The out-of-our-control-part is that my husband (My Leo) was laid off at the end of September 2025. It wasn’t entirely unexpected. His employer previously warned us of a potential policy change that would eliminate his job. It happened on September 1st. He was given until the end of the month to move to California because his position in Texas had been eliminated. My husband (My Leo) was laid off when he declined to relocate.

The Great Downshift

It sucks that he lost his job, but we are OK. At least so far. We made wise choices with his income while we had it. We invested in our future, in travel, in education, in athletics, in our home, and in our health. We knew the gravy train could come to an end at some point. And then, it did. Preparing for the loss of income and surviving on the loss of income are two different ballgames!

We have survived on one income for three months without the need to touch our savings account. This is, in part, because he was given a severance package that floated us the first month. To downship our spending required a very fast change in how we use our money. We spent a LOT of money every month, and in 2024 we got ourselves into debt, which we needed to pay off before he lost his source of income.

That was the first goal we tackled in 2025 – we paid off over twenty-five thousand dollars in debt. What did we get into debt for? A few things.

1. Legal bills from family court (see my previous blogs about the coercive control paradigm I had to navigate my way out out of)

2. $7500 car repair bill at the end of 2024. That’s greater than the value of our car!

3. We purchased solar panels and solar powered mini splits for our cabin in the woods. Besides our car, this was the largest purchase we had ever made. (no, we do not own our cabin. I will explain this in another post one day)

4. We took a family trip to Europe for Christmas 2024 to see My Leo’s family for the first Christmas since his mom died.

Each of these decisions were an investment into our future, our family, or our home. These decisions also coincided with a high monthly spending habit for travel (yes, way more travel than the Christmas Europe trip), dance competitions and lessons, live music concerts, feed for 4 goats, 60 chickens, 6 ducks, 4 dogs and 3 cats – not to mention the cost of human food!!!!!!!!! A LOT of time, energy and money was spent on the repair and remodel our cabin. (As I mentioned above, I will explain this in another blog post).

We knew my husband’s job could change their policy any moment. Our first move was to get out of debt. Because of this, we told the kids we wanted to stop all extra spending until we had paid off our debt, and we locked-in while STILL spending quite a bit of money each month. By the end of summer 2025 we paid it off, although I do think we could have paid it off faster if we had practiced what I just learned in The Year of Less!!!!!!!!!

The same month we became DEBT FREE, my husband was laid off. (Yes, I listened to Dave Ramsay’s Financial Peace University! Once in 2024, then again in 2025 after finding it for $1 in my library’s used book section!!!! I used his methods to get our finances and insurance in order. When my husband got laid off, we had to downshift our spending IMMEDIATELY and DRAMATICALLY to avoid getting right back into debt. As I said, we were spending a lot of money every month.

I Audited Every Expense for Two Years

In order to audit our spending habits, I painstakingly categorized every expense we made in 2024 and 2025 in the Credit Karma App. This showed me how much money we spent on Travel in 2024 and my jaw dropped!!!!!!!!!! What a gift and blessing we were able to take our kids to see so much of the world. And wow. Just wow. It costs a lot!!!!! Also, we were spending SO MUCH MONEY at Tractor Supply to feed the goats. Financially speaking, they had to go. In late summer they went. It was REALLY HARD for me, but now I can see the results in our bank accounts already!!!!

Once I was done with the audit of our spending, we had to make some major cuts. I ended all entertainment or excessive subscriptions except Netflix, Hulu and Disney. Those subscriptions I downgraded to the “with ads” version. This action cut the entertainment subscription bills by at least 80% (around $100 a month to $17). Then for black Friday I cut our Disney/Netflix event more, and the combined entertainment subscription bill is now around $10. No more custom shampoo / conditioner subscriptions. No more scented car freshener subscriptions. No more History magazine subscriptions. No more, no more, no more. Anything that had a reoccurring charge got cut out, except what I mentioned above and some software we use to make our family run (proton office, etc… which also have black Friday deals BTW).

It even meant I had to cancel our beloved CSA veggie box. We spent $20 a week on locally grown veggies every week for years. We cut out hundreds in monthly spending by the removal of these subscriptions. I also audited our Amazon auto-ship items. If we had extras of certain things we actively use, I paused them. I also made sure all the subscription items shipped the same month so we got the maximum savings. Then I found all sorts of subscriptions I didn’t know about -Paramount Plus, for example. It took me until December to find and irradicate them all (and I may still find more!!!)!

I Hunted Down Deals

I used black Friday to look for deals on anything we actively use, or that I knew we needed to buy – how could I cut current costs????? This method allowed us to cut our cellphone bill from $250 a month, or $3,000 a year, to $800 a year total. This is a savings of $2,200 per year, or a 73.33% reduction!

