Living Like No One Else

Guest Post by Liz from Frugally Blonde

When I tell new acquaintances that my husband and I share one
car, I am usually met with a mix of shock and pity. In our affluent
society, it is practically unheard of for each adult driver in a
household not to have his or her own car. 

However, my family has
managed well with only one car for four years, and we plan to continue to
live this way as long as it seems necessary. While our lifestyle might
not work for everyone, I hope that it demonstrates that living without
a second car can be both possible and practical.

Why do we have only one car? The simple answer is that we do not
feel that we can responsibly afford another one. At certain times
during the past four years, we might have been able to squeeze a car
payment into our budget, but it would have been at the expense of our
other priorities.

For instance, we were blessed last year to be able to
purchase our first home. We knew that doing so would seriously hamper
our ability to get a second car in the near future, but we felt that a
home was more needed as well as a much better investment. Further,
although we would not rule out a car payment, we would much prefer to
pay for a second car in cash, as we did for our first one.

Clearly, living with one car can be challenging and a sacrifice.
However, after four years in this situation, we have discovered a host
of unexpected blessings and benefits that have come with our
unconventional lifestyle.

First of all, we easily save hundreds of dollars a year by not
paying for gas, insurance, maintenance, fees, and taxes for a second
car. It also helps us save money in other ways. Out of necessity, I
have become extremely organized about my shopping trips. I combine
trips and map out the route that is most efficient. I try to do most of
my grocery shopping for a two-week period in one trip, and I can often
go at least a week without going to the supermarket, except perhaps for
fresh fruit. Limiting my shopping trips to once a week also prevents me
from being tempted by impulse purchases.

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Back seven years ago when we were first married, we had this crazy
idea that we wanted to pay 100% cash for our first home. It wasn't yet
a goal; it was more of a far-off dream, something we never really
thought would be possible, but was a cool idea to consider.

We got married right before Jesse's last semester of
undergrad so before
we could even consider saving for a house, Jesse had to make it through undergrad and
law school. With both of our parents' encouragement, we had worked hard
during high school and saved carefully so when we married, we had
enough money to pay cash for undergrad and law school, and a little bit
left over in case of an emergency.

Prior to getting married, we had crunched a bunch of
numbers, written out numerous rough drafts of possible budgets, and decided we'd do something counter-cultural: we'd commit to
stay out of debt through law school. We had the money to pay for school set aside in our bank account, so we would use that to pay for school and live off of whatever we could earn while Jesse was in school.

Knowing that Jesse wouldn't be able to work much while in law school and planning for me to be a stay-at-home mom as soon as children came along (whenever God saw fit to bless us with children–we'd left that in His hands!), committing to stay out of debt seemed like a fairly audacious goal. And it turned out to be a whole lot harder than we could
have envisioned.

I came from a family where a strong work ethic was instilled in us from the time we were little. My parents didn't believe in hand-outs; we all had to pull our own weight as part of the family. As soon as we were old enough to earn money, we were expected to buy our own clothes and pay for our own expenses. My parents were generous to us and paid us for extra jobs we did around the house, but laziness was not tolerated in their home.

I so appreciate this about my parents as this was one of the biggest things which helped me survive those grueling years of law school. If I'd have grown up with an entitlement mentality, I'd have never survived.

As I've shared here before, many months when Jesse was in law school, we had no idea how we were going to pay our bills. Most of the time, the numbers never worked out on paper. But we committed never to tell anyone about our needs, give 10% of our little income to our church, and trust that God would provide.

I remember numerous times when Jesse and I would be on our knees literally begging God to please provide as we had no idea how we would pay for our rent or electricity, or even food. God always provided–sometimes at the last moment and through the most unexpected means. He was continuously faithful and our trust in Him grew by leaps and bounds during those first few years of marriage.

We pinched our pennies, worked as many different
side jobs and at-home jobs as we could scrape together or scrounge up, and
learned to pray like never before. And by God's grace, we made it through law school without any debt. We had very little money to our name, but Jesse had his law license!

