Meet The Frugalwoods

The deeply personal story of how awardwinning personal finance blogger Elizabeth Willard Thames abandoned a successful career in the city and embraced frugality to create a more meaningful purposedriven life and retire to a homestead in the Vermont woods at age thirtytwo with her husband and daughter. In 2014 Elizabeth and Nate Thames were conventional 95 young urban professionals. But the couple had a dream to become modernday homesteaders in rural Vermont. Determined to retire as early as possible in order to start living each day—as opposed to wishing time away working for the weekends—they enacted a plan to save an enormous amount of money well over seventy percent of their joint take home pay. Dubbing themselves the Frugalwoods Elizabeth began documenting their unconventional frugality and the resulting wholesale lifestyle transformation on their eponymous blog. In less than three years Elizabeth and Nate reached their goal. Today they are financially independent and living out their dream on a sixtysixacre homestead in the woods of rural Vermont with their young daughter. While frugality makes their lifestyle possible it’s also what brings them peace and genuine happiness. They don’t stress out about impressing people with their material possessions buying the latest gadgets or keeping up with any Joneses. In the process Elizabeth discovered the selfconfidence and liberation that stems from disavowing our culture’s promise that we can buy our way to the good life. Elizabeth unlocked the freedom of a life no longer beholden to the clarion call to consume evermore products at everhigher sums. Meet the Frugalwoods is the intriguing story of how Elizabeth and Nate realized that the mainstream path wasn’t for them crafted a lifestyle of sustainable frugality and reached financial independence at age thirtytwo. While not everyone wants to live in the woods or quit their jobs many of us want to have more control over our time and money and lead more meaningful simplified lives. Following their advice you too can live your best life.