golden story.  Bianca respectfully offered another perspective of what actually happens when the $#*% hits the fan.  In her words, “There’s so many things that you don’t see coming even if you are in real estate.”  I can definitely vouch for this as well.  Bianca likes to joke that she is the poster girl for what not to do in real estate.  

I remember the mid 2000’s when conventional wisdom was that real estate will only go up in value it is just a matter of how fast.  At the time, Bianca explains that she had felt like “I had played by the rules and then the banks changed the rules.”  However, over time she has come to see her role and how that younger version of herself got to an over leveraged position.  As she says this I think of investors who have only come up after the last financial collapse and know nothing except for more than a decade of economic boom and the longest bull market in US history.  Will they be prepared when the rules change? 

Look Forward

It is easier for her to talk about her real estate story because Bianca has gotten feedback from others in similar situations that is has helped them.  On her journey, she started a website mainly to keep herself accountable and the series is there if it helps others in similar situations or makes them feel less alone.  However, it was also more than 6 years in the past now and she doesn’t feel like it is worth while to keep looking back.  “I don’t want that to be my legacy.  I want to move past it,” she explains.

What Would You Like Your Legacy To Be?

“I’ve just never felt the need to climb to the top.  There’s so many people that are great at that…let em have it.”

“I’m not interested in making the whole world a better place.  There’s so many people more powerful and smarter than I am that can do that.  But I am interested in making my little corner better.  That’s what’s important to me.  One of those things is kindness and one of those things is helping other people, and one of them is creating community but do I think I am going to change the world?  No.  And I don’t really care about that.  Really it’s more important that I am there for my friends and my family and I try to be the best person I can be.  If people forget about me 5 years after I am gone that’s fine.  I don’t feel like I have to leave this big imprint.  Because to me it just creates more pressure to do something that I might not feel genuine to do, just to do it.  I just want to be a genuine person and hopefully that’s enough.”

As she says this I wonder if life could be as simple as each of us trying to be a better person rather than changing the world.  I’m not sure but I kind of want to vote for her for president 😉

If you’d like to follow along or hear more from Bianca check out MissMazuma.com.

This is #5 in a series where I talk with others living personalized and intentional Lives that look very different from the norm. Check out more conversations from living outside the maze here.