The Quiet Rebellion: How Tiny Living and Financial Clarity Free You from Hustle Culture

In this week's episode of the Less House More Moola Podcast, host Laura sits down with Angel Mathis, a nurse practitioner, financial coach, and founder of Nurses Investing for Wealth. Their conversation delves into a powerful, two-pronged strategy for achieving personal freedom: embracing tiny living and cultivating "money clarity." Angel’s journey, starting from a high-debt, high-cost-of-living situation in Seattle, proves that radical changes in housing and finance can lead to a life where work is truly optional, a quiet rebellion against the relentless pace of hustle culture and debt cycles.

Angel's Links

https://learn.nursesinvesting.com/Free-Training-Registration-Become-Work-Optional

IG: https://www.instagram.com/nursesinvestingforwealth/

FB: https://www.facebook.com/groups/nurseinvesting/

Book a Call with Laura

Go to thetinyhouseadviser.com

Transcript

Less House More Moola Podcast (00:40)
Hi there, Laura here. Thanks for listening this week. I have been away on a little podcast break for a few weeks, so I'm excited to be back this week. I have been away because I've been focusing on some other things that add value to life as we all have to do. Sometimes we have to shift gears and shift focus. I've been working on the Colorado property, working on some personal development.

or progress, just sort of shifting that focus, which really comes into a great view as we listen to this conversation with Angel Mathis this week. So Angel talks about how we can create some financial wealth, some resource security for ourselves so that we can

separate ourselves a little bit from hustle culture and the requirements that we have to sort of keep at it day in and day out. And certainly when you have a podcast or when you're creating some sort of marketing effort, consistency is always emphasized as super important and consistency has been definitely my motto for a few years. And now as I'm

re-evaluating and moving forward. I'm thinking about maybe quality over quantity and also making sure that the content that I am creating is deeply resonant with what I am learning and experiencing. And so took a little time off to think about some things and I expect that'll happen from time to time. So thanks for coming back and I hope you enjoy this conversation with Angel.

Less House More Moola Podcast (02:32)
Well, Angel Mathis, welcome to Less House More Moola Podcast.

Angel (02:35)
Thank you, Laura. I'm so excited to be here.

Less House More Moola Podcast (02:38)
Yeah, it's so good. You know, I don't even remember now. Maybe someone told me about you. can't even remember. How did we connect?

Angel (02:44)
connected with you because I saw that you were looking for guests and when I realized, yes, yes, that's it. And when I saw what your podcast is about, tiny living and intentional financial living, couldn't have, I couldn't have thought of a better match. And so I reached out to you as soon as I saw that.

Less House More Moola Podcast (02:49)
yes, right, you were a matchmaker.

Yeah, that's right. So for podcast listeners, there's a couple different sites where you can go and put your podcast up and invite guests and, you know, be a guest and whatever. And so this was through matchmaker.fm, which is one of the platforms. So good. So I'm so glad we got a chance to get together and record because, we're so aligned in so many things. So Angel, go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about

how you came to tiny living. ⁓ If you want to talk about your career journey, let's go into that, but I'm sure we'll cover it all.

Angel (03:45)
That sounds so good. So I'm Angel Mathis. I am a nurse, a nurse practitioner. I've been a nurse for more than 20 years and I have been living tiny really for more than 20 years too. And it's been unconventional.

tiny living, but it has been such an important part of my financial journey. And I just don't get to share that enough. And so I'm so happy to be here with you today to talk more about it.

Less House More Moola Podcast (04:19)
And it seems like this is common with nurses. You hear a lot about traveling nurses who maybe go from Airbnb to Airbnb or do van life or other small rental pieces. Tell us specifically how tiny living played out for you.

Angel (04:35)
Yeah, so I was working in Seattle, Washington, and I had just moved from New Zealand to Seattle. And I was aware that I wanted to purchase a home based on what I knew about home ownership, feeling like it was a better investment. It was an asset that would grow in...

