And this is coming from someone who on the surface seems successful. Making multiple-figure months, can technically do what I want when I want without asking a boss for a day of annual leave, and I’m able to talk about what I want for a living.

It’s the dream on paper, but what isn’t spoken about enough is that, being predominantly a short-form creator, it’s very easy to get into ruts. Trying to please the algorithm, falling into comfortable patterns of creating and not experimenting. This ‘flop era’ I experience monthly isn’t just limited to content creation. In all aspects of life, it’s easy for things to feel a bit stale, lifeless.

Here is how I get my spark back time and time again.

In this issue:

• Why creative ruts are predictable

• The trap of “performing productivity”

• The one shift that resets your thinking fast

• How to rebuild taste (not just output)

• A simple 5 part system to get your spark back

5 things I do every time I feel stuck

I got back from Thailand yesterday and thought I’d be motivated to work again.
Instead, I spent the day making content I didn’t even like.

Read more

Always on their phones, taking important calls, ducking into meetings, hastily running to the next event.

I had this idea of success. It meant busyness. A day planned back-to-back with social engagements and things I thought would move the needle.

Yes, everything I’ve done and the work I’ve put in has paid off, but it doesn’t mean that strategy is supposed to last forever.

I’m a big believer in ‘seasons’… but no one tells you when it’s time to leave one behind.

In this issue:

• Why I used to equate success with busyness

• What changed after my first proper break as a full-time creator

• The concept of time affluence (and why it matters more than income)

• The moment money stops being the bottleneck… and time takes over

• A different way to think about wealth in your 20s

I’m writing this on a sunbed in Bangkok. It’s 7pm, it’s gentle temperature, and the whole skyline is in front of me. I’ve spent the last two weeks on my first proper holiday since becoming self-employed. For once, I actually allowed myself to switch off.

Yes, I still vlogged most days and took pictures, but I wasn’t scrolling, actively posting, or replying to DMs.

It sounds cliché to say, but I’ve come back as a different person.

I now feel so much stronger in the idea that I want to do less, deliberately. My past self would have seen that as lazy, or that I had “fallen off”. Now I see it as developing sharper boundaries with how I choose to spend my time.

My message has always been about building wealth and independence, particularly as a woman in her 20s. But wealth isn’t just financial.

The new status symbol

I recently came across the concept of time affluence.

It’s the hidden reason we strive to make more money. Because money buys choice, convenience, and most importantly, time, which is our most finite resource.

This feels especially relevant now. According to the Office for National Statistics, around 1.30–1.33 million people in the UK held a second job in 2025, with early 2026 estimates at roughly 1.29 million. With the cost of living where it is, that’s not surprising. And while I’m a big advocate for increasing and diversifying income, I can’t ignore that for many people, this isn’t a choice, it’s what they have to do to get by.

What this results in is an increase in income, but work slowly creeping into time was really should be for rest. We think that just clocking off at 5 and watching Netflix all evening is enough, but studies consistently show there are many kinds of rest that we can’t ignore. With rest on the decline and distraction increasing, it’s safe to say that time is the new secret indicator of wealth.

Yes, money matters. When you’re starting your wealth journey, it feels like every penny matters. That’s where Frugal Chic is born.

But for me I never really understood phrases like ‘time is money’ until it started applying to me. A few things changed my circumstances:

• Going self-employed

• Diversifying my income streams

• Investing consistently

Now that I’ve reached a stage where I feel more financially abundant than I did on my £30K salary, this is what I realised.

When money no longer becomes a restraint, time becomes the bottleneck.

You start to notice things differently.

The high earners commuting into the city every day, getting home at 7pm, exhausted. They may not actually be better off than the graduate on a lower salary who clocks off at 5pm, goes for a walk, sees friends, and actually lives.

On a flight, the person in business class who buys the wifi and is busy typing away might make more money, but they may not feel as fulfilled as the person in economy flicking through an array of films they’ve been dying to watch.

Switching off and doing less is a privilege and a luxury that took me so long to finally realise I could afford.

This realisation essentially made me see that more money doesn’t automatically equal a better life.

Not if it costs you all your time.

So maybe the goal isn’t just to earn more.

Maybe it’s to earn enough…

…and then start protecting your time like it’s your most valuable asset.

5 action points

1. Define your “enough” number: how much you need to live comfortably. For me, this has always been £2–2.5k a month. I rarely spend more than that. Even in five-figure months, I know that once my basic needs are covered and I’ve treated myself, I don’t need anything more to be happy. It’s important you decide this. Yes, you can chase more money, and I’m all for that if you’re building an emergency fund or working towards FIRE. But if it comes at the cost of all your spare time, it’s not worth it. Defining your financial “enough” sets the tone for how much work you say yes to.

2. Audit where your time is leaking: time-block your week and see where your attention is being pulled into things that aren’t giving you a return. Shallow coffee chats, people-pleasing obligations, and “opportunities” that benefit the other person more than you. Pay attention to patterns. If something consistently drains you or distracts you from higher-value work, it needs to go or be reduced. Your time should be allocated with the same level of intention as your money.

3. Start buying back your time early: don’t wait until you feel “rich” to do this. If you can afford small conveniences that remove friction from your day, take them. This could be outsourcing work, using delivery services, or automating parts of your life. The goal isn’t to be lazy, it’s to free up your time for things that actually move your life forward or make you feel better. I started doing this with meal prep services during busy periods and it did relieve a lot of mental load.

4. Shift from income goals to lifestyle design: instead of only focusing on how much you earn, think about how you want your days to look. What time do you wake up, how much do you work, how often do you see people, how much space do you have to think? Then build your income streams around that vision. It’s very easy to build a high income that traps you into a schedule you don’t even enjoy. A well-designed life should feel calm.

5. Protect your time like you protect your money: you wouldn’t casually spend hundreds of pounds without thinking, so don’t casually give away hours of your day. Be more selective with what you agree to. Set boundaries around your availability, your work hours, and your energy. Not everything needs a yes, and not everything deserves immediate access to you. The more you respect your own time, the more other people will too.

So, the core ingredient for living a Frugal Chic® life is defining your “enough”. Once you do that, you stop trying to squeeze productivity out of every second of the day.

You start being more selective. More intentional. You realise not every opportunity is worth taking, not every pound needs to be chased, and not every hour needs to be optimised.

Because when “enough” is clear, you’re no longer operating from scarcity.

You stop building a life that looks impressive on paper, and start building one that actually feels good to live.

https://substack.com/@miamcgrath/p-192994538

That’s all this week.

Now at 25 I have a £300k net worth, I run my own business and i’m working towards financial freedom.

In that time lots of factors came into play:

• living at home for 2 years

• living below my means

• always having a side hustle

• posting online and striking gold with timing and my niche

• investing and returns from the stock market

But the factor I don’t talk about enough is exposure.

You can’t act on what you’ve never heard of.

Growing up, money wasn’t a taboo topic, but it wasn’t something discussed in detail either. Financial literacy isn’t really taught in schools, particularly as I went to a state school too. Investing, compound interest, mortgages, you’re sort of expected to know these things, yet there’s no obvious place to learn about them.

When I get asked on podcasts what got me into investing, I say it’s because I had male friends at university who spoke about it as if it were commonplace, the same way they spoke about sports or beer. In terms of saving, I had a friend in sixth form who told me she saved 50% of all her earnings. I took that as gospel and did the same, albeit lacking the experience to know that it doesn’t always work like that.

The point is, I have consumed hours upon hours of content about financial literacy, yet all these experiences came from people in real life, conversations, asking questions, not from a screen. They were the starting board which sparked my interest, it gave me the awareness.

Becoming financially literate doesn’t mean reading an economics textbook from front to back. It’s more about what feels normal to you, what gets spoken about openly, and what you learn to see as possible.

In this issue:

• Why financial literacy isn’t built from consumption alone

• The real advantage most people overlook: proximity to better conversations

• How your environment quietly sets your financial ceiling

• The difference in how wealthy people talk about money (and why it matters)

Why financial literacy isn’t built from consumption alone

We often think that financial literacy will just “come to us” once we’ve read enough money books or listened to enough podcasts. That somehow, by osmosis, we’ll absorb the information.

And to an extent, that’s true. I learnt most of what I know about ISAs, pensions, and investing from binge-watching YouTube videos and reading money books when I should have been entering data during my first remote internship during COVID.

But a lot of what I know didn’t come from consuming content.

It came from conversations.

A friend in sixth form once told me she saved 50% of every paycheck. In hindsight, that is not realistic for most adults in the real world, but for a teenager living at home and working in a gift shop, it was incredibly disciplined. More importantly, it made saving that much feel normal to me. So I carried that mindset into my first proper job.

At university, I had male friends who would casually show me their investment portfolios. One was buying individual stocks, the other was invested in ETFs. I remember feeling like I’d been let into some private club. Not excluded exactly, just aware that this was a conversation I had not grown up around. That exposure made me curious enough to start researching investing for myself.

Later, I found out a friend was earning £2,000 more than me despite having two years less experience. That conversation was uncomfortable, but useful. It made me realise I was underestimating my own value, and it directly pushed me to negotiate, which later led to a £10,000 pay rise.

I also remember an ex-boyfriend in sixth form telling me he was saving for a house deposit. I genuinely did not even know what that really meant at the time. But hearing someone my age speak about money in that way planted a seed. It made me think, maybe this is something I should care about too.

That is what I think people miss when they talk about financial literacy.

It’s those in-person moments that no video can really replace, it has a more personal meaning and I think forces us to take more action than just saving a video. I think how differently my life would feel if I never had the courage to ask those questions - even if they felt slightly uncomfortable at the time.

Now, as my life has changed quite dramatically over the past year, going from earning £30k in a junior role in fashion to becoming a full-time creator who can make 5-figure months, something I am surprised about is that the conversations I’m part of, and the rooms I’m in, have completely shifted again.

And it makes me wonder: if I had just been more curious, more proactive, could I have accessed these conversations sooner?

How your environment quietly sets your financial ceiling

Most of us are operating under an invisible ceiling. A quiet limit on what we think is possible for our lives. If no one around you is investing, you don’t think to ask about investing. If no one is earning beyond a certain level, that becomes your reference point. If no one is building anything of their own, full-time employment feels like the only option. If you don’t know where to look or you don’t have the exposure, it’s difficult to find these touchpoints.

Whether we want to admit or not, there is a difference in the way that rich people talk about money, even how men talk about money. They speak so openly about what they are doing with their investments. I love how Emma Grede articulated this here.

My personal feeling is we ought to proactively seek these conversations out, particularly if like me, financial literacy wasn’t discussed growing up. Recently we spoke about being low vs high agency and I feel that applies here, there is only so much we can blame school for not teaching us - at some point we need to be curious and seek these discussions ourselves.

How the rich talk about money

I remember a viral piece of content from a few years ago: “conversations my poor vs rich friends have”. It compared how the poor friends spoke about celebrity gossip and shopping and the rich friends spoke about business and money. I am personally not a fan of using that terminology so consider this to be a more grounded version of the same idea.

When I read Rich Dad Poor Dad, I finally understood the distinction it was trying to make. It was not really about one person being good and the other bad, or one deserving respect and the other not. It was about the way different people are taught to think about money. One mindset sees money as something that comes in and goes out, mainly to cover bills and fund consumption. The other sees money as something to direct, grow, and use strategically. For all its flaws, that was the part that stayed with me. It made me realise that wealth is not just about earning more, but about learning to ask better questions. How do I make this money last? How do I make it grow? How do I buy back my time? How do I build assets, not just fund a lifestyle?

It’s not about ditching your friends, becoming some kind of social climber or not being authentic to your true interests. I still have the same core set of friends I’ve always had. However, I do think more of us need to be going outside of our comfort zone in regards to the discussions we have about money.

What has changed for me is proximity. I can now find myself at a dinner with the founder of a multi-million-pound business, sitting next to the Chief of AI at a major tech company. And yes, a lot of that access has come through building a personal brand. But when I think about it properly, this shift started much earlier, and in much smaller ways.

At university, when my male friends were discussing stocks, I didn’t tell myself it was too advanced for me or sit there pretending I understood. I asked questions. I paid attention. I tried to take in as much as I could. It was the same whenever I came across someone in an entirely different world to mine, like a middle-aged man working in property. Rather than switching off and assuming we had nothing in common, I started seeing those moments differently. I use that as a chance to get a 1:1 with an expert in a field I knew nothing about.

Since adopting this forward approach to speaking about money, i’m now part of conversations where the talking point might be:

Things like:

• “How are your investments doing right now?”

• “Have you thought about hiring?”

• “What do you outsource? I’m thinking of getting a cleaner.”

• “How have you structured your holding company”

There is such a huge shift. Yes, part of that reflects where I am financially now. But that is not really the point. The point is that these are still just conversations. Conversations I probably could have been having sooner if I had been a bit more curious, a bit less intimidated, and a bit more willing to ask. Maybe it was never just about how much I knew about money. Maybe it was also about the confidence that comes from hearing these discussions regularly enough for them to feel normal.

A small part of why people feel like wealth is “gatekept” isn’t because people are hiding information. It’s because these topics don’t naturally enter your awareness unless you’re exposed to them.

So here is what I would focus on today if I wanted more exposure to these kinds of conversations:

We often think luck and opportunities live in isolation, but they come through people.

Financial literacy is not just built by consuming more information. It is built in the day-to-day, in the moments where you hear how someone else is thinking, saving, investing, negotiating, building. That is often the thing that expands your world because seeing it in practice is far more tangible.

Because sometimes the fastest way to change your financial life is not to consume more, but to get closer to the kinds of conversations that make a different life feel normal.

That’s it this week,

Mia

xx

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Okay, not really, but I got invited to a “wellness retreat” which feels entirely off-brand for the woman who makes finance-related content. Bear with me though, because what I came out of it knowing was completely unexpected.

In this issue:

• Why wellness and finance are more linked than you’d think

• The NEST personal branding framework

• Breathwork and the 8x8 method

• The 1:1 coaching that genuinely changed me

• The ROI: what I’m actually changing

I spent a few days in Crete with a group of creators, founders, and marketers. The schedule was a mix of yoga, cold plunges, personal branding workshops, and 1:1 coaching. The aim: bring ambitious people together in an intimate environment to connect, share ideas, and collaborate. Full transparency, I was invited with no obligations to post anything - but I felt so inspired by it that I wanted to share.

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We tend to think of finance as the cold, soulless topic. Something entirely separate from the world of yoga mats and morning rituals. And equally, wellness, to me as the Frugal Chic®, has always felt slightly gimmicky. Vibration plates, LED masks, bone broth at 7am. I partake in some of it, but I’ve always thought the overall message has been diluted by consumerism, this creeping idea that you can buy your way to feeling okay.

