EP 126: Unsubscribe from Social Pressure: How Tiny Living Can Liberate Your Life

Dec 4

Written By Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA®

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Trading Houses for Happiness: An Introduction to Nomadic Freedom

In this episode of the Less House More Moola Podcast, host Laura Lynch speaks with Michele DeVries, a full-time RVer, photographer, and creator of Two Happy Campers. Michele and her husband, Mark, embraced an unconventional nomadic lifestyle, transforming their approach to work, debt, and the very concept of "success." Their story is a powerful testament to the liberating potential of downsizing, rejecting societal pressure, and curating a life deeply aligned with personal values.

Michele and Mark started their journey in 2012 by purchasing a truck camper. For Michele, who had always dreamed of being a "snowbird," the initial motivation was escaping the cold Colorado winters. This first taste of living small quickly evolved into a larger goal: achieving debt freedom. By 2017, they took to the road full-time. While a temporary job opportunity brought them back to a conventional house for two years, the call of the road was too strong. In 2020, they returned to full-time RV living, a decision Michele says she can’t imagine reversing.

Escaping the Financial Treadmill: The Drawbacks of Conventional Homeownership

Michele candidly shared her experience with following the traditional life template: working hard, racking up debt with the "spend money to make money" mentality, and eventually buying a house. However, instead of the fulfillment she expected, homeownership felt like an immense, stressful responsibility. As she notes, the high stakes of maintaining a large home—like repainting after a major hailstorm—cemented the feeling that this traditional path was not truly aligned with her happiness.

This realization prompted a critical shift in thinking. For Michele, living small in an RV opened the door to different possibilities, forcing her to ask: "Does this life work for me, or do I want to do things a little bit differently?" It became clear that the conventional path, while working for many, wasn't right for everyone.

The Weird Life Hack: Cyclical Income and Semi-Retirement

One of the most compelling aspects of Michele and Mark's lifestyle is their financial strategy, which Michele jokingly calls their "weird life hack." As freelance wedding photographers, they learned to consolidate their entire working season into a five-month period (May through October), when work is busiest in Colorado. This intensive period of "grinding" is immediately followed by seven months of semi-retirement.

Maximizing Time and Minimizing Stress

This strategic approach to work allows them to manage their money in a way that sustains them year-round. Critically, it has created immense amounts of free time. During their off-season, they live on the beach in Mexico, enjoying warm weather, paddleboarding, and whale-watching. Michele admits it often feels like a lifestyle reserved for millionaires, yet they achieve it through radical reduction of their life footprint. By minimizing overhead and maintaining a tidy, small life package, they have maximized their most valuable resource: time. This cyclical living provides not only financial resilience but a necessary break from the relentless pressure to "hustle and be earning and producing constantly."

Resilience and Adaptation: The Power of Less

Living small has dramatically increased Michele’s resilience and adaptability. She notes that the uncertainty of the current world feels less daunting because they have less to worry about maintaining and fewer payments to make. The pandemic provided a stark illustration of this resilience; when their wedding photography business was suddenly deemed "non-essential," their minimal overhead meant the crisis didn't immediately trigger financial panic. Their ability to simply "ride it out" in their RV, taking life as it came, offered immense comfort during a turbulent time.

Furthermore, their time spent in Mexico reinforces their spending habits. They find they can live substantially cheaper there, which helps them evaluate their spending norms back in the U.S. By breaking out of the constant gradual increase of American expenses, they consciously ensure their money is spent on things they truly value.

Auditing Your Input: Curation for a Happier Mindset

When offering advice to those intrigued by the unconventional path but held back by limiting beliefs (like worrying about status, career, or health insurance complexities), Michele's primary recommendation is to do an audit of your input.

The "comparison trap is real." Constant exposure to content and relationships focused on "leveling up" can unconsciously affect your thinking, causing you to chase goals that aren't aligned with your true values. Michele makes it a practice to take a four-to-eight-week break from social media annually to reset and check that her thoughts are in line with her core values.

The key to initiating a life change is introspection: identifying your values and curating your content and community to align with them. Michele's transformation—from a teenager with a huge closet of high fashion to a happy RVer with a tiny closet—was an evolution built on this continuous evaluation. She emphasizes that while you may only see what you are giving up at first, there must be a leap of faith that the things you gain (time, freedom, peace) will be far more valuable.

Ready to discover how reducing your overhead can lead to an increase in your freedom? Laura Lynch, CFP® specializes in helping people navigate the path to tiny and simpler living.

Take the first step toward unsubscribing from hustle culture and finding your own weird life hack. Book a complimentary call with Laura today at thetinyhouseadviser.com to explore your options for a Less House More Moola lifestyle!