And so I really wanted to purchase a home for that reason. But in Seattle, it was it's a high cost of living area. And I arrived there with.

many many thousands of dollars of debt student loan debt that I needed to pay back and I met with a financial advisor at one point and she laughed in my face when I told her that I wanted to buy a home and it was humiliating to say the least and

I left her office that day, High Rise building in downtown Seattle. I left her office that day and I was like, you know what? I'm doing it. And I did. so I...

was a nurse in Seattle. I worked as a nurse in Seattle and within six months I had scraped together my $10,000 that I needed to put a down payment on a condo in Seattle. And that condo was a 600 square foot home that I lived for 13 years. And after that, so that is by many ways, in many ways tiny. It's not a tiny house, but

compared to my peers that felt very small and that really set me up for lots of other experiences where I just lived smaller and smaller and in different ways from what conventional people live. Even my own experience is not necessarily relatable with other nurses. ⁓

What happened was I ended up quitting nursing and walking the Pacific Crest Trail. So I lived out of a tent for six months. And then after that, life never went back to normal because once you live with only what you can carry on your back for six months, it opens up a whole world of opportunities. And so I ended up selling my place in Seattle and downsizing.

to a boat for a little while even. I think, you know, that initial move to Seattle, staying small, not accumulating a huge house full of things, not investing in a huge house full of things really set me up to both.

increase my wealth, increase my net worth, and be comfortable living small and have the freedom that living small brought to me.

Less House More Moola Podcast (07:36)
So would you say that the fact that you could only afford a small place is kind of what set you on this trajectory of, small is fine, small works for me?

Angel (07:46)
Yeah, I would actually. So in the beginning when I first did that I went into it

Thinking this was going to be a stepping stone for me, right? And I thought I'll live here for a few years and then I will upgrade like I saw many of my peers doing but I lived in the center of Seattle my my Where I lived I was in a walkable neighborhood. I could walk to work. could walk to the grocery I didn't need to use my car on most days unless I was gonna go out to the mountains and Yeah, definitely. I think that because I did

that and then because I found that life in general was so good living there, I never upgraded. I never did upgrade. So that fact that I could only afford something small is definitely the reason that it started me down that road. And then I think other decisions along the way let me feel comfortable living that way, living small.

Less House More Moola Podcast (08:50)
And so then you said that you quit your job and you did some hiking. Presumably this was a chapter of sort of kind of redirect and figuring out where you wanted to go in life. And so did that condo purchase and then sale, did that enable you to take some time off?

Angel (09:14)
So not exactly in that order. So what that condo ended up doing is I rented it out and I was able to quit my job not really because I rented out my condo during that time, but because I had established a money plan in those years from the time that I had met with that financial advisor to the time that I quit my job, which was... ⁓

less than 10 years. So that period, I have to think back, but it was actually was around six to seven years. In that amount of time, I had really gone in on setting up a money plan that let me make work optional. Now I didn't know that I was doing that at the time. I just thought that I was saving and investing and

being responsible with my money. I didn't ever plan to quit my job when I did, but I was at such a period of burnout that I'm glad I did all of that. And then it was later that I ended up selling my house.

or selling that condo. And it was later after I walked the Pacific Crest Trail. Unfortunately, a really sad story is that my husband's dad passed away when we were on the trail, during that, during that journey that we were on. And that was a moment in life where we both were.

shaken and we both thought and said life is just not ever going to be the same and life is so short. His dad was only 62 years old. He died from brain cancer. So it was really fast and pretty unexpected. And he had worked so much throughout his life. He was one of those people that worked

50 weeks a year, two weeks of vacation off, six days a week when he was working. And we both, both my husband and I were like, life is too short for that. We are not going to return to full-time jobs. And so it was during that time after the PCT that we came back. It was still a few years before we decided to sell our condo. ⁓

But during that period of time is when we realized, whoa, what have we set up with our financial strategy that we're able to do this? And it started to dawn on us that we had set up this system for ourselves that worked really well. And that's kind of how those pieces fit together.

Less House More Moola Podcast (12:01)
So it sounds like that you kind of fell into some smart, personal financial decisions after having that sort of really ⁓ uncomfortable conversation with that financial advisor and kind of pulled yourself up by your bootstraps there and then enabled yourself to really transform the future of your life by taking some smart financial moves.

