It’s September and so far I’ve bought six.

On paper that’s a win. However, I’ve spent all year telling you to check your cost per wear before you buy, and I’ve never once sat down and worked it out on my own purchases. So this is the log. Every item, what I paid, how many times it’s been out of the wardrobe, which ones I regret, and the sum that made the regret cheaper than it should have been.

In this issue:

• The six items, in order, and what I actually paid

• The log: cost per wear on every one, and the wears each still needs

• The sum most people miss: what buying secondhand does to the real cost

• The two purchases I regret

• Marking myself against my own five rules

• Why 12 was the wrong number, and what to set instead

• The low-buy log template, to copy for your own year

• Where it goes wrong

The rules I set myself

If you’ve followed the challenge on TikTok you’ll know these. If not, this is the whole system in five lines.

1. Secondhand first. Vinted, eBay, vintage, before anything new.

2. Never pay full price. If it has to be new, there’s a sale, a code, or an email sign-up for at least 10% off.

3. The 30-day wish list. Write down the date you first wanted it. If you still want it 30 days later, you can buy it.

4. Cost per wear under £5. The price, divided by the number of times you’ll realistically wear it. Occasion wear almost never passes.

5. One in, one out. Something leaves for everything that arrives.

The rules are the easy part but the log is where you find out whether you actually kept them.

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It isn’t true, you wore autumn last year and you have the clothes. What you don’t have yet is a plan for using them, and the plan is the bit the shops would rather you skipped.

I worked in fashion for a few years before any of this, and I’m nine months into a low-buy year . So this is the wardrobe version of last week’s lock-in : five rules for the season, and none of them start with buying something.

In this issue:

• The summer declutter to do this week, while you still remember what you wore

• Why I wear brown, not burgundy, and what that has to do with your money

• The four jumpers I actually wore last autumn, and the six I got rid of

• Which fibres are worth paying for once it gets cold

• How to plan an investment piece so it’s not an impulse

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Declutter summer now, while it’s still fresh

This is what I am always trying to do before the weather does it for me. After I spent three months in my summer wardrobe, I know exactly which pieces earned their place and which sat there looking hopeful.

I keep a small capsule for holidays and I’m strict with it. Anything I’ve accumulated and haven’t worn this summer gets moved on: sold, donated, passed to a friend. It’s ok to let it go. I’d rather have a curated wardrobe than a full one.

The next thing I do is store what stays in one place and out of reach. This can look like a case under the bed, vacuum bags or the top shelf. You shouldn’t be looking at linen trousers in November, and you shouldn’t be buying a third pair of sandals next May because you forgot about the first two you already have.

Don’t default to burgundy

Every autumn there’s a colour you’re told is essential and that’s usually burgundy. From what I remember, it was burgundy last year too.

I personally prefer brown. It goes with more of what I already own, it suits me better, and I’ll still be wearing it in five years. So that’s what I wear, and no amount of styling videos will change it.

That’s the whole thinking process you should have before you rush out to shop. Not “is this the autumn colour” but “is this my colour”. If someone has to convince you that you need something, you most likely don’t. Stick to your personal style, it’s cheaper, and it’s the reason your photos from three years ago still look good.

Ignore the “new season, new wardrobe” propaganda

You do not need a new set of clothes every six months, nobody does. “New season, new wardrobe” is part of a marketing calendar, not a real one, that you need to adhere to.

So before you buy anything, work out what you actually wore last autumn. I do this through photos. I film myself most days when I create content so I scrolled back to last October and counted. The same four or five jumpers, on repeat, for three months.

Meanwhile there were another six in the drawer that I was keeping just in case and I decided to declutter those last month. Just in case, most of the time, doesn’t come around.

You’ll find the same, I promise. The pieces you love get worn to death and the pieces you bought for a version of yourself that doesn’t exist sit in the drawer. Start the season from your four pieces, not from zero.

The Frugal Chic® rule: you don’t need a new wardrobe every season, you just need the four pieces you always grab anyway.

Natural fibres, more than ever

Natural fibres matter all year, but as it gets colder they stop being a preference and start being the difference between warm and not warm. Wool, heavy cotton knits, cashmere. Alpaca or mohair if you want something more interesting texturally.

Acrylic and polyester don’t breathe, they pill within a season, and they’re why a £20 jumper feels like a £20 jumper by November. You should always check the label before you check the price. A secondhand 100% wool jumper for £15 will outlast a new acrylic one for £40, and look better doing it.

Plan your investment pieces, and be honest about what that actually looks like

I wrote recently about whether your clothes are actually investments, and the short version is that most of them aren’t. An investment goes up in value, whereas a blazer goes down the moment you wear it. The only way it earns the word is if you wear it constantly, or you do the cost-per-wear maths and it comes out cheaper than the fast version.

So if there’s a dream piece this autumn, a coat, a blazer, proper boots, plan it. Decide what it is, find out what it costs, and divide that by the paydays between now and when you actually need it. Mid-range, female-founded brands like GROES and Odd Muse put a blazer somewhere around £150 to £250, which is three paydays of £60, rather than one impulse and a credit card.

Then it goes on the list instead of placing it in the basket straight away. If you still want it in December, it’s the one thing you buy, with a clear head, with money that’s already sitting there.

The capsule maths

This is the bit nobody selling you a new wardrobe wants you to work out. Four jumpers, three bottoms and two coats is nine pieces. It’s also twenty-four outfits, before you touch a scarf or a belt. Add one blazer and it’s thirty-six.

A small wardrobe where everything goes with everything makes more outfits than a full one where nothing does. That’s what a capsule is. Not fewer clothes for the sake of it, but more outfits per pound.

This week, do one thing

Go through your camera roll from last October and count the jumpers you have. Write the number down. That’s your autumn wardrobe, and it’s probably smaller and better than you think.

Everything else is just the shops talking.

That’s all this week,

Mia xx

P.S. Wednesday's post is the one I've been thinking about writing for a little while. The full 2026 low-buy log: every item, every price, every wear count, plus the tracker I use so you can run your own numbers. It's for paid subscribers only, and if you've been meaning to upgrade, this is the week to do it.

Ask them again in a year, once they’ve got the bit more, and you’ll get the same answer.

I know, because I used to have a similar answer. On my old salary I had a number in my head, and every time I got close to it, it moved. Then I made over £100k profit in my first full year as a creator and the number stopped moving. For the first time I’d actually worked out what enough was, and it was a lot smaller than what I was earning.

If you read Wednesday’s Financial lock-in and worked out your Christmas number, this is the bigger version of that sum. But this is not just for December, it’s for your your life.

In this issue:

• What the research actually says about money and happiness (three studies that disagree)

• Golden handcuffs, lifestyle creep, and the time you’re really spending

• Leverage: the three ways to earn without trading hours for it

• The enough line, turned into a number

• My enough number, my FIRE number and my Coast FI number, worked out line by line

• The enough test for any upgrade

• Where it goes wrong

Obviously, nothing in this post is financial advice. It's how I think about my own money and how I work out my own numbers, and it depends entirely on your circumstances.

Does money actually make you happy?

Depends who you ask, and what season of life each person is in.

• In 2010, two Nobel prize winners, Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, went through 450,000 survey responses and found that day-to-day happiness (how people said they’d actually felt the day before) rose with income up to about $75,000 a year, then stopped. Above that, more money didn’t make anyone feel better on an ordinary Tuesday. It did make them rate their lives more highly when asked, which is a different thing. That study became the version everyone knows: past a certain point, money stops mattering.1

• In 2021, a researcher called Matthew Killingsworth pinged 33,000 working adults on their phones, 1.7 million times in total, and asked how they felt right then. Happiness kept rising with income. No plateau at $75,000, and none at $200,000 either. But, and this is the part everyone skips, it rose with each doubling of income. Going from £30,000 to £60,000 gave people about the same lift as going from £60,000 to £120,000. Every step up costs twice as much as the last one.2

• So in 2023 the two sides did something academics almost never do and published a joint answer. Both had been right, for different people. For the unhappiest fifth, the plateau was real: money helped up to about $100,000 and then stopped, because whatever was making them unhappy wasn’t something money could fix. For everyone else, happiness kept climbing with income. For the happiest 30%, it climbed faster.3

Here’s how I read all of that, having now lived on both sides of the first number. The first money changes everything: rent covered, no dread when a bill lands, a buffer in the account. The next money changes less, and each lift costs twice as much as the one before. And the money after that changes almost nothing unless you’ve decided what it’s for. Which is the bit almost nobody does.

When my income increased, I had the luxury to choose what I believed beneficial to splurge on, at what to save on. Some of the things I started doing have been things like getting more taxis especially for safety, I wouldn’t look at the bill when eating out because I’d made a conscious choice to splurge on that area. Also, I go to a luxury gym.

But there’s a lot that didn’t change: I didn’t upgrade my rent, I wear the same clothes, I didn’t buy anything designer but I do have a nice leather handbag already from Demellier.

Work actually allows me to live a more luxurious life because I sometimes go on work trips, meals and brand events. This actually means I feel less inclined to splurge on those things since my work is so intertwined with lifestyle. It obviously took me a while to get there.

Golden handcuffs you put on yourself

Lifestyle creep is what happens to the money in between. You go from £2,000 a month to £2,600 and the extra £600 doesn’t go anywhere you decided. It goes into a slightly nicer flat, a slightly nicer car, the Netflix subscription, a nicer gym membership, the eating out, until you’re earning 30% more and feel exactly the same as before.

Then comes the part nobody warns you about. Every one of those upgrades has to be paid for again next month, and the month after. So the job has to be kept, the hours have to be kept, and the pay rise you were so pleased about has quietly become the minimum you can now afford to earn.

That’s golden handcuffs. Most people think it’s something big companies do to you, but it isn’t. You lock them yourself, one upgrade at a time, trading more and more of your time to keep up with a life you might not even value.

