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Simple Living: wherever you go, there you are

Simple Living: wherever you go, there you are


If you didn’t live through the mid-90s, early aughts you have no idea the ABSOLUTE chokehold the “Idiot’s” and “Dummies” guides had on the culture

I gave up most social media with never ending scroll news feeds and instead I focus on a few YouTube channels and Reddit feeds. It’s about an hour a day of entertainment for me and I ruthlessly remove any subs/channels that get too bogged down or repetitive. Recently, that was r/simpleliving.

Truthfully, it is because there were too many posts asking for advice. I realized that “simple living” content was trending a bit on tiktok, thus driving people to Reddit for advice on how to slow down. Cue myriad posts along the themes of: how do I get off of social media apps? How do I live a minimalist lifestyle? How do I stop shopping so much? I want to slow down but I have debt, help! How do I move to the country and start a homestead?

To summarize: these folks think simple living is moving to the country and having an *~aesthetic~* beige farmhouse where they own very few things, choose analog vs. Digital (except for, you know, their instagram reels), and instead of a job, they garden and feed their chickens in perfect makeup and unsoiled linen dresses. It’s basically what is being sold on carefully curated social media accounts (“Use my coupon code for 20% off a linen dress for the farmyard!”) and while it looks great, it’s completely unrealistic and most of these videos are unrelated to actually living a simpler life.

Can these things be part of a simple life? Yes, of course. Is it the only path to a simple life? Absolutely not.

I was writing about simplicity on livejournal in the late 90s/early 00s and I completely get the dream that lines up with the *~aesthetic~*. From my urban 500sq ft box in the sky, I dreamed of buying a farm that had a heritage farmhouse, sprawling gardens and farm animals. Centred around my bucoloic dreams was quiet – so much quiet! When we visited The Pharm[1] a few times a year I would soak in every moment in nature surrounded by rolling fields and a chorus of birdsong. The beauty! The nature! The quiet! Oh my!

As it turns out though, I never did move to the country. I ended up staying in the city, living in mid-century, quasi-urban suburbs. I was much happier being able to use public transportation and to live somewhere where I could walk or bike to the things I needed. When The Eldest was born, we didn’t even have a car. I walked to the grocery store, the library, the YMCA and playgroups. My kids grew up surrounded by friends and neighbours who would meet every day at the park for a few hours. In retrospect, that was a much more simple life for me than driving a half an hour to go anywhere. We now live even further from downtown than our old house was and I have what I really wanted all along: quiet & access to nature. We can walk to the river, the MUP/Trans-Canada trail and everything I need is within a 5 minute drive[2]. Both of the kids take public transportation to school and most of their friends live nearby. As it turns out, while the *~aesthetic~* of country living was appealing, I really do enjoy the amenities that come with living in a city. Of course, there is also the elephant in the room: being self-sufficient in the country is basically impossible if you are disabled. Had we even gone that route we would have absolutely have had to come back to the city in under less-than-ideal circumstances. But still, our life is generally pretty simple: we keep our formal activities to a minimum and focus on seeing our friends often but not in situations where we have to spend a ton of money. We may do takeout and a games night on the pricier end but we are also big fans of themed potluck get-togethers and homemade pizza and a movie.


Edward Carpenter popularized the term Simple Living in this essay

For most people, the turn to simple living is not actually about the bucolic ideal or minimalism but instead the dissatisfaction with their own lives. Simple living can be all or a few of these things:

1 – Minimalism – including digital minimalism.
2 – Frugality & watching your conspicuous consumption.
3 – Meditation/being present.
4 – Prioritizing relationships over things.
5 – Living your values, faith or spirituality.
6 – Homesteading/self-sufficiency.
7 – Environmentalism/social justice.
8 – Working less/reaching Financial Independence.

…and so on.