Almost immediately after graduation, we discovered just how much freedom there was in being debt-free. We didn't have any chains of school loans to drag around with us for
the next ten or fifteen years making our monthly expenses quite low, so we didn't have to worry about landing a high-paying job.

All that hard work and short-term sacrifice was beginning to pay off!

During the last year of law school, we'd discovered this guy named
Dave Ramsey. Jesse started listening to his radio show and kept coming
to me all pumped about what he was learning. I really wasn't too
excited. After all, I stubbornly thought, weren't we pretty smart when it came to finances?
Did we really need some guru with a radio show to tell us what to do?

Little could I have guessed at that time how much this "guru" would end up influencing our lives and changing the way we thought about money. But first, I had to humble myself and be willing to listen…

…To be continued

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Frugal in Virginia's husband, Ryan, has another smashing piece up here which you'll want to go read. I found myself nodding along in agreement until I came to the sentence which said they don't reuse their Ziploc bags.

I had to stop and catch my breath for a second.

They don't reuse Ziploc bags?? Doesn't that break rule number 10454 in The Frugal Zealot's Handbook? Doesn't everyone know that you must get at least 543 uses out of a Ziploc bag before throwing it out? That's just what we frugal folks do. Anything else would be… well, it would just be unthinkable.

Jesting aside, the point of the piece was excellent: true frugality considers the ROI (return on investment of time) as the bottom line. There are thousands of ways to save a buck. But each family needs to carefully weigh how much time it is going to take to save that buck. Time is money, too.

So figure out which money-saving efforts are worth your time and stick with those. Don't feel guilted over the fact that you might not be doing all the frugal things some other family is doing. You can't do it all, so pick and choose what works for your family in the season of life you're in.

For me, it's not a big deal at all to reuse Ziploc bags. I do a lot of baking so when a freezer bag of baked goods is empty, I just dump the crumbs into the trash and stick the empty bag back into the freezer door to be at-the-ready for my next Baking Day spree. It probably takes me all of ten seconds and it means that I only buy a box of freezer bags twice a year–at the most.

But there are a lot of things I don't do. For instance, I don't use a clothesline, don't cloth diaper, and we do go out to eat once a week. Just like it seems weird to me that someone who considers themselves frugal would not also reuse their Ziploc bags, it probably seems strange to some of you that I don't hang my clothes out, use cloth diapers, or make every meal from scratch.

I've done each of those things before and might do them again in the future, but I've found they just don't work well for our family right now. And I'm okay with that. What works for one family, won't necessarily work for another family.

I love how Ryan ends his post:

Check up on yourself. Evaluate your frugal techniques. Which ones are really
worth it? If you wouldn’t accept $2 per hour as payment for your labor
from another, don’t accept it from yourself under the guise of
frugality. Valuing your time is the subtle and important difference
between being cheap and being frugal.

The frugal experience is about living better on less. If you miss the living better part, you’ve missed it entirely.

Just for fun: do you reuse your Ziploc bags? What common frugal techniques do you find to not work or be worth it to your family? Tell us about it in the comments.

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Jennifer recently left the following comment on my blog:

Do I miss variety? Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that there are many things I often see at the store which I'd love to buy but which I know would totally bust our grocery budget. No, because I truly believe that making temporary short-term sacrifices (like, for us, eating simple meals made with inexpensive ingredients–see some of our normal menus here) is worth it to achieve long-term goals.

Before my husband and I got married, we sat down and did a lot of calculating to see how little we could survive on. Our goal was to make it through Jesse's six remaining months of undergrad and the following three years of law year without going into debt.

We had the money saved up and set aside to pay for school, but we didn't have much more beyond that. We figured that if he worked part-time and I worked part-time, we could manage to make close to $1000 per month. So that was the dollar amount we had to work with in making our budget. Considering that our rent ate up over half of that amount, we had around $125/week leftover to work with.

It seemed rather daunting to be able to pay for our utilities, transportation, food, and living expenses with that amount but we were determined to make it work. We knew we would have much more freedom if we weren't making payments on law school loans for years to come. And we knew if Jesse were to begin his legal career without the bondage of debt, it would give us much more of a foundation for achieving our long-term goals of owning a home debt-free, owning real estate debt-free, and being able to share abundantly with those in need.

