More Money Podcast - 149 Living Your Best Life Through Sustainable Frugality - Elizabeth Willard Thames, Blogger & Author of Meet the Frugalwoods

Episode Date: March 7, 2018

Your path may not be to quit city living and move to the woods, but that's not what Liz's (a.k.a. Mrs. Frugalwoods) story is about. In her new book, Meet the Frugalwoods, she shares how defining your life can help lead you to your best life, whether that’s living simply in the country, living it up in the city, or being nomadic and travelling the world. Not matter what path you end up on, the most important things to always remember is being true to yourself and making sure you’re living a life with more intention. Long description: Joining me again on the podcast, and now no longer an anonymous blogger at Frugalwoods, Elizabeth Willard Thames is the newly published other of Meet the Frugalwoods. Not a “how-to” book on living that frugal life or reaching financial independence, but her personal story of how she was trying to check-off life’s checklist only to realize, that checklist wasn’t making her happy and didn’t align with her values anyway. I’m pretty sure most of us can identify with this. How many of us have been checking off things throughout our lives without really taking some time to think about whether what we’re doing or achieving is actually making us happy or bringing us fulfillment? I know I was doing that exact thing up until a year ago. I got my degree (check!), got married (check!), got a corporate job in Toronto’s financial district (check!), and by anyone’s standards was “making it.” But it didn’t feel like that to me, which is why I did a crazy thing and quit my job to work for myself. That’s why I totally get Liz’s story in her book. I can relate to it on such a personal level. Heck, I even fantasize about moving to the country (in the Maritimes) with my husband in the next few years. Now, I’m not sure if that’ll actually happen, but I am definitely taking a page out of Liz’s book by trying to be more intentional with my life and also practicing sustainable frugality. To me, that means spending my money on stuff that brings value to my life, and not spending money on stuff that doesn’t. Also being strategic so I can maximize my dollars so there’s more money to save and invest for my future. To me, this book was a great in-depth look into someone’s personal finance journey. I really loved this book, and I hope you do too! Check Out Liz’s Top Blog Posts Announcing My Book, “Meet The Frugalwoods: Achieving Financial Independence Through Simple Living Introducing Littlewoods! How I Figured Out What I Want To Do With My Life (And How You Can Too!) How To Be Frugal With Your Time, Not Just Your Money Buy & Review Meet the Frugalwoods Buy on Amazon.ca Buy on Amazon.com Buy on Indigo Review on Goodreads For full episode show notes, visit https://jessicamoorhouse.com/149 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to episode 149 of the Mo Money podcast. And I have a fabulous guest for this episode. And she is actually a guest who's been on the show before. It's actually one of my top downloaded episodes, which is crazy. So I'm so excited to have her back. And also, I think the time that I recorded that she was still anonymous on her blog. Now, she's not. And the big reason is she has a book. She has a book coming out. And when you have a book coming out, you can't really be anonymous.

You have to kind of have that name on there. Who I'm talking about is, of course, well, she could be known online as Mrs. Frugal Woods. But now she is out in the open. And you can know her now as Elizabeth Willard Thames or in the personal finance community, we call her Liz. She is coming out with the book Meet the Frugal Woods. Actually, it is officially out now. It came out yesterday on March 6th. So grab your copy, support a new author, especially a female author. Go get it. I read the book in like a weekend. I loved it. Oh my gosh. I had no idea. You know,

sometimes when you read a book and you're just like, yes, yes. I completely identified with, uh, well, Liz's character or Liz herself, I suppose. It kind of like freaked me out a little bit. I'm like, yeah, I can totally see so many similarities and parallels when I was in my 20s and trying to figure out life and all that stuff. I didn't exactly go the route that she did, which eventually if you'll read the book and if you're a big fan of her blog, frugalwoods.com, she was able to reach financial independence with her husband. And she has a daughter and she actually just had another baby. She's been damn busy. So we go in depth about her new book, Meet the Frugalwoods, in this episode, and I'm super excited to share it with you. But before I get to that episode,

