My husband quit his job at age 40! How we made this happen.

hello we have had a really big life change recently and we thought we'd come on here and tell you about it since you will undoubtedly be seeing a little more of mr tidbits here on the channel um basically he has quit his job slash career so you would say it was and has come home a retired man at age 40. um we would like to tell you why we've done this how we've done it maybe go over what our life looks like now and um and then answer some very interesting questions that i got on instagram when i shared this announcement so this should be fun [Music] all right so in case no one knows who you are why don't you introduce yourself well i like to go by mr tidbits and i'm her husband you can call him kevin but yes i frequently refer to him as mr tidbits because my blog name is tidbits and so it just just seems to fit anyway so one of the questions i got on instagram was people wanted to know what did you do for a living well the last job i had i was an engineer for a pvc pipe company and it was uh basically a do everything kind of a job you are a handyman um you're smart you're graduated as an engineer but you're also just a willing person who knows how to do a lot and so to a fault yeah so you did a lot at work and i think it kind of burned you out a little um but did you like your job i the last job i had i really enjoyed it we got to find issues that we had or ways of improving our systems and processes and that's what i do best i like to find things that aren't going correctly or find issues and find so then find the solution to them so yeah i did enjoy that yeah and you did great you excelled and they loved you there we decided to quit anyway so i definitely got sorry guys i just got papers here with the questions that i wrote down that i got on instagram um so why did you decide to quit and retire your career that you've worked so hard on and done so well basically let's go over our why with them [Music] well for me a lot of it was spending you know 50 hours of work every week and only 20 hours with my family kind of gets old didn't even feel like that much honestly i come home exhausted mentally physically we're trying to finish a house i just too much and i think that i yearned for a life where i could be building something for myself especially homesteading i grew a great fondness for that to raise my own animals have my own garden provide for ourselves so i decided to leave the workforce and come home and do something for myself instead of working for other people yeah and just i feel like it's just something we've talked about for a long time it is really something that we yearn for as a couple and as a family i know not everyone wants to have both parents home all the time but for us that was like the ultimate dream to be able to support ourselves and just do it together i kind of like you yeah i'm rather attached to my wife and kids we have a lot of fun together we're just getting home doing everything together it's just it's been a great experience it feels right um all right so i would agree with him like i wanted him home also because i was trying to do a lot on the home front myself homeschooling my online business just running a household i just i was overwhelmed and probably living at a stress level that's not maintainable or healthy and then he would go to work and come home and work on projects and i think we were both just kind of stressed to our max and so we felt like this would be a way for us to kind of divide and conquer and share the load um anyway so really just just everything we've wanted for years and years and years okay so people are curious how we were able to bring you home because obviously you need an income and you have been like our financial supporters since we got married pretty much and i was having babies um but we found another way but anyway how did you answer that well a lot of it has to do with the fact cammie was paying other people to do a lot of things that i could do and so that income was income that we could then realize and keep ourselves if i could do those things for um also she was lacking a lot of time that you needed to invest in your blog or your online business and so me being home able to take care of the kids make breakfast and lunch and do the homeschool allows her then more time to focus on her work and so just looking at the amount of money that could be saved um an amount of money not spent on other services just it made sense i mean we wouldn't be we're not going to be living it high on the hog but we could at least make it a little bit we can make it just fine without that plus i get to spend my life with my kids and so you know i want to back up in case you guys aren't aware but so i have an online business that goes by many names you might consider a content creator blogger youtuber influencer there are a lot of names for what i do but basically i create content online but basically sum it up how we were able to bring him home financially was that i do work and i do bring in income and i've been working hard slowly but surely to grow it to a place where i felt like my income was reliable and could sustain us and then also we've we've tried to really invest to where we could um get sell things and get a return to kind of pad our savings for a rainy day and just we just really tried before we made this leap to get us into a place where we felt like if things go south we're going to be okay for a while i mean worse i guess not worst case scenario but you could go and get another job um people always want us help because he's just the handyman so there are other ways we can make money but we're really trying to make it work by investing in ourselves in our land and then giving me that time to work more and make more at what i do so to sum that up and i'll and we'll go into a little bit more because there were some more detailed questions but oh someone asked about regrets and i just want to say that we wish that we would have been able to pay off our mortgage and we wish that we still didn't have so many home projects left to do in this home that we've built we have no landscaping so there's still kind of major expenses that we're going to need to make and a mortgage that we still have so ideally we would have not had any of that and then i don't feel like we'd feel so much pressure but i feel like if we would have waited for those things we never would have done it how long do you wait if you