Transcription
For a long time, I lived pretty frugally. I meticulously tracked every penny I made or spent. I only bought groceries that were on sale. I'd wear my clothes until they literally fell apart. And I spent 5 years sitting on what must have been the world's most uncomfortable couch. Hell, I even made a video called "Why I'm So Frugal," which was the video that initially blew up this channel almost 3 years ago.
To be honest, being frugal didn't really bother me all that much at first. I didn't really feel like I was missing out on a lot. Like, all my basic needs were met, and my life was pretty simple, and I was pretty content overall. I saw frugality as a tool or a strategy to get the things I wanted most in life by choosing to sacrifice the things that were less important to me. I don't think that's all that unreasonable, and straight up, it's a great strategy. It works for me.
My main motivation from the start was to lessen my reliance on my job. I always hated working. So when I thought about my options, which were A) to work hard and a lot and make as much money as possible so that I could then just spend it on whatever I want, or B) to live frugally, stretch every dollar, keep my expenses low, and minimize how much I had to work, option B sounded far more appealing. There was no car, or clothes, or vacation in the world that I felt was worth having to work my life away for. I just never really valued that stuff all that much, and I really still don't. So, I figured the less money I spent, the more I could save, and the sooner I could be free. Frugality seemed like a cheat code to escape the rat race as soon as possible.
I began looking at every purchase through the lens of how long would I have to work to afford this. And when I did that, I could usually talk myself out of anything, especially because I wasn't even earning that much at the time. If I was making $12 an hour, let's say, a pair of shoes could easily be an entire day of work or more. I mean, even at $20 an hour, a single meal out at a restaurant would be like 2 to three hours of work. And you know what tastes better than a veggie burger and a pint from a shitty chain restaurant? 2 to 3 hours of not being at work.
But in truth, it wasn't even really about the low pay. It was about what I had to do to get those few bucks. I hated being forced out of bed early in the morning. I hated having to spend my entire day hanging around people I didn't like and doing things I didn't really want to be doing. And I hated the fact that when all was said and done, I barely had any time or energy left to do the things that I wanted to do. I felt like I had no control over my life. My plan was to save as aggressively as possible in the short term so that I could retire early, or at least drop down to just part-time work in a few years and take back my life.
So yeah, I mean, frugal living made sense. It helped me save a lot of money. It taught me discipline. It worked for me until it didn't. What happened over time was that I was saving a good chunk of money every month, but when I did have time to myself, I found that I wasn't really enjoying it in the way I had hoped. Because doing anything that involved spending money caused me anxiety. I was reluctant to pick up new hobbies if that meant having to buy any equipment or pay for classes of some sort. If I went out to dinner with friends, I would feel guilty about it the next day, knowing that that one meal cost me as much as like an entire week's worth of groceries. Basically, spending money on anything that wasn't truly necessary made me feel like I was dragging myself further from the finish line that I had been racing towards, and I wanted to cross that finish line so badly. But at the same time, choosing not to do the things I wanted to do in effort to save money made that finish line feel kind of meaningless. I didn't want to spend my entire life miserable at work, but I also didn't want to sit around at home doing nothing all the time. I felt like I was caught between a rock and a hard place. What a weird expression.
So anyways, I started asking myself some questions. Questions like, "If money was no object, how would I want to spend my free time?" And, "What exactly is it about working that I hate so much?" And, "Is there a world that exists where I could find balance, where I could maybe somehow make work less soul-sucking so that I didn't feel so desperate to get away from it? And where I'd be able to spend money a bit more freely on the things I enjoy?"
After a lot of reflection, I realized that self-employment was the obvious first step. While being your own boss isn't necessarily a guarantee of sunshine and rainbows, it does immediately eliminate certain miseries. Miseries like being micromanaged, being forced to follow someone else's schedule, having a cat's salary, and needing to ask permission to do things like take a day off or leave early. Simply knowing that I could set my hours in a way where I wouldn't have to wake up at the ass crack of dawn and that I wouldn't need approval to work around my personal priorities relieved a lot of pressure right off the bat. My logic was that if making money didn't have to feel so painful, then maybe spending it wouldn't have to be either. And I was right, sort of.
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So yeah, I started a business and started working for myself. I was 22 at the time, and in some ways, things were instantly better, but in other ways, they weren't at all. Yes, I made my own schedule and set my own rates. And yes, I got to sleep in. In case I haven't mentioned it enough, this one was huge for me. Technically, I had more control over my life, but I was working as hard or harder than I had ever worked before. And so, I still didn't really have much freedom, and I was even more burnt out than I used to be.
So, again, I went back to the drawing board. To me, the perfect self-employment venture is the one that sits right in the middle of the Venn diagram between the things that you find reasonably enjoyable or at least tolerable, and the things that pay you enough to justify putting up with the parts that aren't as tolerable. Obviously, those things will be different for everyone based on your skills and your interests and your personality. For me, I didn't really mind what I was doing. Sometimes I even enjoyed it, and I was definitely making more money than I did before, but it wasn't enough money that I could honestly say the less enjoyable parts were worth it. So, I was still very much living a life I wanted to escape from. I still felt like I needed to pinch pennies, and I still felt like most things I could buy were less valuable to me, less important to me than the time I'd have to work to afford them.