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review in the show notes or visit Jessica Morehouse dot com slash nestwealth review. Thanks, Liz, for joining me once again on the Mo Money podcast. I feel like you may be my first recording of a guest who's been on my show twice now. So, ooh. Ooh, well, thank you. I feel very special. Yeah. So last time I had you on the show, we talked about kind of your journey to financial independence through frugal living. It's a big hit. It's one of my most popular episodes, actually, because I think people really identified with your story and just got really interested because it seems like it's a

thing that anyone could pretty much do. You don't have to be anybody special. You don't have to start out rich to be able to kind of achieve what you did. Most people, you know, were probably in your shoes or, you know, a couple of years ago. So that's kind of, I think, a reason why lots of people feel like they, hey, maybe I could do that. But I want to, you very excitingly are coming out with your own book very soon, Meet the Frugal Woods. And I just finished reading it. And I want to kind of dive in to find out, how did this book come about? It definitely seemed kind of like a natural fit, obviously, since you already have the blog. Sure. So I've been writing my blog, frugalwoods.com, for almost four years now. And a couple years ago, an editor from HarperCollins

came to me and said, do you want to write a book? I said, oh, I've always wanted to write a book. And I was, at the time, I had a very young daughter. She's now two, which is still pretty young, but she was even younger. And we were moving to our homestead in the woods of Vermont. And so it was a fairly busy time for us personally. But what I realized and what I've realized continually is that when an opportunity like that comes up, you kind of just have to take it. Yeah, exactly.

Pursue it because there is no perfect time. There's no such a thing as waiting for that right moment because you can spend your life then waiting for that time. And it's people ask, oh, when should I start taking charge of my money? And the answer is right now because the best time to do it was probably yesterday, but the next best time is right now. And now as the book is about to launch, it publishes on March 6th, I am eight months pregnant with my second child who's due in February. So it's sort of an ongoing iteration of just taking life as it comes. Exactly. And as much planning as you can do.

And this is kind of, I feel like a theme in your book, no matter how much planning you can do, it doesn't matter. God will like laugh in your face because yeah, it's life happens. And I find like for you, and that's like a big reason why I identified with certain parts of the book. I'm like, yeah, it always feels like when everything is, all this chaos is happening all at once. That's when like one extra thing happens and you just have to roll with it. Otherwise you'll go crazy. Absolutely. And I also find that I actually am more productive the more that I have on my plate. And I think there's

something to be said for time constraint to encourage you to really get things done because you don't have a whole day to procrastinate. You don't even have an hour. You have half an hour and you need to get these things done. And so I think there's actually some wisdom in just going for it and doing things as they come and being as efficient as you can. Absolutely. So the book, I wasn't sure before I picked it up. I'm like, oh, is this going to be kind of more of a novel like your story? Or is it going to be a how-to book? It seems like it is more of a book about your life. And so lessons kind of weaved in there kind of naturally. Why did you decide to kind of do that instead of how to do what we did, you know,

step-by-step kind of guide? So I really enjoy that narrative memoir style. And I also find that readers seem to respond best to a story. I think it's really easy to tell people, here are the things you should do. Here are the 10 steps you need to take to financial independence. And people say, I don't want to be told what to do. And I find that by telling these personal stories, giving the personal examples, and really showing people what it feels like, as opposed to telling them what they should do, seems to resonate more. And I also just enjoy that writing a great deal more, and I enjoy reading that more. And so my blog is largely a mix of those two styles. I have some posts that are

really quite straightforward, but a lot of it is storytelling. And I think that's my forte. My undergraduate degree is actually in creative writing. And so I really enjoy creating a world and a story for people to hopefully be able to see themselves in and see how they could implement these ideas in their own life. Yeah, absolutely. And I think you did it quite well because I feel like even though I already knew your story, I definitely got a different perspective because I got to visualize kind of what you went through.

And I'm a very visual thinker. And so it was nice to kind of have these, you know, very descriptive passages on like, you know, your move to New York. I'm like, oh, wow, I could really, I can feel, I could feel the struggle in New York. And I really like at the end when you talk a lot about making that move to the woods and how one of the things that you really were surprised by, but are, you know, glad with that. I'm like, oh man, that sounds awesome is moving to a smaller community where it really is about the people. Um, I mean, you mentioned a lot, you know, obviously you lived, uh, in, you know, busy city of Cambridge, Massachusetts for

a while. And I mean, I live in Toronto and then I lived in Vancouver, two big cities. And even though you're surrounded by people, it's, you have your pockets of, you know, friends, but sometimes you're just walking in a crowd alone. And that's one of the things I've always struggled with too. And sometimes when I go, me and my husband went on vacation to the Maritimes to visit family in New Brunswick, which is a very small town. And I loved it because everyone knew each other. They swapped like, oh, you need some eggs. I've got eggs. You need, you know, whatever. And it was just like such a nice community feeling that you don't get when you live in the city. So is that, I want to kind of, well, there's so many things I want to dive into, but I would actually really love to talk about specifically, like, what is your life like now and how does it compare to city living? Whereas I think a lot of people listening probably are city dwellers. We love living in the country. I have to say it is our dream come true.

