Embracing Tiny Living: A Journey to Financial Freedom

In this episode of Less House More Moola, host Laura Lynch speaks with Fiorella Yriberry  about her journey into tiny living and the financial freedom it has afforded her. Fiorella shares her experiences as a full-time nomad, the evolution of her living arrangements, and the lessons learned from traveling extensively. The conversation delves into the importance of being present, navigating remote work, and practical tips for affordable travel. Fiorella emphasizes the connection between tiny living and financial security, encouraging listeners to embrace unconventional lifestyles and pursue their dreams.

For full show notes and more information visit: 

Go to www.altamericandream.com

Transcript

Less House More Moola podcast (00:05.974)
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.

Less House More Moola podcast (00:43.694)
Fiorella Yriberry. Welcome to Less House More Moolafla podcast. I'm super excited that we get to have this fun conversation about you and your beautiful BLM lifestyle out there in your rig. Thanks for joining me. Thank you. Thank you for the space. I'm very excited to join you today and talk all things, you know, tiny living on the road. So very excited to be here. Yeah. So

You're sitting in your, you know, tiny rig. So please introduce yourself and the rig that you're in. Yeah. So my name is Fiorella. Like you mentioned, I've been a nomad, a full-time nomad for the last four years in two different builds. So my first bill was the 27 passenger shuttle bus that we converted with no experience with my husband. And now we are in a self-converted, what we call expedition truck.

so an old search and rescue fire truck. So a combination of like an ambulance and a fire truck. And we love it. It's two years almost coming to being full time in this rig. And we've been just loving this new evolution of our road life. Talk more about the expedition rig. Why expedition? Cool. Yeah. So what we realized very quickly after hitting the road in a bus was the limitations of like a big.

vehicle that has low clearance and not the most capable off-road. So when we were experiencing this lifestyle those first few months and realizing that the dirt roads are endless and the possibilities of just where you can go are just like off the charts in the U.S., we realized we wanted to do more of that kind of travel, not just like go out to public lands, but see how far we could go down a dirt road and get to those really hard spots.

So that's where this evolution came about. in like in Europe, know, expedition trucks are very popular where you're looking at rigs like Unimogs and these MAN trucks. we kind of wanted to do our version of it in a budget. And so this is what we created from this like ambulance. We were able to switch the tires to 42 inch tires. So, and we converted them from dualies to super singles. So we've gained like all these capabilities and outfitted our rig.

Less House More Moola podcast (03:02.808)
to be able to do as much off-roading as we can. So it's our little expedition truck. takes us for far, far down dirt roads and we love it. Yeah, that's awesome. Back when you and I were chatting before I hit record about my time, you know, in the plane in the BLM in years past. And I would like sit at work all day and I'd be looking on Google maps and on satellite and like zooming in, like what is the most.

remote road that can get me to some weird place that I want to go and I love that we become obsessed with that idea of like okay where does this dirt road end you know where does it go like let's see maps and doing all this kind of like the second level of road life that we call it of like just taking it that next step of like how far can you go down a dirt road or

how far from civilization can you get, how many days can we go without seeing anybody, like that kind of stuff, which is really fun. Yeah. And also how far can you push your fear limits, right? Yes, very true. Yeah. How far, you learn very quickly also just what you're capable in terms of like driving and what your rig can withstand and you know, what kind of obstacles you are comfortable with and which ones are not worth it. So yeah, just a lot of those layers in there too. Awesome.

So you have a whole college history and a whole life of growing up and your family. What is it that brought you to tiny living? Yeah. So that's a fun question for me because I was born and raised in Bolivia. So I'm from South America.

in a place where we don't have RVs and we don't have like, you know, the tiny living concept maybe is very new everywhere, but that's very not a concept there. But I did grow up in a family that loved to travel. Our motto or like my parents, the whole thing was like, not a lot of gifts for Christmas, not a lot of gifts just throughout the year. And instead let's go on these like big family vacations. And those are some of my favorite memories. So I grew up to be a traveler and...