But here’s what I couldn’t keep ignoring: our nervous system and our sense of self are more intrinsically linked to our financial behaviour than we like to admit. So much of the way we handle money has very little to do with information and a lot to do with identity, self-trust, emotional regulation, and the beliefs quietly running underneath everything. You can know how to budget, how to invest, and how to build wealth, but if your nervous system is permanently fried or your self-concept is shaky, that will show up in your financial life somewhere.

I’m fortunate to have financial abundance now. Increasing my income dramatically changed my life in very real ways. But money fixes money problems; it doesn’t fix everything else. What I realised at this retreat was that I’d been carrying a lot of what the workshops called “limiting beliefs,” and some of them were quietly running the show.

Equally, wellness has been largely commodified and turned into a $224 billion industry.1 But that doesn’t mean at Frugal Chic® we have to partake in the same way. Simply making more intentional choices about where you spend your time, energy and money is part of it.

In the last issue, we talked about unlearning unhelpful money stories, like “I’m bad with money.” This retreat pushed that thinking further: if you don’t understand yourself properly, nothing you build on top of it will feel aligned. It was like doing a money audit for my confidence and career direction. Here’s what I learned.

The emails you don’t skim

It was a random workday. I was in my light-work window, the part of my day I keep for emails and admin, typing away at a LinkedIn post when an email notification dropped. “The Growth Collective: Wellness Retreat.” I clicked, intrigued, then immediately forwarded it to my talent manager: “is this legit?”

Then I spotted Sedge Beswick in the deck they’d sent over. I’d just done a panel with her at the NXT LVL event. That was enough for me.

The retreat was organised by a startup called The Growth Collective, a members club connecting people in the founder space with senior mentorship and the right contacts, through events, retreats, and an online platform.

On paper, the agenda looked like workout after workout. And to be honest, I’m not the sportiest person. I go to the gym for mental clarity, not to get results. So arriving as someone only six months out of their 9-5, surrounded by founders and people with decades of experience, it would be fair to say I was braced for imposter syndrome to make an appearance.

What I felt when I was there couldn’t have been further from that fear. Instead, three other women in the room, including Sedge herself, felt exactly the same way. At one point she said I ought to be the one giving the presentation. It’s funny how as women, no matter what we achieve we can still be susceptible to imposter syndrome.

Overall, there were three pivotal workshops we had that changed the way I see myself and personal brand.

Build a 1% personal brand

The first workshop was led by Sedge Beswick, a British marketing strategist, speaker, and founder who’s held senior roles at companies like ASOS, built multiple businesses, and is now one of the most recognisable voices in the personal branding space. She’d made a video about me and Frugal Chic® a while back, and I’d spoken on her NXT LVL panel. What strikes me about Sedge is that she’s genuinely omnipresent; she has so many fingers in so many pies while also navigating motherhood, which I find so incredibly impressive.

Picture the setting: a room of mostly women, a Greek hotel, blue skies through the windows, that kind of warmth that kisses the skin. The room was full of people who wanted to build, who were mid-build, who were trying to figure out what they were even building.

Sedge opened with a story I wasn’t expecting. A £24 million private equity deal, negotiated while pregnant. A boardroom full of traditional finance types, men in suits, with presentations that effectively framed her pregnancy as a liability. She was told to buy a £10,000 Rolex just to be taken seriously in the room. The whole room gasped. She shared it not to invite sympathy, but as context for everything she’d learnt about building something that’s actually yours, on your terms.

This isn’t about posting better on LinkedIn.

This is about how you’re read in rooms that decide your income.

The reframe that stayed with me most: most people treat personal branding as a content problem, a posting frequency problem, a niche problem. Sedge’s argument is that it’s a clarity problem. Until you know your values and can prove them consistently, you’re just producing noise.

Her framework is built on three circles:

1. Who you are in real life. Not a curated version, the actual one. She used the example of swearing on a podcast, it’s the parts of you that you are unapologetic about. If there’s a gap between who you are online and who you are in a room, people feel it, and it costs you trust. A compliment I always value is if someone says to me “you know what? You’re exactly like you are in your videos.”

2. What you can prove. Not what you claim, but what you can point to with evidence, stories, and results. This doesn’t necessarily have to be a PhD, a Forbes 30 under 30 list or an MBA, sure those things are great, but most don’t start out with them, they’re a product of the work. Instead, lean into your specific expertise in an area of life where you had a significant transformation.

3. How consistently those two things align over time. It really is about showing up long enough. Most people give up after starting but those who stick it out long enough are the ones who become an ‘overnight success’ because no one was watching before.

She also laid out the NEST framework for monetising a personal brand:

Networking — building relationships that open doors you can’t access alone.
Events — putting yourself in the right rooms where opportunities naturally circulate.
Speaking — turning your ideas into paid authority.
Thought Leadership — consistently sharing perspectives that position you as someone worth paying attention to.

Something that resonated with me was that her own content process is deliberately unglamorous; voice-noting LinkedIn posts on the go, testing ideas before overthinking them, using platforms as live testing grounds rather than performance stages. This is something I relate to as a former perfectionist who now believes that the sooner something is out in the world, the sooner you can iterate.

What I took from Sedge’s session was that a strong personal brand is not built by trying to look impressive, but by getting clearer on who you are, what you can genuinely stand behind, and how that translates into actual commercial value. In other words, the goal is not just to be visible, but to be legible, memorable, and monetisable.

Breathwork with Leo Oppenheim

The next session was in a yoga studio. Candles lit, a jute mat laid out in the centre of a circle, stones and crystals arranged around the space. Before anything started, Leo burned what I think was sage. This kind of ritual, burning sacred plants to cleanse a space before ceremony, has roots in indigenous traditions across the Americas and beyond.

Leo Oppenheim is a breathwork, yoga, sound, and movement facilitator based in Manchester who draws from ancient traditions including pre-Columbian and indigenous Peruvian culture.

We started seated, setting an intention. Then we lay down, put on eye masks, and the music began. The breathwork moved through different patterns over the course of an hour: eight seconds in, eight seconds out, breath retention, then shorter cycles of four counts each. The patterns shift the chemistry of your body in a way that’s difficult to explain until you’ve done it.

Leo had prepared us for what to expect. Tingling in the hands and legs, involuntary muscle contractions, sudden movements. The body processing something it’s been holding. A few people in the room had visible emotional releases. The environment was deliberately judgement-free, which made that safe.

I didn’t have anything dramatic. What I had was stranger, and more useful.

Behind the eye mask, with the music moving through me and my breath doing something I’d never consciously asked it to do, I started seeing thoughts and memories, not in a distressing way, but almost cinematically. And the strange thing was, I wasn’t in them. I was watching them from the outside. Like looking at my own life through the eyes of someone with no stake in the outcome.

By the end, the room was quiet. Someone described it as relief, which is exactly the word. Not euphoria, not a breakdown, just a quiet settling. A sense of: oh, there I am.

I felt more present afterwards than I had in months. Not because anything had been resolved, but because for an hour I’d stopped performing my own life and simply observed it.

If you want to implement this yourself, try this:

1. Try it for 5 minutes, not an hour: you don’t need fancy crystals or anything really - just yourself and slowing down.

2. Track what comes up afterwards: just a short sentence about what you saw, how you felt - it doesn’t have to be perfect, it’s for you to notice patterns.

3. Try it when you are tempted to self-soothe with spending: If you feel that itch to buy something because you’re tired, flat, insecure, or overwhelmed, pause and breathe first. You may still want the thing afterwards, but at least the decision will be yours, not your nervous system’s.

4. Practice observing your life from an outsiders perspective: The most useful part of the session for me was not some huge emotional breakthrough. It was being able to watch my thoughts from the outside, almost cinematically, without immediately getting swept up in them. That alone is a skill. If you can observe your patterns without judging them, you can actually change them.

5. Treat nervous system regulation as part of financial wellness: optimise for slowness, intentionality with what you allow into your life through what plans you say yes to, what you buy, who you surround yourself with.

1:1 coaching and insights workshop

This was the session that surprised me most, partly because it looked, on the surface, like a standard corporate personality test.

We’d filled out the Insights Discovery assessment in advance, based on Jungian psychology, the idea that we each have a primary way of engaging with the world driven by four energy types: cool blue, earth green, sunshine yellow, and fiery red. My result came back as Observer; analytical, considered, and introverted in its orientation.

But before we even got to the group session, we had 1:1 coaching calls, which I’d never done before.

I’ll be honest with you: it was more emotional than I expected. Jess asked what my goals were, which sounds simple enough, and then gently kept going. What came up, sitting there answering questions I’d been too busy to ask myself, was the realisation that I hadn’t been taking care of myself properly. Not in a dramatic way. Just the quiet, accumulative neglect that happens when you’re optimising hard for output. Saying it out loud to another person made it real in a way that thinking it to myself never had.

The group session involved sitting in a circle opposite our psychological opposites, and then doing something uncomfortable: telling each other honestly what it’s like to work with or be around the other type. There was something liberating about being honest about what introverts felt frustrating with extroverts.

The extroverted, action-oriented types said about us: we can be too introspective. Too cautious. We can miss opportunities because we’re still processing while the moment has passed.

Because I’ve always framed my tendency to think carefully before moving as a strength, and it is, sometimes. But there’s a version of it that becomes avoidance dressed up as reflection. A version of “I need more time to process this” that is actually just fear of being wrong before everything is perfectly understood.

The framework isn’t about putting yourself in a box. It’s about recognising the box you’re already in, and deciding, consciously, when to step outside it.

The ROI of wellness

Every good investment deserves a returns breakdown. Here’s mine.

The underlying theme across all three sessions was the same question: do you actually know who you are and how you want to show up in the world. When was the last time you questioned thoughts and actions that happen on autopilot?

Here’s what I’m doing with what I found:

• Stopping optimising for noise. Sedge’s workshop reframed something I’d been doing without realising: chasing reach over resonance. Going forward I’m doubling down on values, impact, and my story, the parts of what I do that are actually mine, rather than what performs well in a given week. The compounding effect of a clear, consistent brand is one of the highest-returning assets I’ve built; I just need to stop diluting it.

• More intentional wellness, specifically breathwork. Not as an aesthetic or a routine to photograph, but as a genuine tool for nervous system regulation. If our emotional state drives our financial behaviour more than we’d like to admit, then investing time in regulating that state is, by that logic, a financial decision.

• Leaning into my type, and working better with my opposite. Knowing I’m an Observer means I can stop treating my need to process as a flaw and start using it intentionally. It also means I can actively seek out the people who are wired differently, the ones who move fast, who decide in the room, because the gap between us is where a lot of good decisions live.

None of this required a retreat in Crete. But something about being away, the warm air, the slow mornings, the fact that your phone barely mattered, made it easier to actually receive what was already true.

Subscribe to my YouTube so you don’t miss the vlog from Crete.

This newsletter is kindly sponsored by XTB who are offering 6% on a Cash ISA currently for the first 90 days after opening.

Start building wealth today

AD | Disclaimer: Your capital is at risk when investing. The value of investments and the income from them can fall as well as rise and you might lose the original amount invested. Fluctuations in such value and income can result from factors such as market movements and variations in exchange rates. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. 2% ISA rate boost for 90 days. New clients only. T&Cs apply.

It’s a new financial year, so for us at Frugal Chic®, it matters even more than January.

This is the time to reset, assess where you are now, and look at what you can optimise going forward.

One thing I’m still not happy about is the gap in financial literacy, particularly among women. Boring Money’s 2025 estimate puts the UK gender investment gap at £678 billion1. It’s safe to say we need more women to care about their finances, feel that it’s for them and to close the knowledge gap. This is something I’ve always tried to change through my content by being transparent about money, breaking down complex ideas into simple frameworks, and representing a different kind of image in the finance space.

Like many people, I spent years trying to look the part. I wanted to look like I had everything together: the right clothes, the right makeup, the right skincare. I thought that would make me feel liked and accepted. What I did not realise was that building financial freedom would become the single biggest factor in the confidence and freedom I have now. Being able to work for myself, increase my income, and rely on an emergency fund has given me more confidence than any blush or cleanser ever could.

So, in this issue, I want to go back to basics. Not in a patronising way where I compare stocks to lip gloss, but in a practical one, the money handbook I wish I had at 18. Because every new financial year is a chance to get honest about where you are, unlearn what is not serving you, and build better systems from there. This was inspired by my ultimate role model , she has been my goat for content since day 1 and this newsletter wouldn’t exist without her influence on me.

(Not financial advice. When investing, your capital is at risk. This is purely for informational purposes only.)

in this issue:

• the money stories and limiting beliefs shaping how you earn, spend, save, and invest

• a money audit to get honest about where your finances stand right now

• how to save properly, so it feels intentional rather than restrictive

• investing basics, so you can build long-term wealth with more clarity and less fear

• the key tax allowances and optimisation opportunities worth knowing this financial year

• how to approach debt and credit cards without shame, and manage them more strategically

• simple systems and automations that make good money habits easier to maintain

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the money stories you need to outgrow

The first thing I want you to recognise is that there is no such thing as being naturally ‘bad with money’. Money is a skill. It is something you learn through exposure, through trial and error, and through being in environments where these conversations are normal. Some people obviously have a massive head start.

I did not go to private school. My parents were not financially literate, and I did not grow up around many people who understood how money worked. So, like a lot of people, I spent my early years navigating money in the dark.

Honestly, it was almost by chance that when I got to university, I had male friends who talked about stocks as casually as they talked about beer or football. That was when these conversations started to open up for me. But at the beginning, I was very much pretending I knew what an ISA was and clumsily pronouncing it ‘I-S-A’ instead of ‘Ice-ah’.

While I was curious to learn and took it upon myself to self-study the topic for 7+ years, I realised through trial and error, and learning the hard way, that a lot of unhelpful beliefs were still directing my money choices.

I remember being deep in my shopaholic phase and saying things like, “I’m too broke right now,” “I can’t afford that,” or “I’m so bad with money,” as if it were a badge of honour, a self-deprecating joke. And in the UK, we do love a bit of that.

And that is the thing. A lot of people are moving through adulthood repeating inherited beliefs without ever questioning whether those beliefs are useful.

Things like:

• I’m just bad with money

• wanting more money is greedy

• hard work will make you rich

• money is either for spending now or saving for later

If you believe money is ethically wrong, you are less likely to ask for more, earn more, invest more, or build more. If you believe hard work should automatically equal income, you will be confused by a world that rewards leverage, ownership, and scalability over effort. If you think about money dogmatically, as though it only has one job, you end up living a restrictive life at both ends of the frugal and frivolous spectrum.

