If you'd asked me to write this post on a good week, I'd have given you a neat list of tips and called it a day. But honestly? I don't feel carefree at all right now, and I think that's a more useful place to write from.

Living carefree and uninhibited, to me, means not worrying about the future, money, or even your health. It's the freedom to do what you want, when you feel like it, without constantly weighing up the financial or health consequences. It's freedom of time and freedom of location too, no work trappings, no clock to watch. That's the dream version anyway.

The reality, for me, looks quite different. I have a mortgage. I'm the main breadwinner. I have two children, a home and garden that need tending, and businesses to run.

Right now money is tight, as my husband's earnings have more than halved recently and mine have taken a slight dip too, so I feel even less carefree than usual. Taking time off feels like it comes with guilt attached. Spending feels uncomfortable. We're constantly focused on making money, getting through the low patch, clearing debts, and getting back on top of things.

So if you came here hoping for a breezy "just relax and stop caring" post, this isn't quite that. It's a more honest look at what it actually takes to live more carefree and uninhibited, even when life is full of responsibility.

Knowing You Can Do It Changes Everything

One of the biggest shifts for me came from proving to myself that something worked. When I first went self-employed, I found that being financially secure while self-employed didn't come from nowhere.

It came from knowing I'd already been doing it successfully for six months. I'd tested it. I'd seen it bring in money. That track record gave me the nerve to keep going.

It also helped knowing that if it all fell apart, I'd happily take a role doing anything to make money and support my family. That safety net in my own head, the knowledge that I'm capable and adaptable, has done more for my sense of freedom than any amount of positive thinking ever could.

If you're weighing up a big decision, whether that's self-employment, a house move, or a lifestyle change, a short trial run and a backup plan can give you the confidence to be a bit more uninhibited about taking the leap.

That's genuinely one of the most useful shifts you can make. Instead of waiting to feel ready, test the smallest version of the thing first. Even a few weeks of proof that something works can do more for your nerves than months of thinking about it ever will. 

Living On Your Own Terms, Even When Opinions Bother You

I'll be honest, other people's opinions do still bother me. But we've never let that stop us living how we want to live. If we'd cared too much about what people thought, I'd never have gone vegan, we'd never have moved to Cornwall, and my husband would never have gone self-employed.

We do take opinions to heart more than I'd like, and I wish we could be more carefree about that. But we also stand by our decisions, which in turn makes us more confident in them.

Take our vegan lifestyle. We've made that choice based on our ethics and our own research, so nobody else's opinion is going to change our minds. But a lot of people have voiced opinions about it! It's our decision, not theirs, and ultimately we're trying to cause less suffering. I've never quite understood why that bothers other people so much. I think, if anything, it makes them question their own ethics rather than ours.

That's the bit I've learned to hold onto. You don't need to stop caring what people think entirely to live more uninhibited. You just need to trust your own reasoning enough that their opinion stops being the deciding factor. In practice, that means sitting with a decision until you can explain to yourself why you're making it, then letting that reasoning carry more weight than someone else's raised eyebrow.

Finding Freedom By the Water 

Where I do feel closest to carefree is by the sea and the river. I love the water, the calming effect of it, the sound of the waves.

Every morning before work I go for a walk, usually one to three hours, before I get stuck into up to ten hours at the laptop each day. This morning, with the weather so good, I did a three hour walk along the river, the beach, and the headland, running supermarket errands on foot before starting work.

If I didn't do this, I'd be indoors on the laptop all day and I'd go stir crazy. That walk is what keeps me sane. It clears my mind and gives me proper thinking time before the responsibilities of the day take over. Once I am sat down and working, I'm fully focused, but I need that outdoor time first to get there.

We try to take weekends off too, exploring the coast and getting in the water, though we're sometimes limited by DIY, the garden, or house chores that have built up during the week, or by knowing we haven't made enough money that week.

I definitely feel more carefree if we've got on top of things and had a good week financially. Then we can properly relax at the weekend. If we try to take time off mid-week when money is tight, we're always slightly stressed, knowing we need to get back to work. Hopefully, as time goes on, we'll have more time and money to do this without that background worry.

What I've noticed though is that the walk itself doesn't need the rest of life sorted first. It's free, it takes no planning, and it works whether the week's been good or bad. That's probably why it's the one thing that reliably shifts how carefree I feel, even on the days when nothing else does.

There's a flip side to the uncertainty too, and it's one of the genuine upsides of working for myself. I get to choose my own hours, so if the sun's out I can go for a walk first and shift my work into the evening instead.

In winter, that matters even more. I used to work in an office, arriving in the dark and leaving in the dark, and I'd barely see daylight for months. Now I can build my day around whatever daylight there is. That kind of freedom doesn't erase the money worries, but it's real, and it's one of the trades I'd make again.

Setting Boundaries to Protect Your Energy

This is one of the harder parts to write about, but it's an important one. I've had to cut off a family member in the end, to protect my own mental energy. It's not a decision I take lightly, it's taken me years of emotional turmoil to adjust, and it's not something everyone will agree with, but it's made a real difference. 