Less House More Moola podcast (05:05.846)
I came to the US for college and I met my husband and we just, I mean, I had been traveling my whole life, so we just incorporated that into like our dynamic and the relationship. So we backpacked Europe and I was in the hospitality industry after college and we were just trying to keep traveling and that's kind how we ended up in Tiny Living, just by the traveling passion. We realized like, wait, if we...

can build a tiny house, could travel in it, we could have everything we need, we could save more money so we can allocate that to more experiences and more travel. And we kind of went in through that route and we are so in love with this lifestyle and everything that we wanted it to be and more. And honestly, we always talk and we have many years, I think, left of road life, but even after road life, like a tiny house is something we would want to pursue. So it's become just so part of us and we just like love this living style.

Did you ever feel a little odd in comparison to your peers and what they were trying to achieve in life when you all were just really unconventional in your approach to travel and experiences instead of things? Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question. think we so we graduated college and the first two years after college we were like, how do we travel? How do we travel the most? You know, we're like

taking all of our vacation piled together long weekends, we could take these big trips and do all this stuff and yeah, we started looking around and realized not other people are doing this. People are starting that traditional route of getting the house and starting families and we just really wanted those experiences. So definitely felt a little alienating at some point of like, okay, we are looking for different things that maybe our friend group in college was looking for.

But it's led us to this lifestyle and like the choices we've made and this passion for traveling and pursuing it has led us to find friendships that also value that. And they've become some of our dearest and most special friends. So it's been really cool to have that transition. You know, you kind of change who you, that core group is, or at least we did. So. So you and your husband have built out two rigs and the first one, as you mentioned before, was maybe a little bit bigger and you actually sort of.

Less House More Moola podcast (07:20.568)
It sounds like scaled down even further to be a little bit more adventurous with your travels. So I don't know about you, but I like to do things once, not necessarily twice. What kept you motivated as you were doing something you'd never done before the first time and then turning around and doing a second build out? Yeah. So the first build was really motivated by just this big desire to

travel and it was like this big, okay, let's go do this big trip and experience at that time, maybe a little bit thinking it from the angle of like before we settled down, because we really didn't maybe understand our options back then. So we were very motivated by that. Like, okay, let's build this rig, let's build a house, let's learn all these things. And it was just that excitement of like, we'll be able to go out West because we were based in Ohio. So, you know, the West was like,

We took a few vacations out here that were so expensive because you know, you're flying, you're getting your hotels, you're doing all this stuff. So it felt like that passion to discover these places at like our rhythm and in a budget felt like that was our fuel throughout our first build. And then in our second, going to the second build, I do agree, wasn't ideal. Like if we would have been able to like, you know, nailed it in the first time, would have been better. But something we realized was that

we were confusing like our background in traveling and like backpacking, for example, for like experience with tiny living and especially with like RVing or like vehicles that turned into homes and that doesn't translate, right? So like maybe you can live out of a backpack and you're okay with very few items of clothing or whatever that is, but it doesn't translate to like your space and how that space is going to work out.

So we went into blind, like I said before, I didn't have any RVing experience. I had never been in an RV or a camper or anything like that. My husband didn't come from a family that did that either. So we were kind of very blindly building the first time and we were just assuming things like, we want a big bathroom, you know, that felt like something that we needed. And we're like, let's have a big kitchen, you know, cause we like cooking together. So the most counter space we can, the most like we'll put in there.

Less House More Moola podcast (09:26.86)
We wanted to be able to do yoga inside. So we like measured our like hallway to like our yoga mats. Like, can we do that? And we were very focused on this, like, how do we kind of take our lives, like our life stationary lives into like just mobile life and not thinking about how that tiny space was going to work. And that became evident after a few months in the road of like, you know, the extra space in the bathroom, like we're like, this could be better as a workspace or like we were just reallocating some of our decisions or space.