Yes, we had some pretty big long-term goals from the get-go, and the only way to achieve those was by making short-term sacrifices. It would mean going without, saying "no", and exercising lots of self-discipline. In short, it would mean experiencing some temporary discomforts in order to reap lifelong rewards.

The temporary discomforts during the law school years weren't always easy, believe me. Both of us had moments when we just wanted to throw in the towel and throw our arms up in defeat. There were many times when we wished we could spend money on this or that or enjoy some of the little luxuries in life it seemed everyone else was. But we plodded on and on and on–wearing the same clothes over and over, driving an old car, brown-bagging it, clipping coupons, forgoing dinners out, living in a cramped little basement apartment, and so on–constantly reminding ourselves that it would someday be worth it.

And it has been every bit worth it. The little luxuries in life that we gave up–like eating out, making fancy meals, buying new clothes or things, driving a nicer car–pale in comparison to the freedom we now have living a life without payments.

Many people expected that as soon as my husband got out of law school and our income quadrupled, we'd stop being so frugal and start "really living". Shouldn't we reward ourselves for those sacrifices by loosening up on our tightwad ways? It was easy to justify, for sure, but we'd lived on such a beans-and-rice budget for so long that neither of us felt comfortable with all of a sudden becoming more extravagant. Plus, we have more audacious long-term goals–like paying cash for a house–and we know the only way we'll be able to achieve those in a timely fashion is by making more short-term sacrifices.

We have given ourselves quite a bit more budget breathing room than we had during law school and we have mutually decided to allow ourselves to "splurge" every now and then (like our dinner at The Cheesecake Factory last Friday night!), but we still adhere to a strict written budget and we do our best to constantly be looking for ways to keep our expenses and expenditures to a minimum. This enables us to live on much less than we make so we put a large part of what we earn towards saving to pay cash for a house. In addition, it allows us to have much more to share with others.

None of this would be possible if we were buried in debt. Not only would we have all the stress of trying to make ends meet while paying all our payments, we'd not have the freedom to give generously or the ability to make good traction in our savings goals.

So yes, there are days when I wish I could go to the store and just buy whatever I want without worrying about staying within our grocery budget. And yes, there are times when I wish I could make more elaborate meals with more expensive ingredients instead of planning our menus based upon the sales and what coupons I have. But then I quickly realize that sticking with a small grocery budget and eating simple meals is one of the reasons we're living a life without payments and one of the reasons we're able to save more and give more. When thinking of it in that light, it is so worth it!

And honestly? I really enjoy the challenge of working with a small grocery budget. In fact, while our menus might seem dull to some, we really rarely notice the fact that we spend so little at the grocery store. Through years of practice, I've learned a number of tricks (like the Buy Ahead Principle) which, coupled with a large dose of creativity and ingenuity, allow us to enjoy a rather varied and healthful fare without breaking the bank to do so.

Note: I wanted to make it clear that I am not advocating everyone need to have a grocery budget like ours or that you need to forgo eating fancy dinners. These are choices we have made based upon our family's goals and what works best for us right now. Your family's goals and needs are different than ours so please do not feel the need to do similar to us. I just share what we've done and are doing in hopes it might be an inspiration to you to find ways you can live on less in order to save more and give more.

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Take a two-pound bag of pinto beans and sort the beans for any stones or bad beans. (These around $2 at the grocery store and less than $1 per pound if you buy it in bulk.)

Soak
the beans overnight in a crock pot turned off by covering the beans
with plenty of water and stirring in about 2 tablespoons of plain
yogurt. The yogurt will begin to break down some of the amino acids
that cause our digestive systems some difficulty. This process will
also make the beans' nutrients more bioavailable (ready for our body to
use).

The
next morning, rinse the beans and refill the crock pot with fresh, pure
water. Let the beans cook on low for most of the day. I start mine
first thing in the morning. In the early afternoon, add 2 cups of brown
rice ($0.50), 2 Tablespoons of chili powder, 1 teaspoon of garlic powder, and salt and
pepper to taste. (Since I purchase my seasonings in bulk these
spices only add up to costing about 5 cents.)