The sum I want you to do:

Every £100 a month you add to your lifestyle is £1,200 a year you have to earn after tax. On a basic rate salary that’s roughly £1,700 before tax and National Insurance, more again if you’re still paying off a student loan. If you take home £3,000 a month, it’s about eight working days of your year, every year, for as long as you keep it. And if you ever want that £100 covered without working for it, you need about £30,000 invested to pay it. (more on that sum in a minute.)

Do that for the car finance, for the gym you don’t go to, for the flat that’s £300 more than the one you’d have been happy in. The more you spend, the more you have to earn, and the more of your time you have to trade for it. You don’t lose your freedom when you earn more, but you lose it when you spend more.

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Here’s the thing: the shops are right.

Financially savvy people have been putting a little aside every month since January. If you haven’t started yet, September is the last month where catching up is still easy. Three paydays go a long way.

So this is the autumn lock-in, 2026 edition. Same idea as last year, but this time the whole thing points at one goal: walking into Christmas with the money already there.

In this issue:

• Why September is the right month to reset your money, not January

• How to work out your Christmas number in ten minutes

• The pot, the standing order and where to keep it

• The conversations to have now, not on the 20th

• What to cull so the pot fills itself

• The autumn spending traps that undo all of it

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Why September instead of January

I wrote about this in Know your financial season. Just like you have seasons in your life where you focus on various priorities, your money has seasons too. Summer is for experiences, winter is for friends and family, autumn is the build season or the “lock in” season as Gen Z loves to call it, when you set the money up so that winter runs itself.

January resets tend to fail because by the time a new year unfolds the damage is already done. September gives you three paydays before Christmas. That’s enough to make a change.

1. Work out your Christmas number

Christmas is the most predictable expense of the year, and it still catches people out.

Nearly one in five UK adults borrowed money to cover Christmas 2025, mostly for presents. The Bank of England estimates households spend around £700 more in December than in a normal month.

It isn’t a surprise. It’s almost an annual subscription most people forget to budget for.

So work out yours: presents, food, travel, going out, the Christmas Party or New Year’s Eve outfit.

1. Go through last December’s statement if you need to, and write the total down.

2. Divide it by the number of paydays between now and when you want the money in hand.

If you’re paid monthly and you want it ready for December, that’s three paychecks.

That’s your monthly Christmas number.

2. Open the pot and automate it

The frugal chic® version of this is putting a little aside every month from January. If you haven’t already, September isn’t too late. It’s just a bit more per month.

• Open a separate pot and name it “Christmas Fund”.

• Set up a standing order for your monthly number, the day after payday, so it’s gone before you can spend it.

The Frugal Chic® rule: never save for Christmas in your current account. If it can be spent, it will be.

3. Decide what Christmas looks like now, not on the 20th

The pot covers the money and this covers the expectations.

In September there’s still room to have the conversations you can’t have in December.

• A secret Santa instead of buying for all eight cousins.

• A price cap with your friends.

• The adults skipping presents this year.

Nobody minds in September.

Then think about what you’d give if money wasn’t the point. A day out you plan and pay for. A printed photo in a frame. Something you cooked or wrote.

The gifts people are still talking about in the years to come and are rarely the expensive ones.

4. Cull before the pot fills

Every September I go through every direct debit and app subscription and ask one question: did I use this in August?

Not “will I use it”. Did I use it.

If not, it goes. I can always re-subscribe if there is a need for it, but most of the time, there' isn’t.

The frugal chic rule I live by is to be chic where it counts, and frugal where it doesn’t.

On that note, look for the summer subscriptions: the holiday fitness app, the second streaming service, the delivery membership you needed for that one heatwave. If this isn’t something you use regularly, get rid of it.

Whatever you cancel, redirect it straight into the Christmas pot. That almost makes the pot fill itself.

5. Watch for the autumn spending traps

I’ve been on a low-buy year since January, and for most people, September is where discipline starts to slip.

That’s not because a low-buy is deprivation. It isn’t. At least I don’t see it that way.

It often happens because after eight months of considering every purchase, a small voice says you’ve earned one impulse buy.

The weather is getting cold, you’ve been “good” for so long, the knitwear is calling.

The cosy tax: candles, new pyjamas, home décor. All of these are items you might want but there’s a recurring “need” for it every year. You should remember that last year’s pumpkin pillows are still fine and there’s nothing wrong with the pyjamas you’re wearing at the moment.

What keeps me going is remembering why I started. Spending intentionally has kept my flat clutter-free, my savings have gone up rather than just moved around, and I want less.

So write down the one thing you’re tempted by, and give it until the 1st of December, then reevaluate.

6. Plan December before December

The most expensive thing about December isn’t buying presents. It’s the six friends & family dinners, three drinks and two work parties that land in the span of three weeks.

Look at your calendar now and decide how many you’ll say yes to. Book the train while it’s a quarter of the price. These small decisions you start making now will add up by the time December comes around.

Style lens: the knit goes on the list, not in the basket

The thing I’m tempted by this autumn is knitwear: natural fibres, the kind that’s expensive to buy and lasts for years.

So it goes straight on my Christmas list. If it’s still the thing I want in December, it’s either the one gift I ask for or the one thing I buy with a clear head.

That’s how a low-buy survives autumn: the want doesn’t disappear, it just gets a date.

And if you’re the one buying it, for yourself or someone else, buy it properly.

This is something my friend actually shared with me and it’s quite an interesting fact.

It isn’t only the fibre, it’s the gauge: how densely it’s knitted. Feel the weight, hold it to the light, stretch the cuff. A dense merino outlasts a thin cashmere every time, and that’s what makes it a gift rather than a purchase.

So if you want to start your money reset in September, here’s where I’d start:

The key takeaway here is: Christmas isn't expensive. December is. Spread it across three paydays and it's just another month.

That’s all this week,

Mia xx

P.S. Wednesday's paid post is the one I've been circling for months: how much is enough? I'm going through the studies on whether money actually buys happiness (spoiler, they disagree), why lifestyle creep is just golden handcuffs you put on yourself, and how I use investing, side income and equity to stop trading every hour for every pound. If you've been meaning to upgrade, this is the one.

That might sound relaxed for someone whose entire brand is money but it’s the opposite. That one hour is the reason I’m able to leave it alone without stressing.

If you check your banking app every day and still couldn’t tell me what you’re worth, this is for you. If you read Sunday’s 30 Frugal Things I’ve Done Recently to Save Money and thought about how you can become better with money, this is the how.

In this issue:

• What I actually get paid, and how it’s split

• The accounts my money moves between

• The hour, minute by minute

• My budgeting tracker, free for paid subscribers

• How I pay myself as a limited company director, and why the numbers are what they are

  

One deliberate hour beats fifty anxious glances

The One Hour Rule is the idea I’m most known for: one focused hour a day builds more than eight distracted ones. The Money Hour is the same rule pointed at your finances. One hour per month, on the same day, in the same order, phone in another room.

Obviously, nothing in this post is financial or tax advice. It’s what I do, and it depends entirely on your circumstances.

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There’s a quiet thrill in knowing I’ve ‘hacked’ the system by doing something clever that’s maybe going to save me money, but it also might be more environmentally conscious or it might actually help me build taste.

Overall, consuming less has helped me cultivate a cleaner environment and the by-product of that is I get to save A LOT each month.

So these are some things I’ve been doing lately to save:

1. Used reusable natural loofahs I got from hotels and put them in the washing machine - they also save on soap

2. Started wearing less mascara and makeup overall - I’ve been wanting simplicity lately

3. Did at home manicure using the same set of tools

4. Left my food shop one extra day so I could get creative with the remaining ingredients and use up cupboard food

5. Wore the same silk polka dot dress to yet another event because it’s timeless and no one cares

6. I couldn’t get my hands on a certain book for a book club so I listened to an audiobook version for less £

7. I’ve been watching some silent films and films from the 40-60s as they’re public domain and free to watch. It’s a good way to test your attention span.

8. Went through all my expenses for last month in a spreadsheet to see what I actually spent on different categories

9. Brought home leftovers from a meal out because it would have been thrown away otherwise

10. Kept plastic cartons from grapes as storage for my cupboards - they work well and they’re not seen anyway

11. Swore I’d use up all the beauty products I have before buying anything new

12. For products I wasn’t a fan of, I’ll either give to friends and family or I’ll repurpose: e.g. shampoo as makeup brush cleaner, conditioner as shaving cream

13. Washing my hair at the gym 3+ a week forces me to go and it means I buy shampoo less

14. Spent more time reading Substack articles than scrolling on short form - means I’m much less influenced to buy things

15. Listened to podcasts about money and business inspire me to consume less and create more

16. Still using up razors I’ve collected from hotels to shave my legs

17. Committed to a low-buy year where I only buy one fashion item a month

18. Walks through nature - they’re free and sparked inspiration and gratitude

19. Stopped drinking alcohol (a very personal choice) but I just stopped wanting it, I realised I was only doing it to seem normal

20. Staying in most evenings - with my job I’m usually at a lot of events, conferences and speaking engagements, so time at home is sacred, plus saving money is a bonus

21. Randomly treated others because frugal ≠ stingy

22. Ruthlessly decluttered my wardrobe, because the items you own carry more weight than you realise

23. Kept my nice body creams in the living room and kitchen so I’d use them less quickly and it would be a treat (I also have dry skin so touch points are needed)

24. Burning all my scented candles to use them up (I won’t be repurchasing more). I’ll reuse the jars for cotton buds/makeup brushes

25. Made one big bolognese to eat during the week - this saved A TON

26. Switched to M&S washing up liquid- I’ve tried lots of own brands and this is the only good one

27. Switched from washing pods to laundry liquid because you can use less and choose how much you and to use

28. I started using a Stanley pour over with ground coffee instead of buying coffee pods and having a bulky machine

29. Sewed up a hole in a pair of jeans

30. Buying most of my clothing secondhand because you often get the best discounts

I get some of these are ‘normal’ but tbh I think we need a bit more normal on social media.

Hopefully this gave you some inspo.

Mia xx

P.S. Everything above is what you should do. On Wednesday, I will be going through how you can do it. I’ll be walking you through my actual monthly money routine for paid subscribers, with my real numbers, the tracker I use (yours to keep) and how I pay myself as a limited company director.