We've also had to set boundaries around visitors. A lot of people want to come and see us in the summer, often in the middle of the week, and we've had to start keeping some weekends free so we can do what we want with our kids. We restrict most visits to weekends, since that's when we're actually off. Otherwise we have to miss work, and therefore money, which is too stressful to sustain.

People sometimes forget that we work, just because we're self-employed. There's a common assumption that we can take time off whenever we like, when in reality learning to switch off when self-employed without losing income takes real, deliberate effort. I don't think most people would take a week off their own job unpaid, just to come and see us, yet that's effectively what they're asking of us.

Boundaries like these aren't about being unfriendly. They're about protecting the time and energy you need to actually enjoy the freedom you've worked for. Once we started keeping certain weekends genuinely free, we noticed the difference straight away, we actually looked forward to the time rather than watching it get chipped away.

Why Financial Pressure Makes Carefree Living Harder

I think growing up with financial pressure shapes how carefree you're able to feel as an adult. Money was always tight growing up, I've never really known anything else, and unfortunately my adult years didn't start off any better once I could access credit and debt.

I went through financial pressure and debt in my teenage years, including being on a debt management plan at one point, and it left its mark.

Funnily enough, I was actually carefree with money once, back when I turned 18. I took out store cards, credit cards, loans, and spent as though it was free money, never once considering that I'd one day struggle to cover all the minimum payments and end up in real trouble. Naive, a bit stupid, but genuinely carefree at the time. If I wanted something, I just got credit for it. That version of carefree cost me a lot, and it's exactly why I'm so cautious with money now.

It's genuinely hard to feel carefree about money when you know first hand what it's like to be in a low place financially, having lived through my own £17,500 teenage debt story before I'd even properly started adult life.

Bills and the mortgage still need paying every month, and there's a limit to how relaxed you can feel about spending when you're watching every outgoing to make sure you don't go over. There's also no holiday pay, no annual leave, and no real certainty about what we'll earn on any given day, week, or month, as we're both self-employed, which on its own is enough to stop you feeling fully carefree, no matter how well things are going.

I'd need a fair bit more financial security to feel properly carefree about money, and in the meantime I've had to learn how to look after myself when finances feel tight rather than waiting for the pressure to lift before allowing myself any relief. One day, when we have enough to retire or simply choose to work rather than need to, I imagine that will feel wonderful. I can't wait for that stage, even if it's still a way off.

Who Actually Gets to Feel Carefree?

Looking around, the people I genuinely see living carefree tend to have far fewer responsibilities than we do. Mortgage paid off. No kids. A lump sum in the bank. Already retired. 

It's easier to feel free from worry once the big financial pressures aren't there anymore, and I think that's worth naming honestly, rather than pretending anyone can feel fully carefree just by thinking positively.

Growing Older Helps More Than You'd Expect

If there's one thing that has genuinely helped me care less about what other people think, it's getting older, having kids, and having a husband who backs the same values. That comes from being comfortable with who you are and what you believe in.

It's easy to be vegan and not care if someone disagrees, because I'm happy with my choice and confident in it, so their opinion was never going to change my mind anyway. If anything, it bothers me more that people are bothered by what I eat, than it bothers me that they've said something about it. That distinction has taken years to land properly, but it's made me far more comfortable living on my own terms.

Practical Ways to Feel More Carefree, Even When Life Is Busy

You don't need to overhaul your whole life to feel a bit more carefree and uninhibited. A few things that genuinely help, even in a busy week with responsibilities stacked up, include:

• Getting outside daily, even a short walk, to clear your head before work takes over. It costs nothing and doesn't need the rest of life to be sorted first.
• Testing a big decision on a small scale first, so your confidence is built on evidence rather than hope.
• Setting clear boundaries around your time, especially if people assume self-employment means unlimited free time. Even one protected weekend a month makes a difference.
• Trusting your own reasoning on decisions that bother other people, rather than needing their approval before you feel settled in them.
• Keeping a couple of weekend hours completely unplanned, so there's always a small pocket of time that's genuinely yours.
• Doing something fun and spontaneous when you can, even just an hour a month. For us that might be grabbing the bodyboards, or dropping work for an hour to watch the sunset at the beach.

None of these fix the bigger picture. They won't clear a mortgage or bring back an income that's dropped. But they're the difference between waiting for carefree to arrive fully formed one day, and actually feeling a bit of it along the way.

Final Thoughts

I don't think I'll feel properly carefree any time soon, not with a mortgage, two kids, and businesses to run. But I am sure I will one day.

Once the mortgage is paid off, we've got real financial security with enough saved for retirement, and we've got more time on our hands without worrying about the next debt or mortgage payment, or whether we'll make enough income that day, that week, or that month, I think it will feel wonderful.

Until then, it's less about waiting for that version of carefree to arrive, and more about building small, genuine pockets of it into the life you already have. Trusting your own decisions, protecting your time with proper boundaries, and finding the things, like a walk by the sea, that let you feel it now rather than only in some future, fully sorted version of life.