wait till everything's perfect you're never going to do it no i agree we just decided that was the time yeah he was listening to uh jill winger's podcast i don't know if you ever listen to that but he pointed me into an episode where she talks about jumping out of the airplane and building your parachute on the way down that really related to us because we're not comfortable this isn't you know living it up this is scrimping and saving and trying to figure this out so that we can live the life we want to but all right so people are very curious about what i do and what are the most profitable income sources for me or the main source of income people wanted to know how do you make money as a content creator where does the money come from so i'll talk a little bit about that but um okay so like i kind of mentioned i'm a content creator and the biggest way you make money is advertising um so everything i do put on youtube or on my blog i have ad companies or google adsense on youtube and when people look at my stuff there are ads that you know and probably don't love very much but they are there and um they help us make money so it helps us to put free content out there so the next time you complain about the ads on a blog or your youtube channel just remember you're showing up for free content and that content creator has put a lot of time and work into that content and so just put up with the ads because it helps us do this stuff and put out this content that hopefully you find interesting um so ad income i often work with brands and have sponsorship deals so that's when a company may want their product or service promoted so i work with them and i always try to make it a very organic fit i never want to share brands that don't feel natural for me and so i'm kind of picky about that so i don't do that a ton but anytime i'm talking about a brand or showing you their product in my space or in my home or how i'm using it that's often in a brand sponsorship kind of deal sometimes if the product is substantial it'll just be a product exchange um or sometimes it's just straight up money so it's great either way if it's something we need um affiliate income is also a good source as a content creator so a popular one is amazon affiliates if i use anything in my home and like it and share it with you i can leave a link that if you click on that link i get like a really small percentage of the sales so you know if i'm recommending products and integrating them into my content in a natural way and my readers trust me i can make um money that way and then of course i've tried to dip my toes into product creation in the last few years as a blogger youtuber content creator we kind of need to put our eggs in a lot of baskets and so coming up with my own products to sell basically to promote myself has been really rewarding and because i don't really love to work with sponsorships or other brands i like making a product um that i'm really passionate about and offering it to you so i have a planner line um that i sell it's like a day planner i created it and i get it produced and it is my life and i love to teach people how to plan and manage your lives with that product i also have a linen line um linen tea towels eye pillow sachets we have some digital products like you just released the bed plans anyway i want to get more into that maybe classes or courses but all this stuff takes a lot of work so i'll just kind of integrate it as i can but products is another way you make money really quick how you can create content if this is something you're interested in of course you can do a blog and a lot of people think blogs are dead but they're not would you say they're dead no no and actually something he's taken on is doing my seo research which is search engine optimization so he's helping me on the blog end to kind of create the content that people are looking for and to keyword it right have you enjoyed that yeah yeah that's been fun so far that's something i've never had the time to get to or it's not really a passion of mine but he's a researcher so we've learned a lot just by kind of giving that on him to shoulder so blogs are not dead everyone gets online to search things i would say blogs as a journal like they used to be are sadly dying they're not as personal anymore because video has kind of taken the place of that but you can still create really valuable content that people are looking for and if you make google happy they show it to people okay so you can do blogs you can do a podcast that's something i have not done it is something we've thought about i think he would actually run a tidbits podcast pretty well um you can do youtube of course and social media i would say with youtube um is a great source to start i actually felt once i picked up youtube and was able to get kind of another income source from ads on youtube that's when i felt a little more stable to do this because i have the blog ad income and the youtube adam come together they kind of make me feel a little bit better about shouldering this responsibility and then social media is often used basically it's free marketing so you can get on social media and work with brands a lot of people do that but for me social media is a little exhausting it feels like i have to sell my soul to succeed on there so i i mean you can look at my numbers on social media they're not huge i don't pour a lot of my heart into that because it's a game and it's kind of a vicious game like i said it can it can suck your soul so but social media is a great place to connect with people to get your stuff shared get more eyeballs on it and then hopefully direct them to those sources where you do make money so i hope that answered a question sorry he was telling me this is a little long-winded but this was most of the questions i got on instagram was people were so curious how do you make money as a blogger so that is it sorry there's not a whole lot of input for you on these next couple questions but so a really interesting question i got was how did you get started and your best advice for a wannabe um so i got started back in the good old days of blogging basically back when blogging was not so complicated but i probably got started oh how long would you say when vlogging uh 12 years ago yeah i would say 12 years but i didn't take it seriously like actually approach it for money until our last was about one seven or eight years ago yeah so i'd say well close to nine so eight years let's