So that was what motivated, I think, the second build, like this desire to actually create a space that was like functional for us and our lifestyle and the things we wanted to do. it just like taught us that first build taught us what we actually needed and what we needed to prioritize. So those were like the two different like stages. Like the first one was like just excitement, like let's get on the road, let's build what we think we need. And then the second one was like, okay, now we know what we need. We have experience, so let's.

take that and like make it a reality. So cool. And you know, so much about this lifestyle is enabled because of our ability to work remote. When you were first sort of encountering this idea, was that an option for you of, Hey, I know I can work remote. I've already got a career lined up, or did you have to kind of figure it out as you went along and how has that worked for you in terms of continuing your career while on the road?

Yeah, that was a big shift for us actually. So when we got on the road originally, we did get on the road with savings thinking we'll just do like, you know, a year trip. We were, we had lined up an opportunity to work in like a farm and that gave us, you know, free lodging. And so we were kind of looking to do that kind of stuff, like seasonal jobs and just kind of go with our savings. And we got on the road right before COVID. So we were on the road when COVID happened and it opened this world of like remote.

opportunities like right in front of our eyes right in the time where we were like looking for ways to sustain our travels so we jumped right into it so we both got freelance jobs and just got remote work started doing whatever odds and ends we could find at the beginning to just like see if that was even a possibility because at that time you know Starlink wasn't as popular so internet was a whole thing like navigating internet on the road and it was like okay how do we make this work and

Less House More Moola podcast (11:50.912)
It was a lot of the first jobs we had were just kind of small jobs here and there.

And then eventually actually through somebody in the RV community that we met once in a campground just talking to them. I've learned about this company called RVshare, which is a peer to peer RV rental marketplace. And it just resonated so much with me getting people out in RVs experiencing the world, experiencing the way I'm living. And this guy worked for them and it was a fully remote company. And I was like, wow, that's exactly kind of what I'm looking for. know, something that resonated with me and that.

would also like understand my lifestyle. So obviously working on the road is not the easiest. Even if you have good internet collection, there's always things that can go wrong or you you kind of want, I learned that I wanted at least a flexible work environment or a work environment that would understand like my living situation.

And that was perfect. So I was able to, I took an internship with RV share and been working with them for over three years now. And it's been so incredible. And it just resonates so much, you know, again, with my lifestyle and just getting people out there while also working for a company that just not only is okay with how I live, but like encourages it. So it's been a great mix in that way. Yeah. I noticed in my own life that every time I am moving between places or traveling, like

My calendar just sort of like floats away from my brain and I forget. Like it's hard to keep in that structured mindset of work while also figuring out, Hey, what do we need to pack up and where do we need to stop before in the way to our next destination? And it's like you're managing your life and you're managing your work. And sometimes, you know, something gets dropped. seems like at least in my experience.

Less House More Moola podcast (13:40.642)
So yeah, it's so nice to be able to you know, have those like be on the same page as much as possible. Like just a few weeks ago, we had a few engine breakdowns and you know, I had some things at work and to have a work environment that I can be like, hey, like, can I push this meeting? Like I have this going on and they're like, okay, well, it is so great. Like I had a previous job before I reached here on the road that was like a strict nine to five and it was.

so difficult on like one of these like random road things would come about that are unexpected like to just navigate it and so much more stressful and I definitely don't think that that would have worked for us long term. working on the road is for me so it becomes so much about like what works for you long term and like what can be sustainable for you in your living space and you're comfortable to like manage with day in day out for a long period of time. Yeah.

So one of the things that you're really passionate about, I learned on our pre-call, is about these affordable traveling tips. And so I'm curious, because I didn't get all the dish last time, share with us, like, what are your best tips for folks that are considering, you know, doing like you did, coming out of college and taking to the road? What are your tips for traveling in an affordable way?