We accomplished this with a black Friday deal on Mint Mobile, and moved my oldest and I from Verizon. My husband also got an affiliate commission for bringing us over! I got a mega discount on supplements I regularly take. In a stroke of pure coincidence – the hotels we needed to book for Anarchapulco in February had black Friday deals going on as well, and that saved us a TON on housing costs for our lineup of speakers!!!!!!!!

We already had some balls in motion when My Leo lost his job, so we could not cut all spending immediately. For example, we had already paid for our Thanksgiving trip to Mexico, so we decided to go, and to only spend money on food and a few pre-determined items (no impulse shopping!). My list included a silver ring from Taxco, a woven blanket from Oaxaca, and hand made dolls for each of my children from Puerto Vallarta.

I also wanted to check out my favorite clothing store with Indonesian imports to see if they had another pair of pants like the ones I ripped two years’ previous – I found both pants and a dress that is actually perfect for work! We knew when we got back from this trip that it was over. The gravy train had ended. If we hadn’t already paid for it, we now couldn’t buy it!!!!!!!!!! So we came home and knew we had to eat out less, no travel for the holidays, etc……

And yet, I still had holiday shopping to do. How did we handle the holidays? Well, thankfully for our Moon Child I had already bought gifts on our adventures throughout the year, and all we really needed for her was a gymnastics bar. I posted on our local small town facebook page – I didn’t manifest a gymnastics bar, but I did manifest a gymnastics balance beam! We found the gymnastics bar for super cheap on Amazon for black Friday, so she ended up with both! I got our annual matching pajamas for 50% off on Old Navy’s website.

From our local facebook group, I got a ton of legos and a lego table for my Sun. My oldest daughter, Stara, wanted to go to Winter Camp in Kansas City so her dad and I split the flight and camp registration. My husband and I agreed to not share gifts, and that left extended family. For my sister I ordered a family gift with a fun board game, hot cocoa bombs, and a Chiefs themed nutcracker. I haven’t mailed the gift I got my step mom and dad yet, (shhhh), but it was purchased while travelling before my husband lost his job.

I Got Creative

Finally – we had teacher / community gifts. The Greenbriar teacher gifts, secret Santa gifts, and white elephant gifts were ENTIRELY THRIFTED (with two small items purchased at Five Below), or came from items we had at home – and, if I do say so myself, these gifts were amazing. I got our teacher’s baskets, scarves, candles and a specially selected mug to match their personalities. In the mug I put a few tea bags of chamomile and peppermint tea, and then scattered some holiday Hershey kisses throughout.

If I had more time I would have made them a custom tea blend from the loose leaf herbs we have at home, but time wasn’t on my side this year! I gave them each a small doTERRA gift I already had on hand. For teachers that I had photos of, I printed them and put them in photo ornaments that I found at the thrift store. No gift garbage was made from our gifts, either, because I used baskets or backpacks I found at the thrift store as packaging! I think the gifts were a huge hit, I plan to do something like this again in the future – whether we have two incomes or one!!!!!!!

Overall I spent thousands less on Christmas than we usually do. Not just on gifts, but on TRAVEL. I am from Missouri, and my husband (My Leo) is from Italy, so as you can imagine we usually spend the Christmas holiday season on the road back home to one of our hOMes. This year, we stayed put. We didn’t travel for Christmas. No gas money. No plane ticket. No eating out every day. Quiet. Home cooked. Amazing. We pretty much only bought groceries and pet feed. DOWN SHIFT COMPLETE.

So here we are, its the beginning of January and we have some big financial goals, but we are living off of 25% of what we used to make (yes the income discrepancy between my husband and I is that great!!!). This is where the book The Year of Less comes in. While my husband looks for a job, we will continue to simplify our lives. It is incredible how fast life can become complicated! 3.5 years ago I lived in a converted school bus! We plan to return to ease-ful, abundant, and magical!

The Great Downsize

Remember how I said I was tired? We not only have less resources, but I need to reclaim some of my time. We spent a lot of money, and we also spent every moment of our time scheduled and busy. This resulted in our inability to care for the items we have purchased in a way that makes me feel happy, proud, or relaxed. We have half-started projects that we need to let go of, or complete. We have possessions we need to take care of, or sell.

Our first step in this regard was to upgrade the size of our storage unit. I found an online deal that resulted in us getting a bigger unit, on the ground level, for less than what we were paying in the smaller unit two stories up. Because we had the gift of time this holiday break, my husband and I built shelves and moved all our existing storage to the bigger unit in one day. Then the weed out / purge began. We’ve brought 5 SUV loads full of items to storage from our house or our converted school bus. We have our next load staged in the living room ready to go.

That’s the first step – get it out of the house. The second step is to organize things between the following categories:

1. Long term keep. (clothes to hand down to grand kids, photos, etc…)
2. Short term keep. (things we actively use like camping gear, life jackets, etc….)
3. Things to donate.
4. Things to gift.
5. Things to sell.