say is when i've actually looked at it as a business and made money on it or trying to make money on it so it hasn't been easy and it hasn't been quick can be for some people but that's not often the case it's it's difficult and so as a newbie or wannabe i would say you're gonna have to put in some blood sweat blood sweat and tears but it's possible and this world of content creation i don't think is going anywhere anytime soon um but you do have to be willing to adapt because things change so fast when i got started it was basically just blogging and then kind of facebook and instagram came on the scene that changed the game a lot and now video is everything so i've had to adapt and be willing to try these new things put myself out there where i'm not necessarily super comfortable doing um but if i were if you wanted to start and try to do something like this content creation gig to help maybe bring in some extra money to share your talents whatever the reason might be my biggest advice to you would be to start on youtube and that's not something i would have said a few years ago did you expect that no but honestly i have felt like youtube is the the quickest way to deliver your message and the quickest place to grow if you're willing to stay consistent if you commit to a regular schedule whether that's one or two videos a week you're going to grow there and it's easier because it's not quite as saturated as social media i mean it is but if you find a niche like say you wanted to create a channel all about um i don't know sourdough or gardening or gardening or if you get really really niche down and specific you can grow actually really fast my problem i think is i'm not super niche down i'm i kind of we just dabble in a lot of things and i've tried to niche myself down and find out that i'm too passionate about a lot of things to be able to do that so mine is more of a lifestyle channel but if you can find a niche or a skill that you're really good at that you can teach maybe you're super entertaining you can grow really fast on youtube and start monetizing pretty quick i've seen it happen a lot now i always think you should have a website associated with it but if you're just needing to get started and get out there i would say start a channel refine your skills you're gonna be awkward and that's okay um if you go back and look at my first videos they're horrible remember you would like hold papers up for me and above the camera now they're gonna go and look yeah they were terrible and i hope in a year from now i'm gonna go and look back and think this is terrible um basically you just gotta put yourself out there and video is a little vulnerable but if you're a newbie and you want to do this start a video and then work on building a website that supports your content and then grow from there i would also suggest a really great source that i will link in the description my friend lisa from farmhouse on boone she has created two courses one is for vloggers if you want to learn how to start a blog from scratch and one is if you want to learn to succeed on video they are both phenomenal and if you want to get started i highly recommend them i will link you right to her sales page if you want to learn more about that but that is always kind of my advice these days on if you want to get started okay someone also asked is it hard to plan life around creating content what's your perception of that that's one of the benefits of me coming home is before cami would just fit in work hours whenever she could she'd be up at six a.m trying to work before the kids got up she'd try to work at nights it just was a very difficult juggle yeah time for her so when i came home i said okay your hours are from this time to this time period i've got the kids i'll do everything you work those hours and so if you can block these are the hours i'm going to work every single day it becomes it's not so much of a hassle as it is just being able to have that you know that time we'll have a video this day at this time so you know you can plan for that you can get everything done you need for that it just makes it a lot easier it is and it's been easier since you've been home hands down by the way he's been over about two months now so we've kind of just been adjusting before i felt like i wanted to talk about this but for me it was interesting to hear his perception um when you're creating content that is very much kind of lifestyle like sometimes these videos are just part of our life and so you get out the camera that's not always very fun but i would say the difficult part about working from home is separating your life because i'm always in the back of my mind thinking should i be filming this or is this something i should share like i never really do anything for myself like my hobbies have become my job so i would say that's a little difficult like if you ever want to build something i'm in your face with a camera and you've got to lay out all the pieces and it's kind of a pain but you know if i just have to think like this is what's allowing us to be together so you just pull it out and film but and i think one thing cami struggled with is letting go of perfection when you're doing that it doesn't have to be perfect if you make mistakes on the camera people understand it's okay it's not that big of a deal yeah my first videos are very refined and ridiculous you guys got longer preparing for it than that and now i'm just kind of rolling with it and getting more comfortable so i hope that's encouraging even if you want to start anything new it's always hard at first and there's a learning curve but it's worth it to keep going and i would just say even though it is hard i am just so passionate about teaching and inspiring that i'm surprised i've been able to do this for 12 years and i i don't want to stop there's nothing inside of me that says i need to be done i mean there are weeks there are definitely days where he sees me super discouraged especially if you work so hard on something and put it out there no one cares yeah but um you just have to have the passion and when the passion's there you can keep going and for me teaching my degrees and teaching that i got back in the day i love to teach and i love to inspire so it keeps me going how do you manage a business and homeschool well we've kind of touched on that already yeah now he's home and he's taking the kids till two o'clock on the ideal day sometimes there's things we need to