I love this question because yeah, I started and I am a budget traveler at heart and I think there's a lot of untapped things that we can do. So especially like I'll use the example, for instance, of national parks. So if you want to visit national parks, a lot of them are in very remote areas and very out of the way. So if you're looking at it from a traditional traveling land, like viewpoint where you're going to get, you're going to fly to the destination, you're going to get a car rental, you're going to get a hotel.

it quickly adds up, especially considering that because of these parks being, for instance, in remote destinations, there's few restaurants options that have that tourist tax in there. So really that vacation becomes very expensive very quickly. And something I discovered through this lifestyle is just the magic of our public lands and camping and car camping and just the ability to bring, for instance, a kitchen with you.

Less House More Moola podcast (15:54.766)
So now maybe you're just doing one meal out instead of three meals out. That is a huge budget saver. Having that flexibility and comfort to be able to make meals, stay in one place. And as an example, if you would rent an RV instead of renting a car rental, you're having your accommodation and your transportation in one. So then that mixes two things into one bill and just finding little things like that. Maybe you can drive your car instead. so bring your car and bring, you know, a little camping stove.

different things that are gonna alleviate your expenses, especially around food. think food is one that we forget to plan for when we're planning a vacation, and that's one that adds up really quickly if you're going out to eat for every meal. So just think about your travel and see it from different ways, like outside of it. Okay, what can I change for food? What can I change instead of staying in hotel? Maybe I can try camping or a tent or a cabin or maybe an RV.

So just kind of having this different approach is like my biggest budget tip, especially when traveling the U.S. So many of our destinations here have these different alternatives. So you could camp in like a national forest right outside the national park for free instead of having to like, for instance, pay for a campground inside the national park. So that's even another layer that could save you money. Yeah, that's so good. I have one of my favorite pictures of myself is with this really cool Japanese.

camp stove that I had when I lived in Japan cooking my meals out of the back of my Subaru Impreza on the way across the country. See? And that too, I feel like this type of traveling not only saves you money, but it creates these bigger experiences that really stay with you. So that's another reason I really love just unconventional type of travel. It just will really push you out of the comfort zone and in that...

It will really create these like everlasting memories. So Fiorella, you have lived so many places, right? Because you've traveled to so many states and you have backpacked through Europe and you've done a semester at sea. What have you learned about yourself in living in so many different places and being on the road?

Less House More Moola podcast (18:10.478)
I love that question. But I think the biggest thing I've learned of just all my traveling experiences is just how beautiful and valuable it is to be present. For me, traveling has always been a tool that's allowed me to tap into the moment that's happening right now. I'm usually a person that gets caught up in thinking, what's next? And overthinking life and what am I going to do tomorrow and what time am going to wake up and all this stuff. But I think traveling has really

taught me to like ground in the present moment and just experience it and let go of like, you know, the thinking of the past or the future and just like be in that moment. It is a lesson that I try to implement my day to day life, but that I always go back to from traveling. That's been some of my most fond, dearest memories have been traveling when I was exactly in that moment, like experiencing it. And then it just carries you through like,

your life, you know, it's a map. becomes a real memory. So yeah, being present is a big one for me that traveling has gifted me. that why you call your or why, why your handle and your website is growing slow and wild? It is. Yeah. So I think before this lifestyle and throughout college and just my whole life, I was, you know, defined as like this go getter. had this do as much as I can plan everything personality and road life has really taught me to like on

plan my life and to like slow down and to just like be here in the moment. So that's definitely where that connection is of like, just love this like, I love the like slow life movement that's so connected to this like tiny living movement of just like being here. Like you don't need the distractions. You don't need to be thinking of all this stuff. You don't need all these things and courses and all this stuff. really just, just need the present moment. So yeah, that's connected to that. Yeah. I love that. I keep saying that my goal is to shrink my life.

I love that. In terms of, you know, just rooting down into a community, whether that's, you know, the tiny home community or local community and sort of blocking out all of the rest of the world that is tugging so hard at our attention. I just want to shrink and shrink and shrink over time. And that way I can be just present and in my place and rooted instead of.

