Guest post from Kari Patterson.
Every email my friend sends from Africa contains her signature quip: From a distance it looks like an adventure … up close it is filled with challenges.
Isn’t that always the truth? It’s easy to look on the lives of others from afar and simply see the adventure. The success. The end-result. But making meaningful changes in our lives involve far more than adventure, right? It involves challenges. Obstacles. Hard things. The key is looking honestly and realistically at these challenges and still believing it’s worth it in the end.
We all would probably agree that “living with less” is a worthy goal. I doubt that any of us made “buy more, consume more, eat more, spend more” a New Year’s Resolution this year. We all want to live on less, but statistics show that few of us really are. Americans are spending more, weighing more, and consuming more than ever before. Where is the disconnect? Could it be that we romanticize this “living with less” lifestyle, making the reality of it so surprisingly disagreeable that we jump ship before making much headway at all?
For example, in October 2010 my family was inspired to take a step of frugality by selling our brand new dream home and down-sizing into an older, smaller rental. We had read the book, The Hole in our Gospel, and learned that around the world 26,500 children die every day of preventable causes related to poverty. We knew we couldn’t change the whole world, but we could change the world for one… or a few.
For us, this wouldn’t be possible if we were stretched financially thin. We began with great expectations. We worked hard through the weekend, cleaning and fixing and touching things up. New barkdust, sign in the yard; we were ready.
The house showed once. No offer. It showed again. And again and again and again and again. It showed ninety times over a full year. Still no offers. With a busy life and a 2 and 4-year-old underfoot the year was exhausting. Constant showings. Constant emotional ups and downs, hoping for sales, promises of offers and nothing coming through. And a full year later, just before the listing expired – it sold. Time to move.
In my mind I’d imagined we’d move to a quaint little home. Bungalow-style or farm house. Something from the 40’s perhaps, with character. Surprise! None of those existed in our new frugal price-range. So, we moved to a split-level 70’s rental. The first time I saw it, I told my husband it was the ugliest house I’d ever seen.
But now it’s ours, and we truly love it. Is it romantic? Not really. It’s crazy cold at night, sometimes it’s crowded in our tiny shared bathroom, and the smoke alarm goes off every time I use the stove. No matter how much I clean the laundry room it still smells like the B.O. of whoever lived there before. But we’re out of debt and living on less and it’s worth it.
But can you see how romanticizing frugality can sabotage our efforts? Eating less actually feels like eating less. Buying fewer groceries really means you have to get creative. Not getting that coffee is not what you feel like doing when you really want it! The benefits are bountiful: our health is better, our needs are fewer, and our lives are simpler. Less truly is more.
And the benefits extend beyond our household. Just yesterday we received a letter from one of our sponsored children in Zambia. I read her words with tears in my eyes when I realized that she has food, water, clothing, medical care, and education–and all we had to do was quit buying ice cream and snacks. Suddenly, everything falls into perspective.
But in the moment, going without is actually really hard. Isn’t it powerful to admit that? We’re so much more prepared to live on less when we expect challenges. An old house is cool, but it’s also really cold. It’s good not to have cookies in the house, but it’s also crazy-hard when it’s all you really crave.
The great news is this: You can do things that are hard. You can live on less. You can go without. You can resist cravings. You can find yourself free to live on less. But first we must resist romanticizing the process and take a realistic look at what we’re wanting to do.
Chances are, the adventure is definitely worth the challenge.
Not quite ready to sell your home and downsize? Check out our Frugal Homemaking page or our Recipes page with TONS of recipes and ideas for cutting costs, doing it yourself or going homemade.
So what are your live-with-less goals and dreams?
And then, what are the very real challenges you’ll inevitably meet along the way? How can you prepare for them and face them with confidence? Would you share with us a bit of your live-with-less adventures? It’s always refreshing and encouraging to candidly share bits of our own journeys with each other.
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Kari Patterson is pastor’s wife, preschool mommy, writer, speaker, reader, blogger and frugal living enthusiast. She writes all about the beautiful mess of life over at KariPatterson.com.
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Hi, I really appreciate your article.
Sometimes I love the challenge of frugal living, sometimes I’m just tired of it.
60 years old, my husband and I raised 8 children on one teacher’s salary, so I have done my share of frugality.
The kids say that at my funeral someone will tell the story of my favorite mealtime activity, “Guess how much this meal cost??”
Best wishes,
Cyndy
Hi. I know this is a few years late, but hoping it might help. We had this crazy old-dog, peoples-feet and rancid-curry smell in our house for a long time. I washed the walls, the ceiling, the cabinets…and it persisted! It wasn’t until I changed all the lightbulbs and washed the glass domes from the lighting fixtures in the dishwasher that the smell went away. I was thinking if the laundry room funk is still there but you haven’t done that in your laundry room (and you have repainted or wallpapered), it might be worth a try.
