Julieta Duvall is a 42-year-old flight attendant, unschooling mom, and part-time poet who spent years chasing job security before realizing that freedom mattered more. (@the_unschooling_lifestyle)
Originally from Mexico, Julieta studied law, dropped out, and ended up taking the midnight shift as Spirit Airlines’ only Spanish-speaking reservations agent in Michigan. One year later, she joined the first class of flight attendants hired after 9/11. Today she works for Delta, earns top-of-scale pay, and chooses her monthly schedule based on her family’s needs, often dropping every assigned trip to rebuild the month from scratch.
She explains the hidden economics of flight attending—how pay is calculated, how to game the system, and why the swankiest layovers are hotly contested. Julieta also opens up about her family’s financial history: buying a $7,000 house, doing accidental landlording, weathering debt consolidation (twice), and how their motto became “spend less, don’t work more.”
We discuss how unschooling her kids changed everything—especially how she sees time, purpose, and money. She describes the shift from tiger mom to intentional parent, how her body reminds her when she’s over-pleasing, and why she’ll never again miss a family moment for the sake of someone else’s crisis at work.
We also get into her enduring love for bookstores, slow travel, and the trees of Michigan—and how she’s built a life that lets her say “no” to work, “yes” to crafting, and “maybe” to the chickens next door.
Full transcript: dirtbagrich.com/julieta
Recorded in July 2025.
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript. Typos and mistakes exist!
Blake Boles (00:01)
Julieta Duvall, welcome to Dirtbag Rich.
Julieta Duvall (00:04)
Thank you for having me, Blake.
Blake Boles (00:07)
What’s the best thing and the worst thing about being a flight attendant?
Julieta Duvall (00:12)
The best thing is, I think, obviously the travel, but also the people that I get to work with and the people that I get to meet throughout my travels. The worst thing I could say is the extremely long days and inability to follow the cues of my body.
Blake Boles (00:29)
can you elaborate on that? The cues of your body?
Julieta Duvall (00:32)
Yes, I have struggled with this for many years. So I’ve been on a flight with them for almost 20 years. And I got used to eating whenever I knew I could. Because for example, if I got on a flight to going to Japan, which is a 14 and a half hour flight from Detroit, the service, the first service, we take about maybe three to three and a half hours. But by the time I got time to sit down and eat a meal, it was the service, was the time that I had driven from home and gotten ready. So it might have been close to eight hours by the time I got to sit and eat a decent meal or perhaps use the restroom. So I got used to following a timeline of eating whenever I could, not whenever I was hungry.
Blake Boles (01:20)
Have you been able to circumvent that or get better at that?
Julieta Duvall (01:24)
Yeah, I think the last couple of years have been a really trial and error as far as like choosing trips. For example, I don’t do international trips anymore. I try to choose ⁓ short day trips and even my three day trips. You know, I have space in between my layovers. I like them to be at least 18 hours minimum. don’t do domestically. We do like 30 hour layovers in different cities. But the third day it’s a really early pickup. Like we have to be downstairs and ready to go by like 4, 10 in the morning. So for me, that equals like a two in the morning ⁓ wake up call. And I noticed that when I do that, my stomach is like really upset. So I stopped doing those trips and just, you know, trying with the system what works for me so I can follow those cues that have, you know, given me a new sense of freedom almost.
Blake Boles (02:19)
Hmm. So you said you’ve been doing this for 20 years. It’s still a struggle to manage, you know, whatever your body needs early wakeups. ⁓ where did this career begin for you?
Julieta Duvall (02:23)
Yes. As a mistake, really. mean, you know, back actually when my mom, when I was like six or seven, I wanted to be a lawyer. So first I wanted to be a writer. And my mom said, I grew up in Mexico and she said, well, you’re going to starve. You cannot be a writer or anything. I wanted to be a poet. I like to write poetry, like, you know, and I said, okay, so if I cannot be a writer and make money, I chose to be an attorney. And then my mom said, what don’t you become a flight attendant? I’ll send you to every country so you can learn a different language and then you can be a flight attendant. This, I must have been seven and I’m like absolutely not. I don’t even know what that is. No. We live in and we lived in Mexico and then I moved to the States in 2000 early mid 2001 and by 2004 I needed a job with insurance and back then we were looking at the newspaper you know so I was looking at the job placement ads and Spirit Airlines was hiring a bilingual reservations agent. So I was the midnight shift Spanish phone girl. Like, you know, if you push to for Spanish, you would get me. I was the only one actually because Spirit, yes, because back then Spirit was still pretty young and their reservation center, their call center, they started in Michigan. So he was in Michigan.
Blake Boles (03:49)
Hmm for all of a spirit airlines
Julieta Duvall (04:00)
And they were starting to grow in Fort Lauderdale, but they’re not nearly as big as they are today. Like that’s their home base nowadays. So I was the only one. And a year later in 2005, they put out an ad for flight attendants and it was the first class of flight attendants that Spirit had hired after 9-11. So someone said, do you want to go? And I’m like, sure, why not? And I went in it not really knowing what I was signing up. So yeah, and 20 years later here I am
Blake Boles (04:34)
And now you work for Delta, you’re like a senior flight attendant, you’re at the top of the pay scale. Is that all correct?
Julieta Duvall (04:41)
Yeah, so I am at the top of the pay scale. I wouldn’t say senior because Delta just completed 100 years in flight. So we have actually we have flight attendants that have been flying for 50 years. So I, you know, there I have completed 15 years. So I’m at my I’m at the beginning of my 16 year. And ⁓ yeah, so I do get good trips. I don’t get all the good ones.
