How I Actually Pay My Bills While Starting Over (No Guru Stuff)

Lifestyle & Living

After starting over, a lot of people keep asking how I actually pay my bills — so I’m breaking it down honestly. This isn’t a “how much I make” or guru post. It’s how my income is structured to support my life.

When people hear “starting over,” they assume starting from zero — no skills, no experience, no foundation. That wasn’t my reality.

In this post + video (below), I explain how I actually pay my bills while starting over, including:

  • Why starting over doesn’t mean starting from nothing
  • How lowering lifestyle costs changed everything
  • The difference between income and financial security
  • The income structure I use (not hustle, not hype)
  • Why flexibility matters more than “consistent” income

This is about designing income that works with your life, not against it.

🔹 WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

I walk through:

  • My content foundation (blogs, YouTube, email)
  • How monetization layers on top of content
  • Direct income vs. relationship-based income
  • Optional & supplemental income streams
  • Why I don’t rely on just one thing
  • What I stopped doing that mattered more than what I added

Watch The Video

Watch the full video to go along with this blog post here

FYI, This is PART 3: a follow-up to my other posts When I first talked about starting over and explained how I actually live…

🎯 Chapters:

00:00 Why I made this video
01:18 Starting over ≠ starting from zero
03:10 The real shift: lifestyle cost vs income
05:02 How my income is structured
07:30 Content as the foundation
10:15 Monetization layers
12:40 Direct income & control
15:05 Relationship-based income
18:10 Optional & seasonal income
21:40 Income vs financial security
25:10 What I stopped doing
28:30 If I had to start again today

Here’s the video transcript… so you can READ vs watch 😉

Why I made this post / video

I didn’t plan to make this video, but after the last two, people keep asking me this same thing: “Okay, Brandi, but how do you actually make money?” And some people straight up ask if I’m broke!

So what I realized is that I haven’t explained how my life actually works. But this isn’t a look at how much money I make post. This is a “how I built income streams that work for my actual life and not against it.”

ICYMI, this episode is part of my “Starting Over & Building Income Again” series… You can READ or WATCH the full series.

Starting over ≠ starting from zero

When people hear the word starting over, they imagine that you mean… Starting from nothing, starting from zero.

  • No skills,
  • No plan,
  • No foundation.

That’s not true, because:

  • I didn’t lose my skills,
  • I didn’t lose my systems.
  • I definitely didn’t lose my experience.
  • Or the audience that I’ve been building over all these years.

What I lost was structure, not my identity!

The real shift: lifestyle cost vs income

Now, this is the part that most people miss, and here’s the real shift.

So most people think the solution is, I just need to make more money. But what changed my life was figuring out that all I needed to do was reduce what my lifestyle costs to live.

That’s for things like

  • housing
  • stuff
  • commitments
  • stress

When your lifestyle costs less. Then your income doesn’t have to be massive. It just has to be flexible.

How my income is structured

So let’s talk about what pays my bills right now before we get into this.

  • None of this is overnight.
  • None of this is passive magic.
  • It’s really stacked, boring, flexible, on purpose.

My income is structured in buckets:

  • content based
  • products I own,
  • relationship-based and
  • supplemental income.

I’m gonna break this down a little bit differently so it makes sense next… but the key to all of these, at least for my lifestyle, is that none of these require me to be in one place for one long period of time.

These all move with me according to my lifestyle, and I can make money from anywhere online, whether I’m in my RV, an Airbnb, a hotel, or wherever — I can work from home or while I roam.

Now, these are not all of the ways that I make money, but this is how my income is structured.

Content (the foundation)

The foundation IS my content…

They are the engine that runs everything else.

This is where blogging, vlogging, and my email marketing come in.

A lot of my income comes from the content that I’ve created. Some of this income is immediate, while some compounds over days, weeks, months, or even years.

Monetization (layers)

Next, we have monetization.

