I’ve often heard sorted-stories of people working endless hours, even double shifts or weekends, to live above their means and ‘keep up with the Jones’. But…rarely do I hear of someone struggling to live below their means.
This in a nutshell, is exactly what my husband and I have been trying to do for several years now. This is what seems impossible to do in this day and age. Still, we keep searching for ways to keep dwindling down the cost of living so we can actually sock money away for a real emergency or for a way of life actually worth living.
To us, ‘living’ isn’t getting up day after day to go to the same place…to do the same thing…to be met with the same outcome week after week, month after month, year after year. This is the norm for the majority of societal folks, but it just isn’t ‘for’ a small percentage of us who desperately want quality over quantity, used but paid for over new and in-debt to pay for, free time rather than overtime, or living over ‘never enough stuff’ and bragging rights. We’d much rather own our old and used assets than be paying for something until we’re too old to enjoy that asset or perhaps never make it to the ‘pay off’ date.
It is a grim reality, but even-still…it’s a fact-of-life for so many hard working folks who go through life like robots and never even realize it. Is this the way it was supposed to be back when this country became a country? I wonder what our forefathers had in mind for our nation…for our way of life. I wonder what they thought living really was all about.
I’m not talking about what the history books tell about our nation’s history, but rather what the people of long-ago felt from day to day, what they dreamed, what they wanted for their futures or that of their children. I wonder about so many things; too many things for one woman’s mind to bear at times. I am the victim, I guess, of an over-active imagination or restless mind and spirit.
So…with that ‘bit of a rant’ behind me, I am still in pursuit of a different…less complicated, lower cost-of-living, way of life. I know…somewhere out there, we (me and my family) will find a place where we can live below our means and actually be allowed to do so in peace and with little or less judgment from those folks zooming along in their big trucks or fancy cars they struggle to pay for, or those who live in big, fine houses they’ll be paying off until they have one foot in the grave. I’ll take living with less and actually owning my rickety old stuff, and being happy to know it’s really mine, over grinding my nose to look good to people who don’t really know me at all. Which, in turn, means they’re opinions aren’t worth a hill-of-beans.
The simple life might seem rather elusive where we are standing right now, but I feel sure that it’s just over the next horizon. It’s so close…I can feel it! To me, that’s something worth looking forward to and worth every ounce of sacrifice I can muster.
When you’re attempting to live the good life—less really is more.
*Simplify Your Life—Free Your Soul*
.V..
Fifty Something World 