Hey, guys.

It's Chelsea from The Financial Diet, and this week's video is brought to you by my own class. So I'm sponsoring my own video today because it's my house and I can do what I want.

So for those of you who don't know, at TFD we do tons of workshops and events and conferences and things like that. And we do every so often these longer four week deep dive classes. We have one on investing.

We have one on building financial foundations. Those come around every couple of months. And we have a really qualified credentialed people who teach those and they're awesome.

But when I was thinking about-- because I wanted to do a class myself-- the subjects that I feel qualified to teach a four week kind of master class on, the only thing I could really think that I am truly qualified to teach is building a real and sustainable business on YouTube. There are a lot of classes and courses and videos out there about how to go viral and get a lot of subscribers. And those things are good, but I also know from my nearly seven years on YouTube that even consistently going viral or having a lot of subs does not translate into having a real, sustainable business.

And as you guys probably know, I'm also very, very passionate about operating that business in a way that is ethical and equitable to its staff and genuinely working to build something that you're actually proud of. So this class is for people who have a channel or are starting a channel that they are looking to build into a real, sustainable profitable business, whether that's just supporting them as an individual or supporting a staff like we do here at TFD. It's a four week class starting on April 19.

And if you can't make classes live, there will be recordings available of everything. I also have office hours where I work with my students and answer all of their questions. There's going to be live kind of critiques and feedback for real channels of people in the class.

There's going to be take home activities and tools and resources for every single class to really help build your channel, diversify the revenue of your channel, and learn how to change just making videos that are cool into a business that works. Tickets for this class are normally $199, but you can get yours for just 150, which is $49 off using the code master class 49 off at the link in our description. I'm incredibly excited to be teaching my own four week class.

It's the first of its kind, and I hope you'll be there starting April 19. In late 2021, my husband and I packed up and left Toronto after more than 10 years of living and working in the city. Our town just off the coast of Lake Erie isn't actually that small.

It's 13,000 people, which is larger than where either of us grew up, but that's still about 0.5% of the population of Toronto and life is different here. There's no public transit, no skyscrapers, and everything closes at 4:00 PM and doesn't open at all on Sundays. A lot of people have advocated for relocating to small towns since the onset of the pandemic.

And while it's hard to say if my husband and I would have moved here if not for relocating for my job, there have been some huge advantages in terms of the changes to our lifestyle. When we look at some of the money we saved from no longer being city dwellers especially on little things we don't even miss, we're pretty happy with our decision. Here are some of the things we didn't even realize we'd no longer be buying.

Number one, novelty foods, convenience foods, and treats. Whether it was a vegan brownie at the coffee shop where my husband got his work coffees or a bottle of kombucha at the corner store by my office, it always felt very easy to drop $2 a day on extras. And in a way, this became more frequent because when you're in a big city you always feel far from home.

Long transit trips, working late, and spontaneous detours always make it way too easy to grab those convenient snacks. This expense did already reduce when the pandemic hit and we started working from home, but it still occurred a few times each week with things like grabbing a protein bar at the grocery store for the walk back to our apartment. Overall, this has resulted in anywhere from $40 to $60 in savings any given month.

Number two, bar visits, coffee dates, and excessive dining out. Our district actually has a pretty decent food scene due to all the local agriculture, but nevertheless, when we started making friends we noticed that asking someone to go out for coffee or go out for drinks wasn't the default like it was in the city. In five months of living here, I've never once met someone for coffee or drinks.

I've been far more comfortable hosting at my place and being hosted at others' places or we'll hang out at the park or beach. Part of me wonders if it's because we don't have as many new places here that we feel compelled to check out or because of how limiting the operating hours are here. But I think it's more likely that entertaining at home feels more exciting when you actually have the space.

I wasn't huge on dining out, but loved a good coffee date. So compared to pre-pandemic I'm still saving anywhere from $50 to $100 a month. Number three, random grocery visits.

At my old apartment we lived a short walk away from three different grocery stores, a half dozen produce stands, and countless convenience stores and drugstores. Here, there are only two grocery stores in town. One of them is superstore where we can buy a lot of our home goods and toiletries.

Everyone knows that you can not only save money, but also have a more organized meal planning experience if you actually pre-plan your grocery trips. Well, I can safely say that it's much easier to force that habit when you don't have a grocery store or produce stand on every corner that often mark up staples like bread and milk thanks to their convenient locations. It's hard to say how much we saved because it was hard to track our grocery spending before with how random it used to be, but what I can say is that for five months now we have spent essentially the same every month on groceries, making our bank balance far more predictable.

Number four, micellar water, cough drops, eye drops, and other things to compensate for the city air. This one is a strange one, but it is absolutely one of the biggest differences I've found not only in terms of my wallet, but also in terms of how I feel. Because I'm no longer constantly immersed in big city or even suburban air, I've not had to put nearly as much money into physical upkeep to compensate for those things.

In the city, everything from my daily bike commute to work to just sitting in the park with my friends resulted in feelings that I thought were normal, constantly dry eyes and contact lenses, smelly hair, jeans that never felt clean. I never have a dry throat anymore and haven't had to buy new lip balm since I moved here. I shampoo my hair less frequently, down to once a week.

And like groceries, we're able to stick to a more regimented laundry schedule since our clothes don't feel dirty after half a day. Over the course of five months I've spent just over $200 less on those sorts of products. I'm even finding my contact lenses stay fresh longer and will actually last the whole month instead of three weeks, and I've not yet had to order another month supply after just five months, saving me around $180.

This is not a push to leave the city. Small town life is not for everyone, and I've had to invest in other things unique to small town living like a water softener and more protective winter outerwear. But overall, despite now being a homeowner, I have far more money left over in my bank account at the end of every month.

And I didn't realize how many little things made living in the city that much more expensive. It's not just the price of your housing and transit, it's those little splurges that don't feel impulsive because they're so ingrained into your everyday life. If you're ever considering moving to a smaller town, you'll probably find far more subtle savings than you realize.