By 2017, Chris and Roxanna Harwood's relationship was on a familiar trajectory. They'd met through mutual friends, lived together in a group situation, done the distance thing, moved for school and for work and were signing a lease on a place of their own in Loveland, Colorado.

Things were about to get a lot more serious — but not in the way couples often do.

In the weeks following their move, Chris found out that his father was planning to sell the family business, the Wheels Motel in Greybull, Wyoming.

Chris had some attachment to the place — he'd spent much of his childhood there — but hadn't planned on coming back. "I did not really enjoy it as a child. It's a lot of work," he says. "And we never left. We never took a vacation. We did this place year-round."

Still, knowing that his dad couldn't run the motel forever, Chris had previously run the possibility of buying it by Roxanna. At the time she showed little interest. But after stints working at a bar and for a chocolatier, Roxanna had begun her first real 9-to-5 desk job doing marketing for a chiropractic office. She hated it.

"It was more like seven to seven," she says. "I got physically ill from that. I had to go to the hospital and get fluids. I couldn't keep anything down. It was my body telling me, 'This is not working for you.'"

So when the couple received the call about the motel, "I was like, 'Hold the phone,'" says Roxanna. "I know we just had our housewarming party, but we're moving." Though her memories of Greybull were hazy — she'd visited just once — "I knew in my gut, I knew in my heart, that this was gonna be my path," she says.

So Chris and Roxanna — now ages 38 and 31, respectively — purchased the motel for about $483,000 in 2017, they say, fronting down payment out of Chris' savings. (CNBC Make It was not able to independently verify this figure.)

In the years since, they've gotten married, welcomed their son, Ronan, now age 4, and gradually built the Wheels into a successful business. They paid off the mortgage for the motel in 2020, they say.

The motel is on track to bring in about $412,000 this year, based on 2024 revenue through August. So far, the couple has paid themselves roughly $115,500. That puts them on track for about $174,000 in annual income.

Overall, the motel is expected to turn an $81,000 profit in 2024.

And though the workload is heavy and the lifestyle can otherwise be a little slow, Roxanna has no regrets about the couple's decision to move. "It took a long time to adjust to the small town life, but I freaking love it here," she says. "It's literally like my little oasis."

'We were starting from the ground up'

The Wheels Motel features 22 rooms, free Wi-Fi and complimentary banana bread and blueberry muffins, which Roxanna bakes daily. Situated in the Bighorn Basin, it's about 100 miles from the east gate of Yellowstone National Park, 100 miles from the nearest interstate and about a two-hour drive from the nearest city, Billings, Montana. The town it's located in, Greybull, is home to about 2,000 residents.

Chris' father purchased the motel from his parents in the 90s, moved the family into one of the buildings and embarked on operating and expanding the business. So Chris knew the kind of work the motel would demand.

"Most of the time growing up here, I was either cleaning rooms or building the motel," he says.

After graduating from high school, Chris spent four years in the Navy, where he first learned the importance of saving money. "They had several different programs for saving portions of your paycheck, which, I would argue, that's a big secret," he says. "A big secret to our financial success is just taking money out of your own hands, putting it somewhere you can't touch it."

Chris took a job with aerospace communications firm Harris before moving back to Wyoming to go back to school, first at a community college and then at the University of Wyoming. By then he'd met Roxanna, who, after graduating from Colorado State in 2015 with a degree in sociology and a minor in business, joined Chris in Laramie while he finished his degree in graphic design the following year.

They'd end up putting everything they'd learn to use as soon as they bought the motel. One of the buildings needed a new roof. The motel needed a new sign. Water heaters were down. Carpets needed to be replaced. The motel needed a new review system. The washers and dryers didn't work.

"We were starting from the ground up," Chris says. He estimates the couple spent more than $100,000 in the first two years refurbishing the place.

A 'Monday through Sunday' job

 Even after getting things up and running, the Harwoods' work had just begun. After all, the motel is open seven days a week, and Chris and Roxanna are its only full-time employees.

"At 5:30, the alarm goes off, Monday through Sunday," Roxanna says. "Someone has to roll out of bed and put the coffee out."

The two carafes available to guests run on a timer. The banana bread and muffins have been made the night before.

Then it's time to get their 4-year-old son Ronan dressed, fed and ready for the day. During the fall, he's in preschool. Over the summer, he hangs out with Chris' grandmother — who moved in last year — while Chris and Roxanna begin cleaning rooms and checking guests out at the front desk.

During their peak summer months, the couple might clean 10 to 15 rooms every morning. But it's not always easy to concentrate on one task, Chris says.  

"If I'm cleaning a bathroom and there's a phone call, and I have to make a reservation, I have to come all the way back up here," he says. "If somebody rings the doorbell, I have to come back up to the front desk. Somebody catches me in the parking lot, I have to answer questions and speak to them."

Tackling rooms is a team effort. Roxanna handles linens and surfaces while Chris tends to clean bathrooms. Chris' father, who lives on the property, chips in some vacuuming and making beds. Grandma does a lot of the folding.

