Live Like You're Poor And You Never Will Be

Note, I take a very firm position of considering myself neither liberal or conservative, as I find being only one or the other would be prohibitive of my ability to research issues and decide what is correct for myself.

We look like hippies. We don't use our dryer, opting for a clothesline, we have an oldschool reel lawn mower (as in, totally manual powered; no gas or electricity for it), we cloth diaper the baby, compost organic food waste, the majority of our food is cooked from scratch, we buy flour and oatmeal in 25-50 pound bags, don't have cable or satellite, and walk/ride bikes more often than we drive. The only thing missing from the equation is "hemp." Our neighbors think we're eco-nuts, however, we can snicker at our reasoning behind our hippie-like nature.

Our family motto has been and will be, "Live like you're poor and you never will be." Our fiscally conservative nature actually aligns heavily with the environmentalist movement. All of the things I previously mentioned that we do has a financial basis before it has a moral/religious/ethic/whatever basis.

Let's look at some of these things individually, and I'll explain how these things work in our favor financially.

1) Cloth Diapers
     Yes, I cloth diaper my child. Yes, I recommend cloth diapering for a myriad of reasons, however, let's look at the cost effectiveness of them. On average, the cheap disposable diapers cost $0.20/diaper. Anya is a crazy pooper, so we easily go through 5-6 poopy diapers a day, cloth or disposable. If you count wet diapers, let's say she goes through 8 a day. In a 30 day period, we can round that to $50/month! That's only for the way cheap diapers that no one likes anyway!

2) Composting
     I know this one sounds weird, but I like to garden, and I'd rather use my own leftovers which would just go in the trash anyway than paying extra for fertilizer.

3) Clothesline
     Not using the dryer obviously saves us on our power bill. Why heat the house more during the summer with the dryer when the clothes can dry quickly outside?

4) T.V.
     By not having T.V., we're healthier since we're not couch potatoes, don't use the T.V. as much, thus saving on power, and don't have to worry about paying for a monthly subscription. We can find most everything we want to watch online, anyway.

5) Using "foot power"
     Who wants to pay for gas, anyway? Let's stick it to the gas companies by using the free power of walking and riding bikes!


By living by the "Live Like You're Poor" motto, the only debt we currently have is our mortgage, and it feels so good to not have to worry about credit card debt hanging over our heads. If Daniel were to lose his job, it would undoubtably be hard, but we wouldn't be hounded by debt collectors. My advice to you, my faithful friends, is to live WAY below your means, pay off debt, and live a happier life! People may think you're crazy, but when you have net worth and they don't, who's really crazy in the end?