It's really the life that we had always hoped we might be able to create. And what I would say is that while that's our story and that's what we've done, I think that a lot of the lessons that I talk about in the book and on the blog can be applied no matter what you want to do. Your goal might be to move from the country to the city and you're trying to put yourself in a financial position to do that. And the overarching ideas of the book aren't that you should move to the country because it's our individual dream. And that is not the dream of everyone. The goal with the book is to get people to ask, what would I do with my life if I did not need my paycheck? How would I conceive of my use of time, my use of money? What do I want to do in 10 years? What do I want to say that I've done over the course of my lifetime? And for us, that was moving to a very rural homestead in the woods of Vermont. For you, that might be

becoming a yoga teacher in New York City. So you could have a radically different view, but you could really use these same steps. So for us, the reason we decided to move out here is that while we were living in the city, we came to the realization that we were happiest when we were hiking in nature, which is pretty different than living in the middle of an urban area. And we were driving these long distances to go hiking every weekend. And we started to realize this does not make sense as a way of constructing your life. And we thought about a number of different iterations of life where maybe you have a cabin in the woods and go there periodically. Maybe you live part of the time in the woods.

Maybe we took our traditional retirement at age 65 to the woods. And what we finally realized is that there's no point in doing that. If you want to be somewhere different, you need to just do it. You need to happen. And so once we acknowledged that we really wanted to live in a rural area, we made a plan, both a financial and a philosophical plan, and then we executed on it. And for us, living out here lets us use our time as we want. And I think it's really important to recognize that, that while financial independence is a financial goal, what it's ultimately giving you is control over your time.

That is the biggest factor for us and our happiness is being able to determine how our days go and being outside when we want to on our land, hiking around, being inside, reading books when we choose to do that. Being able to be stay-at-home parents for our children is a very important element of this as well. And we found that living in the country is a wonderful place to raise kids. And we have a very rich, loving, supportive community of people here, which really makes our lives so much more enjoyable. There are all these intergenerational relationships where we like to say we have friends who are nine years old and friends who are 90 years old. And it's such a wonderful way to live because you learn and you grow and you derive so much from all these different relationships. It's also true

that barter and trade is alive and well out here, which is a wonderful frugal element to life. Most people who live out here are just naturally frugal. So the things that I talk about, they say, well, yeah, that's just, we've always done that. So what do you mean you write a blog about this? Doesn't everybody just live that way? And I love that. I love that approach because it's really a holistic approach to frugality.

So it's a question of environmentalism. It's a question of your impact on the world. It's a question of self-sustainability, creating your own food sources. And it's a question of being a good neighbor. So being there to help people out and not expecting or asking for money in return. So what I like to say is that a lot of work gets done out here cooperatively, but very little money changes hands. I like that. And I feel like that's starting to kind of infiltrate our generation. I love that it's alive and well in the country.

I would love to see it more prominent in the cities because there's a lot of people that need help and it doesn't necessarily have to be like, well, you have to pay for that, right? That's one of the reasons there's a company that started in Toronto called Bunz, and it's just a trading zone. So it's like, I've got something, you need it, want to trade, and then we'll do it. I'm like, that's a great idea. And it's not a new concept. It's a very old concept. We need to kind of embrace that. But you mentioned a lot of

how financial independence is great, but it's really about time, which I totally get. And some of the stories in here where you talked about your days living in the city, you'd go to work. It was the routine. You'd get home, you'd clean, you'd make dinner, you'd go to bed. I'm like, my gosh, yeah, that was like 100% my corporate life. And weeks would go by and you're like, I don't even know what happened. And it's just like, you're just like on a hamster wheel, just turning and turning. What for you, like, was that point where like something needs to change? It took a while of following that routine because I was very bent on doing what you're supposed to do. I went to college, got good

grades, got a job, went to graduate school, got even better grades, got a better job. I just thought that I was supposed to follow this societally prescribed track and that then I would be happy. So I never thought about, oh, what do I really enjoy doing? Like, what do I actually love to do with my time? It was much more a question of how can I get promoted? How can I become a manager? How can I get a higher salary? How can I achieve more external success and external validation with no consideration for what I actually like to do? And it was a long process for me to understand that no one else cares how you live your life. You're the only one who cares. And we spend, at least I spent, a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of stress in service of doing what I thought other people wanted me to do.