I’ve always been an optimist. That doesn’t mean I ignore the challenges, but I honestly feel (as cringe as it sounds) that if you want to achieve something, you very much can - especially in the day and age of social media and content.

Let’s take me for example, on paper, I shouldn’t be doing what I am doing. I am not a finance expert, I don’t have a finance degree I don’t have financially literate parents.

I have privileges. I lived at home for 2 years after uni, I come from a stable home with supportive parents and I grew up middle class.

But I still am a ‘normal’ person. I went to a state school, was shy growing up and didn’t have a ton of financial abundance.

Now I have:

• An £400k+ net worth

• £100k+ saved and invested

• 1m personal brand

And I’m 25.

I know this is completely unusual, but if you have an open mind and you’re actually willing to put the work in, you’re in the right place.

Today I want to break down how to achieve lucky girl syndrome.

And not in the delusional “I just sit there and everything magically works out for me” way.

I mean the kind of lucky girl syndrome where you intentionally put yourself in better rooms, around better people, with better ideas, so more opportunities can actually find you.

Because I think we need to talk about privilege differently.

Privilege isn’t always just something you are born with.

Sometimes, privilege can be created.

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Lately, I’ve been thinking about the point where upgrading your life stops improving it.

So let’s talk about how to define your ‘enough’ and identify your Chic Ceiling.

In this issue

• Why spending more doesn’t always improve your life

• The psychology behind getting used to upgrades

• How over-optimisation can actually make life feel worse

• Why owning more creates its own mental load

• How to work out where your own Chic Ceiling is

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Why spending more doesn’t always improve your life

Consumerism sells us a lie that by just buying enough, we’ll be complete. The ‘hot’ or ‘cool’ girls are wearing xyz. Everything has an aesthetic version of the everyday thing: hand soap, tea towels and even, surprisingly, sardines. This has culminated in an upgrade culture. There is a constant temptation to consume, to optimise both ourselves and our surroundings, but at what cost?

I’ve felt this shift. Becoming a high earner and being around entrepreneurs for most of the week, I stick out like a sore thumb. I got told the other day to buy myself a milestone gift for writing a book, namely a bit of jewellery or a watch. I’ve always wanted a Cartier Tank. I just think they’re timeless and incredibly tasteful. But as I’ve gotten older, built a £100k+ investment portfolio and a six-figure business, it somehow just doesn’t interest me anymore. I would probably be happy with a smaller-brand lookalike.

I can completely understand the sentiment behind this. Every time they looked at their milestone gift, they’re reminded of a huge achievement. But for me, I just don’t need a material thing to signify I have made it in some way. I can just reflect on my career, take a long walk through nature, look at pictures and celebrate with friends and family. That’s not to demonise material goods. I am still one to splurge on quality clothing, that’s my value, and maybe someone else values watches, but the point stands that as my life and situation with money got better, my appearance and possessions didn’t require an instant upgrade.

Once I could afford to, I no longer wanted to buy it.

I still wear the same cardigan to podcasts because it’s timeless and good quality. I wear the same silk polka dot dress to most events I go to (and I go to a lot, like three a week). I still live in the same flat with an unaesthetic kitchen and dreary bathroom in Zone 2 because that still makes sense for my life. I love the idea of owning a home, renovating it, and starting to collect home decor, but that’s the point: I know I like the idea of it, but not necessarily the reality.

I know it sounds a bit cliché, but I think this happens to a lot of financially savvy people once they get money.

For one, it took so long to reach a large investment pot, that now purchases are considered because that discipline muscle has been built.

Secondly, the push is no longer there. When something is just out of reach, it feels desirable.

Either way, I don’t see myself changing my spending habits any time soon.

The psychology behind getting used to upgrades

There’s actually an economic concept behind this called diminishing marginal utility. Essentially, the more of something you consume, the less additional satisfaction you tend to get from each extra unit.1

The first upgrade might make a huge difference. The next one, a bit less. Eventually, you can spend significantly more money for a very marginal improvement.

I think over-optimisation culture has made this harder to recognise because there is always another thing being marketed to us as an upgrade.

For me, it’s things like electrolytes when you don’t run or exercise enough to actually need them, or buying a new iPhone simply for the sake of having the newest iPhone, or another pair of trainers even though the ones you have look perfectly fine.

As you get more money, you should improve the things that matter. Things that help you feel healthier, safer, more fulfilled.

But often, that doesn’t come in the form of a haul.

When more starts creating more work

One of the reasons I think we have a ceiling is clutter.

Physically, you can end up with an overly cluttered space, which can start to cloud your mental headspace too. Your environment does matter. One study looking at how people described their homes found that women who described their homes as more cluttered or unfinished had less favourable patterns of cortisol throughout the day and poorer mood.2

Obviously, that doesn’t mean having a messy drawer is ruining your health, but I do think it shows that our physical environment has an effect on us.

You are also holding the weight of owning all of those items.

You have to store them, clean them, maintain them, mend them and eventually dispose of them. The more you own, the more there is to manage.

Honestly, I have started to feel this as a creator who verges on being a ‘lifestyle’ influencer. I try to be as selective as I can, only saying yes to PR from small fashion brands, makeup I actually use or skincare that I know I like. But in the midst of that, I could go to an event and get given a goodie bag, with no control of what’s inside.

Lucky me, but also, this piles up. I give a lot away to friends and family and yes, I am super privileged to even have this ‘problem’. But in a way, that makes my experience even more helpful for those who aspire to have ‘more’. 99% of these products I sadly don’t use, I still have a really simple routine. Suggesting that even if you did increase you income and acquire the 10-step skincare routine, it just isn’t always necessary.

In a similar vein, cleaning becomes more of a chore when every surface is covered in things. I’m not saying have empty shelves, but I don’t go out of my way to buy home decor or trinkets just for it to sit on a shelf.

At some point, you’re no longer buying something that makes your life easier. You’re giving yourself another thing to look after.

The Invisible Upgrade

A more powerful shift, I’d say, is making changes that aren’t immediately visible to others. This is a bit akin to that trend where people say, “If I won the lottery, there’d be signs,” but those signs are usually subtle or unusual.

This could look like:

• More investments.

• More time.

• Cleaner.

• Assistant.

• Therapy/coaching.

• Better sleep.

• Shorter commute.

• Emergency savings.

They’re a bit boring and unsexy, but that’s the point.

Some of these could result in a friend saying ‘you’re looking so well’, or ‘you look well rested’. You bought back time or mental headspace.

I’ve learned this as I transitioned from 9-5 to business owner.

The most common question I get asked all the time is, “How do I manage everything?” Posting every day on short form, once a week on long form and twice a week on Substack, while attending 3+ events and the occasional podcast or speaking gig.

The answer is: I get help. I have an assistant, editors and a coach. I work from home, and I chose to live 30 minutes from my old 9-to-5 office. I sleep 8+ hours a night and don’t have an alarm. I don’t have kids, and the list goes on.

Any upgrade I make now, I’m leaning more towards these kinds of things, because they give me more leverage.

The Chic Ceiling

Your personal maximum level of lifestyle spending where additional upgrades stop meaningfully improving your life.

Once you know what “enough” looks like for you, earning more doesn’t automatically have to mean spending more. The gap can go towards investing, saving, buying back your time or simply giving yourself more freedom.

So, ask yourself which parts of your lifestyle would genuinely improve if you spent more on them, and where you already feel completely satisfied.

For me, my Chic Ceiling is probably going on one nice holiday a year, buying some expensive but good-quality clothes very rarely, going out to eat with friends and family, maybe the occasional expensive meal and going to a luxury gym.

Beyond that, I have room in my budget to extend my lifestyle quite considerably.

In fact, I regularly have more than £1,000 of disposable income every single month that I could spend if I wanted to.

I choose not to.

Not because I’m forcing myself to save every penny or because spending money makes me feel guilty. There is genuinely nothing else I feel like I need in order to be happy.

And that’s quite a freeing feeling.

The more my income has increased, the more I’ve realised that there is actually quite a clear limit to how much lifestyle spending improves my day-to-day life.

After that, I would rather keep the money.

The Enough Line

To find this, ask yourself the following questions:

1. What genuinely improves my life here?

What am I happy to spend more on because I notice the difference?

2. What do I not care about?

Where would the cheaper, simpler version make me just as happy?

3. Where does the upgrade stop being worth it?

At what point am I paying significantly more for a very small improvement?

You can’t buy your best self. You become her when you finally stop chasing more.

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That’s all this week,

Mia x

If you asked me a question in the chat, I’ll see that this gets answered in the next one.

Read more

What I believe came before that, and what I still catch myself saying, is, ‘This is more of an investment piece’ as I admire a £500 coat. As a fashion graduate who’s worked in luxury fashion, but also has a keen interest in personal finance, I can see a tension between knowing what a real investment is and just wanting to justify a purchase.

So let’s actually outline what an investment piece is.

In this issue:

• What an ‘investment piece’ actually is, and when the term is just girl math in disguise

• The difference between spending money and buying something that can genuinely hold or grow in value

• How some women are turning luxury wardrobes into income-producing assets through rental platforms

• Why resale value has changed the way I think about buying clothes

• Whether having good taste can actually make you a smarter spender

  ---

  

What does investment really mean?

An investment is an action you take to buy an asset, it could be stocks, bonds, ETFs or even alternative investments like art. The aim is, ‘I buy this today thinking it will maintain and hopefully grow in value’. Returns with investing, particularly with equities, are never guaranteed.

In the stock market, you can make money in two ways, capital gains which is where your initial investment rises in value and you make a profit. The other way is dividends, where companies pay a portion fo profits out to shareholders. I wrote about this here.

Working out whether the fashion item is an investment starts by defining how it differs from spending money.

Spending money vs investing it

When you buy consumer goods, typically, you’re spending money, not investing.

It sounds super obvious to point out, but once the money is spent, you usually aren’t seeing it again. For some of my clothes, where I bought the depreciated secondhand version, like my Burberry trench which retails for £2k, and I got it for £120 vintage, this will sell for the same price. But for a lot of my clothes, I’d be lucky to get a tenner.

