10 Women Bloggers who Retired Their Husbands

As you may or may not know, I’m an aspiring blogger that desires to retire her husband. When I first started out, I thought it was an insane goal. Now, I ‘m not so sure it’s that crazy. I’m the kind of person who is inspired by stories of other people who’ve done or are doing what I desire to do. So….as much as this post will inspire you, it’s also a great help for me as well.

As for the situations, some of their husbands were already stay-at-home-parents and the business enabled them to remain at home, while others brought in enough income for hubby to either work along side of their wife, pursue their own thing, help with the kids or all of the above. So, all the hubbies may not be technically fully retired, but the point is that these media moguls earn enough for their husbands to ditch the salaried-worker life. Retirement looks different for so many people these days, that as long as they’ve escaped the 9-5, it counts!

Related Reading: The Blogging Course that Helped Me Make a Full-Time Living

So, here’s a list of blogger babes and crushes who’ve done the seemingly impossible:

1) Ruth Soukup of Living Well, Spending Less

I think it’s only fitting that I start with Ruth because it was her story about retiring hubby that reached me first. I can’t recall where I first heard it. I just know when I did, I was totally inspired to reach for the same goal. What’s more is that Ruth is not only a blogger, but she’s also a published author, product creator and blogging coach. Through her wildly popular blogging course, Elite Blog Academy, she’s actually teaching other women (and men) how to create and run profitable blogs.

Ruth initially started her blog to deal with bad money habits rooted in emotional distress. Once Ruth figured out that she could “live well spending less,” her methods of keeping house and saving money reached the masses with great impact. Her blog became so successful that she was able to pay off the mortgage on her home and retire her aerospace engineer husband, Chuck. This power couple is an example of family teamwork that can lead to great things. If you are interested in learning more about Ruth’s blogging course, check out her sales page here: Elite Blog Academy.

2) Rosemarie Groner of the Busy Budgeter

Rosemarie and I started out in the same blogging mastermind group. Even though we started our blogs at the same time, she has faaaarrrr out-paced me making over $100,000 per month! I had the pleasure of interviewing her last year and I am still learning from her ingenious blogging methods.

The former Virginia state trooper turned blogger knew from the first moment that she met her son she would need to become a stay-at-home-mom. She gave herself one year to figure out how to make that happen. Rosemarie and her husband went through their lives with a fine-toothed comb to trim the fat and figure out ways to increase their income.  This birthed her blog Busy Budgeter and the rest is history. Her blog is currently making over $7,000 $22,000  $100k+ per month. With all the additional income and financial stability, her husband, Jon, has been able to leave his job and pursue his dream as the owner and operator of a brewery.

Rosemarie credits a number of things to her success, like blog coaching, training and education.  She also mentors bloggers through her own series of eBooks:

• Pinterest Strategy Guide– Comprehensive Pinterest strategy that increased Rosemarie’s blog traffic and income from $18/month to over $100k/month
• Core Affiliate Guide– The guide to increasing your blog income with targeted affiliate marketing

Related reading: $2,520 in 8 Days- How I Rocked My First Product Affiliate Launch

3) Holly Johnson of ClubThrifty

Holly is one of those people who you try not to get jealous of because of her fabulous life and outrageous success. It’s so hard not to envy, I mean admire someone who gets paid to travel and write about it. Though her most profitable niche is personal finance and higher education, she still gets to travel multiple times a year and cash $20,000+ checks each month.

How did it all start? Holly and her husband Greg both began their professional careers in the funeral services industry. According to Holly herself, they both had dead-end jobs. She barely made over $40,000 per year and had little free-time, sometimes working up to 60 hours per week. Holly started writing when she wasn’t at work: evenings, weekends and even holidays. Eventually, she made enough money to leave her salaried position.  Soon after, her husband, Greg, was able to follow her home.