After some time, I realized that I was approaching work and money completely backwards. My entire life, I had been searching for a job I could get or a business I could start that would allow me to avoid certain things. Again, early mornings, micromanagement, etc. Like, I knew exactly what I didn't want in my life, but I had never asked myself what I actually did want. When I thought about it, I realized that I'm happiest when I have variety in my week, when I can feel productive without the monotony of doing the exact same thing day in and day out. I enjoyed being creative and expressive. And I really needed something that was scalable, something where my input wasn't directly tied to my output. Otherwise, I would be stuck having to work more and more hours if I wanted to increase my income.
With that, I started a bunch of different side hustles. I bought and sold items on Facebook Marketplace. I taught beginner guitar lessons. And of course, I started this YouTube channel. I figured one of two things would happen. Either I would keep doing a little bit of everything, spending a few days a week on each, which I was totally fine with because it gave me that variety I wanted and that creativity I was looking for, and I had the freedom to scale each thing up or down as needed. Or, if one of these things ended up being more fulfilling than the rest, and it paid enough, I could eventually just double down and make that my main gig.
It's weird to think about the fact that I started off wanting to work as little as possible, but somehow wound up juggling multiple jobs all at once. One of my friends recently referred to me as "the hardest working lazy person she's ever met." And I think that describes me perfectly. But because I liked different aspects of each one of these gigs, and because I didn't have to do any of them 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, I didn't really mind the fact that I was still more or less working full-time hours.
And the part that I find the most interesting is that for a long while, my income was pretty much at the same level it had always been at, like it hadn't increased. I was making around the median for my area. So, definitely not terrible, but not a ton. But despite this, my attitude towards money started to change massively. Like, I no longer felt anxiety about day-to-day purchases, and I stopped hesitating to spend money on things that bring me joy. I know you guys probably thought that this buildup was going to lead to me saying something like, "Oh, I started making way more money, so I didn't need to be frugal anymore." But that's not the case at all. My income didn't really increase as much as my contempt for work decreased by a lot because I no longer had to spend all day every day doing something I hated. The idea of spending money didn't really bother me because I didn't mind just getting back to work and making more.
And I think that that's another really important point for self-employment. Like, if you're a salaried employee, you make what you make, and that's it. But when you work for yourself, no matter what you do, you will pretty much always have the opportunity to make more money if you need or want to. That's a big part of why I think that even regular employee people should have a small side business of some sort so that if you ever need to cover a big unexpected expense or you want to treat yourself to something special, you can just take on an extra client or two or accept a small project or whatever, and you get to control how much money you make.
So obviously, in the time since all of this, YouTube has more or less become my main job now, which is really cool and I'm really grateful. But as I said, it wasn't necessarily my plan. It wasn't necessarily my intention, and I didn't really think it was a possibility, if I'm being honest, but it became that thing that I enjoyed more than the rest, and that eventually presented itself as a viable source of income after like two full years of doing it for $0. But hey, that's okay.
So, yeah, I've realized that the ability to let go of a scarcity mindset comes not necessarily from making more money, but from making money in a way that you enjoy, or at least that you don't hate. From living a life that you don't feel the need to run away from. Even if you only make a modest income, it doesn't seem so stifling when it doesn't come at the cost of your sanity.
I would definitely still say that I'm somewhat frugal, or at least conscientious about my spending. I still don't like to be wasteful, and I don't think that would ever change. Even if I was super rich, I still stock up on things when they're on sale. I still shop around and compare prices, especially for larger purchases. I still don't have Netflix, or Spotify, or Amazon Prime, or any of that crap. I still cook 99% of my meals at home. I cut my own lawn, and I clean my own house. And I still track my spending just like I always have. On the outside, it might not look like anything has really changed at all. But if something breaks or wears out, I replace it. If I go out for the evening and I spend $50 or even $100, I enjoy myself and I don't fret about it. If I want to try a new hobby, I do. And yes, I did ultimately get rid of that terrible couch and get a new one.
What has changed is the way that I view money and work and life as a whole. After talking to some other people about this, I've come to realize that my experience isn't at all unique. Hyperfrugality is almost always rooted in a scarcity mindset. And a scarcity mindset is almost always rooted in unhappiness, in a feeling of needing to escape from something—a bad job, a bad relationship, bad living arrangements, whatever. But when you start focusing on what you want rather than what you want to run away from, everything changes. And that's true for everything, not just your finances.
But hey, as always, it's just my two cents. And I would love to hear yours in the comment section down below. Let me know your experiences with frugality. If you consider yourself a frugal person and where you think that's rooted in. If you think it's something that serves you more than it harms you, or vice versa. If you like this video, like the video, subscribe for more. You can follow me on Instagram at @according_2_nicole. Make sure to grab your 99-cent .online domain at the link below with the code NICOLE. Other than that, thank you guys so much as always for watching. Take care, and I'll see you next week.