It’s common knowledge in the personal finance world that a car is a huge liability because, as soon as you buy one, it starts losing value. A new car can depreciate by around 20% in its first year and roughly 50% within five years.

But often we conveniently forget that applies to fashion and beauty. Yes, we are buying it because we want to look nice, we need clothes practically and fashion extends beyond the superficial, it says a lot about culture, identity and even politics.

Therefore, it’s importance can’t be understated, but treating it like a fully fledged pension is something else.

Fashion’s shelf life

The mental shift I made to think about purchasing and the industry as a whole is fashion has a shelf life, just like food.

And this matters, because if we are going to see an item as an ‘investment piece’ we can’t see it as something to consume and dispose of once we are done with it.

What this means as a consumer is there is false urgency created, touchpoints, PR moves that all culminate in you thinking you need to buy something before it sells out, but really, it’s a brand or retailer needing to clear stock.

Yes, I think we are seeing a slight deceleration with the trend cycle, which helps.

I’d argue we’re in the post micro trend era. We had all sorts of trends like strawberry girl, gorpcore, cottagecore. Of course COVID played a part in us all staying inside, becoming chronically online and buying for entertainment.

We saw the pendulum swing the other way to quiet luxury. This got rinsed to oblivion with even fast fashion brands like Pretty Little Thing even trying a luxe-looking rebrand.

So now, we’re left with a few notable trends:

• Maximalism: colour, dopamine dressing. A fatigue with minimal capsule wardrobes (BTW you can dress minimally and wear colour shock)

• More decades and styles being referenced all at once (suggesting a higher empahsis of individual personal style - or the pursuit of it) prep, ‘80s yuppie, ‘20s Art Deco, prairie, sport, romantic dressing, indie sleaze, Americana.

• Finding the thing instead of buying the trend. More emphasis towards secondhand. Not just because it’s sustainable but also because it’s cooler to have something no one else has. BoF says almost 60% of global consumers expected to shop resale in 2026.

What this means is actually it’s a little easier to be a consumer now than it was say 5 years ago when we were emerging from a post-COVID world because now there is more emphasis on individual style, wanting to be separate from the algorthim and wanting to consume secondhand.

That doesn’t change the fact that fashion’s shelf life is still much short than it used to be.

So, what items could you buy that might act more like an ETF than a reduced chicken sandwich from Tesco?

Rental market

There’s another way something in your wardrobe could start behaving more like an investment: it can make you money.

I recently attended a party hosted by By Rotation, and it completely changed how I think about luxury. As someone who champions intentional spending, I am naturally frugal. When I needed a dress for Cannes, spending £700+ on a Zimmermann piece I’d only wear a handful of times made zero financial sense.

The cost per wear would have been a disaster. Renting it instead felt like the ultimate money move.

But what interested me even more was the other side of the transaction: the women lending the clothes.

I struck up a conversation with one of the platform’s top lenders. She didn’t talk about her clothes like outfits. She talked about them like stocks. “I bought this specific piece knowing exactly how it would rent,” she told me, before explaining how she’d travelled to New York just to get it, without even knowing whether they would have her size left.

That completely fascinated me.

We’ve always known there’s a market for high-ticket secondhand pieces like Hermès Birkins, certain watches or collectible fashion. But these women weren’t necessarily waiting for something to appreciate in value. They were buying pieces they believed people would repeatedly pay to borrow.

In other words, the return wasn’t necessarily coming from selling the asset. It was coming from owning it.

For decades, men have been celebrated for having a tactical eye for things like watches and vintage cars. Seeing the amount of data, instinct and knowledge some of these women had for spotting high-demand fashion pieces felt like the same skill applied to a completely different market.

And I’ve started noticing it more online too. I recently saw a creator who said she’d made over £60k lending out her wardrobe, eventually turning it into her full-time job. Another lender shared that a single dress had returned 500% of what she originally paid for it.

Peer-to-peer rental platforms aren’t just useful if you want to wear something expensive without buying it. For some lenders, a wardrobe can actually become an income-producing asset.

I’m obviously not suggesting you ditch your index funds and start panic-buying Zimmermann dresses. But for the right person, with a genuinely good eye and an understanding of what people want to rent, I can see why it works as a side hustle.

And it also made me realise that I’d been thinking about my own wardrobe in a similar way for years, just through resale rather than rental.

Resale

I used to be seriously into reselling, more specifically vintage clothes on the platform depop in its ‘hayday’ before everyone migrated to vinted. I loved going to charity shops or looking on ebay to find things that were undervalued. Carefully researching what different labels meant from different eras.

This skill taught me to treat my wardrobe like a stock portfolio, there is no way I was going to buy an £100 dress if I could look on ebay and see it new with tags for £30.

My best moment reselling was volunteering at a charity shop. I remember tagging some items when I spotted a patchwork coach bag on the shelf. To the untrained eye, it really just looked like an old dusty handbag. To me, it was worth at least £60-80. I bought it for £8, I got home, cleaned it up and listed it for £80. As a 21-year-old this felt different to any money I’d made working in a gift shop or at my internships where I was paid £8.50 an hour.

Reselling taught me an important skill that I now use in investing and my business, to know how to market and sell a product. I didn’t just take a dull flat lay image, I showed that outfit it might go with, how it looked on, I used keywords and SEO.

While it helped with my business skills, it also helped me with developing an eye for quality.

Having an eye

Now, at this point, you may be thinking well I don’t want to see my wardrobe as a small business, I kind of just want to buy what I want. Well that’s where I think having taste comes in. Unlike the other methods that turn into fully fledged side hustles, I believe ‘having an eye’ is a skill you can develop.

Now, I am not going to write a whole essay on seams and ways to look for quality, instead, what I want you to do is start noticing. When you go shopping, don’t even think about buying something without checking the care label.

I personally try to avoid synthetics where I can, when I am shopping online I’ve got quite good at noticing when something has say nylon in it because it has this artificial sheen.

I often scroll on Vinted, not to buy anything, but as research (or so I tell myself). Being on the platform as a buyer or seller you start to notice the brands that hold their value and ones that don’t.

It’s not an exact science, but I’ve found that recognisability maters. It could be a £600 pair of shoes at retail, but if no ones heard of the brand and there’s no demand, it doesn’t retain its value.

Similarly, if lots of people are constantly selling the same item, and it looks like it was released recently, it does suggest it wasn’t good quality or the trend was too shortlived.

There’s so many factors you could consider but honeslty, it’s quite hard to describe what having an eye really is. It’s being able to identify out of even a new collection, what would be the item people would be annoyed about selling out?

Overall, having that level of consideration when shopping can almost definitely have a positive impact on your finances.

When it comes to ‘girl math’, I’m not one to get super offended by it. But that’s because I am financially literate. I do think as women we should stop downplaying our ability to be great with money and to learn about it. After all, we typically manage the household budget and are statistically better at investing.

An investment piece could be considered a genuine investment if you see it holding the value you bought it for, but I think it’s rarer than we’d like to admit.

That’s all this week,

Mia xx

Want more stories like this? Pre-order Frugal Chic for Jan.

But at the same time, something that has always served me well is speaking things into existence. Holding myself accountable publicly has been one of my tactics for growing as a creator. Whether it was my original £100k goal, or even now, my goal to get to a £1m net worth by the end of 2027. Being honest with myself and those who follow me about what I want, how I plan to get there, and why, that’s part of why people like my content. They are on the journey with me.

Here at Frugal Chic, we care about slow consumption, investing, and our personal finances, but equally, if you are as mad about financial freedom as me, it’s likely you’ve pursued some kind of self-directed path, whether that’s freelancing, side hustles, building a personal brand, or just being more savvy at your 9-5.

For this reason, I share with you the deeper side behind my creator business, the parts I don’t show publicly. Because being Frugal Chic is not only about what you don’t buy, it’s what you do with your time and how you get to your goals.

Road to £1m

Why £1m as my major financial goal? I’ve explained it so many times you’re probably sick of hearing about it. Well, it originally started because it was my FIRE number. I multiplied my annual expenses by 25 (because of the 4% rule) read here.

Although the criticism is that £1m won’t be enough to live off forever, it misses the point. I won’t be retired, I’ll be work optional. I’m working towards Barista FIRE, which is when you have enough to tide you over in terms of basic living costs: rent/mortgage, bills, and food.

So currently i’m sitting at :

£125,876 in my ISA and GIA

Read more

Yes, you could argue they are recession indicators but, I think I’ve always been drawn to these ideas.

There is something chic about knowing yourself so well that your refuse to compromise on your values. You know what you’re willing to splurge vs save on.

As someone who is frugal, but also leans towards the occasional luxury, I consume slowly. Not out of scarcity, but because I am incredibly picky, I don’t like clutter and, honestly, I already have an abundance.

Eighteen-year-old me, if she had access to the money I have now, definitely would have taken the chance to buy all the things my childhood self wanted, to prove I was worthy of owning those things.

Now, I have over £100k in investments and a six-figure business. I wouldn’t have got to that stage if I’d spent frivolously, but it also shows that now I have money, I no longer want excess. It’s just not aspirational to me.

Instead, I have a set of unspoken rules I live by. So that the things I buy getg used repaired and well-loved. These might seem extreme to some, but they’re what work for me.

1. One in, one out

Before I buy anything, I must let go of something else first.

I do this because if I just kept accumulating, I would end up with a cluttered space and I’d forget what I own. This isn’t an exact science, and often I find myself getting rid of several things before buying one thing, but it not only helps to reduce unnecessary items sitting around, it slows down the buying process.

In doing this, you’ll likely look through your possessions to see what needs to go and what needs to stay. You’ll probably come across existing items that are useful and maybe even decide to buy nothing.

Either way, you’re ensuring you are buying slowly and not accumulating too much in one go.

Gone are the days of the “haul”.

2. One item per month

I choose one category of my life, whether it’s fashion, home or kitchen, and in any given month, I can only buy one thing.

