Who doesn’t dream of having financial freedom, time with family, traveling abroad, giving to others, and focusing on a passion? All these things often seem out of reach. But I’ve got exciting news for you. Simple living can grow your bank account!
You’re probably thinking how could “less” stuff” mean “more” dreams. I mean we work ungodly hours every week only to still be in debt or “want” more stuff so we need more money to get what we “want” and the cycle never ends. All the while…who is really happy at their core living this race?
I’ve studied this topic of simple living for quite some time now. Having lived some of this out, so far I am definitely beginning to reap the benefits of seeing my dreams come true one at a time. For now, let me jump right into how this concept came knocking at my door.
By now, I’m sure you have heard of the Tiny House Movement. It has exploded across our TV and internet in the last few years. For me, I was introduced to this style of living five years ago when I came across the initial documentary (Tiny: A Story About Living Small). This was created about the movement of Tiny House Living, but little did we know how much it would change our lives!
Let me first answer the question that I know you are already thinking. “So did you give up everything and move into a tiny house!?” No way! Nor do I ever want to live in a 500 square foot space. However, the lives of the individuals in this documentary totally inspired us that day to check our priorities.
We were captivated by the idea of laying aside “things” for the sake of having money to live life with experiences, serving others, and having time with family. While the stories in this documentary were extreme for our thinking, the idea behind it was something we realized we desperately wanted. The only question was, “How do we get there”?
Dave Ramsey always says, “Live like no one today so you can live like no one tomorrow.” The concept behind this quote is to save now, build wealth, and then pay cash to make your dreams come true. To start this process, we took this quote to heart and spent a lot of time writing down our “dreams.”
Our “dreams” included goals for the next 2 years, 5 years, and 10 years. With plans like traveling abroad with our family, owning our own business, having extra time to spend together each day, and living a well-balanced healthy lifestyle we knew we were no where close to making these things a reality. But we decided to take baby steps to get there.
2. Declutter
Enter the day we cleaned out our garage. We decided to downsize the things in our home and declutter what we did not need. Starting in the garage then taking on one room at a time, we conquered the entire house and stripped it down to the bare essentials…this even included my closet.
We are not hoarders, but this task really showed us our focus on stuff and how much of it is wasted. Several hours at a time were spent conducting yard sales, posting on eBay, meeting people from Facebook to purchase things, and the list goes on. We were determined to start the process of simple living.
One amazing tool to help get this step started is The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Maria Kondo. This book lays out the principals behind decluttering your space of living and provides a step by step guide of how to do this so you never have clutter in your home again.
3. Strip down your budget
The next step was to declutter our spending habits. At this point we had decluttered our physical things. Now it was time to get to the real issue…our bank account. We pulled out our trusty ‘ol book, Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover, and revamped our budget. This started by trimming off the excess categories that we knew we could live without. Our priority became paying off student loans and saving for retirement, so we needed to set aside more money to put down each month.
In order to get organized we invested in a budgeting tool, Everydollar. This tool is completely free now and is wonderful to categorize expenses and layout spending each month down to a zero dollar budget. With this in place, we decided to get rid of cable and switch companies for gas and phone services. Of course making these changes was all a hassle and I often wanted to say “forget it,” but we knew these were the right actions to take in order to get where we wanted to be.
4. Eating Out vs. Eating In
We are healthy eaters and we love to eat out. For the good food and the experience. However, we made a huge change and focused on eating at home all week. Even packing lunches for the work day. We did set aside money each week to eat out on the weekends so we could spend time with friends. But with this simple living change we were able to cut our food budget down by $500 each month. Thats a huge amount of money to be able to add to savings or but towards.
In order to make these changes possible I did have to change how I grocery shopped. Rather than buying everything from my list in one store, I now shop at 3 different stores each week. Yes, it takes some time, but the savings is worth it. It’s amazing how it is even possible to eat healthy on a smaller budget.
5. Downsize Car and Home Payments
This is where the rubber meets the road. Deciding to make changes that impact your current car or home can be tough. During our process, I was fortunate to have been driving a car that was already paid off. Although the car was paid off, we continued to save cash to put towards a new car. Since that time, we have purchased a newer car for cash and continue to have no car payments.
However, our mortgage costs were higher than we knew we needed to keep. We found that at that time we happened to be in a seller’s market so it was the perfect time to list our home and look for something with a lower monthly payment. Since we came out on top of our sale, we were able to put a large amount of money down on our new home and reduced our monthly house payments by half of what we had been owing. Yes, the house was a little smaller, but since we had decluttered our belongings, we have found that we have plenty of room.
As I said before, the point is not to sell everything and live in a tiny house. If that’s your dream, then go for it. The point is to stop wasting money on unnecessary things and reduce the clutter in our lives. This method has absolutely worked for us and we can see our bank account grow everyday because of it.
We have made some recent choices that will be amazing for our family all because we took these hard steps several years ago. It really is true…“live like no one today, so you can live like no one tomorrow!”
Anonymous
March 9, 2018I have practiced this since graduating from college in the 1970s. “Use it up, wear it out!”
Also, save to buy that black cashmere sweater that you can wear with jeans, silk dresses and skorts. Have classic pieces. Treasure the pearls and beautiful jewelry from your parents and wear it daily!