This completely coincides with the sermon we had at church today. We were talking about living with a “margin.” There should always be extra finances in your budget, enough time to spend with your family, etc. so you can live a peaceful life. It is so true. I’ve had a very low budget to live in the past few years. Thankfully, I never got into fancy coffee drinks, so I only have one at church now on Sunday. I don’t have to have it, it’s just an occasional treat. We have a personal rule of no junk food in the house. If I really want something, I have it occasionally. I only eat out once or twice a week at most. I don’t have a car payment, thank goodness. My next car will be economical and a good price. I’m also looking to pay off my student loans within the next year so I can be debt free. Not having to live with debt makes life so much more peaceful. I’ve considered myself a minimalist over the past few years, and it’s a great lifestyle because you don’t feel the need to keep up with the Jones’. Great post!
This is amazing and very inspiring. Very few people are willing to with less for the benefit of others and I admire and respect you for it. Thank you for sharing your story. Found you on Pinterest and I’m bookmarking your blog for further reading.
Great article! Very smart of you to do the math to figure out how to buy a house outright. We didn’t do the math of how much our interest would be until after we bought the house. Big mistake because if we kept to our 30 year loan we would pay as much in interest as we did for our house. Now we are paying extra and looking at paying it off in ten years. Also, we live in West Linn 🙂
I just read The Hole in Our Gospel this last year and it rocked my world too! You are such an inspiration Kari…just found your blogsite this week and love it, it is very touching and practical. We would be friends if we lived closer. 🙂
My husband and I are also very passionate about living on less so that we can give more. God has increased our income generously since we first began doing this, so thankfully we have been able to continue to give even more. However, when we only had about $30 of margin leftover in our budget, my heart was broken over some children suffering in Africa. I wanted to do something but didn’t know what…then I felt like God gave me this idea…Rice and Beans Dinner. Because most of the world literally lives off of rice and beans, I made 2 large crockpots of beans (with seasonings…I’ve fine tuned this, people always enjoy it), and made 2 rice cookers full of rice. We invited a bunch of our friends and their kids over. When we have people over for supper, they usually say “What can we bring”…to the rice and dinner we said, “Bring whatever it would’ve cost to feed your family supper that night”…then we all pooled our money and sent it to a charity of choice (typically something to help with a ministry in a country where they eat lots of rice and beans)…so to feed 20-30 people, it has never cost more than $15, the food is actually REALLY good, it’s a great example to the kids, and fun to hang out with a big group of friends.
Oh Lacey-girl, I do so wish we were closer, I’d love to meet you sister. LOVE LOVE LOVE your rice and beans dinner idea, do you blog? I’d love to share that on my site, perhaps you might want to share it…?
Bless you!
Kari
No I don’t blog but feel free to throw it out on yours. 🙂 As a side note, now when we have our rice and beans dinners, we put a large manilla envelope in the center of our table…people can throw in their cash or check and then I mail the whole thing to the ministry. This allows our guests to give anonymously…as much or as little as they’d like. Only the ministry/charity receiving the gift knows who gave what. Makes it kinda fun and even more low pressure. God bless you Kari!
I loved this post! Thank you so much for sharing your story. My husband and I went through Dave Ramsey’s FPU two years ago and we have since paid off 20k of debt (mostly just our truck) and now I am able to only work part-time and stay home with my baby girl. Learning how to be frugal and wise with our money has changed our lives in so many ways. We are both teachers, so making our pennies stretch is quite the game 🙂
I enjoyed your post so much I linked to it on my blog 🙂 thehallyhousehold.blogspot.com
Thanks again for sharing!!
Awesome! Wow, 20K paid off is awesome!! I love hearing stories like that, thanks for sharing. Just said hello on your site….lovely!
Great story. I got inspired by the simple living movement 15 years ago by the book “Your Money Or Your Life” by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin. Back then the bottom of the market houses were 20s to 50s houses. Now it is 60’s and 70’s houses; usually houses where the original owners are passing on.
My husband isn’t on board with simple living so I can’t do it full on as much as I would like, but what I took away from the book was evaluating how worth it it is to buy something vs. how much energy/stress it took to earn the money to buy it. I struggle with OCD/worhaholism so it is useful for me to keep this idea in my mind and reevaluate our spending, with my husband, as often as I can.
Another concept I love from the book is that happiness grows as you earn and spend more up to a point and then it starts decreasing. This upper limit varies for everybody so you need to find it for yourself.
I am also an environmentalist so I see using less as helping the animals and the biosphere more.
