Biggest day in my tiny house journey and exciting updates

In this episode, Laura Lynch shares her journey towards living in a tiny house and announcing big news. She reflects on the challenges faced over 35 months, emphasizing the importance of grit, resilience, and authenticity in overcoming obstacles. Laura discusses the significance of letting go of societal expectations. She encourages listeners to pursue their own journeys towards financial independence and to celebrate their milestones together.

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Transcript

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It takes a brave and independent mindset to go tiny. If you are trying to figure out your tiny pivot, this podcast is here to inspire and connect you with the other unconventional, gritty, inspirational people within this community. I am Laura Lynch, your tiny house friend and host. On this show, we are always going to come back to money because as a financial planner, this is the question I hear the most. How do I make this work for me financially? Well, that's my jam, so jump in, let's go. New episodes drop every Thursday. Hey Les House Mormon Love Friends, thanks for being here today. This is episode 72. I'm recording this on Friday, October the 4th at about noon. I'm sitting obviously in my tiny house loft in my tiny studio and I'm super excited to be here today to share with you some really important news. This has this date. October the 4th of 2024 is by far the biggest day in my tiny journey so far. There will be lots more big days. We will have lots more exciting announcements about things in the works. I'm continuing to be passionate about this work and about this podcast, but today is a day that I feel elated. I feel super high, even though all I've had is a couple of cups of coffee. It is the biggest day on my tiny journey because it's been about 35 months to get to this date. Back in November of 2021, I got on Amazon. I ordered a two year big two by four calendar and I, it was laminated and I got some whiteboard markers. And I put the two year calendar up on the wall in my kitchen in my American dream house because this was starting the work of planning the move to the tiny house. And so I knew it was going to take a long time. We had kind of a fixed deadline around my stepson's graduation from high school. There was a lot of things that had to be. laid out and figured out and orchestrated. And I had learned enough about time management and project management to know that we needed to probably pick three important things to do every month. And so I put sticky notes on each month of the year with three things that we could accomplish every month for two years. Now, as I mentioned, it's been 35 months. So the calendar eventually ran out. And then I moved on to ripping pages out of another calendar and put that on a cork board and really got even more into the week by week details as we got closer and closer. And then as you all probably are aware, about five months ago, we moved here to the tiny house full time. We crossed the country several times moving a lot of important tools and equipment and obviously what little household goods I kept. And so we got here to the tiny house full time in June, but today marks a huge milestone. I was thinking on a couple of things that were things that I really learned and things that I feel like helped make this day possible. And I wanted to share those things with you. The first thing is about grit and resilience in the face of challenges. There were a lot of challenges in the last 35 months. There were challenges about leaving my corporate job and all the clients that I worked with before and the legal details of that. I had to hire an attorney to represent me through that transition. I had to say goodbye to those who I could and those who I couldn't. I had to, you know, sort of apologize to you after the fact. It was a really hard decision to leave what was a successful trajectory in a career that I was really enjoying. There were huge financial implications, obviously, of going from my significant salary down to zero and starting new things from scratch. There was a lot of logistics, obviously, that had to be sorted out. There were personal relationships and expectations. There was a lot of things on the person to person area. And there was a lot of challenges on the logistics area. And one of the things that seems to be in our faces a lot these days, stressed how everything seems to be getting harder to get done, more on that in a minute. So the grit and resilience that had to come into play to keep us on this path for 35 months and to not give up and not lose hope and all of those things I think was really buoyed by the reward that was at the end and by the values that we determined that we were trying to put into our life. Like many of you, we're trying to create a simpler, gentler, quieter life. We're trying to be more present, spend more time in nature. We're trying to make things in our life more authentic, less status-based. We're trying to create community, build relationships that are true and not very superficial. We're trying to kind of exit some of the technology pieces that make our lives so sort of lonely. We have all of these probably very similar ideas about what we want our life to look like as you do. And it's all of those things that kept us going. It was the ideal of those things that kept us moving forward. dealing with all of the challenges. In addition to challenges, we had a lot of disappointments. Things didn't go as we always expected them to go. When we first put our house on the market, as an example, it was at a pretty high price point. When we first devised this plan, the financial outcome for us was going to look rosier than it ultimately did. Things that we thought were going to be easy or go smoothly did not pan out. And actually, when I look back on some things, I realized that the, you know, just the way that we thought things were going to go and the way that we thought things were going to land did not happen. And so dealing with being disappointed and readjusting expectations is also a huge part of the journey that we have gone through in the last 34, 35 months. We also, as with all of our previous endeavors, had to roll up our sleeves and sweat a lot. There was a lot of hard work, both on the just sort of project management, organization, pursuing things, tasks that needed to be done, but actual physical work that we did in order to get our house ready for sale, all of the moving projects. And as you probably know, we moved from Florida, so sweating is something that you do in excess there. So just a lot of hard work and energy that had to go into this day that we finally have today. Also, I was thinking back as we have just driven back to Florida one last time and driven all the way back across the country in the last 10 days. I was also thinking about all of the ways in which in my previous life, I made decisions based on an attempt to look apart or fit in or conform. And so a huge part of this 35 month journey has been getting comfortable with not giving AF about what looked like normal, right? And we have had to decouple ourselves from societal expectations. Of course, I talk about this a ton, but... It wasn't that long ago. I was really trying to do what was expected. I had a brand new car. I bought our previous house because I felt like