These are things like:

  • affiliate marketing,
  • display ads,
  • sponsored content & links
  • partnerships.

These are layered on top of the foundation, so I don’t have to create content every day. You could be reading a blog post or watching a YouTube video while I’m sleeping.

The content (foundation above) actually works for me to help with monetization, which means I don’t have to sell every day. The content sells for me.

Direct Income (& Control)

Now, this is leverage. Direct income is where I trade value directly for money. It’s the most controlled and the most flexible.

  • Digital products.
  • Physical products,
  • services and coaching,
  • memberships and subscriptions,

Think … selling things that I own so that I’m not trading hours for dollars.

Relationship-based income (a side note)

One little piece of my income stream that overlaps from my direct income and monetization categories are relationship based.

Things like…

  • partnerships and collaborations,
  • sponsored deals,
  • coaching and consulting
  • services done for you and
  • freelancing,

… and these all come from TRUST.

This happens after people find my content, see me, and build a relationship = Over time!

For instance:

When people watch a YouTube video or see a blog post, they say to themselves, “Oh, this girl knows what she’s talking about. She’s actually done this before.”

This is how I make money from relationships over time, by consistently creating content, blog posts, YouTube videos, email marketing, social media, and all the different ways that I market myself / put myself out there — that people come across me and they find me, or they might find somebody else that’s worked with me and say, “oh, let me reach out to her too.”

Same thing with a brand partnership where someone says “Hey, would you make a video or write a blog post and review this product for me, or incorporate it into your content in some way or strategy.” or I might say, “Hey, this video is brought to you by…” and they might just want their name in my video, email, blog, social… — It’s like me putting a plugin for someone else, but I’m vouching for them, their product or service as a content creator, blogger, vlogger, influencer, YouTuber.

Yet, ALL of these relationships wouldn’t have happened had I not done some of these other steps… FIRST (outlined above)

Example:

When people watch a YouTube video, I might say something like, “If you’re a brand business or an individual and you want to work with me, head over to my website, BloggingBrandi.com. I’ll put a link below this video, and you can reach out.”

That’s just one instance of how I would get somebody off my YouTube video over to something else. Same thing with a blog post!

Now, I might nurture them with my email list first and then go in for a more sales pitch. BUT, I just let people know, Hey, these are the things that I offer, and this is how you can work with me. I let them find me and let them reach out to me. I don’t really push myself out to them, probably exactly how you found this blog post or came across one of my videos — TYPICALLY this is from SEO, aka SEARCH RESULTS on YouTube / Google.

It’s also important to remind you that people might NOT take action after watching/reading THIS one… Which is why I create series and playlists (and MENTION them in my content — “Did you miss the first two videos that I made before this? Go below this video, you can check those out….”)

But I’m always saying, “Hey, go do this next…”

And it’s not always, Hey, go buy from me. It could be just. Go watch another video, join my email list, or check out a blog post that I wrote.

For EVERY YOUTUBE VIDEO My goal is to say something like, “Hey, if you really enjoy this video and this content and you wanna see more of it, please let me know by dropping a comment below and tell me how this resonates with you, what you’d like to see next, as well as hit the like button below, Subscribe to my channel and tap that little bell icon so you’re notified each and every time that I publish another video.”

Optional & Supplemental Income

My streams of optional and supplemental income are supportive. But they are not the foundation nor something that I necessarily rely on.

Things like…

  • freelancing,
  • reselling and flipping,
  • Donations and tips.

What I like about these is that they can help support my lifestyle because I can turn on and off the income streams depending on the season of life that I’m in.

They give me flexibility, but they’re not something that I have to have because, depending on whether I’m on the road vs if I’m at home, I may not wanna take on a freelancing gig, or I might not be reselling or flipping as many items in July versus December.

It depends on where I’m at in my life and business, as well as this season and the times of the year, plus where other people are at in their lives and my relationship with them.

