Wondering how to sustain a remote lifestyle? According to USA Today, Pew Research Center found that around 22 million employed adults in the U.S. work from home all the time. Being out of the office offers the opportunity for more travel and flexibility, but there are some important financial considerations to keep in mind. On this episode, Cristina and Randy spoke with Lauren and Justin, who work remotely as Director of Strategy and Development Director at GreenHouse Agency.
Randy asks Question 1: “So, Lauren, Justin, are there any financial benefits you've experienced by working remotely?”
Lauren responds: “I'd say the biggest and most obvious one is something you guys touched on in the intro, and it's all about not having a commute. Our gas expense is basically zero. Not having to drive on I-4 every single day is a blessing on many levels. Not just my sanity, but also my pocketbook. So I'd say that's probably the biggest savings that we had.”
Justin responds: “It's kind of a different lens on that same point. Obviously you're reducing your gas expense, but you're getting time back in your day. I think of that as a financial benefit because it gives me more time to focus on other interests. If I've got extra jobs I want to focus on, or volunteering, or just pursuing my own hobbies, that's a big thing to get back is just time.”
Lauren follows up: “The other big thing we cut out was our gym memberships. We would go to the gym after work every day. And I had a personal trainer, which is not cheap. Now that we're working from home, we don't really have any gyms nearby. We had to start doing it from home on the cheap. So that definitely saved a lot of money, too. Just things like subscriptions or things that you normally do if you're out and about in town, you don't really have that opportunity unless you want to specifically go in town for it.”
Lauren follows up: “I would say for lunch, we're definitely eating in more. We don't have a tropical smoothie or something right nearby that we can go to. I have found that since we have more time in the evenings that we do go out to eat for dinner more, which is probably more expensive than lunch. So I don't know if we're really saving much money in that category.”
Cristina asks Question 2: “How have you been able to balance creating a home office while also building a home simultaneously?”
Lauren responds: “We definitely did not choose an easy route. So Justin and I had this crazy idea. We wanted to buy pristine land, no structures on it, just totally raw land, and build a shipping container house. Not only are we in a remote area, we bought a bunch of land and it's on the side of a steep hill, a mountain, and we're building a weird type of house. So we did not make this easy on ourselves. It's been a process. I think we've been working on it for about 13 months. So even before we moved up to North Carolina, we were taking multiple trips last year to go up and visit and finalize the sale of the land and find the property that we wanted and work with our builder.”
Lauren follows up: “That was financially draining, going up to North Carolina all the time. Fun, but expensive. I think it's been nice, we just decided to go ahead and move up there. Even though the house isn't anywhere near complete, we want to be near the land so we can stay on top of the project. We just want to start this chapter of our lives, we've been so excited for it the past year. So finally being able to be up here has been great. We're 15 minutes from our land, so we can go and see how the project’s going at any time and really stay on top of the builder. That's been a challenge. Definitely. I don't know if I'd recommend it to anyone else. We definitely learned a lot and would do things way differently.”
Justin responds: “Yeah, it's been interesting, like you'd asked about balancing the two. We're in a short term rental and that's been difficult just because we've been trying to time out when our home is going to be ready versus how many more months of rent we need. Trying to balance that timing is very difficult. It’s definitely a trade off of, do we want to try and save money by choosing to try to time it out? Or do we just say, let's get several extra months buffer and we might be in a commitment for that, but it's worth it for the peace of mind. I think that's a financial consideration to make.”
Lauren follows up: “I'd say finding a place to live when you're working from home is a lot easier because you don't have to think, okay, how far away is my commute going to be to work? We could pick up and move an hour away from our land anytime that we wanted. We have that flexibility to work from wherever. We don't have that concern of, oh my goodness, is this going to be an hour drive into work just because we want to live somewhere different? So that's been nice, being able to work from home in that regard, too.”
Randy asks Question 3: “So what are some cost effective ways that you've found to combine your work with your travel?”
Lauren responds: “Really just getting creative with your employer and seeing, are they mandating in-office visits or wanting you to come in during different times? Really looking at your calendar, maybe from a quarterly or yearly perspective and being like, okay, my employer is wanting me to come in this week, which is actually near Mother's Day. This just recently happened at our agency. We had a birthday, we had a baby shower, and we had some videos that we wanted to record as an agency for our own marketing and sales."
Lauren follows up: "So my boss wanted us to come in, and that happened to align with Mother's Day. So we were able to come down and see family while also doing work. That helps kind of ease the cost. Work out an arrangement with your employer of like who's going to cover the expenses of flights or travel and lodging. If you can kind of combine the two, maybe you compromise and split the expenses, or maybe your employer covers it all. Being creative in that sense and looking from a calendar perspective, I think has been really helpful for us. How can we maximize our time when we're down here, not just with work, but with friends and family?”
Cristina asks Question 4: “What have you guys learned? Any tools or strategies that you guys have implemented to really maximize your efficiency from working anywhere?”