adjust but that has been incredible for me to better separate my life but before because i know a lot of you are maybe going to want to start something like this and having your partner home or having that extra help isn't isn't an option so i but my advice is still that you've got to get help so when i didn't have him home like he mentioned i hired help that was the only way to do it i hired cleaners to keep my head above water there about once a month i hired a tutor a college girl that would come in and help me homeschool the kids for about two hours a day she took the math and language arts and that's what he's doing now in the morning with them and then after i can do more of the like reading books to them well-educated heart style of learning just the stuff that i never really had the brain space to do because i was so busy but i do want to say it's possible having a business and homeschooling your kids is possible but you have to get help yeah it is a lot yeah and there's a lot of programs out there that'll help cover the cost of tutors oh yes yeah like i mean our tutor i don't think it cost us anything no after we were in i did do a big old instagram story if you're curious about what programs are out there that help you pay for some homeschool but like i said we use some of that money for a tutor but now since we have to pay a tutor we get to use that money for more of like their piano lessons horse riding lessons like other things camps and courses yeah so we get more opportunities or at least that helps funding with other things but that is my advice you can do a business in homeschool but you're going to have to get help whether that's trading babysitting with a neighbor until you can afford to pay for help whatever it is don't expect to do it alone it is hard i could do homeschool and love it if i didn't have a job like 100 myself i could be a 100 wonderful homemaker but i have a business you just you just can't do it all i could talk a long time about that but i won't so okay we got this funny comment on instagram that we kind of talked about but someone said good for you guys in new york that's impossible taxes are someone's salary what did you think of that and don't bring in politics i first thought his move yeah that was my thoughts there's states out there that are just so open and friendly when it comes to allowing you to do what we're doing home school yeah yeah taxes you're always gonna have to pay but there's some states that are ridiculous and they're leveling both people are going to have to work so i hate to say it but i just we would not be in new york there's so many better places out there that uh that are more urban that allow you to have the freedom your cost of living is less yeah yeah like we could if he grew up in washington if we lived in washington we probably wouldn't be able to do this but in utah like our taxes our cost of living is just less and so we don't need as much as someone working in new york i mean yeah anyway enough said yeah all right this is one people are really curious about i get asked all the time and it's a question for you how uh what do you do for health insurance i was really surprised by this um we're we're pretty healthy we don't really have any health issues we cross our range yeah exactly i mean i've had a broken arm and stitches here and there you know we just had stitches on my daughter's forehead um but regardless of that there's programs out there so i i went to a local broker a company a guy here that i was recommended to and i asked him like he told them this house how much were you going to make a year um and he gave me five different options and they varied but in reality i'm paying less now for insurance than i was when i was working considerably less it's like mind-blowing but i have a really high deductible and so i just have that deductible sitting in a bank account which is a health savings account so it's tax-free you can move money into that a certain amount a year and then if it's only there in case one of my kids has a major incident where they're in the hospital or yes cancer shows up you know heaven forbid or something something major i pay that deductible and it's 100 covered after that so we have just made sure we have that deductible yeah so if you have that i recommend i'm not telling you what to do by any means but the way we do it is just a high deductible and basically we go in and pay cash for everything yeah which is cheaper anyways like these stitches i told them i'm paying cash they don't have to build insurance they give you a break yeah can you just 20 30 off yeah yeah i think to me that's the the way weave is best for us but insurance is cheap it's it's not yeah and there's a lot of options but i feel like that is what holds people back i had no idea until i researched it you were paying hundreds more at your work for crappy insurance sorry your boss was watching this it's not much better than i didn't know no anyway so i wouldn't if that is like the biggest reason you're not quitting your job look into it find a local broker and really do the do the research on that because you'd be very surprised how cheap it is yeah all right a couple more questions you guys i'm sorry this is taking a while this is more like podcast style i think anyway all right people want to know how much does your hubby help am i supposed to answer that so i i really enjoy working with the kids at cooking night he's a rare gym i really enjoy cleaning the house doing the you know just own it i'm a great housewife i really enjoy that better than i am i can't still and so you know i get up in the morning i go out and i i have chores i feed cows i water the garden water garden take care of chickens and then come in and i'll make breakfast and then as i'm making breakfast i get the kids up and we try to be ready by eight o'clock in the morning have the kids starting to eat breakfast we do a little reading time today i need to clarify i'm not laying in bed i get up and work out get ready have a little me time and then i get to work as soon as i can so i'm not just yeah laying in bed while he's up doing all this just to clarify but we've found that works for us he's kind of well we're both up and going pretty early yeah i've been an early riser but so by 8 o'clock we're sitting down eating breakfast and we read books together and then school starts and that's when cami goes to work yeah so it's working good i work with the kids and to i i i give her until