These kinds of beliefs are not especially helpful for building wealth because they are often rooted in scarcity, shame, or simply not knowing any better. The goal isn’t to judge yourself for having them, but to reflect on whether they are truly helpful to your financial life right now.

your financial reality check

Before you start following a complicated budget, paying off debt, or investing, there’s one simple step you can take to get on the path to clearer finances: a money audit.

It’s an honest look at where you currently are financially.

Grab a pen and paper and sit down, note:

• your income

• your expenses

• your savings

• your pension

• your investments

• your debt

The reason this matters is because, without a clear picture of where you are, all your goals stay vague.

You end up saying things like, “I want to save more this year,” instead of, “I have £180 left after my fixed and variable expenses, so I can realistically direct that towards my emergency fund.”

Once everything is laid out, organise your expenses into fixed, variable, and one-off categories. Add them up. Then subtract your monthly spending from your monthly net income.

E.g. Tallying up your income and it comes to £2,500, your expenses come to £2,135. You then have £365 left over.

That will tell you one of three things:

• you have a surplus

• you are breaking even

• you are in a deficit

If you have a surplus, that is your capacity to save, invest, or accelerate debt repayment.

If you are breaking even, that tells you there is currently no margin for wealth building.

If you are in a deficit, something needs to change, whether that is spending, income, or both.

If you are the last two, that is totally normal and this is not a judgement. However, just doing this simple act gets you closer to where you want to be. Forget about age, comparison, expectation, this is simply your own relationship with money that you’re getting more honest about.

The benefit of doing this is to clearly see everything in one place rather than fragmented through bank accounts, budgeting apps, and emails.

The next step is to ask yourself:

• Does my spending reflect the life I actually want to build?

• Where am I overspending out of habit, convenience, boredom, or emotion?

• Where am I being too restrictive in ways that make life feel unnecessarily joyless?

• Are my purchases supporting a chosen identity, or are they trying to manufacture one?

A lot of spending is not about the item itself. It is about what the item represents. Status. Comfort. Distraction. Belonging. Having this awareness allows you to make more intentional choices later on.

Rather than saying “I want to save more” or “spend less”, you know what you’re working towards, which is pouring into those areas you value.

saving is the real self care

The first golden rule of personal finance is simple: you must spend less than you earn. If you do not do that, you cannot save. And if you cannot save, you cannot build wealth. There is no way around this. But just because it’s a simple rule, it doesn’t mean it’s easy. If it were easy, Buy Now Pay Later companies wouldn’t thrive. That’s why it’s kinda unhelpful to tell people they should save, we all know we ought to do that, so instead let’s get into the mind of a saver, see how they think differently.

There are people who save consistently do not view it as punishment or restriction on their current life.

Instead of treating saving like an unpleasant chore or something they “ought” to do, like eating the veg on their plate or going to the dentist, they treat it as a strategic decision about what they want their life to look like in five, ten, or twenty years.

Who save effortlessly aren’t magically born better at managing money, they simply have values as established with the Splurge vs Save list, and they use systems like a clear budget.

A common rule of thumb is the 50/30/20 budget2. The idea is simple: allocate 50% of your after-tax income to needs, 30% to wants, and 20% to savings or debt repayment.

In practice, in cities like London or New York, it is often unrealistic.

When rent alone can take up 40–50% of take-home pay, expecting all essential living costs to fit neatly into the remaining margin can feel restrictive. The result is that many people feel they are “failing” at budgeting, when in reality the framework no longer matches modern economics.

I’ve come up with a more realistic version, which I call the Frugal Chic 4 C’s. We divide our after-tax income into: Core, Cushion, Compound, and Curate.

• Core - 60%: essentials like rent and bills

• Cushion - 10%: emergency fund

• Compound - 20%: pensions, ISAs - where real wealth is built

• Curate - 10%: fun money pot

Due to the values of Frugal Chic® which is to optimise for freedom and optionality, the compound bucket is perhaps larger than what other budgeting frameworks show. You can adjust it to your liking.

It’s also worth noting that your cushion (emergency fund) will inevitably fill up, which means you could allocate that extra 10% to your Curate fund.

The purpose of the 4 C’s is not to fit your finances perfectly into the percentages but to have a reference point, a guideline. Don’t worry if your Core is coming to more than 70% and you physically can’t save at the moment. This guide is simply to bring awareness at this stage.

invest with confidence

Investing is often the most daunting topic when it comes to personal finance. I remember feeling like it was akin to gambling, or that you had to be an expert. This section aims to demystify it and simplify it, showing that investing can be simple, accessible, and one of the most powerful tools for creating long-term freedom.

It really can be broken down into a few steps:

• start with active research: a podcast on a walk, a youtube video in the evening, a money book for the month

• build your cushion first: 3-6 months worth of living expenses, it ensures you don’t have to potentially sell during a downturn (essential in times like these)

• understand the time horizon: don’t invest money you might need in the next 5 years

• choose the right account wrapper: in the UK that’s an ISA, pension etc.

• keep it simple: For many beginners, one low-cost global index fund is enough to start.

• automate it: Set up regular contributions and let consistency do its job.

The key thing to remember is you do not need to feel like an expert to begin. You need to understand enough to act responsibly, then stay consistent long enough for compounding to work it’s magic.

Compound interest is when you earn interest on both your original money and the interest already added.

Example:

You invest £1,000 and earn 10% a year.

• Year 1: you earn £100 → total £1,100

• Year 2: you earn 10% on £1,100, not just the original £1,000 → £110

• Year 3: you earn 10% on £1,210 → £121

That is compound interest.

With stocks though, you are not usually being paid “interest” in the normal sense. Your money is growing through returns.

Compound interest is a type of compounding, but investing is more accurately driven by compounding returns.

it’s not about how much you earn, it’s how much you keep

One of the biggest expenses of our time isn’t a fancy car or luxury holiday, it’s tax. We’re taxed pretty much at any stage of life, when we work, buy things, even (god forbid) die. So Frugal Chic® women know that legally avoiding overpaying it is the smart move.

You do not need to become a tax expert overnight, but you should know the key allowances available to you so you are not accidentally leaving money on the table.

More specifically, here are a few key ones for the UK for 2026/27.

• ISA allowance
  You can put up to £20,000 across your adult ISAs in the 2026 to 2027 tax year, and the tax year runs from 6 April to 5 April. A Lifetime ISA still has a £4,000 annual limit within that overall ISA allowance. You could consider opening an ISA with XTB who are offering 6% on a Cash ISA currently for the first 90 days after opening.

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• Pension annual allowance
  The standard pension annual allowance is £60,000. This can be lower for some higher earners because of tapering, and the tapered annual allowance floor remains £10,000.

• Trading allowance
  You can earn up to £1,000 in gross trading or side hustle income each tax year before you may need to report it, although there are exceptions depending on your wider tax situation.

If you want to use this new financial year properly, the aim is not to max out these allowances - very few people are able to do that. But knowing about them and taking small steps towards using them is the key.

debt is not a personality flaw

That is one of those topics that brings up a lot of shame in people, but it really shouldn’t be that way. Debt is not a failure. It is often the result of poor education, aggressive marketing, survival decisions, low income, or simply not understanding how it works. Notice how none of those options were frivolous or putting the blame on you.

Credit is also pushed onto us constantly. It used to be mostly credit cards. Now it arrives rebranded as Buy Now Pay Later services. Klarna. Clearpay. Instalments. Tiny decisions that do not feel like debt until they ultimately do.

The issue with debt is not only the balance. It is the feeling. Owing your future income to someone else is one of the worst financial feelings there is.

So, I personally haven’t been in debt because my parents told me credit cards were evil, but if I had been in debt, this is exactly what I would do.

So the first step is clarity.

List every debt:

• lender

• balance

• minimum payment

• annual interest rate

Then choose a repayment method.

• Debt avalanche means paying off the highest-interest debt first. It is mathematically most efficient.

• Debt snowball means paying off the smallest balance first. It is not always the cheapest, but it can be better for motivation.

If you have high-interest consumer debt, tackling that is often a better financial move than rushing to invest. A credit card charging punishing interest is likely doing more damage than your investments can undo.

This won’t happen overnight, but knowing about these methods and putting a name to them can make you feel like you’re one step closer to clearing it.

automate the boring

Often we ignore finances because they feel like one of those obligatory life admin tasks that just saps the life out of us.

But often, not looking at these things makes your life a whole lot more chaotic. So if your whole financial life depends on remembering, deciding, resisting, or manually moving your money around every month, eventually it will be one of those extra things that sets you over the edge on a really busy day.

You have limited energy, and while the rest of this letter was about saving money, saving your energy and time are just as important.

So automation speeds up this process and puts your saving on autopilot.

I would aim to set up automations for all of these different buckets:

• your bills

• your savings

• your investments

• your spending money

Something that I did only recently, which I am quite embarrassed to admit, is set up the direct debit to my partner’s bank account because we split our rent and bills 50/50. It only made sense for me to set that up exactly on the day I get paid because before, I was remembering, setting a calendar notification, and manually transferring it, and it was just another thing that I had to do, especially as someone trying to run a business.

Automating also allows you to plan ahead for big spending goals. If you know your yoga class costs £12 a week, build that into your Curate bucket. If you know Christmas always catches you off guard, even though it happens every single year like clockwork, set up the sinking fund now and spare yourself the annual suprise to your finances.

So, having systems and automations in place just makes saving and investing an automatic part of your life and identity rather than something that you actively have to try and force yourself to do.

redefining wealth

I saw a quote from Erin Confortini, who is one of my favourite creators on money, and she said:

That really stuck with me because that is ultimately my goal with financial literacy and financial freedom: to understand these things closely, not to obsess over money, but to understand what money can buy, which is more time, optionality, and freedom.

Once you have control of your money, you notice how it stops controlling your mood, your choices, and your sense of self. It’s there to build stability and structure so that you’re not constantly swayed by marketing or impulse spending, but rather you spend intentionally on the things you truly value.

In my last letter, I talked about low status, high income, and how a lot of people are optimising for high status but with fragile financial backing. In this new era of AI, geopolitical uncertainty, I think it is even more important now than ever to focus more on building true wealth that is meaningful to you rather than what looks good to society.

So now you’ve read this newsletter, I hope you feel one step closer to being more financially literate. The point isn’t to be perfect or to try and do this all overnight. It’s simply to understand that these steps can be broken down very simply. You do not necessarily have to read a whole book or watch endless YouTube videos. You can start today with small habits.

Until next week,
Mia

I saw talking about this and it named a sentiment we’ve been seeing for a while now. We’ve been taught to optimise for status: impressive job titles, big-name companies, careers that look successful. But status and income don’t always go hand in hand.

There are people working “prestigious” jobs like doctors, lawyers, and teachers earning £50–70k, burning out, and waiting on their next promotion. And there are people running niche businesses, freelancing, or building audiences earning multiples of that, quietly. No title. No prestige. No external validation. Often earning more than said jobs, and usually more control over their time.

I found this when I transitioned from working in fashion to doing content full-time. The irony was that I was earning more as a creator, but introducing myself as a ‘Junior Account Manager’ somehow garnered more respect than ‘influencer’. Even though it was still a ‘low status’ job, in the sense I was junior, I still feel uncomfortable telling people what I do now. The impression is that I just go to restaurants and pout all day, getting paid thousands to sit at home and chill. The irony is, like anything, it’s a business that requires work 24/7 at the start to get it off the ground, but on the surface it looks effortless.

Worth noting too that status is subjective, and it moves. Creators were not taken seriously even 10 years ago. I was speaking to Patricia Bright recently who said when she left her prestigious job, she didn’t tell anyone. She pretended to still be working there, because the reaction really was ‘so you just put on makeup all day’. Now it's a legitimate career, studies show there’s a growing interest for young kids to become a creator. A 2025 survey of 910 US Gen Alpha kids aged 12-15, conducted by social commerce platform Whop, found that nearly a third want to be YouTubers, while one in five aspire to become TikTok creators (Fast Company). While it doesn't quite hold the prestige of the traditional path yet, but that gap is narrowing faster than most people realise.

I am glad I made this switch because I felt there was potential and opportunity cost. That while I may not even have a regular title, my potential to reach financial freedom seemed all the more within reach.

It’s worth noting that low status jobs are risky, I couldn’t have pursued this without the financial safety net of having a job, a great support network and my emergency fund. But one is a financial risk, the other is a time risk. The time spent almost in a sunk cost fallacy, that ‘ive worked so hard for this prestigious title, i can’t let go’ is time you could spend also building something of your own. The best part is, a lot of these side hustles or ventures can be pursued alongside a full-time job, you don’t have to pick between them.

This brought me back to something Nischa once spoke about that really stayed with me: the difference between the status game and the wealth game. So many people are still optimising for how their life looks to other people, whether that’s through expensive purchases, impressive job titles, or outward signs of success that feel good to show but don’t necessarily create real security.

The wealth game is different. It is far less visible and a lot less instantly gratifying, but it is rooted in things that actually build freedom: saving properly, investing in assets, creating additional income streams, and putting time into your own development so your skills compound over time. What makes Nischa interesting is that she has experienced both worlds. She had the kind of prestigious banking career that naturally gives someone authority, and she still carries the credibility that came with that, but now she operates as a creator.

@nischa.me@nischa.me reveals the one mistake people make when it comes to measuring their wealth. Are you playing the status game or the wealth game? @nischa.me @nischa.me @nischa.me #accountant #money #personalfinance

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This isn’t about rejecting ambition, or the stability of corporate. It’s about choosing which game you’re playing. The status game optimises for titles, recognition, linear progression, and external validation. The wealth game optimises for ownership, leverage, scalable income, and optionality. Most people chase both, which is fine, but it's crowded. The interesting opportunity sits in the gap: the paths that the status-chasers have already dismissed, leaving the field surprisingly open for anyone willing to trade a title for a head start.

You either look rich or you build it. And increasingly, the people building it don’t look like what we were told success should look like.

If you’re early in your career, this is worth thinking about. Are you optimising for how it looks, or for what it actually pays?

That’s all this week,

Mia xx

I feel this a lot. As a recovering people pleaser, or rather an overachieving big sister, I often find myself saying yes to things that don’t energise me, out of an imagined obligation. Or I’ll catch myself following a train of thought I heard on TikTok without questioning whether it actually makes sense in my life.

This isn’t another self-improvement essay. It’s something deeper than that. It’s something I’m still actively working through, day by day.

