Chambers says her dreams of living abroad began in high school in Brooklyn during economics class.

“While the professor was talking about U.S. economics and politics, something in my brain was just like, ‘I don’t think I’m meant to live in the U.S.,'” she says.

She’d have to wait for her wanderlust to take hold, however. Chambers hoped to study abroad while attending Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, but things didn’t work out. “This was something that would hopefully, in the future, become a possibility for me. But it didn’t seem like I knew exactly the direct way that it would happen or how it could happen.”

In the meantime, adult life began. Chambers graduated from college in 2008 with a degree in engineering and about $60,000 in student debt. She moved back to New York City and took a fellowship doing digital marketing for a diversity and inclusion nonprofit, but was barely getting by.

Chambers eventually upgraded to a full-time gig, which helped alleviate some of the financial pressure, but still describes that period as “a limbo state,” “this jumble of trying to figure out my life, trying to make some money, trying to create a career path that made sense for me.”

One thing she had figured out at the time: her love life. In 2013, she reconnected with and began dating an Icelandic man she’d met in college and in two years, the pair were married. By 2016, he told Chambers he intended to move back to Iceland, and she agreed to follow him — on one condition.

“I am not moving unless I find a job that utilizes my skills,” Chambers recalls saying.

Luckily for Chambers, Iceland was in the midst of a huge tourism boom, and digital marketers were in high demand. “This was not a specialty that a lot of people in the country had, or even realized they needed,” she says.

After nailing down a job at a local tourism company, she embarked for Iceland in June 2016.

Chambers launched All Things Iceland in 2018, with a plan to make it at least a year airing one episode per week. “I didn’t have any expectations,” she says. “I didn’t know what people were going to say or think.”

When she began to receive positive messages and comments from listeners and YouTube viewers, she knew she had something real on her hands.

“At first, it was people reaching out to say, ‘Thank you, this was so helpful,'” Chambers says.

Then came the sponsors. “These Icelandic companies wanted to work with me, and it was like, ‘Oh, there’s money to be made.'”

By day, Chambers was still doing digital marketing, and in 2019, took a job as chief digital strategy officer at an advertising agency. It was a well-paid, demanding gig that Chambers says jeopardized her ability to work on All Things Iceland.

Between her job, her passion project and her marriage, “it was a big juggle,” Chambers says. “It wasn’t easy, and I didn’t love what I was doing enough for it to keep me going.”

By the time the Covid-19 pandemic struck, Chambers was already feeling burnt out and soon scaled down her hours. By the following August, she felt confident enough in the trajectory of All Things Iceland to quit her day job altogether.

These days, things are flourishing. Chambers’ one-woman company brings in money from ad sales, sponsorships and affiliate marketing. She also sells maps, travel consultations and private tours, all while working behind the scenes with corporate clients producing online and social media content.

All told, the company brought in about $50,000 in the first half of the year, out of which Chambers pays herself about $6,000 a month in total compensation.

This isn’t the first time Chambers as been a one-woman show financially. She shouldered much of the financial load for herself and her now ex-husband from 2016 through 2020 while he built a psychological practice. The pair separated in 2022 and divorced in 2023.

Chambers has a boyfriend who she began dating earlier this year, though the two don’t currently comingle their finances.

Here’s how Chambers spent her money in June. Virtually all of her financial life is conducted in Icelandic krona, converted here to dollars.

Conversions from ISK to USD were done using the OANDA conversion rate of 1 USD to 139.085 ISK on June 30, 2024. All amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar.

• Housing: $2,031 for rent, phone and Wi-Fi
• Groceries: $545
• Cash savings: $428
• Discretionary: $423 on household items, house and car cleanings, wellness and entertainment
• Travel: $368 on an upcoming trip to Amsterdam with a friend
• Fitness: $352 on a gym membership and personal trainer
• Dining out: $321
• Life insurance: $73
• Gas: $65
• Unexpected expenses: $61 on an emergency visit and medication for a case of strep throat

Chambers’ biggest monthly expense is rent, about $1,941 per month for a 1-bedroom, 1-bathroom apartment in downtown Reykjavik, with a storage area and an indoor parking spot — a key feature for Icelandic winters.

She also spent more than $850 feeding herself in June, evidence that food, especially at restaurants, can get very pricey very quickly. Chambers estimates that an entrée at a restaurant in Iceland will typically run you $25 to $30, and you can expect to pay $7.50 or $8 for a cup of coffee in a downtown café.

A few major expenses you tend to see in American budgets are conspicuously absent from Chambers’ spending. Some of it has to do with her job. Because she has a brand partnership with a rental car company, she gets a company car on the house; she just has to pay for gas.

Other omissions are idiosyncratic to where she lives. Health insurance premiums? Not a thing in Iceland, which has heavily subsidized universal health care. Chambers did shell out $61 to treat a case of strep throat in June, though she could have paid less had she gone to her neighborhood health center rather than the emergency room, she says.

The other major difference is the way Chambers (and all Icelanders) are compensated. The number that actually hits Chambers’ bank account is net of taxes and a contribution toward her eventual income in retirement. Every company in Iceland contributes 6.35% of payroll to the Icelandic equivalent of Social Security and 11.5% to one of 21 pension funds, with each employee contributing at least 4% of pay.

For Chambers, navigating the complexities of being both employer and employee in a foreign country “has been a huge learning curve,” she says. “Getting an accountant to help me with that has been so crucial.”

In addition to her government mandated savings, Chambers stashes away a chunk of her income – usually 10% of her take-home pay — each month in a savings account. Eventually, she says, she’d like to explore the feasibility of opening a brokerage account, too, to boost her retirement savings.

In the shorter term, though, she’s saving to buy a house with her boyfriend.