And finally acknowledging that I need to just do what I think is best is going to yield not only my own personal happiness, but a much greater impact on the world, a much more positive life, and just so much less stress and so much less spending of money. And I find it's really all related. It's all part of a whole. And so coming to that recognition was crucial for me. And it was a question of really working these careers that my husband and I thought we should work, doing what we thought we should do, and recognizing that we were unhappy and having the self-awareness to see that we needed to change. And that's not easy because we essentially threw away these careers that we'd had

is one way that you could look at it. And I thought, can you even do that? Is that allowed? Nobody does that. So granting yourself the permission to say, you know what? I hate being a lawyer. I want to be a skydiving instructor or whatever it is. That's okay. You need to give yourself the permission to acknowledge that and then to change. And I think making that strategic, decisive change and doing it is very important because, again, you can spend so much time deliberating over this. And it doesn't mean that you quit your job the next day. I really don't advocate for being reckless. What I think it means is you acknowledge that, you internalize it, you live with it for a

while, and you make a financial plan that's going to make that sustainable. I think there are examples in our culture of people making the knee-jerk decision to quit their jobs without the financial backing and without the planning. And I think those are the stories that we hear and become afraid of making a change because it's really not a good idea to do that. You need to have a financial plan in place, whether that means you're going to reach financial independence or whether you're going to find a way to live on a much lower salary or whether you're going to create passive streams of income. And by the way, I've sort of done all of those things. So it can be an all-inclusive approach that you take.

Yeah, no, definitely. And you go into the book about how when you did make that decision to leave your jobs and move to the country, you made a plan. And there's certain times you're like, I just want to quit. But you're like, no, we have a plan. We're going to make sure we have money in the bank so we can make this viable. Because yeah, you don't want to quit your job and then live off your savings for six months and then have to get another job. Right. I think it's really important to understand that money is not everything, but money is what enables a lot of opportunity. And if you give yourself financial security, you can pretty much do anything you want with your time and with your life. Yeah, exactly. So you kind of mentioned like,

yeah, if you're a lawyer and you're not happy, you can be a skydiving instructor, whatever. I think a lot of people are afraid to make those leaps because not only because it's scary, it's the unknown, but just the societal kind of, what are you doing? Are you crazy? Did you get a lot of flack or a lot of questions when you made that decision? It's interesting. We actually didn't. And I think it's because we didn't tell anyone for a very long time. Because this was kind of part of our approach. We really needed to sit with the idea. And I don't think you need to broadcast this idea to the world as soon as you make it. You can sit with it. You can think about it. You can research your options.

And it doesn't need to be something that you share broadly. We told our immediate families, and they're very supportive. And they just said, well, OK, I'm actually not surprised that you all want to do that. And the other thing for me was writing Frugal Woods really allowed me to connect with like-minded people who are on a similar trajectory and to learn from them, which I think is very important to do. And also to really think through our plan when you're writing about it or talking about it with people you trust. You get a chance to think of all the nuance in your plan. And we spent years researching, what does it mean to move to a rural environment? What does it mean to quit your job?

And we spent a lot of time house hunting. We spent a lot of time researching what we would do with our investments and our assets in the long term. And so give yourself that time. You don't need to tell the world. And it's very exciting because you really do want to tell everyone. But if it's kind of this half-baked idea that you have clearly not thought through, well, you might not get a good reaction. So take your time, do your research. You can keep it under wraps. And for us, also then having kind of the backing of years and years of thinking about this allowed us to speak about it much more confidently. And then it's ultimately a question of, it's really no one else's business. You have

to do what's right for you. You're not living for anyone else. And so the way that I think about this is a combination of living without regrets. And then also when I am an old woman looking back on my life, what do I want to have done? I guarantee that what a boss thought or a neighbor or an acquaintance thought is not something that's going to come up in that exercise. So imagine yourself at 90, at 100. What are the things that you want to say you've done and then do them? Yeah, absolutely.

