Elizabeth Willard Thames built the Frugalwoods brand around a real-life pivot: leaving careers in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband to pursue financial independence on a rural Vermont homestead.
Total Followers -0.2%
31K
Across Instagram
Primary Platform
YouTube
31K followers · 100% of audience
Engagement
1.6%
vs. 1.5% category median
Sponsorship Tier
Micro
Est. $779–$2.2K / IG post
| Platform | Followers | 30d Growth | Engagement | Posts / wk | Last upload |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 31,148 | -53 | 1.6% | — | 2 years ago |
| Window | Combined | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Last 7 days | +0 +0.0% | +0 +0.0% | +0 +0.0% | +0 |
| Last 30 days | -53 -0.2% | +0 +0.0% | +0 +0.0% | -53 |
| Last 90 days | -137 -0.4% | +0 +0.0% | +0 +0.0% | -137 |
| Last 365 days | -137 -0.4% | +0 +0.0% | +0 +0.0% | -137 |
Daily follower snapshots from CreatorDB's longitudinal index.
Elizabeth Willard Thames built the Frugalwoods brand around a real-life pivot: leaving careers in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband to pursue financial independence on a rural Vermont homestead. The project began as a blog and grew into a book — "Meet the Frugalwoods: Achieving Financial Independence Through Simple Living" — that brought her story to a mainstream audience curious about the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement. She now works as a financial consultant, a role that adds professional credibility to what began as personal narrative, placing her at an uncommon intersection of lived frugality and formal financial planning.
Her social content captures the unglamorous texture of Vermont homestead life — mud season, walloping snowstorms, outdoor standing desks, and a self-described "subpar homesteader" posture that deliberately deflates the aspirational frugality aesthetic. The audience splits evenly between men and women, an unusual balance that reflects two distinct reader camps: personal finance adherents and rural-lifestyle enthusiasts. With her Instagram presence now dormant for several years, her platform footprint has shifted toward her newsletter, consulting practice, and longer-form channels, positioning her less as a social media creator and more as a personal finance author and advisor whose earlier community-building work continues to drive discovery among values-aligned, slow-living brands.
Frugalwoods reaches its audience primarily through YouTube, and is best activated via Instagram Reels and Stories. As a finance creator they map naturally to brands targeting that space. With no brand deals logged yet, they read as an available, category-aligned partner for advertisers building early presence in the space. Engagement on YouTube runs around 1.6%, which points to an audience better suited to category-relevant, mid-funnel campaigns than to pure-reach buys. Their YouTube-first format lends itself to integrations that sit inside the creator's usual content rather than running as standalone ads. Because the audience follows finance content rather than arriving through untargeted reach, sponsorships that match the channel's subject matter tend to convert more efficiently than broad placements. A consistent, on-topic posting focus gives sponsors a predictable, brand-safe environment, lowering placement risk compared with broad, general-interest channels. Campaigns here are best measured on qualified engagement and consideration within the niche rather than on raw impression volume. For brands in finance and related categories, Frugalwoods offers a defined, creative-fit audience rather than broad, low-intent impressions.
Benchmark estimates for a creator at Frugalwoods's tier (Micro, 31K combined followers, —). Pulled from CreatorDB's category benchmarks.
The CreatorDB Agency runs end-to-end influencer campaigns globally — shortlisting, outreach, contracting, and performance reporting. Talk to our team about building a campaign around creators in this niche.
Frugalwoods is the pen name and brand of Elizabeth Willard Thames. She built the Frugalwoods identity alongside her husband — known online as Mr. Frugalwoods — when they began documenting their journey toward financial independence and rural homesteading life in Vermont.
Meet The Frugalwoods is Elizabeth's memoir about how she and her husband pursued radical frugality, achieved financial independence, and left conventional careers to move to a homestead in rural Vermont. It covers both the practical strategy and the emotional reckoning of rethinking money, lifestyle, and what enough actually looks like.
Mr. Frugalwoods is the nickname for Elizabeth's husband, Nate, who co-built the Frugalwoods lifestyle and brand with her. Together they pursued financial independence and relocated to a Vermont homestead, a journey documented in her book and across her platforms.
The #glamourshed is a recurring hashtag and running joke in Frugalwoods' content, referring to a rustic outdoor shed or workspace on her Vermont property. The name playfully contrasts the unglamorous reality of rural homestead life with the polished aesthetic typical of lifestyle content.
Yes, Frugalwoods is closely associated with the FIRE movement — Financial Independence, Retire Early — and became one of its more widely read voices through her blog and memoir. Her approach emphasizes intentional, values-driven frugality rather than extreme deprivation, which set her apart from more hardcore FIRE advocates.
Yes — Elizabeth works as a financial consultant and explicitly offers those services through her platform. Her Instagram bio directs followers to hire her and read her latest writing, making personalized financial guidance a core part of her professional identity beyond content creation.
Yes, Frugalwoods regularly shares homesteading and outdoor life content that includes her two daughters. The hashtag #homesteadingwithkids appears throughout her posts, and her captions often feature everyday moments like children learning to jump rope during mud season or hiking through fresh snowfall.
Mud season is a distinctly Vermont phenomenon in late winter and early spring, when snowmelt turns unpaved rural roads and land into deep, sometimes impassable mud. Frugalwoods documents it as a genuine part of homestead life rather than glossing over the messier side of living rurally in Vermont.
Frugalwoods lives on a rural homestead in Vermont, which she documents through heavily seasonal content — deep winter snowstorms, snowshoeing, and spring mud season. She uses hashtags like #vermontbyvermonters and #rurallife, signaling active participation in the local Vermont community rather than a transplant aesthetic.
Frugalwoods' Instagram has been inactive for an extended stretch, with no recent uploads as of 2026. Her book Meet The Frugalwoods and her financial consulting work remain the most active touchpoints for new audiences discovering her story.
Stats (followers, engagement, audience demographics, growth) are pulled live from the CreatorDB API covering YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Bio and FAQ content is AI-assisted; news items are sourced from cited public press at generation time. Read the full methodology →
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@frugalwoods · YouTube
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