Blake Boles (04:56)
Wow. ⁓
Julieta Duvall (05:10)
like this last month I bid for a two-day layover in Iceland and I was not even close to being able to hold it so yeah.
Blake Boles (05:18)
Huh, so there’s like an internal competitive market for the swankiest trips or the best layovers or stopovers.
Julieta Duvall (05:26)
my gosh, yes. People love them. There used to be a flight attendant a long time ago. This was back, I started here 2011, but I remember seeing a lady with a tag on her back and it was a little dinosaur in the uniform of a flight attendant. And it says dining and dozing for dollars. And what she meant by that is that she would pick the best trips and some trips are like really good. You just get to… deadhead, which means just flying as a passenger to go to another destination to work a flight and you get the same amount of pay and you get to enjoy if sometimes if you fly international for that, which is not very common, will get first class if it’s available. So there’s just like different caveats there, but she would just pick the trips that had the least amount of work and you still get paid the same.
Blake Boles (06:22)
All right, we’re gonna circle back to your life as a flight attendant over these 20, 15 to 20 years. ⁓ Maybe tell me a bit more about the transition from Mexico to the United States, what you did in college, what you might’ve done for work before you joined Spirit.
Julieta Duvall (06:41)
So in Mexico, I started my first year as a law school student and then I moved to the States. I got married really young. I was married. I got married when I was 19 and divorced by the time I was like 22. I chose to go back to Mexico, but even after a few years, it was hard to get back into the life because I had not finished my degree. So I started it, but I didn’t finish it.
And back then, you know, the paperwork and all that stuff about your visa and whatnot, I had to tell the immigration office that I had gotten divorced and that this is what happened. And they decided, they made the decision to extend my visa. So I was able to come back to Michigan. And then I started working at Spirit and it kind of took a life of its own. I always wanted to go back to college, but I didn’t do that until I was in my 30s.
Blake Boles (07:39)
Hmm. What did you study in your thirties?
Julieta Duvall (07:42)
I studied literature, Spanish, which is my first love. Like I’ve always wanted to be a writer. So I studied literature in languages, Spanish and Portuguese, and I had the best time. I really did.
Blake Boles (07:47)
Yeah.
Were you able to pay for that with your flight attendant income?
Julieta Duvall (08:01)
Yes and no. So yes, because Delta has a scholarship program. So I apply for the scholarship and actually I want to say probably 70 % of my undergrad was paid by the scholarship and other scholarships. So I really work, I work really hard to get good grades because in my mind I went back to college when my oldest son was born in 2014. So he was born in and I was in, I started in summer school in May.
Blake Boles (08:12)
Wow.
Julieta Duvall (08:30)
And in my mind, if I was giving up my time with him because he was really young, I could not go to school and get bad grades. Like that was like my trade off was that I needed to get good grades so I could get the scholarships that could pay for it so I didn’t have to put that burden on my family beyond the burden of me not being there actually.
Blake Boles (08:52)
So let me get this straight. You’re a law school dropout. You got married and divorced early. You got Delta to mostly pay for your literature undergrad degree when you were in your thirties. And you also have a family. Tell me a bit about your family.
Julieta Duvall (08:55)
Yes. Yes.
Mhm. Mhm.
My husband and I met on a flight back in December of 2005. He was a passenger going to his friend’s wedding in Jamaica and I was a flight attendant working the flight to Jamaica, from Orlando to Jamaica. I just saw him, I thought he was cute and then I saw him again on the flight back a couple of days later, about a week or so. And we’ve been together ever since. So it’s a…
Blake Boles (09:37)
Who
made the first move, Julietta? Gotta ask.
Julieta Duvall (09:40)
I think my husband did the first move by giving me his phone number on a safety, on the corner of a safety information card. I know. Yes, it was so cute though. So it was pretty cool though, but we’ve been together for, you know, since then. So our first date was January 5th, 2006. And we have been together ever since.
Blake Boles (09:49)
my gosh.
and tell me briefly what your husband does for work.
Julieta Duvall (10:07)
He does real estate, full circle real estate, which means he helps people, prepares the house for sale, sells the house, fixes the house, paints, fixes. My husband’s a very talented handyman, extremely talented. And then he helps people find a new house, get the new house for them to move in, and he’s just kind of full circle.
Blake Boles (10:31)
Okay, does this mean that he’s a house flipper, like who will buy houses and then sell them or he only assists other people in selling their houses?
Julieta Duvall (10:39)
Yeah, so we have not done a flip. No. Yes, no, no, no flipping here. Yeah.
Blake Boles (10:42)
Okay.
All right. I want to get into the nitty gritty of how money and time works in your family. And maybe you can start by describing that balance in your life as a flight attendant and how it’s evolved.
Julieta Duvall (10:54)
Yes.
I think it has evolved in the sense that because I have more seniority and more flexibility in my schedule, what I do is I bid for a schedule. So Flight Attendants get a new schedule every month and we have to bid for the trips. So it’s called preferential bidding. And then we get a schedule and what I do is I usually drop every trip that I have on my line, or at least I try to.
The reason why I do that is because I drop everything so I can keep my month clear and build my month as I go. And it hasn’t always been like this. I know, there were times, I mean, I work Christmas, I work holidays, I work New Year’s before. So I’ve spent a lot of time on the road when I thought I wanted to be home. So I clear my month.