Greg runs their popular website, Club Thrifty and Holly rakes in the big bucks writing. Last year, she made an all-time high of over $220,000 from writing alone! Holly is teaching others everything she knows with her Earn More Writing eCourse and soon to debut travel writing course. Holly and Greg also paid off over $50,000 and write about it in their book, Zero Down Your Debt: Reclaim Your Income and Build a Life You’ll Love.

Related Reading: How to Get Started as a Six-Figure Freelance Writer

4) Michelle Schroeder-Gardner of Making Sense of Cents

Michelle started her blog as a way to chronicle her story of getting out of over $40,000 in student loan debt. She began freelance writing and providing virtual assistant services to add extra income to her 9-5 salary. Pretty soon, people visited her blog in large numbers to check out her debt repayment progress.

Web visitors were inspired by the huge dent she was making in her debt simply by systematically increasing her income. Ultimately, this lead to others starting their own side-hustles, blogs and extra gigs based on her inspiring story. Her loyal audience would use her site’s affiliate and referral links to sign up for services that would help them accomplish similar feats.

It wasn’t long before Michelle’s website income from affiliate products quickly surpassed her freelance writing income. Today, she has a website that earns $130,000+ per month! As a result of earning this independent stream of income, she and her husband, Wes, were able to sell their home in 2015 and travel full-time. The couple now lives in an RV as Michelle earns over $1 million per year through her website!  If you are interested in learning about the affiliate marketing strategies that helped skyrocket Michelle’s income, check out her new eCourse, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing.

Related Reading: Affiliate Strategies that Rake in $100,000 per Month

5) Gina Horkey of Horkey Handbook

Gina has a great story because, she too, started freelance writing as a side hustle and eventually made enough to replace her full-time income as a salaried employee. Her income reports dating back a couple of years show her raking in $10k+ PER MONTH – mostly from freelance writing and virtual assistant work! In fact, she still does both and regularly earns over $5,000 per month from just three clients on a very part-time basis.

Gina found ways to expand her success as a webpreneur by offering coaching services to other freelancers and teaching aspiring writers and virtual assistants everything she knows in her ultra-professional and effective online courses. She’s focused on helping others take action and GET RESULTS.

Gina’s classes are so popular that they account for the majority of her income these days. (Passive income, yay!) Though Gina doesn’t publish income reports anymore (instead she opts for a quarterly business review), she still earns enough money to contribute handsomely to the household pot. In fact, it enables her hubby, Wade, to be a stay-at-home dad to their two preschool-aged children.

Wade’s a true partner in life and their business. His help with household tasks and raising the kiddos provides Gina the ability to focus on running her business and growing it into a million-dollar enterprise.

Looking to start your own side hustle? Here are some of Gina’s popular courses that have helped many freelancers and virtual assistants (including myself) start a successful business:

• 30 Days Or Less To Freelance Writing Success
• 30 Days Or Less To Virtual Assistant Success
• Pinterest VA Course

6) Lauren Gruetman of Lauren Greutman

Lauren Greutman is the frugal living expert behind the popular money-saving blog LaurenGreutman.com (formerly I am That Lady). She also recently authored the book, The Recovering Spender. At one time, she and her husband Mark were in over $40,000 in debt and were running a deficit of $1,000 per month. They knew they needed to change. So they put together a budget to save money and began increasing their income. Two years later, they were debt free. Lauren and Mark now run Lauren’s online business together.

As Lauren’s website puts it, “As a husband-wife team, we are passionate about helping couples get on the same page financially so they can build a strong marriage and family based on love and respect, something money can’t buy.”

Though Mark helps with the kids and family matters, he also has a role in running the website and is integral to their business success. Lauren is popular for her excellent, budget-friendly meal plans and budgeting help. Check out the interview I did with her about her book, The Recovering Spender:  How to Budget as a Natural Spender.

