I’m so excited to share this post with you today. I stumbled across Cathy on Instagram and was mesmerized by her posts of house hacking to financial independence (and an HGTV pilot!). Her lifestyle also provides a lot of inspiration for living simply with little kids: they have moved a lot while renovating homes and now AirBnB their own home on weekends to subsidize their own travel. Thanks again, Cathy!

Stumbling into Financial Independence through Real Estate Investment and House Hacking

Tell us about your family, who you are, where you live and things that you love:

I’m an old-home lover, renovator, and blogger. My husband, Garrett, and I retired at 34 to our small hometown in eastern Washington. We have a handful of rentals, ongoing renovation projects, and 3 young kids that keep our schedule pretty full. Last year we also filmed a pilot for our own show on HGTV (titled Master Plan), and are hoping our next renovation project involves a vintage Airstream and lots of time spent adventuring around the country.

You seem to have almost stumbled into financial independence through house hacking. And you’re young with kids! When did you realize you could quit your jobs and live off of rental income? Was it scary to make that leap?

Stumbled is a great word to describe our path. I wish we knew more (or anything) about Financial Independence at the beginning of our journey, but back then I was just a newly-minted engineer eager to get a dog and an old home in Seattle. We got both in 2008.

One year later, with the recession in full swing, I got laid off and we found ourselves with no way to pay our mortgage. That lead us to become renovators and house hackers by necessity. You can read more about that here.

Fast forward to 2016. We owned 4 homes in Seattle, had just had our second son, and I was working full-time. I’m an avid spread-sheeter (technical term 😉 and knew that if we moved out of Seattle, we could live off of our rentals. I was burnt out of my job, Garrett had just finished an exhausting 7-year PhD, and we had been renovating and moving every one to two years. Throw in a couple of kids and we were just worn out.

The thought of a quiet house in the country was like a beacon.

So it wasn’t scary to quit my job, the real question was when to do it. And that became obvious when we found an old Farmhouse for sale in our hometown. And I should mention that while we planned to rely on our rental income, we were also confident that we could fall back on our skills and work-ethic should the need arise. But mostly we were just happy to embrace a slower pace, more space, and leave the traffic behind.

Renting your own house out with AirBnB so you can travel more.

You’ve started renting your own home out via AirBnB. Many people would find this task daunting because they have too much stuff to hide/remove. How do you keep your home AirBnB ready?

We strive for a simple home with less clutter and stuff. That can be hard with kids, but honestly, a cluttered home just stresses me out so it works for us. And bonus, renting out our house is a great excuse to pick up and give everything a deep clean. As long-term landlords, we also like the idea that we’re earning a financial return on all the time and money we put into our home.

Renting your home via AirBnB is a great way to subsidize or even pay for travel. Do you have any tips for readers on how to do it?

One of the first things to do is embrace a less-is-more philosophy. The houses that are uncluttered and decorated well are going to do the best on Airbnb. The few items in our home that are personal (ie toiletries, jewelry, documents) we move into a closet but don’t mind sharing pretty much everything else with guests.

We get asked a lot about leaving fridge space for guests, and we don’t tend to have a packed fridge anyway. But we clean out the fridge prior to their arrival, take perishables with us on our trip, and consolidate the rest to leave the guests a couple of shelves.

What do you do with your days as young retired parents?

You’re financially independent but continue to work on renovation projects and manage your own properties. What’s it like to do work as a choice rather than as a necessity?

Without a major paying-the-bills focus in our life, work has become what we want to do rather than what we have to do. We get to pursue projects that are interesting and exciting to us (like the pilot for HGTV), which we wouldn’t have had time for while we were working traditional jobs. Plus there’s lots of time for pancakes now 😉

But while early retirement has given us the luxury of time it’s also forced us to really examine how we want to spend that time. And that’s still a work in progress for us. We’ve definitely found a few things we don’t want to be doing over the past two years (like cleaning our Airbnbs) and are making a conscious effort to shift focus onto the things that excite us (like traveling and creating cool content).

That’s probably been the hardest thing about early retirement – where do we direct our energy?

Renovating with little kids at home.

Finally, you’ve moved house many times and renovated with kids underfoot and along. What are your best tips for making those moves and renovationa easier?

Honestly, we’re awful movers. We’re always mid-renovation, working mad hours to finish the house and pack up all our stuff. Everything shows up in black plastic bags. But we keep doing it, so I guess that makes us resilient…? Anyway, I won’t give any advice on the moving front other than don’t have a bunch of stuff!

In terms of renovating with kids, I have two tips: lower your expectations and involve your kids. My husband likes to say that kids are a long-game and we definitely try to keep that in mind.

Renovating will take longer with little ones under foot. It’s best just to accept that from the start. If you can be positive and encourage their help now (even if they’re not actually helpful), they’re much more likely to be around when they’re older when they can actually help! We’ve bought each of our kids an old tool box and filled it with safe tools. Tape measures, electrical meters, and wrenches make them feel like they’re part of the crew.

Oh and if you’re living in the house, try to renovate just one room at a time and cordon it off with plastic. That way you always have space that’s clean and safe for yourself and kids too.