For Example:

Things like donations and tips. Some people say things like, “You can buy me a coffee after watching this video/reading this blog post, or you can leave me a tip or donation, etc…”

YouTube also has ways that you can support creators’ videos, which are not things that I have turned on or used on my content yet, but you can always leave a donation or tip over on my dog blog @BirdiesDoghouse — (If you didn’t know, I have five dogs and one cat.) — to support the dog rescue, all the animals and their lifestyle.

Income vs financial security

Income does not equal financial security, so I plan around savings and long-term investments that I have put money in over the time and years that I’ve been on this Earth.

If you didn’t know before I started all this and became a blogger and a YouTuber, and a vlogger and all of that, I actually had a degree in finance, and I worked at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, traded stocks, did financial planning, investing, as well as having a background in accounting, taxes, and more…

Since my income can be unpredictable at times, it doesn’t mean that my future has to be. Planning and preparation help me, so my savings and investments don’t necessarily pay my bills, but they do protect my future. And I don’t confuse income with financial security anymore.

Consistent Income NOT Constant Support

Not all of these make me money every month, and they don’t have to. That’s not the point. The goal is not constant money. It’s consistent support… like a sugar daddy.

It’s like having a sugar daddy or a little sugar mama all the time, giving you just a little bit of money. Some months, they give you a little bit more than other months. It depends on how hard you were working in one area (one stream of income) versus another. Meaning you might make more money coaching one month or from affiliate marketing another.

Most people think income is ONE BIG thing, but for me, it’s a structure! The content and email are my foundation. The monetization is the layers that sit on top, and the direct income is what gives me control. I don’t rely on just one thing, but I also don’t try to do all of these things at one time.

What I stopped doing

So this is what I stopped doing, and this mattered more than what I added = what I let go of.

  • I stopped chasing consistency that burned me out over things that aligned with my life and business.
  • I stopped building for optics instead of sustainability, and…
  • I stopped saying yes to things that trapped me and things I didn’t wanna do.

Like…

Hanging out with people, doing things that didn’t bring me enjoyment. Watching TV shows, listening to music, anything. That didn’t feel aligned with my life. I quit saying yes to, and eventually, people quit inviting you to.

For instance:

If you didn’t know, I quit drinking a couple of years ago, and when you quit drinking, you lose a whole part of your life, but you gain a whole other; you just start to realize who doesn’t matter, what doesn’t matter. People stop inviting you to events. They almost say, “she doesn’t drink. Don’t invite her to this.”

But what I realized was that stability didn’t come from routines. It came from adaptability and the ability to start adapting!

If I had to start again today

So if everything disappeared tomorrow, and I had to start today with nothing, I wouldn’t panic.

I’d start with:

  • one platform,
  • one skill (I already have)
  • one audience and
  • one simple offer.

I wouldn’t build big. I’d build light because light moves.

Starting over doesn’t mean failing. It’s about redesigning. It’s not about hustle. It’s about creating a lifestyle. So I can breathe. 

🔹 Blog Post + Video Series: “Starting Over & Re-Building Income Again…“

This is part 3 of my Starting Over & Building Income Again series.

No fake numbers. No guru fantasy. Just real life.

If you’re rebuilding, stuck, lost, or trying to figure out your next move — start here…

→ Follow the full Starting Over series here

💬 Question for you:

What does “starting over” look like in your life right now? Drop a comment — I read them.

👍 Like, subscribe on YouTube, and tap the bell if you want more videos like this!

🐾 @birdiesdoghouse

🔹 What’s Next…

If you enjoy this kind of honest, real-life breakdown:

Watch the read/next episode in the playlist
Join my email list for behind-the-scenes + deeper context
Or explore my work HERE at BloggingBrandi.com

Reach out to WORK WITH ME HERE

I don’t push — I build relationships.

#StartingOver #OnlineIncome #DigitalNomadLife #WorkFromAnywhere #LifestyleDesign

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Updated: February 6, 2026
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