7) Jessi Fearon of Jessi Fearon

Jessi Fearon is a blogging powerhouse. She’s used her blog income to accomplish some pretty incredible feats like paying off over $100k of debt, building a sizeable emergency fund and being on schedule to pay her home off 24 years earlier than scheduled! Because of their prudent money management and Jessi’s extra blog income, her husband, Pat was able to quit a job that was, in Jessi’s words, “draining him of everything.” He wasn’t happy and had to be away from his family a lot. Now, Pat runs his own (very successful) home-remodeling business and sets his own schedule so he can spend as much time as possible with his family.

If you’re interested in implementing the principles that helped Jessi and her family become money rock stars, check out her eCourse, Real Life Money Plan.

8) Kim Anderson of Thrifty Little Mom

 I started my blog Thrifty Little Mom in  2013 after reading a book titled, How to Blog for Profit Without Selling Your Soul by Ruth Soukup.  I read a chapter of the book where Ruth stated that she had made enough money that her aeronautic engineer husband was able to leave his job.

I remember connecting with that story on a deep level because my husband was an electrical engineer who despised his daily commute and always felt like he never had time for things he really enjoyed.  That one idea gave me the confidence to believe that blogging and making a full-time income was in my realm of reality.  If she had done it, so could I.

After that, I dove in even with a one-year-old baby at home. At night, my husband would walk into our office at night asking me what I was working on.  I always replied, “I’m blogging so you can quit your job one day.”  He would laugh, shake his head in disbelief and leave the room.  Four  years later, just after our twins were born I asked him if he was ready to leave his job. We did the budget, we didn’t have a mortgage, so when all the math checked out we went for it.

In January 2017, he quit his engineering job to be a stay at home dad, grow his own blog and YouTube channel, Makercise, and work on projects in the garage he enjoys. What we wanted most out of this one life was flexibility. We not only found flexibility but we traded a whole lot of stress for a whole lot more hours doing what we both love in the time we have.  I set my eye on the goal I wanted and went after it until I arrived and believe other people can do the exact same thing.

9) Crystal Paine of Money Saving Mom

Crystal Paine began her journey with her own mother, learning about how to budget and meal plan for a family. She took the skills her mother gave her to the next level while her husband was in law school in order to avoid debt. One day, Crystal decided to share her knowledge of all things frugal on a blog and the response was amazing. As a result, Money Saving Mom has become one of the most popular, successful frugal living blogs currently on the web. Crystal’s husband, Jesse, also plays a vital part in MSM operations. He has a managerial role and helps oversee all the legal/financial details of running the website and business.

Crystal’s husband, Jesse, also plays a vital part in MSM operations. He has a managerial role and helps oversee all the legal/financial details of running the website and business.

If you’d like to duplicate Crystal’s success with organization and productivity, consider taking her 14-day eCourse, Make Over Your Mornings. The goal is to help you create a morning routine that will reduce stress, promote productivity and say goodbye to survival mode. Click here to learn more about the Make Over Your Mornings eCourse.

10) Abby Lawson of Just a Girl and Her Blog

Abby began blogging about decor and organizing for fun but ended up being such a success that the blog grew into a family business! After a sudden layoff,  Abby’s husband, Donnie join the team and they’ve been building their online business every since. Abby also mentors aspiring bloggers with some of her amazing info products. Her most popular one, Building a Framework, is designed to help people start and run a profitable blog.

11) Aja McClanahan of Principles of Increase <—Millionaire Blogger Hopeful

So, I still have a ways to go until I make this list, but I’m putting it out there so that you can keep me accountable to this goal. Hopefully, I’ll be able to add an update to this post soon. It’ll read:

Aja McClanahan started her blog shortly after her and her husband paid the last on their $120,000 debt. After a few short years of blogging, she made enough for her husband to retire. He now flips homes and manages all of their rental properties. The McClanahan’s also travel the world as a family while earning passive income from all their businesses and investments.

How would you like to be on this list? What are you doing to make it happen?

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Aja McClanahan

Aja “A.J.” McClanahan is a writer, speaker and entrepreneur.