Sometimes, dear readers, I forget that most of you do not live like we do, and that most of you aren’t even aware at how we live, here behind the scenes. After all, most people do not usually blog about their finances, and if they do, it’s the lack of them. If you have been a long time reader, like Heidi H, have read through enough archives, or know us in person, then you already know one of our life’s basics.

We do not earn our living as part of the system.
We are not part of the rat race.
We pick and chose when and how we participate.

Ron has been an independent contractor for … oh, yearso. Just recently, I overheard him tell someone else that he hasn’t worked for pay over the summer since 1998. It wasn’t until then that I realized that I take that as a given. Just the other day, he wrapped up some final details on this last contract / project he’s ben working on, then he is home free to spend the summer with us and work on the house.

Just like I don’t understand when someone ask me how can I stand to be around my kids all day, all year, I also don’t understand when people ask how I can stand to have my husband home for extended periods. Simple: I like him.

So I guess the easiest way to explain this, is it must seem to outsiders that we live in a feast or famine manner, when in reality it is quite simple: our spending level stays around the same, while our income level fluctuates. I have found that many people, when they have more money, they spend more money. When they have less, they often do not adjust their spending accordingly.

You may also be thinking that Ron must be getting paid some pretty pennies, but I can assure you, it is a pittance sometimes, especially when compared to big-city wages. I really do feel it is our lack of spending and awareness of mass-consumerism is what helps the most.

I have to interrupt myself to add that yes, when we do have a bit extra, we tend to spend more on things we have deferred, but overall, we try and maintain a somewhat lower standard of living than most other people of our age and situation. One of the things we have done was to try and stay out of debt. We do not buy furniture or anything else with no money down, no interest and no payments for 36 months. If we want an item, we seriously question the need. Therein, I think, lies the difference.

If we decide to go ahead, like the time I needed a new stove, and eventually and new fridge and new dishwasher, we (brace yourself) save our money and buy it for cash.

Did you know you can often get a discount for paying cash? Anyway, I digress. We buy many things second-hand, survived on hand-me-downs and we have made-do, made our own or done without more times than I care to count. One time, in the middle of what I will call our homesteading years, I actually sat down and calculated the amount of money we would need in a year just to survive. Not live in high-style, just to cover the extreme basics. The amount? Twelve thousand dollars. When you put it like that it seems like a lot, but for a yearly wage, it is nothing, and easy to manage. It is, when you think about it, a mere pittance. An interesting thing to note was that our biggest expense during that time was food, and we grew a lot of our own.

As for everyday bills, it wasn’t until we bought this house that we had our first mortgage. Yes, our old house was mortgage- and rent-free. It was a dump, but it was our dump. And this was part of how we broke free from the system, how we removed ourselves from the competition, un-joined the rat race.

Chris, who has finished his coverage of The Underground History of American Education, mentions this quote from Gatto:

At the heart of any school reforms that aren’t simply tuning the mudsill mechanism lie two beliefs: 1) That talent, intelligence, grace, and high accomplishment are within the reach of every kid, and 2) That we are better off working for ourselves than for a boss.

There’s a whole pile of things we would add to that, the list of thing we taught our children when they were younger. Not only as a matter of course, because they were there while we were doing it, but as a matter of survival, should something happen to us, to them, to the world in general, and also as a matter of keeping alive knowledge that is being lost. A simplistic way of life, and the skills with which to survive.

Many people we know would panic (and did) if they were faced with the knowledge of a loss of income. No, we do not have a large safety net, and no, we do not worry too much, and do you know why? More than a good financial planner, which we do not have, and more than trust, which we have in abundance, we feel we have adaptability.

Many people say they want or even crave change, yet panic at the mere suggestion of actually changing to doing something outside the norm. One of the things we did while the kids were growing up, was to give them the knowledge with which to survive on their own. Real knowledge for real survival, and a sense of confidence that they could do whatever they wanted. That when one way didn’t work, you could poke and prod and turn and toss until another way was found.

There are things one really can do, if one wants to, or if one puts themselves in the position where they have to. Can you live with no running water? No push-button heat? No electricity? Can you take two hundred dollars and buy enough groceries to feed five people for two weeks or more? Sure you can, and we did. I know, deep in my own heart, like I know my own name, that I can do it if I really have to. I can survive. For that I will always be glad.

As a side note, I love some of those reality shows like the homesteading ones, suburbanites plunked down in the middle of nowhere and told to build a house and grow some food, but however much I’d like to do it myself, it would probably be boring television to watch people who know what they are doing and get along with one another.

And sometimes I do panic, I do worry, and I do have to be calmed down and reminded that I have willingly traded off consumable, throwaway, material goods and the pursuit of same for the ability to spend time with the people I love.

Shouldn’t that be our ultimate goal?

Anyhow, this summer we will be living off the money we haven’t spent, the bits we have coming to us, and we will be working on house renovation with materials we have previously purchased when the funds were flowing but we didn’t have the time to use it.

It’s a good, good life.