My only real “credentials” are that I went from being the shy kid, constantly told I was “too quiet”, to now getting paid to talk, whether that’s showing up online in front of millions of people or speaking on panels with hundreds in the audience. I used to be someone who made excuses and operated from limiting beliefs. Now my life feels like it revolves around opportunities that flow towards me, rather than ones I have to chase. The same goes for the people I’ve met, the rooms I’ve entered, and the network I’ve built.

So forget cold plunges, 5am mornings, and whatever the latest productivity ritual is this week. The biggest predictor of whether someone builds an interesting, successful, self-directed life isn’t how optimised their routine is. It’s whether they have agency. High agency, specifically. The ability to make decisions, create paths, and move through life without waiting for permission or external validation.

The term doesn’t have one clear originator. George Mack is often credited with popularising it, and I first came across it through , who speaks about it in the context of the creator economy and self employment. But regardless of where it came from, it clearly resonates because it names something most people feel is missing. We live in a culture saturated with advice, systems, and opinions, yet very few people feel genuinely in control of their own lives. At its simplest, high agency is the ability to make decisions and act on them without needing permission.

Gen Z has become slightly obsessed with this idea of free will. You’ll see it in content framed as “you can just do things.” And while that can come across as unserious or even naive, there’s something real underneath it. It’s the rejection of default paths.

The problem is, most people still move through life unconsciously. We go to school, get told a degree will secure our future, climb the corporate ladder, and retire at 65. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that path. For many people stability is the goal. The issue is not choosing that path, it’s believing it’s the only one available. That ambition, success, or a different kind of life is reserved for people who are already wealthy, connected, or naturally talented.

Becoming high agency starts with a mindset shift: you move from seeing yourself as controlled by circumstances to seeing yourself as someone who actively shapes outcomes.

“Life is happening to me” reflects a passive stance, where external events and other people dictate your direction.

“I am happening to life” reflects an active stance, where you take ownership of your decisions, beliefs, and actions, regardless of external approval.

So what does high agency actually look like in practice? One example is having interests or paths that don’t neatly make sense. A singer who codes, a gymnast who listens to heavy metal, a pharmacist who builds a personal brand online. For me, it’s studying fashion, working in fashion, modelling, and then building a personal brand around personal finance. If no one is slightly surprised by what you do, you’re probably playing it safe. This isn’t about being random for the sake of it. It’s about pursuing curiosity without waiting for permission or proof that you “fit.”

Another example is decision-making. Before I left my 9–5, I asked everyone. My partner, friends, strangers, other creators. I wanted certainty. But what I was really doing was outsourcing responsibility. We’re conditioned to seek authority from other people. Unless that independence is nurtured early, it’s something you have to actively build later. High agency people understand that there is no perfect decision. There is only action. You move, you learn, you adjust. What’s harder to recover from isn’t making the wrong decision, it’s not moving at all.

A less obvious one is how they think. High agency people aren’t rigidly attached to one ideology or way of seeing the world. They have values, but they’re not dogmatic. They can hold nuance. They see things in greyscale rather than black and white. They think critically, question assumptions, and don’t automatically align themselves with a group just for the sake of belonging. This isn’t about politics or religion. It’s about intellectual independence. If anything, they start by Googling stances that prove their point wrong.

The three components

George Mack describes high agency as three core traits. Remove one, and the whole thing collapses. 1

Clear thinking means not taking information at face value. When someone says “most people” or “studies show,” you ask which people, which studies. In a world of misinformation, this is becoming a survival skill.

Bias to action means not waiting for perfect conditions. You act, then figure things out. Most people think overthinking is intelligence, when it’s often just avoidance.

Disagreeability means not needing to be liked all the time. You can admit when you’re wrong, change your mind, and explore ideas without needing immediate certainty.

This is crucial to our mission at Frugal Chic: building wealth and financial freedom without sacrificing style.

Because taste, real taste, doesn’t come from following. It comes from deciding.

A tasteful person isn’t just someone who buys the “right” things. They’re someone who has spent time experimenting, refining, editing. They’ve developed discernment. And that only happens when you have agency. When you’re willing to trust your own judgement over trends, algorithms, or social approval.

Without agency, “chic” quickly turns into consumption. You’re not curating your life, you’re just reacting to it. Buying what’s trending, copying what’s validated, chasing a version of success.

Frugal Chic is about rejecting the default script. It’s choosing your own standards over the ones you’ve absorbed, especially when it comes to money. When you develop your own definition of what a “good life” looks like, your spending becomes more intentional, and far more aligned. You stop buying for approval and start allocating for freedom.

That same lens extends beyond spending. You choose a career path that optimises for autonomy and optionality, not just prestige or a higher salary.

Because in the end, the goal was never to look like you had a life. It was to actually be the one choosing it.

Action points:

1. make one decision daily without outsourcing it
No polls, no asking friends, no “what would you do?” texts. Start small if you need to. What you wear, what you post, what you say yes or no to. The point is training the muscle of self-trust.

2. audit your “default yes” moments
Catch yourself in real time when you’re about to agree out of obligation. Pause and ask: would I choose this if no one expected it from me? If the answer is no, start getting comfortable saying a clean, polite no.

3. replace overthinking with a 48-hour rule
If it’s not life-altering, give yourself 48 hours max to decide, then move. No endless research loops. No waiting until you feel “ready.” You’re not confused, you’re avoiding responsibility.

4. deliberately do one thing that doesn’t “make sense”
Follow a curiosity that doesn’t fit your current identity. Post something different. Learn something unrelated. Go to a room you feel slightly underqualified for. This breaks the idea that you need permission or a perfect narrative before you act.

5. challenge one belief you’ve inherited
Pick something you “just believe” about money, success, work, or yourself and question it properly. Where did it come from? Is it actually true, or just repeated? High agency starts when you realise a lot of your thinking isn’t even yours.

That’s all this week,

Mia xx

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It’s understandable why.

Blue jeans, a black headband, tortoiseshell shades. These are readily available items that most people already own some version of.

While it’s valuable to have fashion inspirations and draw from icons, it rarely translates in the same way. More often, we recreate outwardly rather than pausing to ask whether those specific pieces actually align with our current lifestyle.

The only risk I see is that you end up getting pulled into trends, into whatever the current flavour of the month is, instead of developing a real sense of personal style, which isn’t something you can buy overnight.

And that’s exactly what’s happening with Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy.

You can reduce a woman to a uniform far quicker than you can understand the conditions that produced her.

Here at Frugal Chic, we’re going to pause that instinct to cut and paste.

Because copying her is missing the point entirely.

in this issue:

• why copying her style doesn’t work

• the missing layer: discernment

• how her lifestyle shaped her wardrobe

• minimalism as control, not aesthetic

• how to build taste, not just outfits

She’s our Frugal Chic muse, not because she was financially frugal, but because visually, she was. It’s about what her taste represents.

Minimalism is usually framed as an aesthetic choice. Frugality as a financial one. But they come from the same place: making decisions under constraint.

Both require you to say no more than you say yes. And in that repeated refusal, something starts to take shape. Discernment.

That’s where she sits. And more importantly, that’s why her image still feels relevant in a world constantly pushing you towards more. More options, more trends, more consumption, more visibility.

Her style feels calm not because it’s simple, but because it’s grounded. There’s a level of confidence there that can’t be bought or copied overnight. It didn’t come from a template or an influencer’s recommendation, it came from a life that was actually lived that way, not performed.

why this trend keeps failing

If you closely examine the GRWMs, the styling videos, they’re not bad but something feels off.

The proportions, colour palette, references might be spot on, but imitation is never as good as the original. The issue is, people often start with an aesthetic to imitate, a visual aid. Then the person attempts to reverse-engineer their life around it.

Carolyn’s style worked in the opposite direction. It was built from her life outward. She wasn’t dressing to communicate something new every day. She wasn’t using clothing as a performance. She wasn’t trying to be seen in a particular way. She was dressing to feel aligned with her lifestyle, what made sense for her own circumstances.Most modern style advice optimises for attention rather than alignment. What will look best on the feed, what is considered “chic” right now, how quickly you can adapt to the next micro-trend.

Now, I’m not claiming to be the most chic or stylish person, but after spending over two years working in luxury wholesale, I was constantly around people who were. People who had spent years refining their taste, pulling from fashion history, understanding design, treating style almost like an extension of art. What I noticed is that the most stylish people weren’t experimenting endlessly, they had a kind of uniform they returned to. And it wasn’t easy to copy, because it was so specific to how they actually lived.

So what if it’s less about copying the clothes, and more about adopting the filter she approached them with in the first place?

the missing layer: discernment

Discernment is not just “having good taste”. It is the ability to filter.

To stand in front of ten options and immediately eliminate nine, not because they are objectively bad, but because they are unnecessary. Carolyn had that. We often think taste is a trait only the elites are born with. Sure, having money, time, and the many privileges that come with that make it easier to practise taste.

However, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu argued that taste is a form of cultural capital. It is discernment, the ability to filter through noise and recognise what a society considers refined, valuable, or desirable. There is no universal version of what taste is, only standards that groups agree upon, often without realising it. Once you understand that, taste starts to feel like a muscle you can train. It is available to anyone willing to train their eye.

Carolyn’s ability to discern wasn’t innate, it was trained. Her time at Calvin Klein in the 1990s placed her at the centre of a very specific aesthetic philosophy. Calvin Klein at that time was not about decoration. It was about reduction. Removing everything that did not serve the form.

Moreover, working in a PR there meant her job was to control perception. She was constantly thinking about how things read commercially. What feels effortless on camera. What holds up under scrutiny. What becomes timeless versus what dates quickly.

It’s easy to assume her style was an automatic extension of her class or simply a byproduct of her lifestyle, but what appeared effortless on the surface was underpinned by a high level of intention and thought.

she dressed for her life, not an audience

Then layer on the fact she lived in New York.

Not the cinematic version we recall from films, but the lived-in version. Walking, commuting, existing in public spaces. Clothing has to be functional and versatile. Jeans and loafers, wool coats and boots, all very comfortable but stylish. Think classics that look better with wear, not worse.

And then layer on visibility.

Being married to John F. Kennedy Jr. meant living under constant surveillance. Photographed relentlessly, analysed endlessly, yet she was publicy as reserved as her fashion sense was. There is famously almost no recorded footage of her speaking. Her style suggests she treaded lightly, avoiding attention and controversy. Being in the public eye came with a level of pressure and scrutiny that most people would struggle to tolerate, where even the smallest choices were picked apart and turned into something bigger than they were.

The irony is, her wardrobe wasn’t aspirational in the way people assume. It was functional. Editors and stylists consistently point out that she “knew what worked and repeated it”, with nothing excessive or unnecessary (source). Neutral tones, clean lines, dependable options. Some see it as boring, but really it was about efficiency. Each item had a role which in turn reduced decision fatigue.

This is why her outfits feel effortless. They were selected from a system that had already been curated.

These are a few pieces that I interpret from this framework, but the point is, it looks different for everyone:

she was observed, not performed

It today’s world, everything is on show. Even as a content creator, I feel this, the pressure to be transparent. Part of what made Carolyn captivating was the mystery surrounding her. She existed in public, but she did not perform in public. There were no explanations, no captions, no behind-the-scenes context. She didn’t attempt to control the narrative through constant output. She was simply seen. In a strange way, that created more intrigue. Because when someone is not over-explained, you project more onto them. You study the details more closely. You try to understand the choices.

Although she was one of the most photographed people of that time, she kept a lot private, due to her class, the time, and her line of work.

Today, we do the opposite. We fill every gap. Every thought is shared, every decision explained, every outfit overanalysed.

It sounds obvious, but the takeaway is simple: if you want to be more authentic with fashion or develop a signature style, you have to stop comparing and stop over-explaining. Just re-wear what works, wear what makes sense for your life, and slowly curate your wardrobe over time, ignoring the noise.

the frugal chic translation

If you actually what to emulate her essense rather than copying and pasting the outfit, your process has to change.

1. Assess your current lifestyle. Your career, the climate, the pace of life. Where you go, how you move, what you need your clothes to do. It may not look like mid-wash jeans and loafers. It might be more outdoorsy, more corporate, or softer. The point isn’t the aesthetic, it’s the alignment with your own life. Minimalism isn’t just a sad beige life and timeless looks different for everyone.

2. Reduce. Not in a dramatic declutter by a gradual process. Remove what doesn’t get worn, what doesn’t feel right, what doesn’t serve a purpose. My favourite hack is using the money I make selling old things to buy more secondhand clothing, almost creating an infinite fund for shopping (if you buy things that don’t depreciate too much in value). Therefore, buying more becomes a slow iterative process rather than a quick fix.

3. Refine. Pay attention to the variables that matter. Fit, fabric, proportion. Making an effort to check the care label each time you buy something. Checking the seams for quality. Pay close attention to how fabrics feel next to the skin. The whole ‘buy it nice or buy it twice’ can seem tone deaf, but the point isn’t to go out and buy a whole new designer wardrobe for £1,000, it’s to very slowly incorporate this knowledge of quality into future choices.

4. Commit. Stop rebranding every season. Stop chasing every micro-aesthetic. Let your style stabilise. No-buys and low-buys aren’t just financial decisions, they’re psychological. They show you what you actually wear when shopping isn’t a distraction or a hobby. I’m doing a challenge over on short form where I buy 12 items in a year. The goal isn’t some arbitrary number, it’s only selecting the one most valuable item that month (if there is one, or else I buy nothing).

5. Mystery. If you’re not using social media to build something, there’s no need to treat it like a performance. Either stay private, or use it more lightly, as a tool to observe and refine your taste rather than chase validation. Think of those low-key, insider-feeling feeds. Random, zoomed-in objects. Candid moments. Slightly unpolished. Still curated, but not engineered for approval like highly stylised feeds. There’s something freeing in that. It shifts posting from being seen to seeing. From performing to noticing. More like a digital diary. A place to collect what you’re drawn to, what you return to, what actually reflects you.

You don’t want Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s style.

You want her eye for quality. Her taste. Her restraint. That quiet sense of mystery.

You’re probably never going to fully replicate it, but that’s not really the point. In trying, you end up sharpening your own standards.

You start buying less, but better. Making decisions quicker, but with more certainty. You stop dressing for some imaginary version of how you think you should look, and start dressing for your actual life.

And in a world that constantly pushes you towards more, that level of discernment isn’t just aesthetic, it’s financial too.

That’s all this week.

From the outside, it looks like momentum. More followers. More opportunities. More income.

And to be honest, a lot of it has been exactly that.

But behind the scenes, it’s been far less polished than people think.

No one really talks about the awkward middle. The mistakes you make when you don’t know the rules yet. The moments where you realise you’ve been undercharging, oversharing, or saying yes to things that quietly pull you away from the brand you’re trying to build.