Chris makes lunch for everyone around noon or 1 p.m. after which the family takes a collective breather. "If we can get two to three hours a day in the middle of the day, that's kind of our weekend," Chris says. "And usually we just try to rest. We try to lay down and take a nap, personal hobbies, because then three or four o'clock, the doorbell starts ringing."

Then it's check-ins, dinner and off to bed as early as possible. Even though the office technically closes at 9 p.m., the motel maintains an open-door policy. It's not unusual for one of the Harwoods to check someone in at 2 a.m.

The motel needs work that goes beyond the day-to-day tasks as well — if a water main breaks or the ice machine conks out, someone has to handle it. Chris and Roxanna try to do as much as they can personally to keep costs down. Last year, they hand painted about 70% of the exterior of the motel, before hiring pros to do the rest.

How they spend their money

The Harwoods' personal finances are closely tied to the profitability of the motel. They more or less pay themselves as needed, when they can. That means, during leaner times, they don't take much for themselves.

"When we first started the motel, we were paying ourselves basically nothing," Chris says.

The same goes for 2022, a year in which a partial but highly publicized closure of Yellowstone tanked the motel's reservations.

In many years, like in 2023, the motel's expenses — including repairs, supplies and utilities, among others — exceed revenues. Last year, the couple paid themselves just $44,000.

This year, with fewer than expected repairs, things are looking rosier. "This will be one of maybe two or three years that we've shown profitability with the motel," Chris says. "So that's going to be huge for us."

Here's how the couple spent their money in August 2024.

• Household: $1,982 on routine expenses
• Food: $1,522 on groceries and dining out
• Camper: $1,296 on expenses related to a camper they purchased this year
• Insurance: $1,054 on auto, health, homeowners, life and camper policies
• Discretionary: $1,046 on health and wellness, clothing and entertainment expenses
• Savings and investments: $800 into Roxanna's Acorns account; Chris makes larger ad hoc deposits into other accounts
• Unexpected expenses: $333 on auto parts and a trip to the vet
• Phones and Wi-Fi: $333
• Subscriptions and memberships: $289 in monthly Amazon, Hulu, Lovevery, Microsoft, Patreon and YouTube charges
• Gas: $157

Most Americans will look at that budget and see a major expense missing: housing. The couple say it took them a few years to pay off the mortgage they took out when buying the property. With the motel paid off, and the family living in a house connected to the property, the couple don't pay a rent or mortgage. The Harwoods pay for their own Wi-Fi, but utilities are wrapped up in the business expenses.

Everyday household expenses do tend to add up, though, given how tricky it can be to get things in their part of the country. While they try to shop locally, "If I need something for for Ronan and I don't have time to go to Billings, which I typically don't, I use Amazon," Roxanna says.

The couple owns three vehicles: a paid off 1995 Ford F-150, a 2022 BMW X5 M50i, which they plan to have paid off by the end of the year, and a camper, which they bought this year for $25,000 cash.

The latter was a big get for a family that can occasionally feel cooped up, Roxanna says.

"The Jayco camper was really important for me because it's a way for us to unplug from the motel and leave," she says. "There are no phones, there are no doorbells. In the mountains, it's really important for me to be out in nature and be barefoot and ground."

'I'm really proud of us'

Chris and Roxanna are saving for the future — they're just not exactly sure what that looks like yet. Chris says he aims to put about $300 a week into the stock and crypto markets, while occasionally making bigger investments when more money frees up from the motel's profits.

All told, the couple has about $206,700 invested across brokerage accounts and cryptocurrency exchanges, they say. Chris hopes to push that number north of $2 million by the time he's 50, at which point he's considering calling it quits at the Wheels. That, he estimates, along with the sale of the motel and its two attached homes, would be enough for the couple to retire on.

"We talk a lot about potentially selling and going somewhere, but we struggle with the idea of where we would go and what we would do afterwards," Chris says. "I wonder from time to time if this isn't the kind of business that we'll just save to hand over to my son so that he has something in the future."

In the meantime, there's still plenty of work to do at the motel.

"I don't see us expanding the motel past the amount of rooms that we offer, but what I do see us doing is refurbishing and modernizing everything and potentially bringing more amenities online," Chris says. "I would like to install steam rooms. I'd like to install maybe even a theater. At one point we're going to expand the playground."

For Roxanna, refurbishing the motel has come with the added bonus of being part of revitalizing a small town that felt like it was in a 30-year-old time capsule. She's the secretary of Greybull's Chamber of Commerce and painted a mural in town. The goal, she says, is to make it more of a destination, and "not just a pass-through town."

When it comes to the original decision to relocate here, Roxanna has no regrets. "I'm really happy we did what we've done, and looking back on it all, I'm actually really proud of us," she says. "It's sometimes hard to maintain perspective and like, look how far we've come. This place is actually really cool now."

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