It's like the responsible way of YOLOing. Yes, it is responsible YOLO. Absolutely. It's like the responsible way of YOLOing sustain things. But yeah, like you said, it's no one's business. And I got some questionable looks like, really? You're quitting? What are you doing? You're on a trajectory. Just wait it out. You'll climb that corporate ladder. But now it's funny that it's like a year later of me being self employed. I'm like, why was I even trying to climb that corporate ladder? Why? I don't even know why it was so... I think sometimes when you're just in that situation, especially if you've been working at a certain career for so long, you're just kind of almost drinking the Kool-Aid. You're always talking about work with your coworkers. You're very invested in it. And so that's all you think

about it. Sometimes you need to take a step back, maybe start hiking to have some clarity and think about things. I did actually really like that you mentioned that hiking is one of the things that kind of just gave you a sense of peace and just joy. I think that's another thing that's kind of lacking in a lot of our lives. We're very busy. We're always connected to our phones and Instagramming stuff. We rarely take the time to just do a hobby for the sake of joy. Yes. And I did not used to do hobbies for the sake of joy because I thought it was a waste of time. Yeah. Cause you're like, I'm so productive, right? You're like, well, this is a huge waste of time. There's a whole chapter in the book on the first time we went

hiking and how much of a waste of time I thought it was and how angry I was. We spent the day walking around the woods. Do you know what I need to be doing? And so granting yourself the permission to pursue those kinds of hobbies I think is very important because it does give you mental clarity and mental space to think. Yeah. Or what you might really want to be doing. And it also comes down to what is the point of living if you don't do things that you enjoy from time to time and if you don't build out those hobbies in your life? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. What's the point?

I think we need to ask that question a little bit more. It's true. Yeah. We're just always like, yeah, like, like that hamster wheel, like I was talking about, it's just like, we're just go, go going. And it's rare that we take a minute and stop and think, wait, what am I doing and why? And I think it's really a question too, of doing those long-term planning exercises and asking yourself, where do I want to be in 10 years? And how is the way I'm using my time and the way I'm using my money either getting me there or preventing me from getting there? Exactly. Exactly. And you mentioned a couple of times too, which I thought was interesting, the kind of idea of privilege. Do you want to kind of speak on that and why you want to make

sure that you talked about that in the book? One of my favorite topics. So it's my opinion that this whole conversation that we're having and the whole tenor of the book is a very privileged conversation. independence as a possibility. And just talking about that idea of what you want to do with your life as opposed to what you have to do stems from, I believe, a great deal of privilege. And my husband and I are very fortunate that we've come from privileged backgrounds. We had stable, loving parents, homes where we were well-educated, well-cared for. We were both able to go to college. We both were able to get good jobs after college. And I think that those elements are transformational in the successes that we've had. I think that, sure, we've made some good decisions, sure. But we've

also been tremendously lucky and tremendously privileged. And I never want to lose sight of that because for some people working several jobs just to pay rent and just to pay grocery bills is a very draining taxing experience. And the idea of being able to save at a high percentage is not accessible to them. So what it's done is really infused us with a life of gratitude. And we really see our lives as abundant and luxurious and very fortunate. And it's one of the ways that we don't see deprivation as a part of our lives. I think that sometimes people assume frugality is a level of deprivation. And what I think is that I'm very fortunate to be able to choose to be frugal in order to facilitate the life that I want to live. I think that's a tremendously lucky thing to do. And I think you can look around and either see that privilege and that abundance or you can see deprivation.

And if you're fortunate enough to be in a position to do that type of reflection, I think you can really make that choice with how you want to perceive the world. And I think it's important to also say that while I do think that anyone can take lessons away from the frugality I talk about, I think that not everyone can necessarily do this because at a certain point, you do have to have a level of income that's going to allow you to save. Right. And, you know, there are three variables to financial independence. There's time, income, and expenses. And obviously the higher your income is and the lower your expenses, the faster you're going to get there. Yeah. That being said, if you're making $500,000

and spending all of it, you know, you're not, you're not going to get that. But if you're making minimum wage and your expenses are very close to your, you're not going to get that. But if you're making minimum wage and your expenses are very close to your income, it's going to be very difficult to save at that higher rate. And so I think it's just important to have that recognition of privilege as part of this conversation. No, definitely. And especially I feel like I've been talking to a lot more people kind of part of the FIRE movement, financial independence, retiring early. And a lot of them are able to kind of achieve that goal of retiring early at a young age. And I think that's admirable. That's exciting. It's motivating and inspiring. But I'm like, well,