And then we build our month based on the activities that we want to do, whether it’s a trip or perhaps there’s something going on at home. And it’s very intentional. I go week by week.
Blake Boles (12:08)
Got it. And so you and your husband are making these scheduling decisions month by month, or maybe even week by week in conjunction with what’s going on in your kids’ lives. And your kids don’t go to school, correct? Great. So they got stuff that could be happening literally any time of the month. How long do you think you’ve been able to enjoy this very high level of flexibility? ⁓
Julieta Duvall (12:15)
Yes. Yes.
Mm-hmm. Correct. Mm-hmm.
Probably, like about 10 years.
Blake Boles (12:39)
Wow. So really like five years of being a flight attendant with less flexibility. And then you were able to, to get to this level where you’re, more able to pick and choose your shifts and change them up each month.
Julieta Duvall (12:51)
Yes, it was a work, you still have to, I think I, at the beginning of this, like this 10 year period, I work, I’ve spent more time on the computer by being able to swap trips and drop and, you know, move things around. But that level of, like, I don’t really get on the computer a lot for the trips. ⁓ So it’s been really, that’s been gradually decreasing, yes.
Blake Boles (13:16)
All right, and tell me about the money side of things. How well does being a flight attendant pay? What’s the range of possibility? Is there overtime? Give it to me.
Julieta Duvall (13:19)
⁓
So every airline is different. They have different rules. Your pay scale is the basic foundation. You can work a lot. Some airlines have restrictions on time, like no more than, you know, 80 some hours or something. But generally speaking, you can work up to like 100, 150 hours if you fly the high time trips. For example, when I first started in 2011 here, I was trying to fly Asia and
Europe as much as I could because they were worth more hours in the same amount of days like for example a China trip or Japan is worth 25 hours for three days Whereas a domestic trip can be worth 14 hours Yes So the more hours I worked a lot at the beginning because I lost the ⁓ ten dollars an hour When I made the transition from Spirit to Delta
Blake Boles (14:14)
for three days. Got it.
Julieta Duvall (14:26)
So I was trying to catch up, but the money has been something that we’ve struggled in the past. Like we have gone through debt consolidation twice. There were times where we didn’t really have, you you got paid and we didn’t really have any money. And ⁓ it was a struggle until I started to go back to the root of our spending patterns and really getting like laser focus on what’s important.
And at that point, the money started to be, I was the same way I’m intentional with my time, I’m now the same way intentional with the money. Yes.
Blake Boles (15:06)
Hmm. Yeah.
Let’s talk about that a bit later. What’s the pay scale of ⁓ where you are in Delta right now? Like what could someone expect to make if they were working full time? And if you choose to work less than full time, what’s the money like?
Julieta Duvall (15:23)
So you’re considered full time all the time. So there’s not really, there’s a requirement of hours to work a year if you want to keep your subsidized health insurance and all of that stuff. But technically speaking, you don’t necessarily have to work. Like you can choose to drop your trips and not be part, as long as you continue with your education, your continuing education.
Blake Boles (15:33)
Okay.
Julieta Duvall (15:52)
as long as we keep up with whatever we have to do. I think the pay scale now starts at like maybe 30 or 32 an hour, but keep in mind when people think about the hourly pay, well, most people work 40 hours a week. We generally speaking, the average is about 80 hours a month.
Blake Boles (16:16)
Wow, that’s much less. And what counts as an hour and what doesn’t?
Julieta Duvall (16:18)
Yes.
Flight
hour so our flight hours are based on the time that the brakes are released To and from the aircraft so when we park at the gate and they put the brakes You know those blocks thingies on there on the tires that stops the clock So we have two pay scales so we have our flight hour pay scale Which is the highest one and then we have our per diem which is your travel expenses for you know when we’re away from where we’re based
And then there’s a couple of other pay skills there, but they’re a little bit different. Like when you fly international, if you’re the purser, you’ll have something. If you’re the purser in main cabin, you have something different. If you speak a language and you’re going to that country, which I was, I speak Spanish and Portuguese. So I was flying, I flew Brazil from exclusively from 2013.
all the way to 2017. So you get a little extra on that. So there’s a little, you know, some other things there too.
Blake Boles (17:27)
Got it. How does it work with your husband and his contribution to the family? Does he work full time? Is it more seasonal, more autonomous, or is it more restricted?
Julieta Duvall (17:42)
So it’s seasonal for sure and it’s definitely more autonomous too. Seasonal because, we live in Michigan and most of the real estate season buying and selling happens in the summer. There’s a couple of things that happen in the winter and then some of his like painting stuff happens in the winter. Not a lot, but we just kind of work around that. So I come in and out of the house. I try to do day trips nowadays because I do like to be home.
but sometimes the driving gets to be a lot. ⁓ yeah, so it’s very, very flexible, very flexible.
Blake Boles (18:20)
Got it. And what’s the motivating force between both you and your husband maintaining such high levels of time flexibility?
Julieta Duvall (18:28)
I think the motivation is that we have always been pretty, ⁓ just really enjoy our time together. And I feel like we have never known any different. So my husband did work sales for many years, nine to five, for a while. And then the pandemic kind of pushed him out of the sales job because it was like, there was no commission on the pipeline and all of that stuff. So we decided to make the transition for him to be home and…
contribute in the seasonal way that he had been doing. And then I get to bring home like the consistent every two weeks, you know, there’s always something coming in, but there’s like flexibility within that schedule too. Yes.