Less House More Moola podcast (20:33.102)
constantly grasping up about whatever the world tells me I'm supposed to be accomplishing or going after or whatever. Yeah, I love that. That is so true. I resonate with that a lot. Yeah, so good. So earlier we talked about sort of taking the most remote dirt road that you can find on Google satellites, which means that you are bound to have mishaps and that can be

pretty terrifying, you know, having a flat tire out in the middle of nowhere. how do you all handle mishaps on the road or on the dirt road or on the side of the road or wherever they happen? Gosh, they happen everywhere. Most of the times they happen in most inconvenient places, but that is the trick of our own life. You know, it always is testing you. And I'll actually go right back to what I just said about being present. I feel like the first few breakdowns we had on the road felt like

this huge like our lives are ruined, you know, this is it like it's the end of the world like we'll never have our life again. something we've learned as we've had more of them is just like, okay, let's dial that feeling down. Like, let's just like, go step by step. So something we're really like taught ourselves to do is like, go like actually make like, okay, what is the first thing we need to do to start solving this and like, take that step and then like, okay, what's the second thing?

and just kind of really map it out in like little steps we can take instead of just thinking of this really big and overwhelming picture of like, my God, we need to solve this, you in this amount of time or things. And I think what's something that also really works for us is like going through like the worst case scenario. It's like, okay, if nothing like works out, like where would we end up? And realizing that that is not as scary as your mind wants you to think it is, it's always like grounding for us of like,

It's not that bad. We can work with that. You know, we've slept on the side of the road before like this won't be the end of the world. It'll just be a bit uncomfortable. So just like taking that moment to like bring it down, break it down. Yeah, that's so smart because every threat that we experience in life, whether it's a breakdown or, you know, a bad comment from a friend or something, like everything feels like your life is coming to an end. That's our brain reacting to every threat with

Less House More Moola podcast (22:57.01)
similar ferocity, right? Yeah. So it does, you know, if you look back at your prior experience of, hey, we've made it out of these things before, we've solved these problems before, we have some confidence and self efficacy around being able to solve problems. And we just need to take long enough to like get out of our amygdala or lizard brain and like get back to our jacquard brain. And that is

You know, something I think you learn with experience and it's not until you have a few, you know, crisis points that you figure out that you're not going to die. Yeah, feel like the first, one of our first breakdowns that we had was the day we were leaving, like on the bus on the first, our, to one of our dually tires just completely exploded and we were like, okay, this is the end. didn't even start and this is the end, you know?

And now I've come to realize that I tell this to people that are joining Road Life or thinking about doing these big adventures, because I can see this pattern all of these big adventures I've had that it's like, it's going to challenge you and it most likely will happen very early on. And it's just a test. It's like, to me, it's the experience, the universe, whatever you want to call it, kind of testing you like, do you really want this? Like, are you really willing to fight for this? And showing up to that challenge and you know,

facing it is really going to be so rewarding and then just like teach you and you're going to learn so much. And it's become some of those valleys. kind of look forward to them now because I feel like they've taught me so much about myself and just helped me grow as a person. Yeah. It's the same as the first time you have to tackle plumbing, right? Yeah. So true. It seems overwhelming. My gosh. So our first build was pretty simple.

And we didn't have running plumbing, we just had a foot pump system. So in the second build, a lot of what we were trying to do besides this road capabilities was challenge ourselves to the projects that we were scared of doing the first time around. And plumbing was a big one, but when we came to time to start it, we would just sit around or be in the plumbing aisle in Home Depot or Lowe's for hours just like, how do you do this? This is impossible. So yes, very much like that.

Less House More Moola podcast (25:14.616)
So you touched on it earlier about working on the road and about traveling frugally. You know that having some financial security is important to you. So how do you view the connection between your tiny lifestyle and financial security? my gosh. It's like, to me, this bond has been so important in my life because I feel like, especially right after college, I was in this mindset of, you you're going to build this career.

you're gonna have this big savings, but then that means compromising all these experiences or doing all these things. And that didn't sit well with me. Like I felt like there had to be some sort of medium that like, you know, allowed me to have financial security and be financially smart, but also like allowed me to experience my life now instead of waiting for retirement. Like that idea really didn't vibe with me.