I know I probably can't do that the next five years. So it's great to have this knowledge that this is potentially a possibility, but all of our timelines might be different depending on those three elements you mentioned, the income, expenses, and time. And that's fine. And I think that's the other thing that kind of drives me crazy is we always perceive certain things like reaching financial independence as a race. You're more successful at achieving it if you've done it in your 30s. It doesn't matter. Kind of like we talked about earlier. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all. And you also don't need to be strictly financially independent in order to be financially stable. Yes. You can create a fantastic life for

yourself where you're debt-free. You have a great emergency fund. You have retirement funds, you have investments, you are financially very comfortable and ahead of most of the people in the country. You may not be quote-unquote financially independent, but you're living a life free from worry about money. And that's huge. That could be a transformational element of living. You know, worry over money is a leading cause of divorce in the United States. So clearly this is a very stressful thing for a lot of people. And so you can get control of your money and get control of your life without needing to be, quote unquote, financially independent. And you might also be able to go down to a lower salary with a job that's more fulfilling.

And I think there are just a lot of iterations of what financial stability can mean to you. So I don't want people to think, oh, I need to have 25 times my assets and I need to be able to withdraw 4% in order to feel good about myself. That's not the case at all. No. And because I do like that you mentioned that it's not about like the end goal shouldn't be necessarily to quit your job and live on a farm. If you're loving your job, that's awesome. I personally never felt like that, which is why I made the choice to quit. But man, if I had a job that I loved, then I would be there. And you never know. Maybe down the road, I will go back to a nine to five job if it makes sense. And I love it. Right. Like that's, it's really bad. Yeah.

Well, and also you and I choose to work. Yeah. I mean, I choose, I still work. Yeah. I still work, but you know, I love it. I love it. Exactly. Writing a book is work. Oh yeah. I will just throw that out there. So it's not a question of, oh, I never want to do any work again. It's, I want to do work that's fulfilling and meaningful to me. Exactly. Well, thank you so much, Liz, for taking the time to chat with me. Where can more people find out about your book and about you? So they can find me at frugalwoods.com or on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter at Frugalwoods. We're pretty consistent. Yeah. And the book publishes on March 6th, 2018. And if you order or pre-order

the book before March 13th, you can get a free signed book plate from me. And there are details on frugalwoods.com about how to do that. Fabulous. I'll link those in the show notes. Well, thanks, Liz, once again, for joining me on the show. It was a pleasure chatting with you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. And that was the lovely Mrs. Frugalwoods, or Liz. And you can, of course, make sure to grab a copy of her book, Meet the Frugalwoods. It is officially out now. And from being kind of a weird situation where I'm friends with a lot of new authors this year, which is so great that I get to promote them and share them via this podcast, let people know. I know it's very critical for them to see success through their book is in that kind of first

couple of weeks, first month situation. So, so important if you want to support Liz because she's an awesome gal and her book's great. Make sure to grab your copy at wherever bookstores are sold or Amazon. Make sure to, of course, leave a review online on Amazon or Goodreads or wherever. And yeah, and enjoy and let me know what you think. Because for me, I finished the book. I literally started talking to my husband. I'm like, we need to make plans so eventually we can buy an acreage, move to the Maritimes, and just live our lives, simple life. How nice would that be? Years away. Years away, but you never know. Anyways, so make sure to check out the show notes at jessicamorehouse.com for some more information about everything we talked about, some links to read the book, buy the book, support the book, and all that kind of great stuff.

I've got a few things to talk to you about, but don't go away. But first, I just have a few words about this episode's sponsor. Support for this episode comes from Nest Wealth. Want to start investing for your future? Luckily, nowadays, it doesn't mean you have to make an appointment with some suit in an office. Actually, you don't even have to leave your house. Nest Wealth, Canada's first ever robo-advisor and the largest independent wealth management platform in the country, provides a new way to invest your money.