So tell us a little bit more, unpack it some more about, I think you call it money clarity and how that freed you from hustle culture and debt cycles and performative success. These are all things that you and I had talked about before that seemed to really be in part of the work that you do. So tell us more about, kind of your mindset around money and freeing ourselves from those.

things that people seem to be really entrenched in, really entrenched in debt, really entrenched in working maybe more than aligns with them and really focused on that performative, lifestyle both personally and professionally.

Angel (13:13)
Yeah, thank you so much for asking this because it's so important. think in our culture, we are so accustomed to working hard and...

climbing a ladder and this is true in the healthcare corporate world too. We're accustomed to working hard, especially, especially nurses. So I'll go back for a second and say that there was a moment in my career that changed my career for me and it is the moment that I

set myself up to quit. And that was a moment when I was meeting with my medical director because I had been working so many unpaid hours. I was being pushed to the edge with the workloads, with the patient loads, with how many people I was supposed to be seeing, being put into dangerous situations and knowing. So I'm a nurse practitioner.

knowing that I could work as a nurse, which is a role with lower responsibility and accountability than a nurse practitioner, I could work as a nurse just 10 minutes down the street and make more than I could make at the clinic where I was. And so I met with medical director and I was like laying it all out and

He was so casual. I remember he had his hands beneath his head and he was leaning back in his chair and had his feet up on the exam table because we were meeting in a clinic room. Feet up on the exam table, soles of a shoe facing me. And I just remember feeling how casual he felt and how stressed I felt. And he looked me in the eye and he said, you already make enough.

What more do you want? If we paid you more, we would have to pay everybody more. And I just remember in that moment feeling like I was disposable. I had worked so hard to get to that point, and I barely scraped it together by working extra night shifts as a CNA before, and years before even donating plasma during times that I was in nursing school to make ends meet. And...

So coming back to the question of.

I have quitting, making some financial choices before that point, remembering that even logging into my accounts felt hard when I started. Even I was, you know, I shared that humiliating moment that I was with a financial advisor.

But I kept at it and I did start small. I had a lot of debt, student loan debt at first, then I added mortgage debt on top of that.

And as I was researching and making sense of my finances and looking for anything that could help me feel like I wasn't just working to survive, I'm slowly saving, slowly investing, chipping away at my debt. And I started to realize that I did have more control of my career than I thought. And so after just five years, I was nearly debt free and I had a hundred thousand dollars invested.

And then this point came with my medical director and I started to think, well, can I quit and still be OK without ruining my future? And I didn't know if I could in that moment, but I did as as I shared with you, I did and I I did that. I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail. And that one year that I planned to take off turned into two and then three and then four and then five.

And then I had to make a decision of if I would go back because for nurses we have to keep up our licenses through practice hours and continuing education. So I needed to make a decision. Was I going to let my license lapse, let my professional career go, or would I get some practice hours and I decided that I would go back?

And when I did, I went right back into the same situation that I had left but five years earlier. High stress, dangerous environments. This time, unfortunately, ⁓ I witnessed some workplace bullying. ⁓ Basically the same stuff that I experienced before that made me want to leave in the first place.

But this time, as a person who was financially independent, as a person who knew that I did not need to stay in a job that was forcing me to work too many hours or that was requesting me to work too many hours, I did not need to put up with the things that happen in workplaces.

I went into it with a fresh new perspective, because I knew that my workplace needed me more than I needed them. And that let me really stand up for what is right, which is I cannot stress the importance of this.

I'm sure everyone can relate to this, but as a nurse, I cannot stress the importance of this because it's not just standing up for what's right in my direct work environment, but it's also being an advocate for my colleagues and my patients. And that's so important for the public to know that nurses above all care about protecting patients. And in these environments,

Being able to stand up because you don't feel a fear of retaliation, of losing your license, and potentially your livelihood is so important. It's important for nurses, it's important for patients.