At its core though, Simple Living is a philosophy. It’s a way to structure your life so that you aren’t getting swayed by shiny things that sap your time, money and energy that don’t really add value to the quality of your life. It’s about drilling down to figure out what truly makes you happy and then aligning your life to focus on those things and letting the rest go. If you say you really want to spend more time with your best friend, why do you never make the plans? If you want to take a sabbatical from work and travel for 6 months, why are you spending so much money on Uber Eats? The point here is not to shame or judge people – we all have different wants, needs, and resources. It’s perfectly ok to move to a cabin in the woods but still own a fleet of classic cars that you work on and that bring you joy. The modern world is designed to separate you from your resources to line the pockets of others and simplicity is a process of unpacking where you want to spend your finite resources of time (including attention), energy and money. You are making a conscious effort to step off of the treadmill and figure out what really does serve you and focus on realigning yourself so that you are prioritizing those things.

But like everything else, there is only so many short form videos you can watch or influencers you can follow before the realization hits you: you need to do the work. That’s where the problem lies. Consuming content often feels like praxis but don’t let that confuse you; consuming content is just another way for tech companies to seize your most precious resource: your finite hours on this earth. The irony of consuming short form videos on how to lead a simple life via digital minimalism is not lost on any of us, for sure. But ya gotta start somewhere and if some random tiktok video encourages you to get your eyeballs off of social media, well great. There is a kind of justice in the universe if these social media companies lead you down the Simple Living path though, and I am here for it.

[1]Before everything went to hell, a good friend of mine lived an hour outside of the city on 200 acres. She would host amazing parties on the Solstices where we would decamp to the country for the weekend. Some of my best memories – and best friends – are from this time.

[2]Walking isn’t my forte these days but I do have a trike I can also take, but I rarely do.

Frugality revisited

Frugality revisited

I adore Morgan Housel’s work and recommend everyone read his books. But his personal definition of frugal is dead wrong, and is probably more in line with deprivation or being cheap. Still, this piece is a good read even if I recently wrote on being frugal can add to your life. I don’t think we are too far off in our vision of what constitutes a good life, I just don’t think being frugal is the same as depriving yourself.

Speaking of: Mr. Tucker built our gaming boxes last weekend and so I have been too busy trying to beat the beast in the first Witcher game to be writing. 🤷‍♀️

Frugal: the new F word

Frugal: the new F word

What I’m reading
Some stores are scrapping self-checkouts.

Only 10% of US workers have the “optimal” characteristics to to save well for retirement.

“We frequently overestimate just how much happiness money can buy.” The pay raise people say they need to be happy.

Ranking streaming services by cost increase.

What I am thinking
I find many things come down to the fact that words can have different definitions. For example, I have discussed how people who dislike the term FIRE often choose to focus on the early retirement piece and not the financial independence piece. Same goes with people who say there is no such thing as “dividend investing.” Well, the term has been defined by the people who use it, so of course there is.

From what I can see, no word has been more maligned in the personal finance community than the word frugal. Let’s check out some history:

frugal (adj.)
“economical in use,” 1590s, from French frugal, from Latin frugalis, from undeclined adjective frugi “useful, proper, worthy, honest; temperate, economical,” originally dative of frux (plural fruges) “fruit, produce,” figuratively “value, result, success,” from PIE root *bhrug- “to enjoy,” with derivatives referring to agricultural products. Sense evolved in Latin from “useful” to “profitable” to “economical.” Related: Frugally.

PHEW. There is a LOT going on in there! What’s interesting is that on that page there is no mention of the word frugal being aligned with the word cheap but yet, it’s what frugality has come to mean to a lot of people. I think we’ve done the word frugal dirty and I am done with it!

Clearly, I consider myself a frugal person but I don’t consider myself cheap. To me, spending judiciously is what I think of when I think of the word frugal. I also think the word applies to more than just money: I want to get the maximum enjoyment out of things I spend time and energy on as well. I don’t watch a lot of movies or tv shows because I get very little value out of them. It isn’t a judgment on whether or not movies/tv are a good use of time, it’s about how I want to spend my time. I have a friend who loves movies and gets a ton of value from hitting up a theatre a few times a month. She loves it. She also loathes cooking, so she spends as few hours as possible in the kitchen. I love to cook, so I spend a lot more time cooking from scratch. We are both using our time on the things we love. That’s being frugal with our time and energy.