Blake Boles (19:14)
Okay. Let’s circle back to your family motto, which is spend less, don’t work more. You said you had this sort of aha moment or this realization that when you got your finances in order, then you didn’t have to keep working more and more or stressing yourself out. Tell me about that moment or that transition.
Julieta Duvall (19:18)
Yes.
I think it really comes down to being afraid to recognize and that I was afraid to look at the numbers. And if I wanted to work less, if I wanted to spend more time at home, I needed to know the numbers because then I was just working for not a specific reason. Like I was just working. So for a while, during our times when we got into a lot of debt, I would just spend, spend, spend, right? I wouldn’t really think about it.
I would just spend and at some point the bank card would tell me that I had no more money left. And as I got older, I’m like, well, what am I working? Who am I working for? So I realized that I wanted the money that I made work for me and not me work for the money. So that kind of started me into the rabbit hole. I also like to go back to beginnings a lot. So I love going back to beginnings. Like I’ll start something and I’ll take it back to
the root of something. So I started really digging into our spending patterns and realizing that I will not, I don’t wanna just work for money. Like I want the money to work for me, but I want it to be on my terms. I’m very, I’m very like, I get really like strong, like I feel it in my body that I am not going to just work for the money.
Blake Boles (20:57)
So I’m still a bit confused when you say make the money work for you. you talking about having investments or so-called passive income? Are you talking about wanting to like feel a deep sense of meaning when you’re doing the work instead of just working for work sake and to have more disposable income? ⁓
Julieta Duvall (21:15)
Yeah, so more so on the flexibility. Like I want to be able to say like, know what, today I don’t think I want to go to work and I’m going to drop a trip or not do something else. I want to be able to have the flexibility to say that versus saying, you know what, I really need to go to work. Like I cannot afford to stay, you know, home for an extra day. Or even if my schedule keeps me, for example, like four days off in a row.
Blake Boles (21:27)
Hmm. Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Julieta Duvall (21:42)
I want to be able to say like, that’s perfect. I am going to go ahead and take a trip or just stay home or, you know, maybe take my parents out to eat instead of saying, no, I really need to find a trip there. That to me is making the money work for me as, or maybe working side by side, right? Because I’m giving my time to this organization, to this company. And I love being there most of the time when, ⁓ you know,
when I’m doing that. So at the same time, we’re both benefiting. I’m there helping out. I’m doing my job as best as I can. But when I’m home, I am home and I don’t get to think about it. I don’t think about it.
Blake Boles (22:24)
Yeah, it seems like you have a really good boundary between the company that you work for and your personal life. It also reminds me, Julietta, of like a kid who wakes up one morning and says, I don’t think I want to go to school today. I’m just not feeling it. I don’t think I’m going to perform very well. I’d rather sleep in. I’d rather hang out with my friends. And they just don’t go to school.
Julieta Duvall (22:40)
Yes.
That’s exactly right. Exactly. Yep. That is exactly how I feel about it sometimes.
Blake Boles (22:54)
You’re adult unschooler.
Julieta Duvall (22:54)
Yes. Yes, I am. And it took a while, you know, I wasn’t always this way. There were times where I would just choose to work a lot. ⁓ I remember working a flight at Spirit to Cancun on, I was coming back from vacation in New York and scheduling for Spirit back then was like really small. So John, the scheduler,
he called because he looked to see if any flight attendants were on that flight just as passengers because they needed a flight attendant to work to Cancun. So after all this like sob story, he said, if you don’t go, the flight won’t go. So I felt guilty, you know, and then I realized, you know, years later, I mean, this literally happens years later, that if I had not gone, if I had not worked a trip, it would have been okay.
I’m sure he would have found someone else. I’m sure the flight would have gone at some point. But I missed that time with my partner back then. It was just the two of us. We waited a long time to have kids. So it was just the two of us. So I missed that. And for working a flight, helping out people I didn’t even know. I’m very intentional about that. Yes.
Blake Boles (24:11)
So let’s talk a bit about purpose here. I’m curious how much purpose you derive from the actual work that you’re doing as a flight attendant versus the purpose or fulfillment that you get from your flexibility and your autonomy. Yeah, how does that balance out for you?
Julieta Duvall (24:30)
⁓ That’s such a great question. I think the purpose, know, when I’m working, I get from it, I get a lot of inspiration from people’s stories, from, you know, talking to my crew, getting to know other places, like seeing how other people live. I love when I go to a new city watching TV because the local TV, the local news will give me ⁓ a little bit of a bird’s eye view of
Blake Boles (24:51)
Hmm.
Julieta Duvall (24:58)
what’s happening in their lives and what’s important to them. So I feel like I reflect a lot on that and it really adds to my flexibility to choosing my flexibility when I’m home. So I feel like I still get more sometimes when I’m at work, but it has to be on my terms. Like if I get stuck in a place because of weather, like I totally understand that it happens.
But if I get stuck in a place and it could have been avoided, like I get really, ⁓ because my time, like I can’t get it back. So I really value that a lot.
Blake Boles (25:40)
Mm-hmm. It sounds like the reason you love the flexibility is because it lets you spend time with your partner, with your husband, when it was just the two of you, and now with the kids, with the family as a whole. Are these relationships kind of the primary driver and kind of the primary reason that you want to have this kind of life in the first place?
Julieta Duvall (25:53)
Mm-hmm. Yes.
Yes, I mean, for that and to do, ⁓ I’m like a multi-passionate person. I like to spend time doing the things that I love, whether it’s writing, whether it’s crafting, whether it’s podcasting. I just want to spend the time that I want to spend on the things that I want to do. I mean.