And that's the place I found myself in that I never expected to. And so that was the game changer for me when it came to my nursing career and the way I relate to it. And I think when we chatted before, Laura, we talked about, I had been talking with you about the rebellion that financial independence has created, has allowed me to feel. And that is the rebellion that I have. ⁓

It definitely is a quiet rebellion where it's a personal agency rebellion, but I think that it's so, it's been so valuable for me individually, but also collectively as I share this with other healthcare professionals.

Less House More Moola Podcast (19:51)
it's so interesting because I felt, I feel the same thing, having become, mortgage free and, you know, debt free, that notion of I decide my course, right? And I am not beholden to anybody that I don't want to be beholden to in terms of.

what I choose to do with my time, how I choose to benefit the world. And certainly I don't, I don't need to repress my voice to conform with anyone else. And I'm sure that as you point out in the medical profession, this is vitally important and probably so extremely rare.

And so many voices are being shushed because we so easily fall into this cyclical life that we're prescribed that we just throw on ourselves because that's what you're supposed to do that involves just a lot of debt and a lot of obligation to our employer and a lot of paycheck to paycheck to paycheck to paycheck, which keeps you showing up.

and doing what you have to do in order to keep your job. And I think in a world in which people actually acted out of their values instead of acting out of their need to keep their job, that would be a far better world and certainly a far better medical system, if that were the case.

Angel (21:15)
I so appreciate the way that you just took everything I said and put it into a nice, neat nutshell because I feel so seen right now after hearing you reflect that back to me and I couldn't agree more with everything you've just said.

Less House More Moola Podcast (21:32)
And so now you're trying to help others, especially nurses do the same thing. your intention around your mission, your work is not just about that sort of independence, financial independence or financial security of an individual person, but it's really about that ripple effect that happens within your industry when people have that agency.

Angel (22:01)
That's right. Yes. So I created Nurses Investing for Wealth at a time during when COVID was raging and nurses were showing up still because that's what we do. We show up and there it was a period in time that

I've never witnessed quite anything as severe as that. I think we all can relate to that in some way, but as a nurse, toxic work environments and burnout is not new to nurses, but during that time it was to an entirely different level. And so I created Nurses Investing for Wealth out of a feeling of how can I help nurses feel more in control of their

choices of when they say that they will work, of what they're willing to accept. Nurses were being called in, required to work when they had COVID and fevers themselves, which is very, very difficult. These are the kinds of things that nurses felt like often they had no choice around.

Out of that, I started Nurses Investing for Wealth. you're right, the whole purpose of it is it's individually focused in the sense that I show nurses, I take them through a system that they set up to fund their futures with just small portions of their paycheck so they can work less and still be on track to retire early if they want to. And...

As more and more nurses learn this, the collective voice of what we're willing to tolerate as a profession grows stronger and our ability to advocate for ourselves and our patients grows stronger too. And you're right, the ripple effects outwards, I hope will be huge, will be enormous in the sense that nurses are the ones that are

having the power in the healthcare system to make sure that their patients are well taken care of like they deserve.

Less House More Moola Podcast (24:17)
So you have such a heart for your industry and just based on our conversation, I'm sure there's some deeper philosophical thoughts you have about nursing and about its effect in society and the way that it is critically important. Certainly, until you realize a healthcare crisis, you don't realize how you're...

personal health dictates every other aspect of your life. so nurses are the people that are there in moments where they're impacting a person's full spectrum of their life. It's not just their health, but the way that their health dictates their ability to enjoy the things that they enjoy in life or show up for work or whatever it is that people are, find really important. You need your health to get there.

Angel (25:10)
Absolutely, that's that old saying health is wealth, right? We don't really have anything unless we have health and this is an interesting two-part two-part Response that we could take because there's one part which is that People who aren't nurses who engage with nurses they want

The best nurse, you want the best nurse, right? The best nurse, the most ⁓ well-rested nurse, the nurse who's mentally sharp to be able to make decisions about.

what kind of CPR you're going to get that day or you you want you get my point you want the you want a healthy nurse looking after you and then from the nurse's side of they want what everyone else has too they want to be healthy themselves they want to

be able to have time with their families. They want to be able to, and they want to be able to show up for their families, for their communities in ways that they feel really good about too. And in order to do that, they need their health and they need their wealth. And, ⁓

What I mean by that is they need to be able to have time freedom. They need to be able to have the ability to.

do those things that bring value to their lives. Most nurses find value in taking care of patients, but the real value is in the same things that everyone else finds valuable. And when nurses are working so hard, a lot of times those more important things in their life are really taking a backseat. And I think nurses, that's part of what lends to their exhaustion.