Great, Julie! So glad you’ve been journeying along this “less is more” path for a while. That’s interesting about which houses are the “bottom market” houses…maybe if we hold on to ours for long enough it will be back in style! 🙂
I am curious to hear what other people are doing to live on less and give back. We bought a modest house nearly two years ago on a 30 year loan. We pay extra when we can and would love to pay it off early. I’ve been couponing more lately which saves us a lot of money, and allows us to do some entertaining. Lately i’ve been thinking that having people we meet from church over for dinner could be a good family ministry.
But I don’t always think of good old-fashioned frugal ways to live. We have taken a nod from friends who share a car. We drive modest, well used cars (without car payments) so it doesn’t make sense for us to sell them, but in the summertime we share a car and my husband rides his bike a lot. I’m hoping to start a garden this summer and intend to fill it with foods i’m too cheap to buy. I am always trying to think up ways we could be saving, without giving up all comforts! anyone else have any creative savings?
My friend Candi, the most frugla person I know, has a list of 35 creative ways to save, and she does them all! I could email you her list if you’d like…
Or maybe Candi’s list could be a post of its own so we all may benefit? I’m sure many of us are eager to learn new (or better) ways to live frugally!
Yes! I actually have it scheduled on my blog next week on Thursday, March 1st. Check it out, and you can subscribe here if you want it sent to you automatically. Hope this can be helpful!
http://www.karipatterson.com
Yes! Candi’s 35 ways to save is scheduled for next Thur, March 1st, on my blog. Check back there or you can click to subscribe if you want it just sent straight to you… Hope this can be helpful! Thanks both of you!
http://www.karipatterson.com
Well said.
One thing I started was an “eating out” calendar. Basically, I keep both my meal planning calendar and my eating out calendar in the kitchen. Whenever ANY FOOD OR DRINK (including coffee!!) is purchased outside of home, it goes on the eating out calendar with the dollar amount spent. This has really kept us aware of what we’re actually spending and helped us really live on less!
Great idea, Deborah! Numbers don’t lie. 🙂 It’s so helpful to hold ourselves accountable in this way. Thanks for your comment!
Today I pulled a weed that was growing inside my 1936 home, so yeah…I know all about the glamor of old small homes. 🙂 I also filled a tarp up with toys & put it in our front yard with a free sign. Everything was gone in less than 30 minutes so I filled it up again. It feels good to give away things we do not need, but it also reminds me that we still have way too much. I love you!!!
Haha, I love this Janae!! I know, girl you could write a whole book on the “glamour” of old homes. 🙂 Yours is SO cute too! Love the free-stuff tarp in your yard! That. Is. Awesome. Love you too my friend!
I love this! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks, Krista!
Two points you made are key I believe “it IS worth it” and seeing the “perspective”! Excellent article and a message our modern world really needs to embrace:-) It really encourages me that I have found others with similar values-sometimes I feel like the odd one out not wanting or having all the new “things” out there.
Thank you, Charolyn! Hope what I wrote above makes sense … I know it’s an odd thing. Bless you!
I guess I’m a little confused… I don’t really understand how selling your home and downsizing to a rental is a financially sound decision. I could understand downsizing to a smaller home, so your mortgage would be less, but with a rental you are building no equity. Yes, you are no longer carrying the debt of a mortgage, but you will be paying for a place to live regardless of whether you rent or own. If you pay on a mortgage monthly, you come away from it with something, equity in your property; when you rent none of the money is ever coming back your way. Just asking because we currently rent and feel like we’re throwing money in the garbage can every month. We can’t wait to buy a home so that we know every month that our money is building equity, this is what will give us more financial freedom. Not trying to be judgmental at all, it’s just that renting has been such a burden for us, I was shocked that you would rather rent than downsize to a smaller home that you own.
Kait: Totally. I’m with you. Believe me, I was raised (and still am) a OWN YOUR OWN HOUSE believer. Truly, you would laugh if you knew who I am and that I am renting. I always despised the “rent fire” — but I’m also a numbers girl, and I crunched the numbers (and used a dozen different Rent vs. Own calculators http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent-calculator.html)
and we discovered we could say MORE by renting. Calculate the amount you pay on interest vs. the amount you pay in rent. In a lower-value area it would be better for us to buy, but in West Linn, where houses are very expensive, it was much better for us to rent, especially in an economy where houses are depreciating. All that to say–great question! It differs with every situation, but in our particular situation renting was a smarter choice. Thanks for your honest questions!! Bless you…
Should say “save” more…typing with toddler on my lap. 🙂
Thanks for your response Kari! I was very curious about this because I was also raised with the mentality that owning your own home is always best. I never would have thought that renting would make more sense, but everyone’s situation is so different and there are so many variables to take into account. Interesting to see that it is sometimes possible to save more by renting, and it seems as though you and your family are doing great things with that savings 🙂
Just one long term thought here-in the long run it really is a goal to own a home outright (it doesn’t need to be a large home!), so at retirement you don’t have that monthly payment, because then you can live on VERY little. I have retired friends now whose home is nowhere near paid off and they had to go to an interest only loan, so they will never get out from under that & can barely afford it.