This ends up being a yearly challenge where I only buy one item per month. To some, this may seem extreme or even gimmicky. To me, it’s very helpful.

I used to have wishlists for all the things I wanted at the time. Wishlists are helpful ways of tracking your purchases because time might pass and you may not want them anymore. But I always found they left me feeling like I did not have enough.

Since I have been sticking to one fashion item per month, it’s made me feel a lot more intentional about what I buy.

Instead of thinking about quantity, I think about quality, cost per use and whether it’s actually worth trading my time for, because time is money.

3. I know exactly what I care about

There are a few things I really enjoy that probably don’t make much sense to other people:

• Good-quality underwear

• Anything that helps me sleep better

• A luxury gym

• The occasional £9 smoothie rather than an everyday coffee

• Meals out with family and friends

But I’ve set those things out, and they have a clear place in my budget.

I know exactly what I am willing to spend on, and anything else can get cut.

This is why I often get people saying, “You’re not really frugal,” or, “You’re not frugal anymore.”

I am. Just within the new budget I have.

4. Secondhand, first

One of my best fashion hacks for finding stuff on Vinted is keeping tabs on my favourite brands, with my size and preferred condition saved, so I can basically browse a premium store whenever I want to.

I have friends asking, “How do you always find such good stuff on Vinted?”

Really, it’s because I’m using it differently.

I like items to shape the algorithm. If I am interested in an item, I’ll try it on in-store and then find it on Vinted.

I’ll also go to affluent areas like Chelsea or Battersea Power Station, take note of the brands stocked there and then look them up on Vinted for 50% off.

5. Check the care label

The care label tells you a lot of what you need to know about whether an item is worth your money.

Look, I am not 100% anti-polyester. It has its use cases in technical garments and occasionwear, but overall, I am not paying £100 or more for an everyday item made from it.

I want to know what I’m actually paying for.

Is the fabric durable? Will it wash well? Does it need to be dry-cleaned? Will it bobble after three wears?

A care label won’t tell you everything, but it can help you make a much more informed decision before handing over your money.

Low consumption is not about deprivation

For me, consuming less isn’t about punishing myself, depriving myself or proving how disciplined I am.

It’s about recognising that more stuff does not automatically create a better life.

I still like beautiful things. I still enjoy luxury. I still spend money.

I just don’t want every passing desire to become a purchase.

These rules create enough friction between wanting something and buying it. They give me time to work out whether I genuinely value the item, or whether I’m simply bored or being influenced.

The goal is not to own as little as possible.

It’s to own things deliberately, spend in a way that reflects what I actually care about and stop treating constant consumption as something aspirational.

That’s all

Mia xx

I have a BIG announcement. Over the last year I’ve been working on a long-term project, that project being writing a book. I will be publishing with Harriman House and my debut book Frugal Chic will launch in January!

Drawing on behavioural psychology, philosophy, and my own journey from fashion obsessive to self-made saver, Frugal Chic offers a commentary on how modern life quietly erodes self-worth and fuels overspending. I explain why traditional budgeting advice fails, why identity matters more than discipline, and why true freedom comes from simplicity rather than restriction.

Frugal Chic is not about penny-pinching, depriving yourself, or perfection. It’s about spending intentionally on what matters to you most in life and building wealth for your future.

Published worldwide and in all formats 12th January, available to pre-order now!

Pre-order now

P.S. I truly appreciate this community we’ve built here at Frugal Chic, you guys have made this possible and I feel so incredibly grateful to have been given this platform and opportunity. Regardless of whether you order, the weekly updates and deep dives from me will continue as normal :)

This is not financial advice. Do your own research. When investing your capital is at risk.

In this letter:

• The key differences between ESG funds, ethical investing and impact investing

• Why a “sustainability” label doesn’t give you the full picture

• Whether investing ethically actually makes a difference

• The risks of building an ethical portfolio

• A practical checklist for investing based on your values

I put off writing this for a while. Only because, when you talk about ethics online, it’s rarely a healthy debate. There’s no nuance.

Actually, true followers will know that I made a few videos about this back in the day.

I’ve found as a creator, a video about “how to invest £100 in the S&P 500” might get 50,000 views, a video about ethical investing would barely scrape 10,000 views and get three comments, two of them from bots.

It made me feel like people didn’t care about it, so I stopped talking about it.

Nevertheless, I think it’s an important consideration for many people when they start investing, whether that’s because of their religion, politics or personal values.

Now, you may be thinking that ethical investing is simple. Just invest in “good companies” and avoid “bad” ones.

But the reason it’s so contentious is because it’s actually much more complicated than that. There are also several different ways of investing “ethically”.

Is investing unethical

Investing, like money, is sometimes treated as inherently evil.

But investing really means owning part of a company and benefiting from its success.

When you buy a share on the stock market, you are usually buying it from another investor, rather than giving money directly to the company. The company typically received money when those shares were first issued, such as through an IPO or a later share offering.

So, in the secondary market, you are mainly:

• buying ownership from someone else

• gaining exposure to the company’s future profits and dividends

• benefiting if other investors value the company more highly later

In other words, it is not quite as simple as handing money directly to that company. You are trading ownership based on its perceived value.

Still, that connection may not sit right with many investors.

So, let’s look at what ethical investing actually means, the different ways to approach it and whether it makes any real difference.

What is ethical investing?

It’s the intention to invest based on your values and to avoid companies involved in harm, such as war, tobacco or alcohol, for example.

The reason it’s so complex is because ethics is obviously subjective. There is no one-size-fits-all approach.

This is where my A* in A-level Religious Studies comes in handy. It’s the only A* I’ve ever got, so best believe I am passionate about this.

Key differences between ESG funds

Thinking about this from a philosophical lens, you could break the three main types into buckets of ethical camps:

Ethical investing, as we outlined, it removing categories you are unwilling to profit from. You might exclude tobacco, weapons, gambling, fossil fuels or companies involved in animal testing. If we linked it to a philosophy, it would probably be most akin to virtue philosophy; choosing outcomes based on your personal values regardless of the measurable wider impact.

ESG investing considers environmental, social and governance factors when assessing companies. However, this is not necessarily about morality. A fund manager might consider climate regulation, employee treatment or board quality because these issues could affect a company’s future profits and risks. It’s more about ‘stakeholder capitalism’, the idea that a company’s long-term success depends not only on its shareholders, but also on its employees, customers, communities, regulators and the environment.

Impact investing goes further. It aims to produce a measurable environmental or social outcome alongside a financial return, such as financing renewable-energy infrastructure, affordable housing or access to healthcare. This is akin to consequentialism - an action is judged by the outcome it creates. From this perspective, the important question is not whether your portfolio looks ethical, but whether your investment actually reduces harm or creates something positive.

why a ‘sustainability’ label doesn’t give you the full picture

An ESG fund might own a fossil-fuel producer because it is better governed than its competitors. An “improvers” fund might deliberately invest in a polluting company because the manager believes it can encourage that business to transition.

Meanwhile, an exclusion fund may refuse to own that company at all.

This disparity is evidenced by one major study that compared ESG ratings from six different providers and found that their scores were sometimes only 38 per cent correlated.

This means the same company could receive a strong sustainability rating from one provider and a much weaker rating from another. That does not make ESG scores reduntant, but it does mean they should not be treated as a universal verdict on whether a company is “good”. Source: Review of Finance

The risks of ethical investing

Alternatively, you could choose individual stocks. Maybe specifically investing in renewable energy companies, or meat alternatives. But, as we know, choosing those is far more risky than picking a fund. You need time to research and stay up to date with news, consider the timing and looking at balance sheets - as opposed to being invested in one fund that tracks an index passively.

The next best thing is an ethical or ESG fund, which can offer much broader diversification. However, the trade-off is that the fund may not perfectly match your personal ethics, and its exclusions may affect its performance.

For example, over the five years to June 2026, the MSCI World SRI Index returned 10.73 per cent a year, compared with 11.47 per cent for the standard MSCI World Index.

One reason ethical funds can fall behind is that they may exclude entire sectors that happen to perform well. For example, funds avoiding oil, gas or defence companies may underperform during periods when energy or defence stocks are booming.

But this is where the nuance comes in.

Over the ten years to June 2026, the same ethical index actually performed slightly better than the standard index. So ethical investing does not automatically mean accepting lower returns.

It simply means your portfolio will be different from the wider market. Sometimes those differences will help performance, and sometimes they will hurt it.

As you can see, like most things in life, there is a trade-off. You might get closer to your personal values, but you may accept less diversification, higher fees or periods of underperformance in return.

Whether investing ethically actually makes a difference

So, at this point, you may be wondering whether ethical investing actually makes a difference. Does it affect the economy, improve people’s wellbeing or help reduce harm?

When you are starting out and investing £100, it can feel like your money will not make much of an impact.

And honestly, on its own, it probably will not. The board members of a multimillion-pound company are unlikely to notice that one person has chosen not to invest in it.

However, when millions of individual investors and large pension funds make similar choices, companies are more likely to pay attention. Your £100 may feel small, but it becomes part of a much bigger movement, so choosing to invest based on your values is not pointless.

A 2025 Harvard Business School working paper found that impact investors were more likely than conventional private-equity investors to fund companies in disadvantaged areas and businesses with minority founders. After receiving funding, those companies were also more likely to hire women, minority workers, people with fewer qualifications and lower-income workers.

They also distributed pay increases more favourably towards minority employees and workers outside senior management. The study has not yet completed the full academic publication process, so we should not treat it as the final word, but it suggests that direct investment can influence real employment outcomes. Read the Harvard Business School research.

The evidence against it

A study published in the Review of Finance found that socially responsible funds did select companies with lower pollution, higher employee satisfaction, better workplace safety and greater board diversity.

However, the researchers found no significant evidence that money flowing into these funds caused the companies to change their behaviour. They also found little evidence that the funds tried to create change through shareholder proposals.

The researchers described this as impact washing. The funds were not necessarily lying about the companies they owned, but they appeared to take credit for positive outcomes they had not actually created. Source.