Blake Boles (26:26)
I just
want to do what I like to do. It’s very clear. So as you know, many other people who I interview on this podcast, Julieta are outdoors enthusiasts. What are your enthusiasms? You just mentioned some of them, but give me a list.
Julieta Duvall (26:28)
Yes, yes, yes.
Mm-hmm.
So I love going to bookshops. Bookstores are my thing. I love books. I love getting to know museums. I am starting to be more in tune with nature. I’ve always liked the water, so oceans, know, beach, nature. But lately the trees have been like my companion, like my grounding force. So I’m starting to dive a little more into that. ⁓
What else? But yeah, I just like being out and about and I like to be able to retreat whenever I feel my, ⁓ my people barometer, you know, just to be like too high. Like I really, I really need that, ⁓ alone space and time. And that’s why flexibility is so important because I, it’s not always, ⁓ good to be spending out, spending time with a lot of people at the airport. Sometimes I get really fatigued.
Blake Boles (27:38)
Yeah, I get that. You’ve told me that you thrive on transition and change, which is pretty evident. And I’m curious what the opposite of that would be for you. Like what’s, what’s a version of hell for you in which there is not enough transition and not enough change in your life. And have you ever been there? Have you ever experienced that?
Julieta Duvall (27:40)
Mm-hmm.
I think it’s really, there has been different periods of it. Transition, my job has been able to allow for those transitions. So I’ve always said my life is consistently inconsistent. It is something that I can count on. There will never be a dull day at the job. And sometimes when I’m home, I feel
a little bit stagnant as far as my creative process. Like not necessarily stagnant by spending time with my family because that’s not, I love spending time with them, but I do feel how much I’ve gotten from, you know, from being on the road and from meeting other people, how that influences my ideas or my creative process. I feel that so when I’m home for too long, I feel like I go into my mind a lot and I get really anxious.
Blake Boles (28:31)
Hmm.
Julieta Duvall (28:58)
before I go to work and sometimes after I come to work. I’m still working on that piece because the transition from work to home is like I want to do all the things that I was inspired by and I have like emotional needs to fill with my family. So it really kind of stops me. And then the transition from home to work, it’s the mind that says you have to do all the things before you leave.
And I know it’s not true. So that is, that’s probably my version of the opposite of what I like in flexibility the hell. Yeah.
Blake Boles (29:29)
Hmm
Just to put a bow on the money side of things. So you’re bringing in the flight attendant income. Your husband is bringing in the sporadic amounts of ⁓ real estate ⁓ income. And do you have any other sources of income that make this life possible? Any outside benefactors? Any secret? I love to just ask people like, where does your money come from? Just be honest with me.
Julieta Duvall (29:42)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Yes.
So my husband does the real estate. We do have a real estate portfolio over own. So there’s a little bit of that. I do have some ⁓ evergreen offers that I have, like some KDP journals from Amazon. have, I’m a human design reader. So I do readings for people. So there’s a little bit that’s not consistent. So it just kind of comes whenever it comes and I’ll, I welcome that. And ⁓
That’s it for right now. Really, those are like, there’s like different pieces of the pie chart when you look at where all of our income comes from. Those are the ones right now.
Blake Boles (30:46)
Yeah. And you mentioned that you guys struggled with money and went through some form of bankruptcy in the past. Like when did the ship really right itself? When did you start to feel like, okay, this is sustainable. We’re accruing equity. Don’t have to worry as much anymore. ⁓
Julieta Duvall (31:03)
I think it began in 2011. you know, the 2008 mortgage crash, what happened for us was that we couldn’t sell my husband’s house. He had bought the house from his mom and we couldn’t sell it because we were trying to buy a place of our own that I could also be have ownership and have equity. Back then, we broke up once.
And I realized, you know, the money that I spent in the house wasn’t, I didn’t get to keep that because it was in the house. So we decided to buy something of our own and we couldn’t sell that place. So we became, we became landlords by accident really because the market just didn’t allow for anything to sell. And then in 2011, we bought a house for $7,000 back then. Yeah.
Blake Boles (31:56)
Excuse me? A house
for seventh? You mean a shack? You mean a parking spot?
Julieta Duvall (32:01)
You know, it was, it’s a tiny house. has three bedrooms, one bathroom, just one floor. It’s a, like a little bit of a ranch type thing, but it needed a lot of work. So from 2008, the mortgage crash, there were a lot of, there was a lot of inventory. And what the bank wanted to do was to get them off their books. And it was closing, you know, this was like October. So what happened, my real estate agent back then, my husband wasn’t one at the time.
She said the house was like 12,000. And I said, well, why don’t you write the offer for like nine or something? And she said, you’re crazy. I said, yes, but I would like to ask. I’ve always been that way. Like, I just want to ask. If it can’t happen, that’s okay. I just want to ask. So we did, and they said yes, and we moved into the process. And when we got to the inspection, the water…
we turned on the water and it was like a fountain. There was like water coming out from every direction. So the house needed a lot of work because it sat vacant for a couple of years. And we said, well, can we get it for seven? Since it’s gonna cost us like two grand to do the plumbing, right? And the bank, again, my agent said, you’re crazy. And I’m like, like I said, I just want to ask. They don’t have to say yes.
And we did and they said yes and we bought it for 7,000. Obviously we put in like, that was one of the reasons why we got into debt because we put, we ended up putting like, I don’t know, close to maybe 15, 20 into fixing it and that was my husband doing all the work. So by the end we were kind of like struggling to finish to make sure that we could pay for all the things that we needed. So yeah.