In this piece, I’m breaking down a few of the lessons that changed how I operate completely. The ones I wish I had understood earlier, before they cost me time, money, and a lot of second-hand embarrassment.

In this issue:

• Why announcing too early can cost you more than money

• The hidden cost of “free” PR and why it rarely benefits you

• How undercharging quietly transfers thousands out of your pocket

• Why “being grateful” can actually hold your business back

• The parts of the creator economy no one explains until you’ve already made the mistake

Intellectual property

The first thing is trademarking. When I was leaving my 9–5 to go full-time with content creation, my mind was whirring with ideas about how I would turn this into a fully fledged company, not just content. My worst fear was being seen as an “influencer” (even though that’s what I was), perhaps because of the negative connotations it evokes. This drive to be taken seriously, paired with the traction that Frugal Chic was gaining at the time, with people copying or citing me, made me realise I had to take immediate action.

Read more

Happy Sunday!

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the fear of putting yourself out there.

I struggled a lot with confidence growing up. I was the shy, quiet kid, too afraid of even answering the phone, who’d get heart palpitations whenever “get into groups” was mentioned at school, whose palms would sweat when my parents forced me to go to army camp (yes, I did act like Sacha Baron Cohen in Brüno, iykyk).

But fast forward 10 years to now: I’ve somehow become someone who literally gets paid to yap. To give my insights and experience, even when I am not the person who has the most knowledge in the room.

Sometimes I stop and think about how strange that transformation actually is.

I often wonder how different my life would be if I had stayed in that comfort zone of anonymity and quietness. I wrote recently that there was a time I didn’t have ANY social media, and it was an extremely peaceful time of my life. It was calm. It was quiet.

But it was also a time where my growth stagnated.

I wasn’t getting opportunities. I wasn’t meeting people who thought differently. And I held a lot of limiting beliefs, like thinking being successful or rich came down to luck or good looks alone.

Which led me to a realisation.

If you are more on the introverted side, you quietly pay what I think of as the “introvert tax.”

You let others speak for you.
You say yes to things you don’t really want to do.
You isolate yourself.
You get easily embarrassed in public situations.
You overthink every social interaction.

And over time, this quietly blocks a lot of opportunities.

Not just social opportunities, but financial ones too. Because the people who tend to benefit in the long run are the ones willing to raise their hand, share their ideas, or simply be visible.

The introvert tax often means you end up sitting on the sidelines rather than being the main character in your own life.

And this doesn’t come out of nowhere.

It could be a personality trait.
It could be growing up feeling like other siblings or relatives shone brighter socially.
It could be being taught to be overly polite.
It could be being told to stay quiet and let other people speak.
Or feeling that your voice, especially as a woman, wasn’t as valuable.

For me, I can trace some of it back to being an adoptee and growing up always feeling a little bit like the “alien”, the odd one out.

Being quiet became my way of not drawing any more attention to myself.

But over time, I realised something important.

Quietness itself was never the real problem.

Quietness isn’t a flaw

When you grow up being on the more reserved side, people often say things like “you’re too quiet” or “you need to speak up more.”

Interestingly, no one ever tells people who are too loud that they should be quieter.

Quiet people tend to be better listeners. There’s a certain wisdom you obtain from observing, waiting, and calculating. Like a game of chess, you allow the other person to reveal their weaknesses or vulnerabilities first.

But the world often rewards audacity.

The loudest person in the room, the person who shouts the loudest, even if they are not the most qualified or knowledgeable, often ends up getting the opportunities.

This is why teachers tell kids to speak up more in class. It’s why charismatic personalities often get promoted faster.

For years I felt like quietness was a defect to fix, an ailment to cure.

So I tried to adopt a more gregarious personality.

The problem was that it wasn’t authentic to me.

When you treat quietness like a flaw to fix, you end up overcompensating. You try to become someone else entirely.

What I eventually realised is that you can still make an impact, make change, and establish authority without changing your personality.

Noise and power are two very different things.

There is a difference between someone who shouts the loudest and someone who commands respect. The person who selects their best and most valuable ideas. The person who says less, but better.

Quietness can absolutely be a strength.

The only real cost is when quietness turns into invisibility.

When you stay silent, constantly put others first, and spend huge amounts of energy trying to avoid embarrassment.

Because embarrassment was never the real problem.

Embarrassment is the cost of admission

The truth is life is embarrassing.

I love the phrase that was going around on short-form recently (apologies, I couldn’t find the original creator) that every choice we make while alive is essentially a humiliation ritual.

Working in corporate often means pretending to care deeply about maximising shareholder value.

Being freelance can mean unpredictable months and times where work is completely dry.

Not putting yourself out there often leads to mediocrity, because that’s the path of least resistance and it’s what most people are doing.

Whatever path we take, we will encounter some form of embarrassment.

To be completely honest, the TEDx talk didn’t go as I’d planned.

I stumbled on my words, and there was about 30 seconds where I completely froze. The only thoughts going through my head were:

“Don’t throw up.”
“Don’t faint.”
“Don’t faint and throw up.”

Reflecting on it now, I hadn’t prepared as much as I should have. I should have been able to recite it word for word through muscle memory. With a few weeks’ notice, I should have taken it more seriously.

But something that reassured me afterwards was that someone came up to me and said the hesitation actually made it feel more human and relatable. Another speaker told me that the actual content of what I was saying was really inspiring.

What I took away from it was this:

It was terrifying. But it was also an amazing thing to even get the chance to do.

My mentality going into it was simple.

I will regret not doing this far more than I will regret doing it and making a fool of myself.

And that’s often the real choice we’re facing.

We tell ourselves that if we don’t do the thing, then we have nothing to lose. We can just stay home, stay safe, stay comfortable.

But what we’re really doing is quietly paying the introvert tax again.

How I overcame the fear of being seen

Posting a talking video online was something I never thought I would do.

So what actually got me to start posting content, to go on panels and talks, when I believed the way I was had already been “set in stone”?

Honestly, it started by accidentally tricking myself.

My logic with starting TikTok was that I assumed people I knew in real life wouldn’t see it.

The FYP and algorithm create a strange psychological effect. Even if a video gets 50k views, it still just feels like a number on a screen. It doesn’t feel like 50,000 real people watching you.

I’m not saying that’s the healthiest mindset, but that’s genuinely how I thought about it at the start.

So I treated it like a game.

A code to crack.

Every post was a chance to improve and understand how it worked. The game was free. It didn’t require leaving the house, signing up for a course, or massively putting myself out of my comfort zone.

It just felt like a digital diary.

A place to talk about a subject I’d never really been able to share with people in person.

And what happened next genuinely changed the course of my life.

The opportunities that come from putting yourself out there

For me, it’s led to getting paid my yearly salary in one month, going on brand trips, receiving PR, and being invited to cool events.

But more importantly than any of that, it gave me a way to make money on my own terms.

No micromanagement.

No waiting for permission.

I genuinely never thought I would be able to make my own independent living at 25. I assumed starting my own business would happen in my 40s, if it happened at all.

Putting myself out there accelerated that timeline in a way I never expected.

And this isn’t just about social media.

Even if you’re building a traditional business, you will still need the confidence to pitch yourself to investors, meet agencies, entertain clients, and network with people you’ve never met before.

Visibility is a skill.

And like any skill, it can be learned.

Actionable steps you can implement today

Write one LinkedIn post about a recent event, project, idea, or opinion.
Before you say, “Well nothing worthy of writing about has happened lately,” I don’t care. It could be an opinion, a lesson, an observation. Visibility is everything. If you can’t bring yourself to talk on TikTok yet, pick a safer, more traditional medium and get your ideas public.

Create one page that you are going to be consistent with.
Don’t treat it as being an influencer. Treat it as a work diary. And when I say work, I mean your life’s work. The real problems you’ve solved in your own life. You don’t necessarily even have to talk. It could be written in blog format.

When you’re next in public, make an effort to make small talk with a stranger.
I know this feels odd in London. People here are slightly less open to random conversations. But it could be as simple as when you get your daily coffee, actually asking the barista how their day really was.
We think small talk doesn’t mean anything, but it’s often the first step to connection. And sometimes that small moment means more to someone else than you realise.

Film yourself talking for one minute.
Yes, it will probably feel cringe. But it can be incredibly useful. You don’t even have to post it anywhere. It’s just practice. Notice how often you say filler words. Observe your delivery. Don’t judge yourself too harshly.

Write down five social traits you like about yourself.
Maybe you give great compliments.
Maybe you always remember people’s names.
Maybe you remember small details about people’s lives.

A strange thing about confidence is that it rarely arrives before you do the thing that requires it.

Most of the time, it shows up afterwards.

You do the uncomfortable thing. You post the video. You say the opinion out loud. You go to the event even though you feel slightly awkward the entire time. And then later you realise… nothing catastrophic happened. In fact, something good usually does.

The truth is that putting yourself out there doesn’t suddenly turn you into a different person. I’m still someone who needs quiet time to recharge. I still overthink things. I still feel nervous before speaking on a stage or posting something slightly controversial online.

But the difference now is that I don’t let those feelings make the decision for me.

Because the real risk isn’t embarrassment. The real risk is staying invisible.

When you think about it long term, the opportunities in life almost always go to the people who are willing to be slightly uncomfortable in public. The ones willing to say something first, try something first, raise their hand first.

So if you’ve been sitting on an idea, a project, a piece of writing, a business, or even just an opinion you’ve been too nervous to share, consider this your gentle push.

The world doesn’t need you to be the loudest person in the room.

But it does need you to stop paying the introvert tax.

Quick catch up: what a hectic but fun few weeks I’ve had. From going on the Matt Allwright show on Channel 5 on live TV, doing a TEDx talk at the University of Manchester, having a gifted stay at the Four Seasons Hampshire, and going to a brand event with Female Invest. It’s safe to say it’s been pretty tiring, but I couldn’t be more grateful.

I hope you’ll be able to forgive me for dropping the frequency of paid-only content recently. After April rolls around, I will have a LOT more capacity to be making complimentary guides, goodies, and extra resources again, which I’m really excited about.

That’s all this week,

Lately I’ve been thinking about how our culture of instant gratification has quietly created the attitude that “my future self will just figure it out.”

Here’s why investing is actually one of the biggest forms of self-love.

Because “future you” is still you.

In this issue

• Why future you deserves financial security
• The investing mistake I made at 18
• Why starting early matters (but isn’t everything)
• Five different paths to the same wealth goal
• What a “work-optional” life could actually look like

In our late teens and early 20s, we often feel immortal. The idea of a fine line or joint pain feels like a faraway land. We often forget that everything we do now sets up the framework for our 30s, 40s, and later in life.

Of course things change. We pivot. But if you are reading this and you’re between the ages of 18–25, this matters more.

I remember the film The Substance perfectly encapsulating this idea that what we do now, the habits we build, affect our older self. We just sometimes don’t see the effects for decades.

In this body horror film, the protagonist gets this injectable drug (reminiscent of current over-the-counter Ozempic) which brings youth back to a faded TV star. The trade-off is she must follow almost a Cinderella-like routine of switching bodies at certain times, or else “the spell wears off.” But because it is more sinister than Cinderella, it causes permanent damage in real time to the older body.

Although the film touches more on beauty as a concept and ageing, I thought it applied nicely to finance (said no one ever haha).

When people say, “Why are you investing so much now? Live a little. What if you don’t make it to 40?”

To start, 40 is still young in my eyes. Just like in that film, I could either think like the protagonist and believe life is for being glamorous when you’re young, and that my older self can live like a depressed hermit, or I can think that my older self is going to be just as beautiful and glamorous.

Gone are the days when women are supposed to “expire.” Of course, I know I’m writing this in my 20s, but I see so many successful, beautiful women in their 40s and I refuse to see that as old. And therefore the 40-year-old version of me still deserves wealth and optionality (plus, the time will fly by anyway!)

Statistically I will likely live to that age. If it is almost inevitably going to happen anyway, why not plan for it?

We study for a law degree for years before ever becoming a solicitor.
We train for marathons months before race day.
We save deposits for homes we might not buy for five or ten years.
We spend years building careers before reaching senior roles.

Investing financially is simply another version of the same idea.

Conversely, many of our everyday habits quietly pass the bill to the person we will become.

By swiping a credit card or using buy now, pay later without a clear plan to pay it off in time, we are essentially saying to our future self, “This is on you.”

It is an easy trap to fall into. These systems are designed that way. Most checkout pages now default to instalments, encouraging us to spread the cost without really thinking about the total. Add to that the fact that we carry a shopping centre in our pockets. Every time we unlock our phone to send a text, we are also one tap away from the “new in” section.

The result is that restraint can start to feel strange. Being thoughtful with money, or even using the dreaded word frugal, begins to look almost countercultural. In a culture built on instant access and constant upgrades, choosing to pause, plan, or wait can easily be mistaken for deprivation.

But this isn’t just about overspending or buying nothing. This is about smart planning around time horizon.

The mistake I made when I first started investing

One of my mistakes when I first got into investing was treating it like a side hustle or a get-rich-quick scheme.

When I first learned about stocks at 18, I was completely in the dark. I learned from the boys at university, so obviously it wasn’t the best influence because they were all talking about hyped stocks rather than long-term investing.

Looking back, it makes perfect sense. At 18, you’re not really thinking about the 40-year-old version of yourself. You’re thinking about the next week.

That seemed so much more alluring. The idea that you could get a quick return and it could actually make a meaningful difference in your life now.

But the truth is it rarely works out like that.

What I realised later on is that the real advantage in investing comes from thinking long term. Consistently investing in boring things like index funds doesn’t feel exciting in the moment, but it quietly compounds over decades.

If you can reach that realisation earlier, even at 25 or 30, your future self will thank you. Because the moment you start thinking in decades instead of months, you immediately get ahead of most people who are chasing quick wins.

The people who build wealth are the ones quietly playing the long game.

What do you have to sacrifice in order to get there

So we often think we have to give up all fun and frivolity to reach work optionality, but that doesn’t have to be the case.

The best part about Frugal Chic is that it isn’t about buying nothing, it’s about buying cleverly.

Cutting out what doesn’t serve you and redirecting those funds into what fills your cup.

For example:

Cutting out:

• A flattering polyester top that cost £10 in a sale but then pilled after one wash

• That extra streaming subscription you totally forgot about

• PMS spending, angrily scouring the new-in section at Reformation, walking out with a £200 jacket you won’t wear

• Obligatory brunch “catch-ups” with that friend you’re not 100% sure about

• Unconsciously buying a sugary cinnamon roll every day with your coffee that you low-key find too sweet anyway

Splurging on:

• The course that will take your earning potential from £30k to £40k

• That social event with your ride-or-die friends

• Healthy food that energises you

• That trip of a lifetime you’ll always remember

• Books that expand your thinking and inspire you

The point isn’t deprivation. It’s discernment.