that's what a financial advisor, you know, that's what the house that a financial advisor should look like or live in because in our previous house, it was more sort of blue collar and, you know, not the best neighborhood. And so I tried to upscale our life. and took on debt in order to do it. And so I have had to really entrench myself in my values of independence and being more authentic. And so a lot of this was about letting go of being something that I wasn't to begin with. So here it is. Today, October the 4th, is our mortgage free day. Today we have passed on that final obligation onto some other folks that are really excited to build out their hobby farm dream, to run their businesses off of that property. And we have... become completely debt and mortgage free. And I was, as I was running errands this morning, I was really, you know, feeling very elated and high. was actually, I was feeling a lot better than I had expected in terms of this has been such an arduous process that I really thought that most of the joy had been stolen in getting through the challenges. but I feel very, very relieved, happy, very light, very vindicated. And I just feel like we have done a huge thing towards more resilience and more authenticity and... allowing ourselves to be ourselves because we have less risk and obligation that we are bearing. So when I was thinking about it, it really isn't about the sum of money that dropped into our account today, which adds to our nest egg for the future. It really is about that feeling of not being responsible for that big home. with all the risks and obligations that come with that. Because when you have all those conventional risks and obligations, or when we had all those conventional risks and obligations, it kept us from doing things that would have been truer, more innovative, more creative, more inspired. It kept us stuck doing what we felt we were expected to do. And so in this moment, of being mortgage free, I feel so motivated to continue to do this financial planning work for other people who want to make similar choices because I'm super excited to see other people reach this mortgage free day. Being mortgage free allows me to continue to invest in this niche work. It allows me to continue to make those podcasts. It allows me to continue to help other people do logistical and financial planning, to make a transition into some sort of tiny living or to downsize. And all of these lessons that I have learned through this process, I think can be helpful in walking with others through the process. Earlier, I mentioned being disappointed and kind of how this went down when we first put our house on the market, we were expecting a much larger sale price than what we ultimately ended up with. A lot of that has to do with the risks now facing homeowners in Florida and insurance companies in Florida. In fact, we just had to drive furiously across the country in two days in order to get back to the house to do final inspection pieces and pack up our remaining items. because Hurricane Helene was coming. And then we saw the devastation that Hurricane Helene caused along the Gulf Coast. And when we were driving north in the border areas, we have so many friends in North Carolina who have been cut off and lost everything. And in this moment, it reminds us of the drought and deluge cycle that we're experiencing, how much risk we take on when we own significant properties and not just in places that have already been struck by disaster, but in places where disaster may strike in the future. At the end of the day, having less house that you are responsible for and that could be damaged by some sort of climate based event is, you know, another burden that you let go of along with a mortgage if that, those two things come together as they did for us. And so it was kind of surreal timing to get there, to be there for the hurricane, to be blessed and fortunate enough that we did not sustain any damage. And then of course, at the last minute, there's questions about inspections following the storm. There's a realization that homeowners insurance in that area may be even more difficult to get. We had a lot of underwriting challenges through this process because the particular type of house that we had had been eliminated from many homeowners policies. And so it took a really resilient and motivated buyer to navigate all of those challenges. It has been disappointing, challenging, arduous. That whole process of getting to this mortgage-free day has been hard won, which is why it is such a big moment for us. and such a big moment for you because it allows us to continue to share our experience and to continue to do this work and to continue to feel inspired and move on to the next projects where we are creating more impact in this tiny living space and showing up to more tiny gatherings and being able to perhaps contribute more to the community. moving forward because we have fewer leashes holding us in the life that we left behind. So, as I mentioned, and I've said many times just now, this is a huge day. It is the biggest day in 35 months, and I was super excited to be able to get on this recording and share this news with you. Because for those of you who are trying to reach your mortgage-free day, or you're trying to reach your debt-free day, or you're trying to reach your day where you can make a career transition to something that is more inspiring, more impactful, whatever it is that you are trying to accomplish, I just want you to feel encouraged that even though it can take a really long time, and even though my two-year calendar is long gone, You can still get there and you can overcome if you have grit and resilience, if you're able to deal with disappointment, if you're able to roll up your sleeves and, you know, sweat or cry or whatever it takes in order to get there. And also if you can not give AF about what everybody else expects, then you can definitely make it to this very special day for yourself. And I would love to hear about your special day. If you reach it, you can text me on the show. If you just go to the show page, there's a text Laura button. You just click that. It goes over to your text feature. Share with me your special day news so that we can all be celebrating together in community. So thank you so much for sharing this special day with me. Up next week, we have another fabulous guest and there are many more guests in the hopper. So lots of good stories coming to you on Les House Formula Podcast. If you haven't already subscribed to the podcast, make sure you do. And also if you have a friend who's leaning in this direction like you are, if you would share it, that would be so valuable. Hey, thank you for taking the time to listen to Less House More Moolah. I have another free resource on my website for you, the Unconventional Values Quiz. In just two minutes, you can pinpoint your style of freedom seeker, security guardian, adventure enthusiast, or community builder. Check it out at thetinyhouseadvisor.com. one more thing, podcasts don't have algorithms like social media does. They only grow by word of mouth and reviews. If this podcast is helpful to you, would you please post a review on your podcast app and tell a friend who is trying to live a values-based life? It would totally make my day. Please see the show notes for important disclosure regarding the tiny house advisor LLC in this episode.