Blake Boles (33:50)
And is this one of your rental properties now or is it the house you live in? It is. Yeah.
Julieta Duvall (33:52)
Yes. No, it’s
one of our rental properties and we have, ⁓ we just got a new tenant in that house a few months ago and we gave the house some love. it was, I don’t know, we were there and you know, we did a new painting, we did new carpet, we got a new window. ⁓ We, listen to me, my husband did all the work because he’s really amazing. I just kind of.
Blake Boles (34:15)
Hehehehe
Julieta Duvall (34:18)
give some direction sometimes and some input, but he does, he’s amazing. He really does all the work. And we gave the house some love because he has been a really good ⁓ asset and he has given us some important time with our kids at some point. So it’s been a really good relationship.
Blake Boles (34:36)
Hmm. Julieta, I want to switch gears. ⁓ I don’t usually have people who know about unschooling, ⁓ to speak with, but you write and speak and podcast about unschooling. And I would love to hear your take on. Yeah. On the overlaps between your beliefs in the education department and then in the work and the time department, and then especially the purpose department too. Maybe you could begin by just telling me about your kids and their
Julieta Duvall (34:40)
Yeah.
Yes.
Blake Boles (35:05)
educational journeys and when you realize you need to do something different.
Julieta Duvall (35:10)
⁓ They’re 11 and 6 and they are beautiful people. They keep me grounded all the time and let me know where I need to work. I apparently need a listening class lately because I don’t listen enough, but we started in the pandemic really and actually, you know, the transition into unschooling, which made me question the educational path that we were on because I was the definition of a Tiger Mon before that.
And then during the pandemic, we had the opportunity to go into homeschooling and I went into Tiger Mom homeschool edition. And yes, it was not, it was not pretty. I’ve spent a lot of money. I’d spent almost 10 grand at the beginning in curriculum. You know, it was like Christmas. There was a huge learning lesson there and I will forever be grateful for my oldest son to let me know that the path that I was on was not the one that he needed. That was not the mom.
Blake Boles (35:44)
boy.
Wow. ⁓ huh.
Julieta Duvall (36:06)
that he needed. So I started looking into, you know, play therapy or like play, like more play into our days. And that’s how I got to unschooling. And then I started learning more about it and reading more about it. And he just really shifted. And then I read, you know, Akilah Richards book, Raising Free People. Have you ever, have you heard about it? Yeah. So I read her book.
Blake Boles (36:27)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I’m familiar with it, yeah.
Julieta Duvall (36:33)
And it really put things in perspective for me because in the book she talks about how we treat children from a colonized perspective. So my undergrad was in Latin American and Caribbean studies, but also being from Mexico, I was familiar with the legacy of colonization in Mexico while I lived there. So it really, really kind of shifted for me and I started to dive deep. And by asking questions, she calls her this mad question asking.
I also began to be very clear as to what was important to us. So it started with education and then it kind of moved seep through into the rest of our lives. And the whole money situation, that was another thing I just started asking questions. Is this what I need right now? Do I need a phone plan that charges $160 a month? I’m like, no, absolutely not. You do not need that.
So what are the best options? So asking the questions through the on-schooling route that we were on kind of helped me put everything else in perspective for us. And it’s been an amazing journey, really. It’s been really fascinating.
Blake Boles (37:44)
And I want to dig into this a little bit more because I’ve seen this dynamic play out in which a family has maybe a more conventional setup, parenting style, educational path. And then for some reason there’s some crisis or there’s some stressor in the education ⁓ area and they discover homeschooling. They realize this doesn’t really work like we thought it would. They go into unschooling and then the unschooling affects the parents thinking about their own
Julieta Duvall (37:54)
Mm-hmm.
Blake Boles (38:13)
work and life and careers and relationships. It sounds like that happened for you. And can you maybe tease out a few of those lessons that you imported into your life after being exposed to them through the realm of unschooling?
Julieta Duvall (38:19)
my gosh, guys.
Yeah, so I think the first one was the learning is not linear. Like learning happens all the time and I had to stop wanting to see the results at all times. Like stop wanting to see those results from my children and asking them. And I’m like, why am I doing that? And I realized that people, society wanted to see those results from me too, right? Like that’s how I got, ⁓ maybe.
Blake Boles (38:55)
What do mean by that?
Julieta Duvall (38:58)
you know, do you want to be seen? I wanted to be seen as a good mom. So in order to prove myself worthy of society’s validation and all of that, I wanted to be a good mom. I wanted to have like the house and, you know, the things to be seen as a good family. But I’m like, the status, yes. But I’m like, do I really need that? And I felt like I really played that game.
Blake Boles (39:18)
the status symbols.
Julieta Duvall (39:25)
When we went into the school system, because we were in a Montessori setup for a few years, and before that, being in aviation industry, I felt like I was always an outsider. So was hard to keep friendships that were not in the industry, because people get tired from the schedule changes and all of that stuff. So I was always like an outsider in a way. So when we went into the school system, I felt like, my gosh, this is my opportunity to be normal.
And I’m like, and to be part of this, like, you know, the cool kids club that do all the things. And by 2019, I was like, I’m exhausted. Like, why is this what people aspire to? And I’m like, and please, this is no shame for if you’re doing the things, this is not to shame anyone. It just didn’t feel right for us.
Blake Boles (40:08)
it
And what specifically exhausted you? Was it being the homework cop? Was it driving kids places all the time? What else?