When you start paying attention to where your money actually goes, you realise that many of the things draining your bank account aren’t the things that genuinely improve your life. They are habits, impulses, or quiet social expectations.

Frugal Chic is simply about redirecting those resources with intention.

How to balance future planning with being present

If you want to set your future self up for wealth without feeling like you are depriving your current self, it’s all about intentional management and time horizon.

Money behaves very differently depending on when you start. The earlier you start, the quicker it accelerates.

The below is theoretical. Past performance does not indicate future performance. Capital is at risk. This is not financial advice.

Scenario 1

You start at 18 with small amounts, say £50 a month.

Because you started early, time does most of the heavy lifting. Decades of compounding turn small, consistent contributions into a large portfolio. The key advantage is simply starting early.

Scenario 2

You start at 25 once your income stabilises.

Instead of £50, you invest around £200 a month. You missed a few early compounding years, but higher contributions help close the gap while you still benefit from long-term growth.

Scenario 3

You start at 30 after focusing on career progression.

Now you invest £500 a month. With less time for compounding, the strategy relies more on higher contributions and consistency.

Scenario 4

You start at 40 after major life expenses like housing or family.

At this stage you might invest £1,000 or more per month. There is far less time for compound growth, so the plan depends heavily on income and larger contributions.

Scenario 5

You do not have spare money yet.

If your income is tight or you are dealing with debt or high living costs, the priority is building financial capacity first. That might mean increasing income, reducing structural expenses, clearing high-interest debt, and building a small emergency buffer.

The most important thing is not to feel discouraged. Although investing can feel like it is only for rich people, you do need to be financially stable and have money to invest, but the maths tells us that this doesn’t have to be as much as you think it does, especially if you are starting young.

A work-optional future

But what are we actually working towards?

What are we saving and investing for?

Without a clear goal, it can feel like it’s just for a rainy day or simply “the sensible thing to do.” To me, that is not a strong enough reason. That is not what builds a six-figure portfolio.

What builds a six-figure portfolio is drive. The desire to reach work optionality. The desire to have more freedom.

Let’s be honest. The people who want to live a lavish lifestyle aren’t usually the ones aggressively investing.

You have to understand the basic principle of buying back your time.

So let’s paint a picture.

Picture this.

You wake up in a room that feels light and uncluttered. The sheets are soft, quality linen you saved up for, knowing they’d last for years.

You brew coffee at home, not because you can’t afford Starbucks, but because you enjoy the ritual. You’ve perfected it. The right grind, the right temperature, the exact amount of milk.

You head out in second-hand jeans that fit perfectly, a cashmere jumper you invested in three years ago, and loafers that will last a decade because you’ve already had them resoled once.

You carry yourself differently because you know you’re not dressing for Instagram. You’re dressing for you. These pieces tell a story. They’re not just clothes. They’re choices.

You work, not for survival but for growth. You invest. You write. You create. You’re building leverage slowly.

Dinner isn’t another Deliveroo order. It’s a nutritious meal made with whole foods, cooked simply, with a glass of wine if you fancy it, maybe shared with someone you love. The ingredients cost less than takeaway would have, but the experience feels infinitely richer.

This is not deprivation.

This is wealth hidden in plain sight.

This is the future I’m working towards. Slow, no obligation, pure optionality. Working for myself, working on things that I’m passionate about, having the time to live a healthy, safe, and balanced lifestyle.

To me, that is real wealth.

And I’m hoping I can set my 40-year-old self up for it.

I also don’t mean to exclude anyone by age by writing this. You might be reading this in your 40s. The same principles still apply. You just shift the decades.

We all have regrets, including myself. There are things I could have done better to optimise where I am now. I could have got here quicker or had higher returns.

But it’s best not to dwell on the past and instead focus on what we can do moving forward.

That’s why investing in yourself and your future is just as important as the retinol eye cream or the LED mask.

In the same way we safeguard our skin, we should safeguard our finances.

Because when you approach money this way, you’re saying to your future self:

You are just as important and worthy of love and abundance as my current self.

That’s all this week,

There’s been a quiet question circling around my content lately. Am I still frugal? Has Frugal Chic changed? Did it only make sense when I was earning less?

I understand why people ask. When income changes publicly, people try to anchor you to a previous version of yourself. So I want to reintroduce Frugal Chic properly.

Frugal Chic was never about a fixed income. It was about a way of thinking. And that way of thinking can move with you.

In this issue:

• What “frugal” really means

• The difference between cheap and frugal

• Why value-based spending and frugality are the same idea

• How my spending evolved from £30k a year to £30k months

• Why discipline matters more as income grows

What “frugal” really means

Let’s start with the word itself.

Frugal is often associated with penny pinching, not wanting to split the bill or cosplaying poverty. This is why you get people saying ‘doing x isn’t frugal’, if it’s traditionally seen as a luxury.

Here’s why that thinking is misguided.

At its core, frugal simply means intentional spending. It is choosing where your money goes instead of letting impulse, comparison or pressure decide for you.

Many people say they do not believe in frugality but believe in value-based spending. In reality, they are describing the same thing. Value-based spending is simply a gentler way of saying that you spend in alignment with what matters to you and reduce what does not.

Perhaps the avoidance of identifying as frugal is because they feel they’ll be forever trapped in a certain aesthetic or behaviour, almost like a limiting belief. But many rich people are frugal. Their version of frugality can even look extravagant compared to someone on minimum wage, it’s all relative.

The problem is, the internet likes to put things into neat boxes, frugality must mean minimalism, neutral palettes, no luxury in sight.

But frugality isn’t a look, it’s a decision making framework.

Cheap vs frugal

There is also an important nuance between being cheap and being frugal.
Cheap focuses on the lowest price in the moment. It can mean buying poor quality repeatedly. It can mean avoiding necessary costs. Over time, cheap decisions can become expensive ones, like wearing poorly made shoes that impact your walking, only eating instant ramen and eventually facing the health consequences.

Frugal, on the other hand, is long term. Frugal might spend more upfront for quality and longevity. Frugal considers opportunity cost. Frugal asks, “What has the highest ROI”. It’s financial intelligence in action.

It is also worth acknowledging that many people are forced into cheap decisions because that’s all they can afford to do. This is why being cheap is expensive, ironically.

From constraint to restraint

When I was on £30k working in fashion, frugality looked like constraint. I was living at home, which is a privilege I fully acknowledge. I used that season to save 50-70% of my income while my other friends at home blew it all on holidays and going out. I did not move out prematurely. I did not stretch my salary beyond what was sustainable.

After moving out, I doubled down on my side hustle. I worked in the mornings, evenings and weekends. When I eventually decided to go full time, it was not the safest financial decision on paper. I did not have guaranteed income. I did not have consistent five figure months (I didn’t even think it was possible for me to earn that much!!). What I had was momentum and belief.

That decision was not reckless. It was strategic. I was reallocating my time into something with greater long-term upside.

Over time, income changed. Five figure months became consistent. Recently, I had a £50k month. Understandably, that shifts perception.

In that month, I spent £1.9k. Roughly 3 to 4 percent of my income.
For me, that is still frugal.

The difference is this: at £30k a year, frugality was about constraint. At higher income levels, frugality becomes restraint. The difference is choice. You can afford more, but you choose not to expand your lifestyle at the same rate as your income. You essentially choose to use that disposable income to buy freedom instead of lifestyle.

Restraint could be perecived as deprivation, I see it as financial taste. To be tasteful, it’s more about what you say no to, what you don’t like as opposed to what you do like. It’s cleverly filtering out the noise, and the same goes for your finances.

The middle ground

Frugal Chic has always been about that middle ground. Neither extremes are helpful for building wealth. If you focus too much on counting the pennies you’ll never focus on what truly moves the needle, increasing your income. At the same time, if you spend all the money you make - or worse get into debt trying to keep up, you’ll be forever trapped living paycheck to paycheck, no more money would help you.

Frugal Chic is about realising that style and strategy don’t have to oppose each other.

Transparency as a creator

As a creator, there is an added layer. There are gifted experiences, PR packages and brand partnerships. Transparency matters to me because my platform is built on financial literacy. But receiving something or occasionally buying something expensive does not automatically contradict the framework.

What would contradict it is mindless excess. What would contradict it is spending to signal status rather than to build stability.

The question that matters more is savings rate. People pull random figures or examples out of context, like going for a luxury staycation isn’t frugal, or buying an £8 smoothie isn’t frugal - they might be if the budget allows for it.

Frugal Chic was never about staying small. It was about staying intentional.

Frugality is not something you graduate from once you earn more. If anything, higher income requires more awareness. It’s not a trauma to overcome. Larger numbers create larger consequences, and therefore high earners can definitely also practice Frugal Chic.

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Action points

1. Redefine frugal for yourself as intentional spending, not deprivation. Write a splurge vs saves list, this ensures you have purpose behind your frugality.
2. Calculate your spending as a percentage of your income, not just a raw number. It’s easy to say someone that spends £5k a month isn’t frugal, but what about if they have kids, a mortgage, family obligations. Context and income matter.
3. Distinguish between constraint and restraint in your current season. Are you limited by income, or choosing discipline?
4. Set a lifestyle baseline you would feel comfortable maintaining even if your income fluctuated. Write out all your non-negotiable expenses.
5. Allocate income growth deliberately. Let investments and assets grow first, then adjust lifestyle gradually and consciously. Buying a Chanel bag might not seem frivolous at all if you have paid off your mortgage, or you already reached an investment goal for example.

Appearing modest for the sake of it is just as damaging as appearing rich to prove a point. At the end of the day, your finances are your finances. As long as you are living below your means, you’re Frugal Chic.

That’s all this week,

in this issue:

• why i’m choosing visibility over disappearing in my building season

• how posting online shifted my trajectory more than traditional routes ever did

• the difference between scrolling for entertainment and showing up with intent

• why you don’t need a big audience, just the right eyes

• what people misunderstand about social media being “toxic”

• why going offline is often easier once foundations already exist

• how the internet still functions as the most accessible leverage tool today

There’s this fatigue I am seeing online with creative people saying that they wish they didn’t have to post online as part of their strategy. I feel that.

Not many people know this, but I took a break from social media in my late teens where I had zero accounts, no Instagram, etc. I had tried to become a fashion influencer for a few years, and with little success I disappeared.

I was tired of feeling like I had to buy my way into a community. I realise now that that didn’t have to be the case, and I could have explored that niche in my own way. Nevertheless, having zero social media was a very peaceful and present time of my life. I liked being mysterious, private.

When I got it again, it was at university in first year, during freshers week, where to socialise and make friends meant asking people for ‘their snap’ or Snapchat (very nostalgic haha). I begrudgingly got it again, later followed by Instagram. It felt like in order to fit in, or to ‘keep up’, I had to do what everyone else was doing. I did also feel like if I didn’t post or keep up with others’ posts, it’s like I didn’t exist.

When I started posting on Instagram, it was very curated, aesthetically pleasing pictures. I was on holiday with my partner, forcing him to take these model-esque pictures of me at every occasion (looking back now, I realise this must have been annoying). I almost saw it as a hobby, a digital moodboard. A way of cultivating an image.

This unexpectedly got me signed with a modelling agency, who I am still with today. Other than my brief stint at trying to be a fashion influencer, it taught me the power of visibility. At the start I would get £120 a day for a shoot, which thinking back now was very low. But over time, I built my portfolio and landed bigger deals for £300–700. I remember the first time I got paid £2,000 for a shoot. That was the most money I’d seen in my life, and as a student, it made an impact.

However, I wasn’t very successful with modelling either. I’m short (in modelling standards), which limits me, plus there are people who want to do it more than me. I dreaded being asked to go to castings where I would wait two hours in a queue to be looked at like a piece of meat for 10 seconds and asked to leave and never contacted again. The concept of it is largely demoralising. I landed a few jobs here and there while studying and during my internship year, but overall, it was a small hobby.

The point is, I kept my socials because of that, and therefore I fell into the slippery slope of short-form content. At the time a friend said, “you need to get TikTok”. I didn’t at first because it seemed childish, I didn’t think there was any fashion content on there. When I finally got it, I was literally addicted to it, I would delete the app and redownload it. Spend hours unknowingly scrolling. I did get lots of tips and value from it, but I knew overall the habit of being on it wasn’t great.

Time passed and I started my internship in fashion. After getting promoted to the sales team and staying in a permanent place, I had an itch to try posting. We all know those familiar videos saying ‘just post the content’. They seem cringey, but eventually I saw so many of those types of videos that I thought, ‘yeah why not’. So it was one random midweek evening after my 9–5 that I decided to whip out my phone, tape it to my childhood bedroom window, and start filming.

From there I switched my addiction from scrolling to creating: seeing engagement, reading comments, seeing how I could improve my videos. I loved being able to talk about finance, even if I didn’t have a background in it. It was something I’d self-studied and learnt about, and also it wasn’t technical finance, it was day-to-day personal finance like budgeting and saving.

I can confidently say, the benefits outweigh the negatives when it comes to putting yourself out there. Yes, there’s the risk of looking silly, of your work seeing it, of judgement. I don’t usually talk so much about the benefits I experience or indulge in flex culture. I find this to be a bit distasteful, and if I do ever show numbers it’s only to add credibility so people will actually watch the video. But here, with my few set of close subscribers, I can openly say the benefits are more than you could imagine.

PR from dream brands, gifted hotel stays, beauty treatments (although I always say no to these usually), invited to do talks. The opportunities are immense. Yes, they aren’t guaranteed, and they’re a result of doing countless unpaid work too, posting mornings, evenings, and weekends around my 9–5, but the point is, they’re there. I don’t like to take the piss, but I know some influencers literally live for free, everything is gifted (this isn’t something I would do or advocate for, but it just shows, the option is there).

Now the point of this isn’t to become an influencer or think like one, but if I had just never posted, I wouldn’t have got that modelling opportunity, or the life-changing money that content creation can potentially give, nor would I have the option to forge my own career and be my own boss. I am seeing more and more ‘normal’ people just posting, not to get x amount of views, or try to monetise right away, but simply because they’re realising that if the right person can see it, that’s all they need.

My friend is an aspiring musician and wants to start running music events, from posting and getting a modest amount of views (respectfully, under 1,000, sometimes) she landed an event gig. It just shows that yes, while I am biased as I am speaking from the perspective of someone who now has the power that being an ‘influencer’ gives me, I started out with no intention of doing that. If I hadn’t liked the idea of being known, I would’ve done a similar thing to my friend, posted about my interests, achievements and spoke my desires into existence because you don’t know who’s listening.