But we should be realistic. A fund sold as sustainable may still prioritise investment returns over creating the greatest possible social benefit.

So, what could you do today if you are starting small?

Practical steps:

• Look into Sharia funds. These aren’t just for muslims, anyone can invest in them. They screen for companies involved in gambling, alcohol, or mainstream banking. However, you should double check each fund to ensure it actually aligns with your personal morals. Some possible ticker symbols: HIWS, SPWI.

• When looking at ESG funds, look at the company’s holdings. That will give you a closer indication of whether it aligns with your values. For example, a fund might ESG compliant, but have Nestle in there - technically it might pass through the filters but you don’t deem it to be ethical.

• Accept there won’t be a perfect fund. Often investing in individual stocks is far too risky and would require constant research or paying costly fees to a manager too. Instead, find the closest funds to your values and accept that investing can never be 100% ethical because ethics is subjective.

These are the most ‘popular’ ESG funds

London Stock Exchange

• EEWD: Global developed-market ESG and climate-transition ETF.

• V3AB: Broad global ESG ETF from Vanguard.

• SAWD: Developed-market companies with stronger ESG characteristics.

US stock exchanges

• ESGU: Large US ESG ETF with broad exposure to American companies.

• ESGV: Low-cost US market ETF excluding controversial industries.

• ESGD: ESG-screened companies from developed markets outside North America.

Overall, I would argue that investing ‘ethically’ is a good thing. If it’s a non-negotiable for you, then go for it.

However, I personally stick to broad-market ETFs in my portfolio, and I stand by that as my own choice based on what I feel comfortable with, my risk tolerance, time horizon and investment goals.

I am not writing this to preach something I do not practise, but to make you more aware of an option you may want to consider if it aligns with your values.

Frugal Chic is all about spending according to what you value, and your investments are no different.

Let me know what you think in the comments. Let’s have a healthy discussion.

Mia xx

They oscillate between two extremes. Buying everything in sight, then the guilt kicks in or they genuinely run out of money, so they enter a period of extreme restriction.

£0 spend, saying no to all plans, feeling miserable until payday comes.

The cycle begins again and they return to their old habits.

This happens because we often equate saving money with not buying anything. We convince ourselves that being “good with money” means depriving ourselves of everything we enjoy.

The savvier approach is to become Frugal Chic®.

You know exactly what you are willing to splurge on, what you are happy to save on and, most importantly, why.

In this issue:

• Why extreme saving rarely creates lasting habits

• The difference between being frugal and feeling deprived

• How to create your own Splurge vs Save list

• What your bank statement reveals about your real priorities

• How to make your spending better reflect your values

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Create your Splurge vs Save list

Open the Notes app on your phone and create two headings:

Underneath each heading, write ten things.

Your splurges should be the things that light you up. They add value to your life, making it easier and more enjoyable.

It could be:

• Consistent Pilates classes

• Going to the pub with your friends on a Friday

• Travelling

• High-quality shoes

• An arguably unhealthy addiction to M&S cookies

I do not care what it is. There is no one-size-fits all. Yes, there’s obviously things that are negative to your health or probably a bad idea to consistently splurge on, but apart from that, think about what you consistently put your card down for without thought.

Your saves, on the other hand, are the things you either do not care about or actively resent spending money on.

It could be:

• Taxis when public transport would have been fine

• Trend-led clothes you only wear once

• Food delivery because you forgot to plan dinner

• Beauty treatments you no longer enjoy

• Subscriptions you barely use

Maybe you kept getting lash extensions even though they irritated your eyes. Maybe you got a few takeaways that made you feel sluggish afterwards.

Your save list is not about cutting everything. It is about identifying the spending that gives you very little in return.

Once you have written your list, pin the note to the top of your phone.

Then we’ll look at how to actually measure value when making purchases.

Read more

This is a quote I heard fellow creator Erin Confortini say in a video, and I’ve been obsessed with it ever since. It perfectly encapsulates how I feel about wealth.

Growing up, I always aspired to be rich. Perhaps when I was younger, it was the glossy luxury I pictured: a high-rise flat, a handbag dog, and a walk-in wardrobe. Over time, it evolved. As I realised the value of money, or rather how much of my life had to be traded in exchange for it, I became less focused on the outward projection of wealth and more focused on how it made me feel inside.

It wasn’t necessarily the state of having a lot of money that I was hoping for. It was the increase in time, choice, and autonomy.

Now, at 25, I am much closer to my financial goals than I could have realised.

I have a solid emergency fund and, being self-employed, have set up accounts such as a private pension.

I’ve built a £100k+ investment portfolio.

A £400k+ company.

That was a far-distant reality for the 18-year-old starting out with £0 and no clue what she was doing.

Over time, I’ve noticed that each little milestone has unlocked a bit of financial freedom for me.

In this issue:

• Why financial freedom is not one single destination

• How to recognise the earlier stages of freedom before you reach full financial independence

• Why “enough” matters more than endlessly chasing bigger numbers

• The role of emergency funds, investing, Coast FI, and work-optional wealth

• Why every level of financial freedom gives you more choice, not just more money

For most of us, we often speak about financial freedom in terms of reaching a huge, lofty number, such as £1 million. Phrases like “I want to be rich” and “One day, when I win the lottery, I’ll do X” hint that it is often used as shorthand for a better life, yet the specifics are rarely made explicit.

For some, freedom means the ability to do meaningful work rather than simply well-paid work. For others, it means spending time with friends and family without mentally calculating the cost of every decision. It may mean living in a safe area, having time to rest, or moving through the day without the constant pressure to monetise every spare hour.

This is part of the problem. Financial freedom is often discussed as though it were a distant and abstract ideal, reserved for people who are already privileged. But in reality, it’s not a one-size-fits-all idea, and it doesn’t appear all at once. In fact, you cross many different stages of financial freedom in life, which I call the Freedom Ladder.

The Freedom Ladder

There are milestones along the way that unlock varying levels of financial freedom.

Defining enough

The first is conceptual. It is the shift from assuming that freedom requires endless accumulation to recognising that it begins with defining what is enough. If your desires are permanently increasing, no level of income will ever satisfy you. But if you are clear on what makes a good life for you, rather than what looks impressive to other people, you need far less money to feel settled, complete, and in control.

Having a buffer

The second level is protective. This is where a cash buffer, or what I call a cushion fund, begins to change your relationship with work and risk. A healthy emergency fund gives you the ability to leave situations that are harmful, unstable, or simply no longer right for you.

That may be a job, a relationship, a living arrangement, or a period of financial chaos. The ability to walk away is one of the earliest and most important forms of freedom money can buy.

It also gives you protection if you lose your job through redundancy or another circumstance and have to find a new one, as it reduces the urgency to take any new job you can get.

Building momentum

The third level is momentum. For many people, reaching six figures in invested assets marks a significant psychological and financial turning point. At this stage, investment growth begins to feel more visible.

The market’s movements, for better or worse, start to have a noticeable effect on your portfolio, and the mathematics of compounding become easier to believe because you can see them happening in real time.

Your money is no longer growing only because of what you add to it each month. Increasingly, it begins to generate growth on its own.

Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that “money makes money”, and while the phrase is simplistic, the principle is sound. Capital, once accumulated, has the capacity to reproduce itself.

Coast FI

The fourth level is what many now call Coast FI. This is the point at which, even if you never invested another pound, the money you have already built would still be enough, given time and compound growth, to support you later in life.

Coast FI matters because it changes the function of your labour. You no longer work primarily to secure your distant future. That future has, in large part, already been funded.

Work can then become about covering present-day living costs, exploring different priorities, or simply reducing the intensity of the race.

Work-optional status

The fifth level is full work-optional status, often associated with a financial independence number, which we’ll discuss shortly. This is the point at which your assets can sustain your lifestyle indefinitely, or at least for the foreseeable future, without requiring employment income.

It does not necessarily mean retiring in the traditional sense. It means choice. You can continue working if you want to, but not because you have no alternative.

Freedom arrives in stages

This is why it is so limiting to imagine that freedom begins only at a net worth of £1 million.

In reality, most people encounter meaningful forms of financial freedom much earlier than that. They experience it when they build savings that allow them to leave a situation, or when their investments begin to carry part of the load.

Freedom does not suddenly arrive one morning in its final form. You pass through varying degrees of it along the way.

Every level I have passed, I’ve gained slightly more confidence which actually changed the way I moved through the world.

In my humble opinion, in order to achieve great things in life, you have to be a bit unhinged. By that, I mean committed to your goals, with an unwavering curiosity and desire to learn. Researching, having nerdy conversations and experimenting.

That’s what the world of finance felt like for me as a fashion student. It was so separate from what I was learning about and the career I wanted to pursue that it felt exciting.

You could say I went further than most people need to.

Most people just need the basics: a tax-advantaged account, a pension, a good credit card used responsibly and a high-yield savings account.

Meanwhile, I was learning about REITs, money market funds and IPOs.

But why?

Well, for me, I grew up with zero financial literacy. Going to a state school, I didn’t learn about it there, nor did my parents know most of the more advanced stuff. It left a gap in my knowledge. It was clear that rich people knew something I didn’t, and I wanted to find out.

In this issue:

• Why being slightly obsessed with money can help you build financial security

• The simple systems I use to automate my finances

• My exact payday routine as a company director

• Why financial security makes money feel less important

• How to protect your time, energy and headspace by thinking about money less

So, I went on this path of wanting to get to my first £100k, which I did by 25 years old through a mix of living at home for two years after university, being incredibly frugal and working 60-plus-hour weeks across my 9-to-5 and side hustles.

For that period of time, money was the most important focus in my life.

But what if I told you the very goal is to stop thinking about money altogether? The beauty of having enough of it is that it works in the background. You set up systems and automations, and you put your values in place so that spending on what matters becomes easier and easier.

There’s a quote by economist Eugene Fama that perfectly encapsulates this: “Your money or portfolio is like a bar of soap. The more you handle it, the less you’ll have.”