Julieta Duvall (40:21)
Yes,
it was that and it was trying to please the school teachers and the parents and having to go to the birthday parties when we didn’t really know the people, but just we felt like we should. There was a lot of should, like we should do this. The Christmas gifts, the Valentine’s gift, over the years, the amount of money we spent on gifts, was like for teachers, it was insane. And I’m like, why do we need to do this?
Blake Boles (40:48)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Julieta Duvall (40:51)
And
then, you know, we got also some bad experiences there with different things about, you know, timeouts. I’ve never used timeout with my kids. That was not something that I grew up with. So it wasn’t part of, you know, like my parenting style per se, but it was just, yeah, it was just different. And I’m like, is this, by 2019, my second son was born. So I wonder, I ask myself, is this how I see
our life, driving, waking up, and barely having enough time to see each other at night for the next, you know, 10 years. And it felt, it didn’t feel good.
Blake Boles (41:28)
Hmm.
You know, I’m working on this dirt bag rich book right now, Giulietta. And just this morning I was editing the section on purpose and kind of the modern search for purpose. And I get this feeling that when people are in their later twenties and certainly in their thirties and they’re kind of thinking like, okay, I got my job and maybe I have a relationship, you know, is this all? This doesn’t feel like it’s enough. I feel like a lot of people have kids and almost kind of gladly enter into the, all the shoulds.
Julieta Duvall (41:37)
Mhm.
Yes.
Blake Boles (42:05)
Of the education system and the stuff you do with kids and you go to the birthday parties and you drive them to the play dates and to the activities because it just provides this big sledgehammer of purpose. You know, even if it’s stressing you out and it costs so much money and it’s so tiring. And like you said, you kind of, you barely make it to the end of one day, just so you can get up the next day, under slept and slurp down some coffee and do it all over again. ⁓ but that,
Julieta Duvall (42:18)
Yes.
Yes.
Blake Boles (42:33)
offers this package deal of purpose. Like you send your kids to school, you make sure they get good grades. You kind of you’re on the same team as the teachers and the other parents. And then you don’t really have to think, you don’t, you probably don’t have energy to think very hard about anything else or feel any anxiety about like, what’s my purpose on this earth?
Julieta Duvall (42:48)
That is ex- yes.
Mm-hmm, that is exactly right. And I think it’s easier sometimes to fall into those patterns to just kind of go with what people expect of you. And you know, I think from our older generation of my parents, for example, it was just like, that’s just what you did that you aspire to towards education, towards doing the best thing and not really think about yourself, not really think about what your needs are.
because you’re giving everything else for the needs of others, know, your collective group or the school, your work, whichever situation you’re in, but it doesn’t give you the time to reflect whether that’s right for you.
Blake Boles (43:33)
Hmm. Yeah. So that sounds like some big thing that you took away from discovering unschooling that you imported into your life. You can’t just be a self-sacrificer forever and ever.
Julieta Duvall (43:40)
Yes. Yes, because I basically
No, mean, you know, I feel like when we do that, that’s how your body reacts. You know, your body starts giving you the signs that perhaps you’ve been, you know, people pleasing for too long. And the body really let us know, gives us the clues to whether we’re in alignment or not. And it’s, we often don’t listen. And I think that’s why there’s a lot of like illnesses and whatever, but
I’m a big believer on that. you know, being able to trust myself and to trust my body and to be able to look deeper because when you’re trying to find your purpose, it may not be all, you know, good and, you know, unicorns and rainbows at first. Like there is some like inner work to be there to be done. But also when you’re choosing yourself, you’re probably going to rub some feathers with people around you and people would probably make you think that you’re crazy for choosing that path.
that you know it’s true. And I often shy away from different endeavors in the past because I would share with people and they’re like, well, that’s not gonna work. And I would be like so conditioned to seek this validation from other people that I just wouldn’t even think about it. I was like, yeah, you’re probably right. That’s probably gonna happen. And now I’m like, no, let me think about this. Let me sit with this.
Blake Boles (44:43)
Mm-hmm.
Julieta Duvall (45:12)
With unschooling we have to basically take all of our beliefs and kind of really like, know flesh them out Is this truly what we believe and if we did we we kept it? I guess we believe that education is important But how is it that we get towards, you know education is at the school? No, we definitely don’t believe that’s the route. So how do we do that? So there’s a lot of reflection, but again, I love going to the route like I love taking this
Blake Boles (45:19)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Julieta Duvall (45:40)
you know, back process, you know. So it may not be for everyone, but that’s the way we work through it, for sure.
Blake Boles (45:48)
Maybe you can give me a little glimpse into your unschooling life and maybe tell me like, what is negotiable ⁓ in your family? And I’m specifically thinking of what you expect from your kids and what’s non-negotiable.
Julieta Duvall (46:04)
I think everything is negotiable in terms of meeting everyone’s needs. So non-negotiable would be ⁓ communication. Like we always communicate with each other to make sure everyone’s needs are met. It’s difficult sometimes because we cannot, ⁓ you know, perhaps they, ⁓ maybe we have to go on an early ⁓ trip to somewhere. So everyone has to get up early, but
There, the communication that happens is that the night before, I tell everyone, hey guys, we’re gonna get up at 0-Dark-100 because we’re going to the airport. Yes, we just got back from the Aero conference in New Hampshire. So we got up early. I’m like, this is when we’re gonna get up and we have to be out of the house by, I think for this trip, it was like 730, which it wasn’t that early for us actually. And I did exactly what I had said.