You don’t need 100k people to watch a video if 100k of those people aren’t going to move any needles for you. You need one customer, one agent, one manager to see it and it can change your trajectory.

That’s why I won’t be neglecting the power of social media while this analog trend is happening. I’m in the building season of my life which means visibility is everything. Presence creates surface area for luck, opportunity, collaborations, and income streams. Opting out too early can sometimes mean opting out of momentum.

When people talk about how toxic social media is, it usually comes from the perspective of being a consumer. Purely being online and just being a consumer of content, I feel, is fairly toxic for your mental health, creativity, wealth prospects, because you’re constantly being marketed to. You don’t have much autonomy with algorithms, you’re purely just shown things, and you don’t have a lot of choice.

That difference matters. Consumption is passive, and increasingly with short form, your choice of what you consume is largely out of your hands. Creation on the other hand is active. One drains your bank account and attention, the other compounds. If your entire digital experience is scrolling, comparing, and absorbing, then yes, social media will feel damaging. But if your experience is building, publishing, testing, iterating, and learning, the exact same platforms function completely differently.

That doesn’t mean offline living is bad. It just means timing matters. There are seasons where you can log off, and seasons where showing up is part of the work. Not everyone is in the same season, and pretending otherwise can create unrealistic expectations for people who are still trying to establish themselves.

The real power move is choosing a side: log off completely, or build something.

That’s it for this week,

in this issue:

• why ambition can become self-sabotage without clear priorities

• consistency over perfection and what actually drives growth

• how to structure your time around real life, not ideal routines

• protecting your energy by choosing focus over obligation

• the 10-step action plan to protect your peace while being productive

I know that feeling because I used to work relentlessly in the mornings, evenings, and weekends alongside my entry-level job in fashion. I’d get home from work when it was already dark and still pull out my tripod to film a video. Now I’m thankfully in a much better position and have been able to leave my 9–5 to do this full time. But that doesn’t mean I suddenly have unlimited time. It just means my time is filled with different things. I’m in a different season.

Building on my last newsletter about dedicating one hour to deep work and sharing behind the scenes of my creative process as a full-time creator, I want to expand on that and talk about how I actually manage my time, and how I manage to do all this without burning out.

THE AMBITION TRAP

Something I’ve learned recently is that you cannot do everything exceptionally. If you’re anything like me, a type-A ambitious overachiever, that drive comes with many benefits. I will work relentlessly to reach my goals. I genuinely did not stop until I became a full-time creator and started earning six figures. That level of ambition can be powerful.

But it also means I find it difficult to switch off. I struggle with work-life balance now that I’m self-employed, and I have a tendency to try to do everything at once. When I can’t, I feel like I’m failing.

For a while I believed that being a full-time creator meant I needed to do everything to justify the opportunity. Posting seven times a week on short form. Being present on micro-blogging platforms like Substack Notes and Threads. Uploading a long-form video weekly. Managing brand deals, contracts, admin, accounting, podcasts, and events.

Eventually I realised something simple but confronting. It is physically impossible to be your best self across every single platform, responsibility, and role at the same time, especially if you are trying to build a brand and a business, not just be an influencer.

Read more

So in this issue of Frugal Chic®, I’m breaking down:

• The one-hour rule that changed everything for me

• Why most people never build “their thing” (even though they want to)

• How I structure my day: deep work, focused work, light work

• Why walking is part of my routine, and the science behind it
  The simple pattern that makes the whole thing work

Let’s get into it.

The 14 Hour Workday Myth

There’s this idea that if you’re trying to change your life or become your own boss, you need to be working fourteen-hour days. The reality is, most people don’t have fourteen hours to spare. They have one, if that - and that one hour is sacred.

The Attention Economy Problem

The real problem is that we’re living in an attention economy, and it’s only becoming more aggressive. Every app, every notification, every scroll is designed to keep you reactive instead of reflective. The more distracted you are, the easier you are to influence. The easier you are to influence, the less autonomous you become. I spoke about becoming a high agency individual here.

Most people’s spare time disappears into low-resistance activities. The gym. Seeing friends. Watching shows. Rest is essential, of course. But what’s often missing is building their own thing, something self-directed.

No one wakes up with a platform, an audience, or a business. It’s built in the quiet moments no one sees, in the spare 20 minutes here and there. It’s daily compounding from small, deliberate actions, not dramatic bursts of effort.

Why Focus Is Becoming Trendy Again

That’s why the analogue trend is booming. People are craving books, paper planners, film cameras, long walks without headphones. On social media, this looks a bit performative, but I understand the sentiment, because it gives them their focus back.

Frugal Chic is as much about being frugal with your time as it is with money. As we know, we trade our time for money, which is why we get the phrase ‘time is money’. Therefore, protecting your energy and focusing on high ROI tasks is a wealth building strategy.

Proof That Routine Compounds

Since going full time in September 2025, my business has generated over £136,000 in profit in six months. If everything continues the way it is, I will be set to make £272,000 per year, or £600,000 a year if my February revenue number of £50,000 continues. This means I’m pretty much set to become a millionaire in the next few years, which is pretty surreal.

Going from a £30,000 salary in the fashion industry, it’s safe to say I’ve changed my life in a significant amount of time. I would attribute my recent growth to a steady routine.

Everyone sees the glossy final product. In reality, being a content creator day to day feels like working a remote job on a laptop. Just like with money, it’s the boring, repetitive moments that move the needle. The parts that aren’t Instagrammable.

The One Uninterrupted Hour

The first thing you need, if you’re trying to build something great, is at least one uninterrupted hour where you do not speak to anyone. No messages. No emails. No reacting. You completely shut off from the world and focus on your work. No emails, calls, or scrolling. You just wake up and start working on a self-directed project.

Lots of people start their day with a workout, journaling, or a skincare routine. It really depends on what you prioritise, and it’s not that one is better than the other. My non-negotiable is working on something I own that gives me autonomy and eventual financial freedom. I crave the feeling of having control over my life and setting myself up, so a leisurely morning is a luxury I’m not affording myself right now. I don’t want to influence you in a negative way by any means. What works for you works for you. I’m simply being honest about how my life currently looks and the results it brings.

What is universal is how the day tends to unfold. As the hours pass, most of it gets filled with distractions. Notifications. Conversations. Admin. Small requests. By the time you sit down to do something meaningful, your mental energy has already been siphoned away. Dan Koe often references a physics term called entropy, a state of chaos, which is the opposite of the flow state. As the day goes on, entropy creeps in, so it makes sense to focus at the start, when your mind is refreshed, before the day can influence it.

That’s why I prioritise deep work at the start of the day.

What Deep Work Actually Is

Deep work, as Cal Newport describes it, is when you properly lock in on something mentally demanding and give it your full attention for a sustained period, no distractions, no tab switching, no pretending to multitask. The goal is to focus deeply enough to reach what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls a flow state, where you lose track of time, stop overthinking yourself, and get fully absorbed in the task. You’re not just ticking off tasks or “being productive”, you’re mentally inside the work. From a brain point of view, it’s like turning down the background mental chatter and turning up the signal of what you’re actually working on. It results in cleaner focus, better thinking and a higher quality output.

What This Looked Like in My 9–5

When I was in my 9–5 in fashion, this looked like creating content in my childhood bedroom with my phone taped to the window before I commuted to the office. Contrary to popular belief, I didn’t start creating content with the intention of becoming an influencer or monetising it. I was simply using it as a creative outlet for my love of personal finance. The point is, it was something for me.

I’ll share my current routine as a full-time creator, but it didn’t start this way. There were periods when I didn’t have eight hours to give to it, sometimes I had thirty minutes. Progress isn’t about matching someone else’s schedule, it’s about using the time you do have well. Comparing yourself to someone a few steps ahead is pointless. Take what’s useful, apply what fits your situation, and ignore the rest. If you’re self-employed or running a business, this structure will be especially helpful.

How I Structure My Mornings

I try to wake up around 6-7am. On the days I wake at 6, those quiet hours are the most powerful. It’s not about waking up at an arbitrary time, like 5am, just because social media tells us to, but trying to wake up at a time before distractions like breakfast, cleaning and other duties creep in.

I dedicate the first hour to the hardest task. You would think starting the day with the highest priority task makes more sense, like outstanding client work, but I don’t believe that leads to the best long-term results for you. It needs to be a self-directed project: a book, newsletter, course, eBook, something that you have ownership of.

The reason being, if you start the day working for someone else, your life will continue that way until you decide to prioritise your own ideas, goals, and projects first.

There are caveats, of course. What if you have children? What if you’re a carer? This has to be adapted to your situation. However, for the majority of people, screen time alone takes up more than an hour a day. It’s about trading that hour for something with a higher return on investment for you. You can also adapt this idea to fit around a full-time job, or just do the first stage.

My Three Stage Work Routine

This is the three-stage routine I follow daily:

Stage 1: Deep work. I start my day with writing. I aim for 1,000 words daily. Most creative work is writing, even if it doesn’t look like it. Scripts. Ideas. Strategy. Structuring thoughts. This is where you bring ideas to life. This is where there are zero distractions, and the quality of thinking is higher. Deep work is literal isolation: phone on aeroplane mode, no tabs open, no quick replies. Just one task.

Stage 2: Focused work. This happens later in the day. That’s where I film, edit, and execute. I might reply to an email or message in between tasks. It’s still productive, but it’s not sacred in the same way.

Stage 3: Light work. This comes at the end of the day. DMs. Emails. Admin. Accounting. Anything that isn’t urgent and is more of a nice-to-do. I leave this until later deliberately. Prioritisation is a form of self-respect. If you wake up and immediately check Instagram and all your messages, you’re effectively saying that watching other people build their lives is more important than building your own.

Why I Use 90 Minute Work Blocks

I split my work into 90 minute work blocks because that matches how the brain naturally sustains high levels of concentration. Human focus runs in cycles, often called ultradian rhythms, where mental energy rises and falls roughly every 70 to 100 minutes. After about an hour and a half of deep cognitive effort, attention, accuracy, and decision quality start to decline. Rather than pushing through and producing lower quality work, I treat that dip as a signal to pause and reset.

Why Walking Is Part of My Work

I also break my day up with errands and long walks. There’s solid evidence that walking improves creative thinking. Stanford researchers found that walking increases creative output by up to 60 percent compared to sitting. When you move, blood flow increases to the brain, and you shift into a more associative mode of thinking.

When I walk to get my steps in, I’m not just ticking off 10,000 steps for the sake of an arbitrary health goal. I’m thinking and strategising. Some of my best ideas have come mid-walk, not mid-scroll.

My Current Workload

When I first left my 9 to 5, I thought I would suddenly have loads of time. Instead of rushing a video in a spare 30 minutes, I imagined having a whole day to think, plan, and create. Six months into full-time content creation, that has not been the reality. If anything, I often feel more time-constrained now.

Part of that comes down to the learning curve. Managing your own time is a skill. Some of it is capacity, some of it is workload, and some of it is simply experience. I have also deliberately increased my workload because I have specific income goals. It is not only about money, but financial freedom is still the overarching mission, alongside maintaining my values and delivering high quality content to my audience. It is a constant balancing act.

This is what I currently prioritise each week:

• Seven short form videos, sometimes up to fourteen when I have brand deals (because it requires additional organic content to pad it out)
• Seven microblogging threads and Substack notes
• Two long form newsletters, one free and one paid
• One YouTube video, although I have not been as consistent here as I would like
• Book writing, with a target of 2,000 words per week
• One carousel post for my Frugal Chic Instagram, which I have recently started outsourcing to a graphic designer

Altogether, this adds up to well over 40 hours per week, and that is by choice. On top of that, there are brand deals, affiliate campaigns, and my own product sales, all of which require planning, admin, and delivery time.

There is also the relationship side of the work: events, podcast appearances, and meeting other creative founders for coffees. That is both social and strategic, and it still counts as part of the job.

It is a heavy workload, but this is the current engine behind more than £50k per month in revenue as of February 2026. I wanted to lay it out transparently because it gives a realistic picture of what full-time creation can look like behind the scenes.

The Simple Pattern

If you zoom out, the pattern is simple. It comes down to four rules:

• Protect one sacred hour.

• Do the hardest thinking first.

• Let distractions come later.

• Move your body to think better.

• Align your workload with your goals.

None of this is revolutionary. It’s simple. But with anything, simple doesn’t mean easy. In a world that is designed to steal your attention, protecting it with a strict routine gives you a competitive advantage.

Action Points

Action points

• Choose your one hour tomorrow and protect it like an appointment, no talking, no phone, no tabs

• Decide your self-directed project for that hour, something you own, not something you owe

• Put your phone on aeroplane mode and leave it in another room for that hour

• Take a 20–30 minute walk today without scrolling, and use it to think, plan, or solve one problem

• Move all admin, messages, and low-value tasks to the end of the day, set a boundary like ‘I don’t take calls in the morning’ if you find that drains you

The point of this is not to glamourise hustle culture, but to show the systems behind my content creation business as someone who is only 6 months into full-time creation. It’s a process and I am sure I will iterate, but right now, this is what is behind the results.

Productivity is often sold to us as busyness, who can work the hardest, the most hours. It’s really not about that. It’s about one uninterrupted hour a day, applied consistently - realising that this has the power to compound.

Quiet, focused, self-directed work is not glamorous, but it is where autonomy is built. That is the real Frugal Chic move, investing your attention where the long term return is highest.

Hey, hope you’re having a good Sunday!

In the last issue, we broke down leverage, the four main types and how they apply to your life. Today is the real-world follow-through, because understanding leverage is one thing, but seeing what it actually changes in behaviour and income is another.

For years, my financial progress was steady but slow. It came from frugality, discipline, and consistency. Useful and necessary, but linear. What changed my trajectory wasn’t saving harder. It was building assets, ownership, and leveraged sources of income alongside those habits.

Yes, I had privileges, like being able to live at my family home for over two years and increase my income through content creation. My path wasn’t linear, but the behaviours behind the shift are repeatable, and that’s what I want to walk you through today.

In this issue of Frugal Chic®:

• Why saving alone did not create acceleration

• How my early frugal habits shaped my base

• The mindset shifts that changed my income curve

• Why £100k is a behavioural milestone as much as a financial one

• The traits I adopted that sped everything up

• The exact practical moves behind the change

Why £100k changes the game

They say £100k is the magic number because after that point, compound growth starts working harder for you. Charlie Munger, right-hand man to Warren Buffet, once said, “Find a way to get your hands on $100,000, even if it means walking everywhere”.