So you can imagine how serendipitous the timing of The Year of Less is for me. I am actively downsizing, actively downgrading, actively reigning in our spending. Then I listen to this brilliant book which has inspired the choices I plan to make in 2026 for MY Personal Year of Less.

Goals for My Personal Year(s) of Less

Phase One DOWN SHIFT SPENDING – COMPLETE (100%)
Goal Completion Date: Thanksgiving 2025 (success!)

1. Get out of Debt. – Complete (car, cards, all paid off)
2. Recover Credit Score. – Complete (over 700)
3. Audit Spending. – Complete (used Credit Karma)
4. Downshift Spending. – Complete (Described above)

Phase Two DOWNSIZE STUFF – IN PROGRESS (20% complete)
Goal Completion Date: End of Spring Semester 2026 (May)

1. Audit our “Stuff Situation”. (house, storage, converted school bus)- In Progress 10%
2. Move unused stuff to storage. – In Progress 30%
3. Sort into categories. (Keep, Sell, Gift/Donate) – In Progress 10%
4. Process the Unused Stuff. (Store properly, sell, gift or donate) – Not Started
5. Downsize the Storage Unit. (Once most items are removed, or properly stored in tubs, labeled, on shelves, etc…) – Not Started

Phase Three – SAVE $XX,XXX – In progress (17.3% complete)
Goal Completion Date: June 2025

We have a big purchase goal we want to make in June of this year. I have no idea if we can get it together in time or not. This is a stretch goal, and I don’t plan to reveal the actual number or purpose just yet. We are going to try. This goal requires my husband getting another job, or me to get a nice fat raise! Plus, we will need to keep our spending down.

1. Impulse Shopping Ban. – I am going to follow the protocol in the book and create an approved shopping list (obvious items like food and toiletries, plus some known items I will need throughout the year – like a new pair of Birkenstock sandals before I leave for my job in February, or kids’ shoes as they grow!). I will also make a “not allowed” shopping list. For example – no fast food, no to-go coffee, no candy, etc…
2. Sell What We Can. – We have some big pieces of property that we own and do not use – for example we bought a second school bus with the intention of my husband building it into a toy hauler. We ended up moving into this cabin and did not finish the second bus project. We can sell that and increase our savings account by several thousand dollars. I’m sure we will find more items to sell as well! The funds from selling what we don’t need will go into our savings account for future planning.
3. Find Creative Ways to Further Save. – How can I reduce our food bill? How can we save on gas? What else can we cut out in the name of our future?
4. Save My Leo’s (my husband’s) Income – Once my husband is employed again, I’d like to continue our downshifted lifestyle and put as much of his income into our savings account as possible. I have really enjoyed season tickets to the ballet – but we don’t need them. Once we have reached our savings goal – we can loosen the belt! This includes any side hustles he has in between now and then.
5. Only Travel for Work or Education or if on Approved Spending List. – Until further notice we will only travel for work or education. Unless we already paid for it. We already paid for a trip to San Antonio, for example, next June. Our trip to Mexico next October is on the approved spending list. We need to go for our PERMANENT residency in Mexico. I should have enough points accumulated on my travel credit card to get us there. We also have already paid for our time share, so we will have a free place to stay! I will likely double that trip up with work since our event has moved to Puerto Vallarta!

Phase Four – REARRANGE LIFE – Not Started (0% Complete)
Goal Completion Date: End of January

1. Move Fence. – Once we move the fence to our dog yard, we can park cars there and move my skoolie where the cars are currently parked. The bus is sinking in the sand where is currently is, and I don’t want to set up an office before it is relocated.
2. Restore Use of our Skoolie. – Move my bedroom office into my converted school bus. I have already weeded out my office and we are actively weeding out the bus. After it was my home, it was Paolo’s office then, then it became a catch-all storage….. We will set up a permanent studio and a guest bedroom space in the converted school bus. This won’t cost aything because we already have the desk, technology, and bed / mattress we can use. This will allow me to work “outside of the house” so I’m not interrupted by children all day!
3. Build a Closet. – Once my office is moved, we can build a closet for our bedroom! This will allow us to get some of our clothes back out of storage and have a functional space for all seasons of clothing! (My husband has a dresser, I have a an armoire and a small dresser).

I’m sure this strategy will evolve over time, and it is for sure incomplete…. I am publicizing this journey in the hopes that you will share your ideas / brainstorms, and provide ACCOUNTABILITY. I will set new boundaries around how my time and energy are spent in this Personal Year of Less, although I am currently still figuring out what exactly those will be…… I do have the goal of posting one blog per week. Let’s see if its possible!!! I will certianly try.

Peace, Love and Sovereignty,

Cat Wilder