Glamour on a Shoestring
Living it up on a budget
Welcome to the The Art of Lite Living. A space for lightness (letting go) and lite-ness (inspiration). For more essays, poems and simple yoga practices that breathe life into our heavy days, please
Dear Lite Living community,
Before I launch into this week’s topic—glamour!— I want to take a moment to thank my friend
who inspired last week’s post about the magic and beauty of learning a new language. Amy is one of my favourite writers here on Substack. She writes about her journey of transformation in her six decade of her life, leaving a 33 year marriage, caring for her mother and embarking on her newest adventure: building a life in Barcelona, and, learning Spanish! She writes Living in 3D “for late bloomers of every age,” where you can delight in all the inspirations she has to offer. Like this post:
For me, the greatest gift of Substack is discovering like-minded thinkers who inspire me to be a better writer and person. These are just some of the extraordinary women I look up to, and continue to learn from:
, , , , , and , whom I ‘met’ through ’s writing community Writing in the Dark, ’s Substack Writers at Work and George Saunders’ Story Club. As Substack is a space that celebrates long-form, I feel that I’m privy to a wide-range of engaging, thought-provoking themes, writing styles and perspectives. I am looking forward to finally meeting Amy in person this summer in Barcelona!
This week I am writing to you from my hometown, Budapest. We arrived here yesterday after a week-long vacation in Costa da Caparica and Lisbon. As soon as we walked into our old building in Izabella utca, my daughter Celeste took in the local, familiar smell that she had missed: a unique amalgamation of sewage, cigarette smoke, urine and paprika aroma mixed together. “Ah. We are in Budapest,” she remarked with a sense of relief.
Sewage smell might be an appropriate place to start if we are to talk about glamour, or, perceived glamour.
Before we left Montreal, two friends had made the same remark: “Ah, you lead such a glamorous life, Imola!”
I want to get honest about this “glamorous life” for a moment, because in some ways it is a glamorous life, but probably not in the ways you are imagining it to be.
Firstly, this vacation was hard-won. A health scare put our entire trip in jeopardy and for a while it looked like we were not going to be able to go at all. Luckily, three days before the scheduled flight we got the ‘go’ from the doctor, but it was touch-and-go.
Here are some of the ways I had made this trip more affordable and possible for us:
Saving on flights
Learning from last year’s mistake (trying to book a summer vacation to Europe in April when the price of airfare per person was around $2000) I began looking for flights to Europe in January. Air Transat used to have a direct flight from Montreal to Budapest, but sadly, not anymore. So, I had to become a resourceful travel agent and search for flights to nearby European cities with affordable connections to Budapest. I settled on Lisbon and Barcelona. London and Paris were cheaper, but I knew that if I were to consider the price of accommodation, those stop-overs would become significantly more expensive (that was before I had learned about Home Exchange!).
Most flight companies will charge you obscene amounts of money on your checked-in luggage, which is fine by me, because I travel light. The last time I had any checked-in luggage was when I moved countries. I’m all about carry-on. I have taught my daughters to pack light as well. For two months in Europe we each had a travel backpack of 40x30x20cm, in addition to a small carry-on suitcase, which my daughters shared. (I have written before about mastering the art of travelling light and you are welcome to steal my tricks!)
I reminded my daughters that all the places we were staying at had a washing machine and a pharmacy nearby where we could buy all the face creams, soaps and shampoos they needed. Summer means light clothes, so I wore the only pair of jeans and sweater I took for this trip on me for the flight.
My small backpack had 5 summer dresses, one pair of shorts, one yoga pants, 5 tank tops, 2 bikinis, 7 panties, 5 pairs of socks and a pair of flip-flops for the beach. We brought 2 travel-beach towels that fold into a compact size and dry in no time from Decathlon. If you need to take a towel with you anywhere, I highly recommend you buy one.
An added benefit to a small bag is that it forces you to think carefully about anything you are tempted to buy! I have a weakness for books, which I had to resist hard!
A couple of weeks ago I read a beautiful post by
about travelling as a minimalist with the subtitle “Whatever it is, you probably won't need it,” in which she made an interesting observation:Packing for vacation is a cultural/psychological thing that feels far more connected to personal storytelling than we actually think it is [and…] seems to be directly linked to [our] general worldview and sensibility.