This extends beyond investing. The set-it-and-forget-it mindset is helpful in all aspects of your financial life, not just your investments. I spoke recently about having different financial seasons in your life, and in the Curate season, the scarcest resource is your energy. Therefore, anything that saves me the mental headspace of manually having to transfer something, I will automate.

So here’s the routine I set up so my money runs in the background.

Read more

What skincare do they use?

What makeup are they wearing?

Where did they buy that outfit?

We start looking for the exact products they use, hoping that buying the same things will help us replicate the same result.

Sometimes this comes from genuine inspiration. You see an outfit you love, buy something similar and wear it for years.

But sometimes it comes from insecurity.

Those tend to be the purchases that end up collecting dust. They are the products we buy and barely use, or the clothes that look great on someone else but never quite feel like us.

Then comes the buyer’s remorse.

Did I actually need that?

Did I even want it?

I call this the insecurity tax.

In this issue:

• How you’re quietly paying more for your insecurities

• Beauty as a survival mechanism

• My relationship with insecurity and confidence

• How to reduce your insecurity tax bill

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I grew up Chinese in the UK in the early 2000s.

The beauty standard at the time was incredibly Eurocentric. Think blonde hair, blue eyes, a button nose and the Barbie type of beauty you saw in films, magazines and on Disney Channel.

I looked nothing like that.

I was also the only Chinese child in my school. Kids would pull the skin around their eyes, make racist jokes and ask whether I could see properly. At that age, you don’t always understand how much your environment is shaping the way you see yourself.

You just start to believe there is something wrong with you.

I remember pinching my nose and wishing it looked different. I watched makeup tutorials designed for features I didn’t have. I even ordered double-eyelid tape online because I thought changing my eyes would make me prettier.

It sounds disturbing when I write it now, but when you are young, you don’t realise how deeply the world around you can influence your self-image.

For years, caring too much about my appearance kept me trapped financially, mentally and emotionally.

I spent money trying to become a better version of myself, without realising that the version I was chasing didn’t actually exist.

I was paying the Insecurity Tax.

It is the money you spend trying to fix something about yourself that may never have needed fixing in the first place.

It can show up as clothes, makeup, skincare, cosmetic treatments, hair appointments, supplements or anything else sold to us with the quiet promise that we will finally feel good enough afterwards.

The problem is, insecurity is extremely profitable.

There will always be another product, another treatment, another trend or another version of yourself to pursue.

The Insecurity Tax does not just cost you money. It keeps you trapped in the belief that more is always better and that you are always one purchase away from being complete.

Beauty as a survival mechanism

Women already face a lot of additional costs.

Periods, the pink tax and the wider financial impact of the gender pay gap are the obvious examples.

On top of this, women are constantly taught that beauty equals success.

We know attractive people can benefit from the halo effect, where people assume someone has other positive qualities simply because they are physically attractive.

Women who wear makeup can also be perceived as more polished or professional in certain workplaces.

We can pretend appearance doesn’t matter, but that would be dishonest.

There are real social and professional incentives attached to looking a certain way, particularly for women.

This is why beauty can start to feel less like a personal choice and more like a survival mechanism.

I am not saying that spending money on beauty automatically means you are insecure. I still wear makeup. I like clothes. I enjoy looking presentable.

The difference is whether you are buying something because you genuinely value it, or because you believe you need it to become more worthy.

For a long time, I struggled to tell the difference.

Becoming attractive didn’t make me confident

You could argue that I have had a glow-up.

I became a model for several years. My appearance changed. I learned what suited me and became better at styling myself.

Strangely, though, my confidence did not improve when I became more conventionally attractive.

It improved when I stopped treating my appearance as the most important thing about me.

At 25, I can leave the house without makeup. If someone takes an awful photo of me, I genuinely do not care.

Ten years ago, an unflattering photo could ruin my entire day.

I was constantly monitoring myself through other people’s eyes. I would think about how I looked while I was talking, sitting, laughing or simply existing.

There is a strange irony in spending so much time worrying about your appearance that you are barely present in your own life.

My confidence changed when I stopped trying to build my identity around how I looked.

I found something else to care about

One of the biggest shifts happened when I discovered personal finance and investing.

I went down a complete rabbit hole.

I would come home and binge-watch videos about investing, dividend stocks, compound interest and the FIRE movement, which stands for financial independence, retire early.

The idea of becoming work-optional fascinated me.

I learned about the significance of building your first £100,000 and how compound growth becomes more powerful as your investments increase.

For around seven years, reaching that number became one of my biggest goals.

It gave me something else to focus on.

Instead of spending money trying to improve my appearance, I became interested in building an investment portfolio and creating more freedom for my future.

Personal finance was the interest that helped me redirect my attention, but yours could be completely different.

It could be writing, fitness, films, gaming, pottery, history, business or learning a language.

The point is to develop parts of your identity that have nothing to do with how attractive you are.

When your appearance is your main source of value, every bad photo, breakout or change in your body can feel like a crisis.

When you have skills, hobbies, ambitions and interests outside of it, appearance becomes one small part of a much bigger life.

Content creation forced me to stop being perfect

Another shift happened when I started creating content.

Short-form content requires consistency. When I was starting out, I would post up to three times a day while still working my nine-to-five.

I didn’t have time to make everything look perfect.

Sometimes the lighting was bad. Sometimes I had a pimple. Sometimes I looked exhausted.

I posted anyway.

Creating content forced me to show up on days when I didn’t feel attractive. It also got me used to how I actually looked when I spoke and moved, rather than the carefully selected version of myself I saw in selfies.

Ten years ago, I would have been too distracted by how my face looked when the camera flipped to focus on what I was actually saying.

Eventually, I had to make a decision.

I could either spend my time worrying about my appearance, or I could use that time to build something.

I chose the second option.

That does not mean I never think about how I look. It means I no longer allow it to take up the majority of my mental space.

The Frugal Chic approach to beauty

This shift also shaped my wider Frugal Chic philosophy.

Splurge on what you love and cut back on what you don’t.

I like spending money on experiences, education, comfort and anything that genuinely improves my quality of life.

I am happy to do the bare minimum with parts of my appearance that do not matter much to me.

I don’t get my nails done. Not because I think manicures are pointless or don’t look nice, but because I don’t enjoy the time commitment.

I get my hair cut around every six months. I use largely the same skincare and makeup products every day.

At one point, I was washing my hair with shampoo I had taken from a hotel.

To some people, this probably sounds completely normal.

But in an era where constant modification is becoming normalised, being content with looking like yourself can start to feel almost radical.

I am not trying to optimise every inch of myself.

I would rather build skills, financial security and a body of work that is not dependent on me remaining young or attractive forever.

Pretty privilege

I have spoken about wanting to decentre my appearance on YouTube and in short-form content. The most common backlash is: “Well, it’s easy for you to say. You’re young and incredibly beautiful.”

Even though I think beauty is subjective, I can hear this.

I have straight hair, clear skin and a naturally small frame, all things that many women spend a lot of time, money and even pain trying to achieve.

But we also cannot erase how I felt growing up, or the fact that I did not fit the beauty standard at the time. There is far more diversity and representation in the media now, largely thanks to social media, which has democratised fame and success for many women of colour.

Not only that, just because I am 25 does not mean I am not allowed to have a perspective on beauty, insecurity or the way women are taught to relate to their appearance. I hope that my future 40 or 60 year old self will feel confident too, but they’re right - life will throw new challenges at me.

I also understand that not fitting the standard at all, having severe acne or dealing with a visible condition can make it much harder to simply “forget about your appearance”.

Presented as a blanket statement, the idea of decentring appearance can sound ableist, dismissive or ignorant.

But, as with all of my content, I can only speak from my own lived experience.

My “bare minimum” will also look different from someone else’s.

For one person, it might include getting their eyebrows threaded, having a blow-dry or getting a manicure and pedicure. That’s what they need to feel they look presentable.

Everyone has a different definition of ‘enough’.

Getting braces, having surgery recommended by a doctor, treating a skin condition or making a change that genuinely improves your quality of life are all completely valid.

I am not against beauty, maintenance or changing something about yourself.

I am against beauty-maxxing culture designed to keep women on a treadmill, constantly chasing a new flaw, a new treatment and a new version of themselves that is always just out of reach.

How to reduce your insecurity tax bill

Curate your feed carefully

I used to follow a lot of influencers and models simply because I thought they were beautiful.

My Instagram Explore page became a never-ending stream of perfect faces.

I told myself it was inspiration. In reality, it mostly made me compare myself and feel worse.

If someone’s content consistently makes you feel inadequate, unfollowing them could genuinely help.

Your feed is an environment, and environments shape how you think.

This applies offline too.

I have had friendships where every meetup seemed to revolve around taking photos. There is nothing wrong with enjoying pictures, especially when you work in content, but there is a difference between documenting your life and living primarily for documentation.

Other people’s insecurity can rub off on you.

Choose people who make you forget about how you look.

Build interests outside your appearance

Find something you enjoy that has nothing to do with beauty.

For me, that became personal finance, investing and content creation.

I also love films. I rate everything on Letterboxd. I play games on my Nintendo Switch and have spent an unreasonable amount of time playing Two Point Hospital.

None of those interests make me prettier.

That is the point.

You need parts of your identity that still exist when you are not dressed up, wearing makeup or feeling your best.

Buy less

Buying less changed my relationship with my appearance.

I started experimenting with low-buy and no-buy periods because they forced me to become more selective.

This year, I have been doing a challenge where I only buy one fashion item per month.

It has made me think much more carefully about what my wardrobe genuinely needs.

When you consume unconsciously, you can start sending yourself the message that you are not enough without those things.

You need another outfit to feel stylish.

Another product to feel beautiful.

Another treatment to feel confident.

Buying less can become a way of proving to yourself that you are already complete.

It also saves money, which is a fairly convenient side effect.

Decentre male approval

I also became more conscious of how much of my appearance was shaped around attracting male approval.

When I was younger, I wore more bodycon and traditionally flattering clothes because I believed that was what made me attractive.

Now, I dress much more for myself.

Or, arguably, for the female gaze.

If my boyfriend hates an outfit, I usually assume I am doing something right.

