Involved Living Series Part 3: How to Live With Less Without Deprivation

This is Part 3 of my Involved Living Series where I am talking about our journey to financial independence. You can see all posts in the series here. I recommend starting at the beginning if you are stopping by for the first time.

In my last post in the series, I talked about the most important question I ask about every purchase. It has helped me cut back spending tremendously, but taken to the extreme, this could be a little too minimalist and deprived. I’m here to say we are nearing our goal of financial independence and don’t feel deprived in the least.

We have figured out what areas in our lives we want to spend that really contribute to our overall happiness and well being. It’s all about prioritizing, and it isn’t a one size fits all approach. These are our priorities, where yours might be vastly different. The key is figuring out your priorities, then cutting out the things that fall lower on the list.

Many blogs and books on financial independence would be clutching their pennies at the idea that we spend money to make our house look nice, that we have gym memberships, and that we have a whopping two cars.

The big difference between the approach we are taking and the approaches of many others I have read about is that we make room for the things that are important to us, regardless of if they are non-essential. Many people going for similar goals seem to have a laser focus, an all or nothing approach, that is just too extreme for us.

We have things that we don’t want to give up to reach financial independence sooner. It’s those things that when I ask that important question, my answer is yes, these things do make me deep down happy, or if not deep down happy, they greatly contribute to my well being and I’d rather keep them than get to financial independence sooner.

Our Splurges

Our home is the place we spend the majority of our time. We make it a destination we want to be rather than spending money going to other destinations. I get so much enjoyment from making our house a comfortable, happy place to be, and we are extremely proud of all the work we have put into our fixer upper. We both truly enjoy being at home, and there aren’t many other places we’d rather be. Because of this, we are okay with spending money making it comfortable and aesthetically pleasing.

Having a gym membership or access to gym equipment is almost non-negotiable for us. We pay about $30 each for a membership at a nearby gym, and we both use it almost daily in the winter and multiple times a week in the summer. Well, that is up until lately.

When I drafted up this post initially I was going to just talk about the gym, but we also just bought a really nice gym quality Precor elliptical off Craigslist. It still wasn’t super cheap, but a lot cheaper than buying anywhere close to the same quality new. We paid $300 for the elliptical and $250 to have someone move it. The guy who moved it does this for a living, and apparently there is a way to see how many hours it has been used. He said it had only been used for 7 hours. Seven hours. The family had owned this for almost 10 years and just never used it. They paid a few thousand for it new. Super nice family, too. I had fun chatting with the owner while the movers were working.

Because of this new elliptical, and also that I discovered YouTube has free workout videos that I actually like better than going to my gym classes, plus I bought a few weights, I may drop my gym membership. I’m not one of those people who can just use jogging or some other free, no equipment workout. I need to do something active every day to feel well…and I’m a wimp when it comes to weather, so I need a variety of indoor alternatives.

So, back to my point, it might be a stretch to say the gym and working out itself makes me happy, but the effects do. I work out because it is healthy and it makes me feel good. Without exercise, I don’t feel well and my energy and mood go south. Without a gym or decent options to work out at home, I end up not working out as often as I need to in order to feel my best. So the gym and workout equipment is something we will definitely pay for. Even though I am considering dropping my membership, Marty will probably keep his and it’s a priority in our budget.

Along the same lines as the gym, healthy and tasty food is something we would only give up if we really had to. We are most definitely not on a rice and beans or ramen diet. We eat lots of fresh produce (and when I say lots – I mean lots). Like our two big crisper bins in our big french door fridge won’t even come close to holding all of it after a trip to the store. We both eat heaping piles of veggies at lunch and dinner, plus some fruit mixed in there too. We typically eat meat with both lunch and dinner (we both generally eat leftovers at lunch). We buy big 20 – 40 lb bags of rice from our international grocery store, the big containers of oats for breakfast, lots of nuts (walnuts and almonds mostly), eggs, a little cheese, a little bread, cereal, and sometimes whole wheat pasta. We don’t buy much in the way of processed things, but will sometimes get chips, bottled sauces, and cereal. We of course buy spices and other odds and ends needed to make things taste good.

We make most things from scratch, so we buy high quality ingredients to make really good meals at home that are (mostly) healthy too. We try to save as much as possible on our groceries, but we could definitely save a lot more. That’s not worth it to us, though. Eating well keeps us from feeling deprived from getting yummy food out, so we do our best to replicate it at home to the point where I now like our versions of many dishes better than what we could get at a restaurant.

Common advice for achieving financial independence is to give up dependence on cars for daily transportation. We just aren’t able, and frankly we don’t want to, bike or take public transportation everywhere. If doing so is within your ability and it is something that isn’t a burden, I do agree that it is an excellent way to save a lot, and I give a major thumbs up to anybody doing this.

Driving is extremely expensive – more expensive than I used to give it credit. A simple trip to the store that is 5 miles from our house costs money. It’s not just about the gas, it is also about the mileage and that we will have to buy a new car 10 miles sooner now. It also just isn’t about that single trip – it is the trips day after day that add up. For example, a commute to an office that is just 10 miles away adds about 5,200 miles a year onto a car. While I know commutes are not something we have a lot of control over, it is something I like to take into account when I think about negotiating a job.

We realize the insanely high cost of driving and have accounted for it. If we had to bike or take public transportation everywhere, it would be a burden that is more uncomfortable for us than saving that extra amount. We are, however, very conscious of the amount of miles we put on the cars, combining errands whenever possible and avoiding unnecessary trips out.

Living simply our way means we break some “rules” of achieving financial independence, but we more than make up for it in other ways.

Even though we buy high quality and semi-expensive food items such as meats, nuts, and fresh produce, we cook almost all of our meals at home and don’t generally spend extra on convenience items at the grocery store. We actually go to two stores every week to get good deals on things – WalMart and our local international store.

We don’t particularly like traveling. Neither of us have wanderlust. This is a big one since I know for many people going for our same goal, travel is non-negotiable, which is totally fine. I actually feel rather lucky that I don’t much care for traveling since it is really expensive.

No expensive hobbies, other than the DIY and decorating, which I would argue in many cases actually makes us money by increasing the value of our home.

So the key thing we did to keep from feeling deprived is made a list of non-negotiables, then cut the rest, and we are happier in the end for it. Then a crazy thing that has been happening as time goes on, things I may have initially thought of as a non-negotiable, have become, well negotiable. The more that I keep asking myself that very important question of does this really make me happy - the less deprived I feel by giving things up. Instead of feeling deprived, I feel happier.

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