Less House More Moola Podcast (27:00)
I'm so glad that you have translated your own personal story and certainly that idea around living small and minimalism and you took

control of your own financial situation, even though it seemed like a big uphill challenge, right? And you worked on it a little bit at a time with the same determination that you put into your career and taking care of others. You use that to take care of yourself. And now you're helping others do the same, such important work and impact that you have that far is beyond just who you're touching individually.

Angel (27:38)
Thank you, thank you Laura for giving me the chance to talk about this because I think that for me, I think that a big part of my story is that by being able to live small, it freed up a lot of other opportunities for me in my life. And I don't think that we often.

When we're thinking about our housing situation, we don't often think about that, right? We think about, when we think about our housing, we think about, so often, space, large spaces, things that require us to have more stuff. And what I've learned is that having less stuff,

and smaller spaces not only is less mentally cluttering, you know, it frees up space, but it also saves a ton, a ton of money and it is such a great wealth builder to have such, to take a minimalist approach to life.

Less House More Moola Podcast (28:45)
Now you're singing my song.

Angel (28:47)
Yeah, I know. And I love what you're doing.

Less House More Moola Podcast (28:52)
So,

do you have just a couple of anonymized success stories, just things that you have seen play out for people in their lives, so that listeners who maybe feel a little bogged down in the debt cycle, they've got a lot of student loans, they feel like maybe they can't dig themselves out to a point of financial agency and, being able to make choice about how they spend their time?

What have you seen happen for people?

Angel (29:20)
Yeah, absolutely. I have so many. I'll start with one, Ebony, who is a nurse who I've worked with and her name is publicly available on my website as well She has four kids.

She has aspirations like everybody else. she's wanted to start a business. She wanted to not have to work so hard as a nurse so that she could spend time with her four kids. Very sadly for Ebony, her children's father had passed away, so she was on her own.

She was working with a financial advisor who, like so many nurses, didn't understand anything that that person was trying to tell her about her money.

What she learned is that there is a way to take what she has and to put it into the places where she can get the most out of it. And in her case, that meant what it means for a lot of us, putting it into debt bills, her children's education funds.

her investments, actually in Ebony's case, she didn't have any debt, so she was ahead of the curve on that one. But ⁓ put it into her investments more, understand what it meant, like what is she even investing for?

She's managing her money, getting it going to all of the right places. And she was able to start her own business in her town, which is a group home.

for mentally disabled folks because she's a nurse and she said she has a heart for the community and she is, I'm just so proud of her for being able to take her nursing skill and combine it with her passion to bring something very valuable to her own community. And so that's just one example of what. ⁓

Knowing where your money's going, knowing the right places to put it to get the most out of it can bring. And I'm just so proud of her and all my students really.

Less House More Moola Podcast (31:28)
Well, as we wrap things up, Angel, tell us where listeners can find and get in touch with you.

Angel (31:35)
I think the easiest place to find me is on my website, learn.nursesinvesting.com. And I love connecting through DMs on Instagram or Facebook. And you can find me at Nurses Investing for Wealth.

Less House More Moola Podcast (31:51)
Thank you so much for sharing your personal story of kind of leveraging that minimalism to create financial freedom and also personal choice and agency for yourself. And so glad that you're out there in the world helping other people in the nursing profession do the same.

Angel (32:09)
Thank you, Laura, and I'm so glad that you're out here helping people to see that living small and minimalistic is so important.

Less House More Moola Podcast (32:18)
Yep, it's definitely not for everybody, but it can be such a wealth maximizer.

Angel (32:25)
I agree. Thank you so much for your time today.