How Low Can You Go?

Matt Ragland
Jul 24, 2017 · 3 min read

I think about this all the time. It’s been a question I’ve asked myself almost every week for the past 4 years. We’ve lived in some tiny, tough places in that time, but it’s all been driving towards completely flipping our lives around and taking charge.

In August 2013 we left Asheville without any experience in what we really wanted to do with our careers. I wanted to work for a startup, and Morgan wanted to be a nurse. We went to Nashville for her to attend Belmont, and I started doing freelance web design and copywriting while applying to jobs.

I came really close on a few startups (see more of those stories here), but I didn’t land a full-time job until ConvertKit in November 2015. During those two years I was also working at UPS, as a teacher/coach, and for a real estate developer.

It’s easy to have survivorship bias here, as if all you have to do is hustle and try hard for things to work out. That’s only part of the equation. There is a single discipline Morgan and I committed to that made a real difference in achieving our goals.

Living below our means

Our first apartment in Nashville was a 500 sq ft studio with no windows, then we moved to a 700 sq ft duplex (with lead paint) before I landed at ConvertKit. We could have afforded a nicer place, but it certainly extended our “runway” several months. If we had continued to live in nicer house with all the trimmings, it would have cut all of this much shorter or driven us further in to debt.

We still have plenty of goals as a family, and right now the primary one is to pay off Morgan’s student debt in 3–5 years instead of the normal 10–15. That’s why we started travel nursing, and lived in the toughest little apartment we ever have.

Last week we left a travel nurse assignment in Chattanooga, after 5 months of grinding and living low. We’re ready for the next adventure, and are proud of how we accomplished our goals! But throughout it all I didn’t show too much of our apartment or tell the story.

To be honest, I was a little ashamed of where our family was living. Two people with well-paying, professional jobs signing up for another 5 months out of our comfort zone isn’t a normal part of the story.

But showing the messiness is a part of telling a full story about life. It’s also something we chose as a point of leverage to pay off more debt. What it’s really made me realize is how “low” we can go to make our goals a reality.

It’s not comfortable, but it’s doable. And you know what? IT’S OK. We know we can be uncomfortable and be ok as a family. We can be in smaller spaces. We can tighten up life and rally towards something we want and believe in.

Tim Ferriss is fond of paraphrasing Seneca’s question, “the simplest of food and the plainest of dress… is this what I so feared?” It’s a valuable exercise, even if it’s only a thought experiment.

I do encourage you to literally take a week or a weekend and live low, just to see how it feels and to realize you’re ok. That you can make it for a while if it moves you towards something that you really want that will pay dividends for decades to come.


Watch the full story and see a quick “tour” of the apartment


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If you really liked it, subscribe to my YouTube channel. I talk about how we work and build things at ConvertKit, and how I make things on a side hustle. I have a goal of 1000 subscribers by September, can you help?

Matt Ragland

Written by

Onboarding Lead at ConvertKit. Started a weekly vlog this year to teach everything I know, check it out: https://www.youtube.com/mattragland

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