Voluntary Simplicity - but Will It Make You Happy?

But Will It Make You Happy?
August 14th, 2010

In the “normal” world, in our “normal” careers, we would have an annual combined income of roughly US$100,000. What horror would the U.S. government commit with the portion of the taxes it would demand from us? We now live well on a tiny fraction of what we would make in our “normal” careers. We have no debt. We own our small farm and our vehicles outright. We convert what’s left over at the end of the month into cash savings and gold. We also give money to people who are doing good work.

Whether you decide to leave the U.S. (like we did), or not, doesn’t matter. Living well on very little, encouraging others to do the same and actually funding people who are doing good work (allocating resources to values) are the main tactics of the frugal insurgent.

—We’re Inching Dangerously Close to the Point Where Consumers Run for the Hills

My take on frugal living is that it is a better response to the situation we’re facing than armed insurgency. Obviously, framing it in those terms doesn’t maintain the right appearances for publications like the New York Times and other dying bastions of polite circledom. Have no doubt about it, though, taking fiat confetti out of circulation hurts this thing bad, far worse than trying to kill it with fire, bombs or bullets. Things like consciously earning less taxable fiat confetti, keeping your fiat confetti “in a mattress” and buying precious metals (physical, not paper based) with previously accuмulated fiat confetti are all weapons of mass destruction to the fascists of finance and the maniac vampire state that have built this cσncєnтrαтισn cαмρ of a system.

If all of this sounds too frightening, here’s a vaguely hip, new black, new normal, cool kids spin on voluntary simplicity.

Via: New York Times:

A two-bedroom apartment. Two cars. Enough wedding china to serve two dozen people.

Yet Tammy Strobel wasn’t happy. Working as a project manager with an investment management firm in Davis, Calif., and making about $40,000 a year, she was, as she put it, caught in the “work-spend treadmill.”

So one day she stepped off.

Inspired by books and blog entries about living simply, Ms. Strobel and her husband, Logan Smith, both 31, began donating some of their belongings to charity. As the months passed, out went stacks of sweaters, shoes, books, pots and pans, even the television after a trial separation during which it was relegated to a closet. Eventually, they got rid of their cars, too. Emboldened by a Web site that challenges consumers to live with just 100 personal items, Ms. Strobel winnowed down her wardrobe and toiletries to precisely that number.

Her mother called her crazy.

Today, three years after Ms. Strobel and Mr. Smith began downsizing, they live in Portland, Ore., in a spare, 400-square-foot studio with a nice-sized kitchen. Mr. Smith is completing a doctorate in physiology; Ms. Strobel happily works from home as a Web designer and freelance writer. She owns four plates, three pairs of shoes and two pots. With Mr. Smith in his final weeks of school, Ms. Strobel’s income of about $24,000 a year covers their bills. They are still car-free but have bikes. One other thing they no longer have: $30,000 of debt.

Ms. Strobel’s mother is impressed. Now the couple have money to travel and to contribute to the education funds of nieces and nephews. And because their debt is paid off, Ms. Strobel works fewer hours, giving her time to be outdoors, and to volunteer, which she does about four hours a week for a nonprofit outreach program called Living Yoga.

“The idea that you need to go bigger to be happy is false,” she says. “I really believe that the acquisition of material goods doesn’t bring about happiness.”

While Ms. Strobel and her husband overhauled their spending habits before the recession, legions of other consumers have since had to reconsider their own lifestyles, bringing a major shift in the nation’s consumption patterns.

“We’re moving from a conspicuous consumption — which is ‘buy without regard’ — to a calculated consumption,” says Marshal Cohen, an analyst at the NPD Group, the retailing research and consulting firm.