But dressing for yourself rather than trying to predict what other people find attractive can be incredibly freeing.

My style may look boring or overly capsule-wardrobe to some people, but I know what I like.

That clarity is more valuable to me than being universally appealing.

The real glow-up

You cannot simply wake up one morning, decide to decentre your appearance and suddenly feel completely confident.

But you can begin reducing the amount of power it holds over you.

You can invest more time in your brain, your skills, your interests and the life you are building.

That is how you develop real taste.

That is how you build a life that actually feels like yours.

At 25, something I wish I could tell my 18-year-old self is:

“Your appearance is the least interesting thing about you”.

That’s all this week,

Mia xx

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It’s a phrase that always made me feel slightly bad for being multi-passionate.

Even though my life might look quite clear from the outside now, being my own boss, running my own company, and building a personal brand, the truth is, none of this was ever in the cards.

Social media did not exist in the way it does now when I was growing up in the 2000s. There was no obvious path to becoming a creator. No one was sitting me down at school and saying, “One day you might build a business from talking about money on the internet.”

And honestly, my interests were completely different.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an artist or a fashion designer. I would draw endless portraits, obsess over clothes, and spend hours dressing up.

At A-level, I became obsessed with philosophy. For a while, I thought I might go down a more academic route. I loved thinking deeply about ideas, morality, identity, and the way people make sense of the world.

Then I ended up doing a fashion degree, where I learned about the business side of the industry. I did internships, studied brands, learned about buyers and products, and started to develop a commercial eye.

Somewhere along the way, I discovered personal finance and became completely obsessed with it. But I never saw it as anything more than a hobby.

On the side, I modelled, resold clothes, and tried almost every side hustle I could think of.

So when I started posting finance content alongside my 9-to-5 in fashion, people assumed I worked in corporate finance.

But I didn’t.

I was just someone with a lot of varied interests.

And even though I now work for myself and genuinely like what I do, there is still a small part of me that wonders.

What if I had known earlier that I wanted to work in finance?

What if I had climbed the corporate ladder?

What if all the energy I put into failed side hustles was wasted?

For a long time, I did feel lost. I questioned whether I was going down the right path. I worried that loving lots of things meant I was not serious enough about any of them.

Every choice felt like a quiet rejection of another version of myself.

If I chose fashion, was I giving up academia?

If I chose finance, was I giving up creativity?

If I chose content, was I giving up having a “proper” career?

That feeling is captured so well in *The Bell Jar* by Sylvia Plath, where life is imagined like a fig tree, each branch holding a different possible future. Wanting every fig, but feeling unable to choose, until they all begin to fall.

That is what being multi-passionate can feel like.

You are standing in front of ten doors, terrified that walking through one means closing the other nine forever.

But I have started to see it differently.

Because the part people often leave out is:

“A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.”

And honestly, that changes everything.

Maybe the goal was never to pick one thing and ignore the rest.

Maybe it was to explore any curiosity and passion I had, develop skills in multiple areas, and synthesise them in what I do today.

Looking back, none of it was random.

Fashion taught me taste.

Philosophy taught me how to think.

Modelling taught me confidence.

Reselling taught me business.

Side hustles taught me experimentation.

Content taught me storytelling.

Personal finance gave me the thing I wanted to talk about.

At the time, my path didn’t feel clear. I had zero leverage, £0, and was just starting out.

I used to think I was behind because I had not chosen one clear lane early enough. My friends were earning high salaries in corporate from not going to uni or from knowing they wanted to go into consulting from day one. Now I realise that there is a different strength in having a non-linear path.

Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean every interest should become a career or every hobby should be monetised. It’s more acknowledging that every venture we try, even if we think it’s a failure or waste of time, is still bleeding into what we bring forward. It’s still a lesson.

If you’re at the start of your career or feeling lost like I did, the reassurance is that often this only makes sense in hindsight. You don’t always know why you are drawn to something, you just know it feels right.

So when I get asked why my content feels different, it’s because I bring my fashion lens, creativity from art, visual understanding from modelling, and commercial eye from my business degree.

Maybe being distracted isn’t a weakness, maybe it’s your biggest superpower.

Below, I’m sharing the exact prompts I’d use to turn your “random” interests into a clearer career, business, or content direction.

Read more

At the start, it really was a way to romanticise being on a £30k annual salary in London, living at home and not quite being where I wanted to be in life. I rarely bought coffee, I brought my lunch in a Tupperware everyday and I rarely bought new things. Now, my life has changed immeasurably as I made that switch from working in fashion and juggling content on the side (often working 60+ hours a week) to running my own business and becoming a creator CEO.

I now have more of a buffer to spend more freely. I pay myself a £50k income from my business and I often get to supplement my lifestyle with fun events and dinners as part of my job in the creator space. That being said, I still stick to the principles I set out on my journey to financial freedom.

While I’m not sitting there analysing every purchase, I still don’t buy much, and when I do, it’s on something I really care about.

Regardless of where you are, these are universal principles that can apply to many people regardless of personal style and preferences.

This is an updated 10 rules of being Frugal Chic:

1. Define your enough

Never stepping back to define what a ‘good life’ looks like to you will mean that you’ll always be raising the bar. This isn’t some wishy-washy gratitude practice either. It’s about having a clear idea of an ideal salary, ideal house price you’d buy (if you even want to buy), what a typical month would cost - workout classes, subscriptions. It’s about getting clear on what you’re working towards, not your FIRE number, but the number that would affect your everyday lifestyle now.

2. “Financial intelligence”

This is about closing the financial literacy gap. Learning about tax advantaged accounts, investing, pensions, how taxes work etc. I get it, you can go most of your life thinking “this isn’t made for someone like me”. I grew up with 0 financial literacy, and my only touchpoint of discovering the topic was talking to men about it, by sheer chance. But through watching YouTube videos from Nischa, Damien Talks Money and by listening to podcasts like Friends That Invest, I became so much more confident.

3. “Be chic where it counts, frugal where it doesn’t”

Smart spending is all about getting clear on what you value. There’s a misconception that frugality looks a certain way, on one end of the spectrum you have people reusing paper towels and being gross, on the other end, gaudy excess. Frugal Chic is a middle ground. It doesn’t mean never getting your nails done or never buying that iced matcha, it depends on what makes sense for your life. A mantra I live by is “you can have anything but you can’t have everything”. It’s simply understanding opportunity cost; what you spend in one area, whether that’s with time, money or energy, you take away from another area. So create a splurge vs save list - things you value vs don’t.

4. Value over cheapness

There’s a difference between being cheap and frugal. The frugal person really thinks about cost per use of an item. If you buy a £200 winter coat but wear it 60 days of the year, it’s £3 per wear. If you buy a £60 dress and wear it twice, it’s £30 per wear, even if the item costs less. The Frugal Chic woman measures purchases based on genuine use and quality. Yes, it’s worth noting, if your income is very limited, being cheap is your only option - and that’s why it’s ironically expensive to be cheap.

5. “The daily uniform”

Being an outfit repeater isn’t embarrassing, it is actually one of the easiest ways to become memorable. I have a personal brand, and someone once made a video saying, “Mia McGrath wears the same T-shirt and blazer in every video, and that’s what makes her content so visually strong.” And honestly, they were right. Repeating an outfit creates consistency. It gives people something to recognise you by. It becomes part of your visual identity. But this doesn’t just apply to content. In my personal life, I used to think I needed a different outfit for every Instagram post, a new dress for every event, and something fresh every time I was seen. Now, I’m not afraid to wear the same thing repeatedly because most people do not care nearly as much as you think they do, it is far better for your wallet, and having a personal uniform makes getting dressed so much easier. Sometimes, the most chic thing you can do is know what works for you and wear it again.

6. “Old before new”

Shopping secondhand is my default. If I want something I will look on Ebay, Vinted, charity shops, vintage shops, or even ask friends if they are clearing out their wardrobe before buying something new with tags. This is for a multitude of reasons but mainly I find vintage clothing to, of course, be much better quality, and you end up saving a fortune.

7. “Curate, don’t accumulate”

This isn’t about being minimalistic for the sake of it, but I have a monthly declutter of my wardrobe to save space, earn a bit of money and ensure all my clothes are actually getting cost per wear. I never get rid of anything I may actually want to wear just in an effort to save space, I am not the most minimal person, but I’d like to think I want a wardrobe and home full of things I love - and nothing more. I’ve never been a ‘collector’, I don’t value trinkets, and I don’t like clutter.

8. Reject lifestyle inflation

My income had quadrupled in the last year. Yes I actually only pay myself £50k a year, but the fact my business generates sometimes over multiple 5-figures a month, it can be easy to slip into new habits. Although I do now pay for things like taxis to get more work done or a meal prep service in busy times, overall I keep my personal spending at around £2,000 a month, basically the same as my old take home pay. I do this because if I kept raising the bar, it would mean I would then have to make a certain amount. The whole point of financial freedom to me is to increase optionality and decrease pressure.

9. Create more than you consume

Saving is great, but I’d be lying if I told you what got me here was just cutting out brunch and subscriptions. Instead, being frugal to me isn’t just about what you cut out, it’s what you strategically add. I’ve always loved side hustles because they are a way to increase my skillset and earn money on the side. It’s also diversifying income streams so I can again increase optionality and i’m never dependent on one person or source. This essentially means instead of being just a passive consumer, you spend more time on output than input.

10. Optimise for freedom

This all is pointless unless you understand why saving and investing money is important. Yes we all have different reasons, like short term goals, but overall - most people would attribute their financial discipline and efforts to wanting to achieve financial freedom. This comes in many forms, it could be your first £1,000 that means you could cover an emergency cost, your first £10,000 that gives you a buffer in case you lose your job, or your first £100k that gives you confidence that you’re a step closer to work optionality. It could be taking a pay cut to have more time or moving to a cheaper city, it entirely depends on your values and goals - but freedom is often at the heart of what the Frugal Chic chooses in life.

So I want to keep this as core principles and refer back to them - keep me accountable aha!

That’s all for this week,

Mia xx