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Lily and her husband, Jared, saved six figures last year and regularly save over 90% of their income. They live in Seattle with their dog and have already hit their financial independence number but they never want to stop working. Jared has a high-stress but well-paying corporate job and Lily manages their Airbnbs and their rental property. Lily made over $40,000 last year on Airbnb! Lily blogs about her life and path to financial independence at The Frugal Gene.
We chat with Lily about:
- How she saves six figures
- What Lily’s childhood was like
- Getting married at Jack in the Box
- Supporting family members & community
- Is it worth it to do Rover as a side hustle?
Enjoy this chat with Lily, and please subscribe to us in iTunes if you enjoyed it!
Show notes and links from today’s episode
- The Frugal Gene – Lily’s blog
- Mr. Breadwinner’s Burden – The Fight That Made Me a Better Wife
- Lily’s Feature on Time.com
- Brown Ambition Podcast – Tiffany and Mandi
- J’s $15,000 Wedding
- Ep. #123 Your Money or Your Life w/ Paula Pant & Vicki Robin
- SniffSpot (use code FIREDRILL for a $50 gift card)
- Chief Mom Officer’s Six Figure Millionaire Moms Series
- Episode 15 w/ Gwen’s Boyfriend Erik
- Episode with Sylvia Hall on Family Support
- Sign up here for Rover *great side hustle for dog lovers
Key takeaways from our chat with Lily from The Frugal Gene
1 – Eat the discount meat at the grocery store. You’ll be OK.
Both Lily and Gwen eat the discount meat at the grocery store and they’ve never gotten sick. Gwen celebrated putting an offer on her second property with a nice, tasty $3 steak from the bargain bin.
While Lily never eats anything too suspect, she will only buy meat from the discount section.
2 – Entrepreneurs & traditional employees make the perfect FIRE couple
Lily mentions how entrepreneurs and people in traditional desk jobs make the perfect FIRE match. They can leverage the health insurance and stability of traditional employment while getting the upside and flexibility of entrepreneurship.
Damn, that is a convincing argument. We have to agree.
3 – Prep for family support and/or community
Lily received a gift from her Mom when she was buying her first house and it’s an expectation in her family that she gives back to her parents and helps support them when they are older. She’s in the process of selling a rental property and using the proceeds to buy her parents a home in South Carolina.
Gwen, Lily, & J talk about reciprocal family arrangements that seem to have been more common back in the day in the U.S. when multiple generations lived in the same house. These arrangements exist today and can benefit both younger and older generations but it seems they aren’t talked about as much.
Vicki Robin mentions on Paula Pant’s Afford Anything podcast that support can come from your community and friends too, not necessarily your family. This leads into a discussion on co-housing which J & Lily are not feeling but Gwen loves the idea of it. Co-housing can mean that different families live together in the same neighborhood and share chores, childcare and cooking duties.
4 – Airbnb Hosts – Put your Airbnb on Instabook & leave all of the filters on
Lily mentioned it takes too much time to screen and book her own Airbnb tenants and she actually thinks she did a worse job trying to screen them herself than just letting the Airbnb instant book do it.
5 – It’s easier to achieve financial independence when you have a high income
It’s easier to achieve financial independence when you make a high income. Full stop.
This doesn’t mean that it’s *easy* at all to earn that high income in the first place. It just means that it’s easier to save more of it, when you have more money coming in.
There could be a point where someone may not be able to cut anything else out of their spending and they need to focus on increasing their income.
Questions? Like or dislike? Leave us a comment!
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