At £100k invested, average market returns stop feeling theoretical. A normal year in the market can add several thousand pounds without you contributing anything new. Your portfolio starts generating meaningful movement on its own. It shifts from being purely built by your deposits to being supported by growth.

It also changes how you behave. With a solid base, you are less likely to panic, less tempted to interrupt your investments, and more able to think long term. The size creates psychological stability, which improves decision making.

I have personally found that to be true in investing, but what mattered more was income compounding and leverage compounding.

I’d like to say it was just time and market returns, but it wasn’t. There were traits I adopted that significantly accelerated my financial growth. Saving built a secure base, but ownership and leverage created a different kind of asset.

How my early frugal habits shaped my base

I started saving at 18, but like many students, I didn’t have much to save. I was incredibly frugal at university because it was the first real time I had lived away from home and budgeted money to last. I wasn’t thinking about financial freedom at that stage. That idea hadn’t entered my consciousness yet. I began saving from a sense that I should be sensible, and from a bit of fear and a scarcity mindset.

Read more

Compound interest is touted as the 8th wonder of the world for a reason. Interest that earns interest, quietly doing the heavy lifting while most people are distracted by short-term wins.

Return on investment isn’t just a finance term. It’s how I measure my life.
What I put my time, energy, attention and money into, and what comes back because of it.

Think about it like this:
Compound interest = the mechanism (how growth actually happens)
High ROI = the filter (what you choose to invest in)

Choose better inputs (ROI) → let them repeat (compounding) → get disproportionate results.

That’s how you get 99% ahead of people your age, you choose the needle moving tasks that you want to compound.

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When I was starting out in my early fashion career, I had zero capital, and I am not just referring to money. Sure, I was on a moderate entry level wage, but that wasn’t the issue. I had no leverage, no cultural or social capital. I was beholden to a boss, or rather 10 bosses (iykyk). I know what you’re thinking, that’s pretty standard for someone in their early 20s. But I’ve always selfishly wanted more. Eventually getting to a six-figure net worth, being my own boss, getting to 500k followers felt like a separate universe, or worse, it didn’t enter my consciousness.

Fast forward to now, I’ve built a lucrative personal brand, coined a term featured in Vogue, and I now work for myself. What shifted? It was a tiny vote everyday to build my dream life. Spending 1 hour a day making TikToks after my 9-5 seems childish and cringe. What I didn’t realise was I was building leverage, which I discussed here. Eventually my work was no longer tied to the hours I put in, it was tied to the quality of my output. I was unknowingly building a body of work, building a brand that could work for me while I slept.

Of course, I didn’t start out being my own boss, or making 5-figure months, at the time I had no clue about social media marketing (having done a fashion business course at university). However, I learnt an important lesson, that entrepreneurship doesn’t always look like a shopify store and 16 hour work days, it sometimes just looks like spending an hour of the day sharing your value with the world, in whatever format that may be.

That’s compounding in real life.

Small messy inputs, repeated daily.

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Here’s how I live a high ROI life:

Small, messy action:
To make a positive change in our life, we always think we need this big life changing decision. The truth is, we are already voting for the kind of person we want to be with every little choice. I used to feel that to go to the gym, I had to do an hour of training, just going for a light workout wouldn’t be worthwhile. Now, I see any small contribution at the start of my fitness journey as valuable. Like investing, I’m not going to put it off just because I may not have £1,000 a month yet. I’ll start with £20 just to get the ball rolling. The payoff? An identity shift. You start to see yourself as someone who goes to the gym, who’s interested in fitness – perhaps when your prior identity didn’t align with this, it’s proving yourself wrong in the best possible way.

Unsexy habits:
When we want to improve our lives, we gravitate towards expensive LED masks, a £50 journal we may not even write in, that new £500 bag because it signals success, but the things that usually compound are the unsexy, boring purchases that we’re reluctant to make because we can’t show them off on our IG story. For example, ages ago I invested in a Tempur pillow and my sleep has dramatically improved. This compounds because better sleep means better mood, that basically dictates my working routine, social interactions and enjoyment of my day.

Keep your circle small.

Yes, of course, network, broaden your social horizons - but those with access to you and influence over you, keep that limited. By now, we’ve all heard that famous phrase, you are the 5 people you choose to associate with. Well your true friends, therefore, you should pick wisely. This compounds because thoughts become beliefs, beliefs become action, action becomes identity, and soon, you’ve changed your life because of a thought. So, keep those who inspire you around, who set a good moral code and are truly happy to clap for you.

Treat your time like capital:
This is a new one for me as The Frugal Chic. I’ve always said I like to cook everything from scratch. But after getting a real taste of the solopreneur life juggling a 40,000 word book, 7+ short-form videos a week, one long-form, meetings, and two newsletters it’s safe to say I’ve become time-poor (completely self-inflicted, of course). It’s not my fault. I want to do everything and achieve everything before 30. So now my time feels like gold dust. Every unnecessary meeting makes me want to pull my hair out, but I just nod and smile respectfully on the surface. I’ve had to buy back a bit of time with a meal prep service, which I mentioned on my short-form content. Even just the trip to big Sainsbury’s, planning meals, cooking, and washing up adds up. Cutting that out saves a lot of mental energy I can feed back into the business. It’s £3.75 a meal, basically a meal deal. That’s how I’m justifying it to myself.

Build skills that stack, not just pay.
The skill you learn doesn’t exist in isolation, you have to take a step back and think about how it compounds. Sales leads to the art of persuasion, improved social skills. Investing could lead to emotional resilience or greater understanding of delayed gratification. When you learn a skill you’re not just learning the step-by-step processes, you’re affecting other areas in your life. Now, this is simply just my opinion, but the skills I think worth learning right now are personal branding, digital marketing, sales, and AI for anyone wanting to future proof themselves.

A high ROI life is not built through one dramatic decision. It’s built through quiet, repetitive ones.

- What you do after work.

- What you buy to live better, not to look richer.

- Who you let influence you.

- How you spend your best hours.

- Which skills you invest in when no one is watching.

Most people are living with compounding too. They’re just compounding distractions, bad habits, convenience, and short-term comfort.

It’s the same mechanism but different inputs.

The uncomfortable truth is that your future is already being constructed by your present routines.

That’s the compound interest of life.

That’s it for this week,

“Earn with your mind, not your time.” Naval Ravikant

For years, I believed the key to growing wealth was to do two things simultaneously: live below your means and increase your income.

Yes, while those two methods are the bedrock of personal finance, they help build stability and may even get you ahead financially, they aren’t the only factors necessary.

What I didn’t realise early on is that those two behaviours alone have a ceiling. They protect you from chaos, but they don’t automatically move you into the higher stages of what I think of as the Frugal Chic ® Pyramid of Wealth. To get there, you have to go beyond discipline and effort.

Growing up, we’re taught that working harder is the path to getting rich. The problem is, the rich don’t work harder, they work smarter, using resources and systems built over time. I’m not talking about nepo babies or inherited fortunes, but the growing class of so-called “everyday millionaires” being created quietly each year. According to the UBS Global Wealth Report, these everyday millionaires, defined as people with $1–$5 million in assets, have quadrupled in number since 2000, now totalling around 52 million globally. These people did not make their millions by not buying the £5 latte or trading an extra hour for £12, they used leverage.

A year ago, I thought I was doing everything right. I saved aggressively. I worked mornings, evenings and weekends to increase my income. But there came a point where I’d come home from my nine to five, open my phone, and start filming content immediately. My childhood bedroom was dark by the time I got back. A £5 clip-on light from TikTok Shop cast an unflattering glow across my face. My stomach was grumbling for dinner. The time crept onto 7 then 8pm. That’s when it clicked. This wasn’t something I could sustain forever.

You can only cut expenses so far before your life becomes joyless and you can only trade hours for money before time itself becomes the limit. I needed leverage.

What Leverage Actually Means

Leverage is a term that is often misunderstood or poorly explained. Growing up, I only ever heard it in contexts that made it sound risky, unethical, or reserved for people in finance. It was never framed as something ordinary people could, or should, use.

In reality, leverage is simple.
It is getting more output from the same input.

I truly believe that concepts like compound interest, leverage, and dividends don’t really mean anything until you witness them in your own life. You can read a finance textbook from front to back, but until you put the principles into practice and see the results with your own eyes, they don’t carry any emotional weight.

That’s exactly what happened to me with leverage. I knew what it meant. I knew it was important. However, it didn’t really click until much later.

When I look back, the real change in my financial life didn’t come from saving an extra fifty pounds a month. It came from learning how to stack different forms of leverage deliberately, often quietly, and usually without immediate reward. I was already doing it unconsciously through investing, posting content, and selling digital products, but it wasn’t until I’d put in hours and hours of effort that I started to see the benefits of delayed gratification.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but by posting content consistently, I was building two forms of leverage without meaning to: trust and media. By showing up repeatedly, explaining things clearly, and being transparent about my own journey, I was building an audience.

This is something that simply wasn’t possible until very recently. For most of history, reach was controlled by large institutions or gatekeepers. Today, a 20-year-old with a phone can have the same distribution power as a legacy organisation or public figure.

I recently watched one of Sumi’s film recommendations: Scorsese’s The King of Comedy, where De Niro plays an aspiring stand-up comedian. Frustrated by his lack of success and forced to wait for gatekeepers to even listen to his tape, he eventually takes desperate measures. It was very funny, I highly recommend. It’s a reminder that in the 1980s, fame was tightly guarded by institutions. That isn’t the case anymore.

Leverage breaks the direct link between effort and outcome. It allows work done once to keep producing results long after the initial effort, and to reach far beyond what’s possible through one-to-one effort.

There are a few forms of leverage that matter most.

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Any time you talk about growing wealth online, there are always anonymous comments like:

“this is only possible if you have rich parents”

Or

“you can only do this if you’re pretty btw.”

Today I want to talk about how envy and comparison don’t protect you or keep you realistic, they keep you exactly where you are.

How I Used Appearance as an Excuse

For half of my life, I genuinely felt ugly. I’m 25 now, and yes, I model, and yes, I get hundreds of people telling me I’m pretty online. But if you’d told 12-year-old me that, she wouldn’t have believed you for a second.

Growing up as a Chinese adoptee in the early 2000s, I was teased for my eyes, kids would pull their eyes to mock mine and I was asked if I could see ok. Everyone deals with some level of this at school, but being the only Chinese kid in my classes and never seeing anyone who looked like me in the media made it clear this wasn’t just insecurity. It was systemic.

Thankfully the world looks very different now. Diversity is celebrated, and I genuinely love my Asian features. But when people say the only reason I’ve built a successful personal brand in personal finance is because of how I look, it erases the effort I put into building something deliberately not tied to my appearance.

It’s also deeply ironic, because I grew up believing I’d have to work ten times harder to be seen as attractive compared to a white counterpart. I can now recognise that society treats me as conventionally attractive, but I never expected to benefit from “pretty privilege.”

What’s more interesting is this: I used to use the same excuse myself.

I tried social media years ago. When it didn’t work, I told myself it was because I wasn’t pretty enough. That story felt safer than confronting the reality that maybe I hadn’t built anything yet.

That belief didn’t protect me. It stalled my growth.

The Aesthetic Gap Excuse

At university, I watched peers become influencers with ease. They had space. Beautiful homes. Parents who funded the aesthetic before the income existed.

There was one girl in particular I was envious of. I already knew she had rich parents from what she shared online. Walk-in wardrobe. Annual trips to America. Endless clothing hauls.

At the time, I convinced myself it wouldn’t be possible for me. I didn’t have the aesthetic background. I was living at home on a £13k intern wage, still in my childhood bedroom. Yes, that was a privilege in itself, but I remember constantly thinking how much easier it would be if I had rich parents, a beautiful home, or if I were blonde and white.

Those thoughts became excuses. And those excuses became inaction. I was more preoccupied with lurking on their Instagrams than actually getting up and building something for myself.

Now I realise, it’s easier to watch and criticise than it is to create.

The Excuse I Regret Saying Out Loud

Around the same time, a family friend who did come from a rich family had built a business in his late teens reselling Rolexes and fancy cars. I remember saying directly to him, “well that’s only possible because your parents gave you the money.”

I cringe thinking about that now.

While it’s valid to acknowledge an advantage, I wouldn’t say that today. Years later, when I reflected on it, I realised something uncomfortable. Yes, having the comfort of being at home, which I had too, and having parents who were financially fluent in investments and business. But the business itself wasn’t complex at all.

My envy and comparison led me to decide it wasn’t possible for me, and therefore I didn’t try.

Did I actually want to resell watches? No. Did I possess the same skillset or drive? No. So why did it bother me so much that someone else had done it?

Because it challenged my belief that working for yourself at a young age was possible. It challenged the idea that the “traditional” route, going to uni, racking up £50k in debt, and starting out as an admin assistant for a few years, was the only sensible option.

When I really sat with it, I realised I wasn’t jealous of the business model. I was jealous of the success - of the fact that I hadn’t done that for myself.

That’s why I empathise so much with the comments I get saying, “it’s not possible for me.” Because that voice was once my own.

But the uncomfortable truth is this: those excuses kept me stuck exactly where I was. Not trying, and always looking for something to blame for a lack of success.

When you tell yourself something isn’t possible for you, your brain stops looking for evidence that it is. Over time, that story becomes your reality. That’s how excuses keep you broke.

What Actually Changed Everything

Now, as someone who pays rent in Zone 2, makes six figures a year, and works for herself, it genuinely wouldn’t occur to me to think like that anymore. Not because the world suddenly became fair, but because I stopped outsourcing responsibility for my life. I actually realised I had many privileges in life that I wasn’t using because I was too focused on pocket watching others.

Once I started building something of my own, I realised the amount of work that was required. I now have respect for anyone willing to put themselves out there or build their own business, even if they had a ‘leg up’.

Yes, some people have unfair advantages. Parents, money, looks, luck. That has always been true and it always will be. But spending your energy cataloguing other people’s advantages doesn’t move you an inch closer to your own version of success.

At some point, you either keep watching, comparing, and blaming, or you start playing the game with the cards you’ve been dealt.

You might not have financial backing, but maybe you have time, intelligence, grit, or curiosity. You might not have the aesthetic, but you have something else the algorithm can’t manufacture: perspective.

If I’d stayed convinced I wasn’t attractive enough or rich enough to start, the price wouldn’t have been insecurity, it would’ve been lost compounding. Time spent pocket-watching or delaying is time not spent building skills, testing ideas, charging properly, or creating something that compounds.

When you tell yourself something isn’t possible for you, your brain stops looking for evidence that it is. You don’t try, experiment or build. Over time, that story stops being a thought and becomes an identity.

And that’s why the most expensive habit is making excuses.

That’s all this week,

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