In this article I can see the point of living simply to be able to focus on better priorities & hopefully that includes saving up to buy an affordable home. One other related thought-as long as you don’t add to your mortgage or are under an interest rate that can vary (NEVER get into that!) your mortgage will never go up, while rent will-so in the long run the mortgage will become more affordable for you. Saying this to encourage people who are buying modest homes, but may be tempted to give it up-it gets easier in a few years when you make more & your monthly payment hasn’t gone up. Also whenever possible pay extra so you aren’t paying all that interest-if you can afford it, even adding $50 to the monthly payment will takes years off the loan.
Yeah, in my family’s situation it doesn’t make any sense to rent, like I said, money in the garbage can, which is why we’re sooo frustrated with it. I also agree that owning a home out right when you retire is a tremendous asset, and almost a necessity to have a comfortable retirement these days. Everyone’s situation is different though, and it’s interesting to see how others are trying to live more frugally.
Hi Charolyn, Yes, again, completely agree that owning a home outright is a fabulous goal!
Here’s how we did the math: We took our old monthly payment, which would have our house paid off in 30 years. “Spending” that same amount but renting a house for much less enabled us to save the remainder which would enable us to buy a house outright (cash) in 10-15 years. So renting actually gets us closer to the no-mortgage goal faster.
Again, these are the numbers for our income and in our area, but it varies with each case. Oddly enough we are renting in order to own a home outright … it seems strange, I know, but the numbers add up. Thanks for your comment and for jumping in here!
As a retiree I am so pleased to own my home outright as I don’t have to pay rent and can therefore live comfortably on a pension.
Bravo! Very well said.
Last year I quit my job to stay at home with my kids, I stayed home with them when they were little and now that they are in high school it seems they need me at home more than ever. Luckily, we do not have a car payment and zero credit card debt. Our budget is slim and our savings, slim to none. We are what you call “house broke”. Our 2300 sq. foot home on 3 acres with a 30×60 auto shop is breaking us. I would love to sell and downsize, be completely debt free but cannot get my husband on board. He grew up with very little and as a man is prideful about his possessions. I pray that his need of “stuff” be filled with something far more valuable and we can simplify and downsize our lifestyle. In the mean time I pray for patience 😉 Loved your story and the fact that you brought attention to romanticizing the idea turned trend of simple living.
Mm… you are a wise woman, Kelly, as you pray and are patient. I will pray for you too. 🙂 It’s awesome that you have no other debt and can live simply and frugally. Thanks for your kind words, I’d love to hear how your story will go down the road!
This is exactly what I needed to hear/read right now! This post was just what I needed to get my priorities straight and stop whining about ‘I want this’ when I already have a perfectly good one of whatever ‘this’ is. THANK YOU! And this quoute, “The great news is this: You can do things that are hard. You can live on less. You can go without. You can resist cravings. You can find yourself free to live on less. But first we must resist romanticizing the process and take a realistic look at what we’re wanting to do.” must have been written just for me because it is exactly what I needed to hear!
Oh, Shariah thank you for taking the time to share this. I’m SO GLAD this is well-timed for you. It’s well-timed for me too 🙂 … I always need this reminder! Glad we can encourage each other along this journey …
Shariah, Those words were just for me, too! I’m telling my husband about this encouraging piece of writing as soon as I see him. We’ve always wanted to live on less, but want to buy nice things, too! We’re starting slowly since we got married last year- doing things like making pasta and beans from scratch, and taking the Max to work. I feel guilty though, because I know there are people who could benefit if we could just downgrade some things in our life! Some people don’t have access to the opportunities we have in the US/Portland, and it doesn’t seem fair that we can choose to use all of our income for ourselves when there are people starving.
Thank you for posting this- we make sacrifices so I can stay at home with the kids. Sometimes I get the “I want, I want, I want” feelings so strongly, but I know that in 20 years I won’t regret not having the nice TV and new car, and neither will my kids.
Amen, Amanda! Well said. It’s so true. But it’s helpful for us to remind each other, huh? Bless you for your sacrifices, your children are blessed to have you!
We have that cute little 30’s farm house, we are finding if we can hold out we can have it paid off in 12 years. Our big dream is to have that wee bit bigger farm house and land. But for now we are just bettering our situation. That is how I look a better place with a more comfortable retirement:)
Good for you paying it off! We would certainly love to own a home outright someday. We’ll see… enjoy that cute farm house!
You choices are right out of Proverbs….so so so wise, thoughtful, full of understanding and knowledge!
Thanks, Michelle. It’s amazing how good His Word is, huh? 🙂
Thanks for sharing your story, it is very thought provoking!