two in the afternoon and then it's my time well when you say which means i'm doing her to-do list and so yeah you're working on our office right now you forget this is our house that you're working on so i'm working on cammy's office and uh but the projects yeah just trying to get this house done and get a homestead built up i've got a whole stack of things to do yeah but it works out good for us we both get the time we need to do what we need to and then she makes dinner yeah um thank you for putting in that book we we both clean it's just kind of like we're dividing this roll of making money and being and keeping a home it's now divided and oh it's amazing and setting expectations is important because there's been times i look at her like i didn't know you wanted me to do that yeah you know setting your expectations up in the very beginning has been vital well and we're still trying to figure it out like like that one time you thought maybe you should make breakfast so i can be outside longer we tried that then i'm super stressed in the morning trying to do my self-care and make breakfast anyway we've been juggling it and figuring out what works and i i feel like that will continue to be so that is kind of the whole maker life in case you weren't aware you just go with the flow but you know i would say he helps a lot and that is a good thing and probably part of what makes him want to be at home i see other maybe men that don't don't love this kind of stuff or would be very unsatisfied doing it and hopefully that's not the case he tells me it's not happiest oh that's so sweet i'm happiest when he's home i just anyway so we help each other we're focused on the same goals for growth i have felt really guilty working and leaving the stuff that i've done for 15 years and he has to remind me like you don't need to feel guilty you're working you're making money so it's a different role for me to give up some of that um homemaking or keeping our home but we're figuring it out it's going well all right let's sum this up with this last question what do you love and hate the most what do you love the most let's first no let's talk about what do you hate what i hate the most i it it is the financial situation you know before i get a regular paycheck i guarantee every two weeks there's money in the bank um now it's kind of it's it's scary not scary more just there's no guarantee in anything that we do i mean we're a conventional way of life that is you know you just show up and but at the same time it also liberates you to i mean i i still do consult for my old my old job do a lot of consulting there i've been help doing work you know here and there everywhere but that's the thing is if we're getting into a financial situation i can always go out and find something to get us by you know and so he helps them yeah so far but uh but that's options always there so you kind of have freedom at the same time that it's that's what you hate like just the financial instability yeah i would say for me that's what i i don't know hates the right word but stresses me out is i've never been the sole income provider i've you know i've always wanted to help financially when i could but at the end of the day he had a job and we could cut back if we needed but now i feel like i've got to make money and that's again a different role for me but i would still say i'm less stressed because now i have dedicated time to work on the things that i know do make me many and so it feels possible whereas when he was working all the time and i was trying to make money and juggle the kids i felt like i could never get ahead or it was never going to work so there's the stress of it being in this new role for me but also like he said the liberation that it's possible anything's possible all right what do you love oh wait i do want to mention what i hate i don't know what it is but when he's home the house just gets messier it's not that you're messy it's just one more person's stuff all day long so there's just seems to be more clutter yeah anyway all right what do you love the most i an answer to that question i it's it's interesting when you're working full-time 50 hours you're away from home almost more than you are home because you're sleeping the rest of it and so you almost get to the point where i kind of felt like a stranger in my own home because when i come home i'm interrupting the flow of things cami already has the kids doing what they're supposed to be doing they're all and i have no usually feeling what to do i have no i no idea what they're doing in school i had no idea what they were doing in their lives and so the chance to come home basically know everything that's going on in my kids lives i'm i can see where they're at in schooling i know how smart they are that's been a big part of it is being able to come home and be a part of the family and support it in a way that i was never possible before i just love that yeah so so jerry we're doing a video on having daddy home can you tell my friends what do you love about having daddy home probably because you can do a lot more stuff because usually you have to wait all over the saturday you always have to wait till saturday there's this list of things you want to do with dad and you have to wait till saturday i agree i think that's what i love most my to-do list is actually getting done it doesn't take months to do an office i know i do love that i know that's what i love the most what i love the most is just having you home being with you ah cheesy moment but it is great and i know it doesn't work for everyone some people need that separation but for us this is the dream so anyway i hope you've enjoyed watching this video it was fun for us to make and um we'll be back i'm sure to share more inspiration for the keeper of the home we'll talk soon [Music]

Channel: TIDBITS & Company

Views: 11,115

Keywords: retired at, retired at 40, retired at forty, retire at 40, retired working for you, retired papa, quit corporate job, quit corporate job for simple life, quit corporate job to start business, leave corporate america, leave corporate job, leave corporate world, entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship motivation, entrepreneurship ideas, quit job motivation, quit job without plan, content creator for beginners, blogging for beginners, youtube success story, youtube success

Id: oCQD7sN0V8Q

Length: 35min 52sec (2152 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 29 2022