Justin responds: “What's been really helpful is our employer. And it's true for a lot of remote employers. They'll provide the hardware, technology, and software that you need to to complete your duties and the job. Our employer provides laptops, monitors, desktops, and software to help collaborate with the teams. Luckily, we already had some of those tools, even before going remote, because they were just something that was helpful to the team in general. So that certainly helped in having the resources to have a home office. Then our employer’s even willing to provide more tools at our disposal to really make that space viable.”
Justin follows up: “We're sharing a space and we'll probably share an office as well. So if we have meetings at the same time, you have background nois, which is true for anyone that might be working from a coffee shop or something. So we actually use a tool called Krisp, which just cancels out background noise. If you ever use Discord and it kind of will cancel out background noise, that's exactly the tool it's using.”
Justin follows up: “The plan in the new house is having this separate space and just really having a physical boundary to just say, okay, I've left the office, and that means I'm having lunch. I'm taking a break. It's the morning or it's the evening, and that's not where work is. So work truly happens in the office.”
Justin follows up: “I think it's just really kind of some practice and setting boundaries for yourself as well. I have found those times where I'm really stressed about a deadline and I'm tempted to kind of push through and or say, hey, I'm going to spend some extra time this evening or on the weekend. So it's really just reminding yourself, no, give yourself that space, because you're probably going to be a lot more effective if you take a break and really enjoy your own personal time.”
Lauren follows up: “We do tend to talk about work a lot outside of work hours, too. So sometimes you just have to tell each other, okay, no more work, talk. We need the space from that. I know it's easy to get into that because it's what we do day in and day out. Again, setting those boundaries is important.”
Randy asks Question 5: “Lauren, Justin, what are some of your top budgeting tips for remote workers who love to explore new places?”
Lauren responds: “This is my favorite question of all of them. I love my Allegiant credit card. We are big Allegiant fans in this house. We often fly into the Sanford Airport in Orlando, and there's a direct flight from Asheville to Sanford. And it's like an hour, a little hop and we have our credit card, so we get priority boarding. We're the first people on the plane. You get a free drink, any kind of drink you want while you're on the plane. So that's always really nice. Then obviously you earn points on all your everyday spending, so then it makes your flights that much cheaper. They also have a direct flight to Tampa, which is where a lot of my friends are. I just get free flights to go see my family and friends by just purchasing things on this credit card. It's really nice, but I would say just look for those airlines in your airport that's nearest to you, to those destinations that you want to go to and search those either airline credit cards or your bank or credit union websites and see what kind of deals they have for those airlines, and see what you can do to kind of maximize your point earning from there.”
Justin responds: “We usually use those. Really, any travel card would be beneficial just because we look for those opportunities like okay, we've got enough points. It'll cover this flight here. Even if you don't have an airline card, a travel card in general, you can leverage those points to take those cheaper direct flights as it is really nice and looking for that opportunity. It's like, okay, you live remote, you can work from anywhere. So travel is not as big a deal. You know, we could book a stay somewhere. And it's like, okay, we're not getting back on the weekend because that's not the cheapest flight for us. So it might be like Tuesday to Thursday. Well, we still need to work on the weekdays, but that's not a problem. I feel like the remote work really does open up sort of your travel options because you're not trying to do Friday to Sunday or even like Friday to Monday and get like a three day weekend or something. You really can just go somewhere and visit with family for a little bit, not take PTO and work on the workdays normally. Obviously, you're still paying for lodging, but I think the benefit is, if you have family that's out of state, you could fly to visit them and stay there. So your lodging is free and you did a relatively cheap flight because you're not traveling on busy days. And then you visit your family over the weekend. Just getting creative with travel now that you’re not dependent on being near an office during the week.”
Lauren follows up: “During this home-building process, obviously big expenses come up like we had to buy all new appliances and things like that. So using our credit card to pay for those and then obviously paying it off. That has allowed us to accrue so many more points. So just thinking of ways that again, you can just maximize your use of those points is the best tip I can give.”
Cristina asks Quick Question 1: “Setting up a functional home office really requires an investment in supplies and equipment. Justin, I know you said earlier about how sometimes your employer will help you with that, but sometimes you have to pick out your own things. So can you share your experience with that process, and how have those expenses really affected your home budget?”
Justin responds: “Our employer will cover a lot of things like the hardware and software. Really making this space work for you is where that affects our home budget. We probably weren't spending as much in that area that we were before. So definitely had to shift the budget around to focus on, okay, how do we make this space really functional for us? Our previous home was small. One of the three bedrooms that we converted into an office and trying to make that work for two people working from home. You have to be creative and thoughtful and plan it out.”
Justin follows up: “And in our next home, the whole home is under 800ft², so it's even smaller. So we have to be very creative about how we set up that space. And what we're really putting our budget towards is more creative, dual purpose furniture desks that fold up into a shelf on the wall or can be converted into some other type of functional furniture so that it is an office. But, we can transform it into a space where guests can still come. So being creative in that way, spending a little bit more than we normally would have if we had just a bed and a dresser, but something that allows us to leverage it as an office most of the time and still have people over. I think that's really where it's affected our budget the most.”