The same goes for your financial picture: spend money consciously on the things you love and you will get great value out of spending that money. Conversely, reaching for that credit card mindlessly every time your brain decides to have a dopamine hit for funsies and you end up broke with no money to spend on things that truly bring you joy.

Of course, people will say that frugal people focus too much on small things and ignore the larger things eating into their budgets. In some cases, that is for sure a fair assessment. For example, the easiest way for me to set up a Registered Disability Savings Plan (RDSP) was to set it up via a brick and mortar bank that had limited investment options (mostly high-fee mutual funds). It fills me with dread to know that I am paying management fees out the wazoo because of this limitation. But, the Canadian government matches my contribution 100% and those amounts grow tax free. So even with the high MER, I am still ahead. Unfortunately, many online banks don’t even offer the RDSP because there aren’t enough clients for them to deal with the hassle. Next year will be the last year that I will be eligible for the matching grant and while I hope online banks (*cough* I am talking to you Wealthsimple!) get into the game, if that doesn’t happen I will intensely research options to switch banks so I can whittle away at those crazy fees. The big things DO matter a lot – especially compounded. Large purchases such as cars, using a financial planner who takes a % of your investment, buying a home, the career you choose etc. can mean big gains and losses over a lifetime. It makes complete sense to focus on these things first.

I would argue though that making frugal choices in your everyday life also builds up your frugal muscle. Frugality becomes a habit and it contributes to your overall financial health. I am not saying that you should drive 20km to save .20cents on OJ – by definition that isn’t frugal at all! But if you shop at the grocery store near your house it takes a few short minutes to take a look at the sale items and think about buying those things and incorporating them into meals this week. It’s way better to plan ahead than end up buying a bunch of food you bought when you went to the grocery store with good intentions (or worse! Hungry!) and it ends up rotting in your fridge.

Also, most of us start our lives not making a whole lot of money. What we do have we have to use wisely if we want to balance getting our bills paid with being able to, say, have a social life. When you have less, you need to plan your money as carefully as possible. Because all the big things in your life are probably already as low as they can go you need to start cutting ruthlessly in other areas. The same goes for people who have lower incomes: telling them to not sweat about the small stuff is terrible advice when the small stuff is contributing to their inability to manage their finances and is increasing their debt. These people need to learn the skills of blackbelt scrimping until they can breathe again.

I spent years being ultra-frugal and making cutthroat decisions in how to spend. Those years allowed me to start a small business – and then to subsequently give up that business to stay at home with my kids. We rarely ate out, we mostly did the free activities available around the city and we had a YMCA membership that gave us access to fun sports classes for the kids. Most of those things were also walking or biking distance from our house. We had a really good life because we were able to access a lot of low-cost, fun stuff.

That frugality also came in handy when I decided to go back to work. Being able to live off one salary allowed me to wait and take contracts for work that I enjoyed and that were at a higher salary. I didn’t have to take the first job that came along because I knew that while the money was nice we didn’t need it to survive. I doubled my salary and went from a low-level admin position to heading up a team in a high-level position in under 5 years. I was free from the constraints of having to scramble for work to keep our family afloat. That kind of freedom to pursue the type of work you want to do is worth a lot more than eating out and shopping a lot.

Our house is paid off and our incomes is more than enough to spend well beyond what we need. But with my diagnosis it has been abundantly clear how precious time is. So while we could be buying up everything our little heart’s desire, we are choosing instead to invest Mr. Tucker’s salary to buy him an early retirement. Thankfully, my disability income is more than enough to support our family – if we spend judiciously. Buying his time back is the most frugal thing we can do right now.

In the end, frugality is a skill that never leaves you. You can also administer it as much or as less as you want to depending on your circumstances. If you have little money, you will have to tighten your belt. If you have a lot of money, you can loosen the belt if you’d like. But it’s exactly like riding a bike: you never forget how to use it.