Let this cook on high until supper time. Voila! You have a dinner that
serves about 12 for less than $3.

At first glance, this meal may not
look like magazine cover-food. However, the seasonings make this dish
surprisingly tasty.

Here is the cost breakdown: $2 of beans, $0.50 of
rice, and let's say $0.10 of spices. That is a total of $2.60. This
meal will serve 12, so divide that figure in half for my family of six,
and we have a complete meal for $1.30. (It will even be less if you buy your beans and
rice in bulk.)

Here are some variation ideas:

• Adding a can or two of petite diced tomatoes gives this meal a fuller flavor. Two cans will add about $0.50 per meal.
• At times, we will often omit the rice and serve plain chili beans
  with corn muffins. My children really enjoy this variation. Simple corn
  muffins are very frugal!
• Our favorite variation is Black Bean soup. Start with just one
  pound of black beans instead of two pounds of pinto beans. Still fill
  the crock pot up with water and cook as normal, adding the rice,
  seasonings and 2 cans of tomato paste. Black Beans sell here for $1.15,
  plus the two cans of tomato paste for $1.10 and rice for $0.50. Since
  this soup will also serve two complete meals, the cost is still less
  than $1.50 per meal. 

A few additional thoughts on this meal:

• Leftovers freeze well for the next Wednesday. Or they are great
  layered with whole wheat tortillas, salsa and cheese for a quick
  Saturday night supper–which makes for another very frugal meal.
• When reheating the rice and beans, spread a thin layer of salsa over the top to prevent drying out in the oven.
• If your children are new to this type of food, cheese sprinkled on the top might make the meal more exciting.
• Our family eats an enormous amount of fresh foods throughout the
  week. We feel one night with all cooked food is not tremendously
  harmful to our health. If you can't skip vegetables once a week, you
  can always steam broccoli or another sale-priced vegetable. This would
  increase the cost of the meal by at least $1.

Amy Ellen is a homeschooling mother of a third-grader, a
first-grader, a preschooler, and a nineteen-month-old-tagalong. She has
a vision to help moms who want to be healthy but don't know where to
start… and moms who know where to start but need some encouragement
along the way. She blogs at HealthBeginsWithMom.com and is a Wellness Consultant in her "free time".

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Last week, in my 100 Ways to Save $100 post, I talked about using less and I briefly mentioned how we've eliminated paper towels from our home. Little did I expect that this simple remark would result in a number of emails asking how we have done this.

You want to know how we've eliminated paper towels from our home? Well, here's the answer: I just stopped buying them. Seriously, that was it.

About two years ago or so, I realized that paper towels were one item I could never find that great of a deal on and I most assuredly never seemed to be able to snag them for free. I also realized that these were an item many people lived without for thousands of years, without being the worse for it.

So I talked to my husband and asked him if I could do an experiment: could I just stop buying paper towels and see if we missed them?

You know what? We never really even noticed. When we needed to clean up a spill, we just used a towel. When we needed to wipe something up, we used a rag. And so on. I keep a drawer-full of towels and rags in the kitchen handy for these types of things.

Honestly, the only times I've realized we didn't have paper towels were when someone was at our home and they asked for a paper towel. I'd just tell them we actually don't use paper towels, but the rags or towels are in the bottom drawer in the kitchen.

We've received quite a few reactions of shock to that statement. It seems as if the thought of living without paper towels is a pretty foreign idea to most Americans. Oh well, I guess it wouldn't be the first time we've been classified as weird!

Now, I'm not writing this to make the case that all of you need to quit buying paper towels. However, I share it as an example of how there are many things we've come to think are "necessities" in life which really aren't.

How about trying to live without some of these things and see if it really is that difficult or earth-shattering? You might be surprised to discover you don't even miss these once-considered "necessities".

What about you? What simple things have you eliminated from your life and found you didn't miss them at all? Tell us about it.

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