And I think tiny living was that door to enabling more control of my finances. So not having to have rent, this huge expense that just goes and disappears into the air was a huge one. reallocating that amount. I think that is the experience that I got from tiny living in terms of financial freedom. It's like,

you can reallocate based on the things that are really important to you. And if that's saving, then you can also consider that, but also factoring in all these other experiences or ways of life. So through tiny living, you we've been able to save money that I know for a fact we would have not been able to save had we had traditional lives. And that's been such an eye opening for us. So it's been able to like,

help us have an actual savings account and as young adults actually think about our financial future too. It doesn't have to be this like, either you do it right now and you're broke and you don't have anything or you wait and you save all this money. We found this middle ground where we can be smart and save money but also choose these experiences and prioritize them in our budget. So that's been our experience into those areas.

Less House More Moola podcast (27:17.558)
Yeah, that's so good. And I think it's so smart of you to kind of figure this out, you know, at the beginning of your career and to be launching yourself on a path where you are able to save, but also live your life the way that you want to, because far too many people find that out, you know, way down the road, they realize how miserable that they are in their life and they're not living according to their values or according to their ideals or aspirations because they've just done the default path.

And so it's so good that you didn't go down the default path. just, you questioned it from the very beginning. And I think that probably has a lot to do with the way that, you you experienced growing up and the focus that your family had. Absolutely. Yeah. I think that was a big one. And just like, you know, the going out there and doing it and trying, like whether that was, you know, college in a different country for me and then studying abroad, like all those experiences kind of just always taught me like.

you can always come back to something. that's even something I tell, you know, a lot of people are trying to do these big moves of like new adventure stuff. like, you know, the worst thing is that you fail and failing is not as scary as it again to our thought conversation early. It seems like it would be the end of the world, but if you just, you know, if you fail, you're going to be okay. And you can just go back to that job. Like that job is most likely always going to be open or a possibility. So if there's something you want to try and

Just the fear of failing is what's holding you back. Like don't let that be what holds you back because it's not, it's not, it's an imaginary thing. Our brains are trying to make us believe is there, but it's really not. Yeah. And we never learn as I have reminded myself with a recent book that I'm reading, we learn nothing through success. We only learn through failure and through problems because that's where we have to create solutions and solve things. so, yeah, that's so true.

Well, Fiorella, thank you so much for sharing your story with me and make sure that you give us any last minute thoughts that you have and where can listeners track you down? Yeah, I love that. Well, I've enjoyed this so much, but yeah, if you guys, guess the last message I'll have is like, go try it out camping or RVing. It's truly this.

Less House More Moola podcast (29:32.62)
beautiful budget friendly way to experience the world and you can do it anywhere in the world and with RV share you can do it anywhere in the US. You can go to Hawaii, can go to Alaska, you can go to that national park you've been thinking about and it's just like such a beautiful way to travel that rejuvenates you and connects you to the outdoors and doesn't just deplete you. just, I'm just a such a big advocate for people trying my lifestyle because it's changed my life and I know it can impact somebody else's.

So go try it out, but you can find me and all social channels with Growing Slow and Wild. If you want to check out our Rvshare, if you want to rent on our van or something, it's our Rvshare.com. But really I'm more than an open book. So if anybody wants to reach out, more than happy. So just find me over there and send me a message. Well, thank you so much for that openness and for your encouragement for listeners. And thanks again for being here. Thank you. Thank you so much. I've enjoyed this.

Hey, thank you for taking the time to listen to Less House More Moola. 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 thetinyhouseadviser.com. one more thing, podcasts don't have algorithms like social media does.

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Please see the show notes for important disclosure regarding the tiny house advisor LLC in this episode.