I couldn’t agree more! Elissa also wrote:
I realize, after all this time, that extreme over-packing can be an indicator of vast insecurity. […] It translates into What If?
which I think is a very apt analysis! I hereby confess that even with my minimalist packing, I end up packing a few items I don’t really need.
So, next time you pack your bags, it’s worth pausing with this question in mind: What what-if scenario do I feel so insecure about that I feel the need to prepare (pack) for?
Saving on accomodation
In Budapest we stay in my mum’s apartment, until the small apartment that I am renovating will be ready (hopefully soon). This is a blessing. But when I checked hostels in Lisbon on Booking.com I was looking at 1000-1500 CAD for 5-7 days. This would have meant a short stop-over of 3 days at the most. But then, I discovered Home Exchange and found us this charming apartment on Costa da Caparica for the yearly membership fee of 220 USD, in exchange for renting out our Montreal home. Home Exchange has changed my life and opened my world (literary) to endless possibilities. Home Exchange is also saving us thousands of dollars this summer, but be warned, it is not without work! It means that before you leave for your vacation, you have to deep-clean and declutter your apartment and be comfortable with people from the Home Exchange community staying at your home. This certainly adds work (and let’s be honest, stress) but (for me) it is absolutely worth it. My exchanges so far have been nothing but positive, and both my hosts and guests have been kind, helpful, and really interesting people.
To help us further with costs towards our trip, I am also renting out our home for a few weeks with Sabbatical Homes. I wish I didn’t have to, but writing and yoga don’t (yet) pay as much as I’d like to.
And now let’s talk about that “glamorous life”…
Sure, travel can look like this:
But travel is also this:
Travel is heat, delayed flights and busses and overpriced meals that taste like chewing gum. Travel is things going wrong, being misunderstood (often) and getting lost. And travel with teenagers… that is a post for another day. I have yet to write that poem about an argument in the bathroom that seemed to dominate our vacation. My daughters’ hormonal mood swings is not something I am likely to post about on Instagram, and yet, it had a far greater impact on our trip than those cute yellow trams.
My life is not glamorous.
I am a hard-working single mother with limited resources and even less help. So I had to learn to look for creative solution to the various challenges that stand in my way of living the life that I want, with the things that are most important to me: meaningul friendships, quality time with my daughters, reading and writing, and of course, travelling and learning languages. This means making specific (often difficult) choices every day. I cannot tell you how many times I found myself curled up in fetal position on the floor, wishing I had a real partner in this journey because mothering alone is bloody hard work and far from being glamorous; the days I cried, the days I prayed (even without believing in God)… But as I have no family in Montreal, I have to eventually find a way to pick myself up from the floor.
I am glad you think I live a glamorous life and look good in my $35 second-hand dress I wear for half of my vacation. I am glad I give off the impression that I “have my shit together” (according to my daughter Celeste). I’m glad I fool you, even if I have no intention of fooling anyone.
And you know what? I do love my life. Despite the financial and health challenges, despite doing this practically on my own, with no man by my side, I find endless things to be grateful for, and I remind myself of these things everyday.
I am not glamorous, but I am resourceful. And of that, I am proud. It gives me a boost of energy, and light. “Man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can do without,” said naturalist Henri Thoreau. I know what I need, and I know what I don’t need. And what I do have, I cherish.
Turning the lense on you…
What makes you feel glamorous? How are you being resourceful? Care to share?
In case you missed it
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It was almost ten years ago now that I sat across my husband in a Montréal restaurant when he accused me of not having a retirement plan. It was supposed to be a romantic dinner that started off on the wrong foot. My husband chose to wear the $20 battered hiking boots that he had bought at Value Village for this occasion, which I think was symbolic of t…
So grateful to have found you here, Imola. Journeys are not to be confused for vacations, are they? You really make that truth sing here. Thanks for this!
Your concluding thought, "I am not glamorous, but I am resourceful. And of that, I am proud," is such a powerful statement, Imola. It strikes at the heart of what true strength and fulfillment often look like. In a world that often prioritizes effortless perfection and material displays, you've flipped the script and highlighted that genuine glamour isn't about what you possess, but about your ability to adapt, create, and thrive despite limitations.
I often think about how much creativity is born from constraint. When we're handed a blank check, it's easy to just fill in the blanks, but when resources are limited, our minds are forced to conjure up ingenious solutions. That, to me, is the most enviable form of wealth – not endless resources, but endless resourcefulness. Your story is a testament to the fact that ingenuity and resilience are far more attractive and sustainable than any superficial sparkle.