Randy asks Quick Question 2: “I want to talk to you guys about the transition that you made. You said you went from Orlando to Asheville. What was that conversation like with your boss? So our listeners want to think about doing that. We're in person now with our jobs and we're thinking about remote work. How did you navigate that conversation?”
Lauren responds: “We're super lucky to have such a good relationship with our boss. I've been with the agency for over nine years. So when I approached Caleb about it I gave him plenty of time, over a year, saying this is our plan. This is what we want to do. This is the next chapter of our lives, our dream that we want to achieve. I love working with GreenHouse and the company, and I want to stay and continue to work and be a good employee, but I would have to do that remotely. Is that something that you're open to providing? He had to think about it and come back and kind of weigh that cost, am I going to lose an employee or two employees over this? Is that worth having someone in the office? Luckily, I did it during my performance review, so I was able to highlight how good of an employee I am and it wasn't really that hard of a choice. He was happy for us to pursue our dreams.”
Lauren follows up: “I think that's another thing, is just being part of a company that really does value their employees' dreams and where they want to go in their lives. We have a track record at GreenHouse of helping our employees achieve those dreams. Whether that's becoming an actor, we've had employees go out and do that. Whether it's that your husband's a traveling nurse and you want to go travel around with him. We've had an employee do that. So we kind of had a history and a precedent. To me, I wasn't that anxious to ask him because I kind of knew what was going to happen. I was pretty confident.”
Justin responds: “We were hopeful that he would make that decision in our favor, but we were realistic that it was entirely possible that he wouldn't want to. We had that conversation with our lender. We found a lender for a construction loan and talking with our loan officer he had asked us what that situation was. Do we have jobs set up there? And we said, we're hoping to go remote. He told us if anything changes while we're going through this process, you just need to notify me as soon as possible. So you have to be realistic with that. If you feel confident in the job market and your ability to find a new job while you're trying to close on a loan, then you can go for it. There definitely was a risk we were taking by doing that. We both felt fairly confident with our skill set. We could find a position remotely. But really, there was a possibility we wouldn't and wouldn’t have gotten the loan and would have had to start a whole process over again. So just have to be mindful and realistic of that.”
Cristina asks Quick Question 3: “What is something that you love about working from home and that you miss from working in the office?”
Lauren responds: “I love waking up and putting on some clothes and just jumping right into work. We have quieter mornings where we're not busy running around packing a lunch and getting out the door. I just love that peace. And then, like Justin said, logging off. Now I can go make dinner and get on with the rest of my evening. I can leave work behind. That's something I love.”
Justin responds: “Yeah, I like being in a space where I feel comfortable and I can easily step away. Something I've got a little bit of a taste of in our current apartment. There's a nice nature trail like right next to us, we can easily take a stroll. It’s something, you know, we kind of had available to us when we worked out of the office. But still, an office park, it's 100 degrees outside and you're taking a stroll around a pond. It's okay. It's nice, it's a good break. But, we've chosen to live in a more remote area surrounded by nature. I'm hoping in a few months when I take a break from work, I can just go and stroll through the woods for ten minutes. That's what I can't wait for. That's what I'm really excited about.”
Lauren follows up: “I do miss my people. My work family. Izzy and Laisha are in the room right now. I definitely miss being able to just turn around and say something ridiculous to them and just be part of that office culture. We still slack and send memes to each other and all of that. Randy, you mentioned at the very beginning that in person team building, it just really is way more difficult when you're remote. It's just the nature of human interactions.”
Justin follows up: “I would echo that. I mean, I'm a very extroverted person. I like building friendships and relationships with people and sort of running into these unique circumstances where you can collaborate. That's where I have the most fun. That's where I get the most reward from work is typically collaborating with people to solve difficult problems. Since being remote and certainly at a smaller agency, I don't experience that quite as frequently as I used to at some of my previous in-person jobs. Being able to walk around the office and, oh, hey, we've got this going on or, what's going on with you? Oh, you're running into this problem. Well, that's interesting. Those conversations that came up were fun. I certainly got a lot of enjoyment out of those types of interactions. I'll say I do have a lot more focus on simple things, which for me personally is probably a good thing professionally. But that was a lot of fun, I did enjoy it.”
Randy asks Quick Question 4: “So, Justin, Lauren, what is the best financial advice that you have for other remote workers or future remote workers?”
Lauren responds: “I don't know if this is exactly financial, but I think a lot of times we think about remote work and the benefits from the employees perspective and the disadvantages from the employer's perspective. So sometimes I like to flip that and think, how is me being a remote worker an advantage to my company? How can I leverage that to show that yes, I'm getting benefits from it as an employee, but also you're benefiting as my employer. I think that's just having that mental shift of it's not always about you, but how is it also helping your company. That'll help keep you in this position and keep telling leadership that this is an okay thing. This is a normal thing, and it's a good thing for people. I always want to make sure that that discourse is positive there.”