Offering index-based portfolios with lower fees and better historical performance than actively managed mutual funds, Nest Wealth is focused on building personalized portfolios to best fit the needs, risk tolerance, and financial goals of each and every client they serve. And Nest Wealth is currently offering All More Money podcast listeners three months free. To get started, visit learn.nestwealth.com slash Jessica Morehouse. Once again, that's learn.nestwealth.com slash Jessica Morehouse. And if you want to learn a little bit more about how it all works, check out my video review in the show notes or visit jessicamorehouse.com slash nestwealthreview. All right, first and foremost,

something really major has happened in my podcasting journey. I finally, finally, after almost two and a half years, have cracked the 100 mark in the Canadian iTunes reviews. So I know I always chat about, hey, send me a review. It's because it actually helps me in the rankings. So more people will be able to find me. iTunes, just like every other thing, has an algorithm. And this is one of the elements that helps people basically find

podcasts. And I want to help people. I want to change people's money situations. And thanks for everyone for basically helping me get there and reaching this milestone of 100 reviews on Canadian iTunes. I think I'm about 61 reviews on the US. So my American friends, please help me out. I'm almost 39 reviews away. So it takes two seconds to send me a review. But anywho, I want to say a big thank you to the Canadian reviewer who got me to 100. Drew, 432, you, my good man, are a hero. Okay, maybe that's going a bit far. But you are a hero in my eyes because you got me to 100.

And that's pretty sick. That's pretty cool. So his review, short and sweet, just like this guy. But you are a hero in my eyes because you got me to 100, and that's pretty sick. That's pretty cool. So his review, short and sweet, just like this guy. Well, he may not be short, but he's definitely sweet. His review is, most balanced Canadian podcast. Thanks for the great content. No, thank you, Drew, for changing my week.

I'm not going to say life. We definitely put a boost in my week. Another kind of, was it skipping your step? Is that? I'm terrible with sayings. Anyway, thank you, Drew, for that. So if you want to help me get up the rankings and support your gal, Jessica, and the Mo Money Podcast, make sure to take two seconds out of your day and leave me a review. I'll give you a shout out on a future episode. Anyway, so besides that, usually I kind of take this opportunity to say some other projects I've got going on, some exciting things I've got going on. Well, there's a couple. Well, first, if you're in Toronto, I will be participating in this event for this program that I'm an ambassador for called Stance. You can find

more information at stnce.ca. Stance. It's like stance without the A. And we are doing an event March 28th with some amazing people who are going to be there. You can buy your tickets now, March 28th at 6 p.m. at the Broadview Hotel. And I will be amongst some amazing ladies, including Desiree Odjik from Half Banked, who's been on the show. Kristen Wood, she is the owner of the Ten Spot Beauty Bars in Toronto. Rubina Amon-Hawk, also been on the show. And, you know, keynote speaker, Michelle Romanoff, the, you know the dragon from Dragon's Den. It'll be super fun. All proceeds

will be donated to the Canadian Women's Foundation. We're going to have fun. We're doing some good. I want to see you there. Make sure to go to stnce.ca slash events for some more info. Aside from that, honestly, right now at this moment,

I am actually on a beach. I am doing something that I put on my vision board, guys, of being on a beach, sipping a margarita, unplugging, and just relaxing. I don't know if anyone else out there feels this, but I feel like this winter is just kicking my butt. And I was doing the same thing for my husband. We just looked at each other. We're like, you know, we have this luxury of being self-employed that we can make our own schedules. But still, obviously we have a lot of work to do. So we had to still kind of book some time. So we didn't book anything in, you know, that kind of window. And yeah, but you know, he got his passport because it expired and he forgot,

but luckily he was able to get it in a matter of days. Then we booked two days before we left a trip to Tulum, Mexico. That's where I am currently, in case you're wondering why you're so silent on social media. That's because I'm trying to have a social media detox a little bit. Anyways, I'll be back in a week. It's just a seven day trip. And then I'll be back here. But that doesn't mean that I'm not going to put out episodes, obviously, because, you know, I get my stuff together and put them out in advance and all that kind of stuff. So anyway, that's where I'm at. I'm in Mexico. And I'm going to be recharged, refreshed when I come back. And I'm going to get back to a lot of exciting things, and I'll definitely share all that stuff when I get back.

Anyway, that's enough talking from me. Thanks so much for joining me for this episode of this show. I will see you back here next Wednesday for a fresh new episode of the Mo Money Podcast. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.