Blake Boles (46:39)
Hahaha
Julieta Duvall (46:58)
and they were both up and ready to go. They packed their bags the night before. Our daily life is really, I mean, every day is different though. Because of my job, it has always been easy for me to transition from those, know, like just be different all the time. Like it’s okay with it. I like routine, some stability. That is for me getting up early and having coffee by myself. Like that’s routine and stability for me.
Blake Boles (47:23)
Hmm.
Julieta Duvall (47:26)
If I begin my day like that, then the rest of the day, whether it’s experiments or a park or something, I’m like, I’m okay. Because I know that I’ve gotten what I needed for me first. And ⁓ meeting in the middle is just really important. So we were in New Hampshire for maybe four days. I was at the conference, that was important to me. And…
Blake Boles (47:41)
Mm-hmm.
Julieta Duvall (47:54)
I took the boys there and I’m like, hey, this is where it’s going to be. Do you think you want to be with me? And they’re like, no, we want to go to the pool. So it was their decision. They were given the choice and it was okay with it because so they went back to the pool and my husband kind of hang out with them. And I did the conference and the sessions that were important to me and everyone’s needs were met. If I had made my kids
forced them to stay at the conference, which ⁓ it was important for me to learn more about self-directed education and alternative education and all of that. I mean, it would have been the complete opposite, right? Like, there is no democracy there when I say you’re supposed to be here because I want to be here. Like, there were options. And sometimes those options aren’t as good, right? Like, have the other parents spend the time at the pool with them and…
Blake Boles (48:40)
Hmm.
Julieta Duvall (48:48)
go other places when I’m at the conference, but this time you just happen to work. And this is where the flexibility, making sure that our actions are aligned towards this type of flexibility is really important for us.
Blake Boles (49:01)
Hmm. What else have you gotten to do as a family or perhaps what have your kids been able to do even if it’s without you or your husband? Thanks to the flexibility of your schedules, the flexibility of unschooling, not being restricted to a curriculum or having to go to the same school every day. Can you give me a few more examples?
Julieta Duvall (49:21)
Yeah, so we love, we love travel. We went to Paris and my oldest son likes World War II. So we went to Paris, we went to London, we have traveled to Belize, we did the world schooling hub with a really good friend of mine and we got to spend time with other families that like to travel. So that was really, really, it was just really, really cool. Get to know people that are on the same page and they seek ⁓
Blake Boles (49:38)
Mm-hmm.
Julieta Duvall (49:50)
learning from different cultures and just really blending in. We go to Mexico quite a bit to keep this relationship with their heritage. You know, I still have family in Mexico, so we do that. We travel usually, we don’t usually travel in the summer. So in the summer, because the airports are crazy, we stay in Michigan. So we go up north to visit my husband’s dad. I have a friend up north too that
has all kinds of animals and whatnot. So we love spending time over there. What else? They do parkour. So parkour. Yeah, parkour is important to them. Martial arts is important to them. They love the pool. They love just being around. And right now we are taking care of some chickens from a foreign neighbor. So they’re excited to go and spend the whole day with the chickens. That’s their saying. The whole day.
Blake Boles (50:30)
ooooh
Julieta Duvall (50:49)
They want to be there. So it’s just, you know, holding space for them and to really letting them get their, amount of time that they need with a certain project and not expecting that they do all the things for like, for all of it, you know, for every project that we do. So.
Blake Boles (50:49)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Not turning them into little corporate employees. If your family homeschool with deliverables and deadlines. so while it sounds like,
Julieta Duvall (51:14)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Blake Boles (51:21)
The free time and free resources that you have are not committed to the outdoors or to travel in the same way that other people that I’ve interviewed for Dirtbag Rich. It certainly sounds like your kids get to spend a lot of time outdoors. Your family gets to do a lot of travel together. And so it’s sort of like distributed among all your, your family, ⁓ this, this, autonomy that you’ve created thanks to your work flexibility and also your husband’s. Yeah.
Julieta Duvall (51:46)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes,
⁓ it’s been a really interesting journey to realize how much flexibility we had before and to really value that and to really put a shelter around that because we are protective over that time. Yes.
Blake Boles (52:05)
Hmm.
Julieta, if people want to follow your work, your writing, your speaking, what is the best way for them to do that?
Julieta Duvall (52:14)
Right now Instagram would probably be the best option for right now. There’s a lot of moving pieces You can find me at the unschooling lifestyle in Instagram. We do have a website is the unschooling lifestyle but I’m in the process of changing a few things and Making sure that my energy is in the most aligned way with my work, which I love but the revelations come sooner than my time for writing them so that’s been ⁓ a learning process for me
Yes, so, yes,
Blake Boles (52:44)
I’m right there with you.
Julieta Duvall (52:46)
my revelations are fast and I write and all of that, but they don’t always make it out into the public. So, but yeah, Instagram, I try to keep people informed a little bit and just some of the reflections and the aha moments that happened. They happen every day when you have the space and time to look for them and to see them, to enjoy them, right? To be in the season.
Blake Boles (53:11)
And last question, where is the next place that you are flying for Delta?
Julieta Duvall (53:18)
I am flying tomorrow and actually I know I have to be there at six. I believe it’s Las Vegas actually. I believe it’s Las Vegas. Yes, always.
Blake Boles (53:28)
All right, Vegas baby. All right, Julieta, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.
Julieta Duvall (53:34)
Thank you so much Blake, thank you for having me, this was very fun.