AlBob

Who is considering or is practicing downsizing? My wife and I spent @5 years preparing and have made the move. Before we spent everything we made on lifestyle now we live on about $1000. a month, life is so much better.

la petite moi

What IS downsizing?

AlBob

Downsizing is eliminating debt, unplugging from consumerism, prioritizing lifestyle choices ie: is spending more time on art, love ,relationships, service to a cause, travel more satisfying than working 30 years to retirement, fufilling emotional needs with products instead of rich life experience. This is a quick response to a complicated issue. The web is full of disscussions on this.

Meier_Link

I guess I've been living like that for about 1.5 years... Got fired, drew unemployment for 6 months, now I work odds jobs here and there, usually not over 20 hours a week. I make enough to get by, but I can't go out and buy stuff like I did when I was full time.

Life goes by very quickly when you work all the time...

roboshark

How come it took you 5 years to make the "move"? Eliminating debt? Buying a smaller house?

Sounds like a good thing, AlBob.

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I want no escape.

AlBob

Both Roboshark,

We were buying a large house with the idea of selling it while buying a really cheap place to retire too ($20,000.) Also we were paying down credit card debt, bought a $12,000. dollar car instead of the luxuy cars we used to drive. What we found in the process is that we were gaining peace of mind and free time. We didn't have to work as much, did'nt feel trapped by our jobs. We were working on a 10 year plan and I unexpectedly became disabled. The planning we had done served us well, enabling us to escape what would have been a financial disaster and minimizing the emotional costs of a radical change in lifestyle. And Meier Link, It sounds like your learning good tools for survival as long as you don't feel deprived.

la petite moi

Wow, it sounds good, but I would be WAY too scared to do something like that. Then again, I'm 18.

Rodney

We got the house paid off and drive old cars, and never had any consumer debt anyway. So we own nothing to nobody. But are we serene? No. I did lose my job a couple of years ago and retrained for the teaching profession, but right now there are no jobs in my neck of the woods. Meanwhile my wife is in her mid-50s, has some chronic medical problems, and works at a quite-well-paid job at a huge company that does its own kind of downsizing and outsourcing on a regular basis (they just laid off the payroll department and outsourced it all to some happy workers in Buenos Aires. Meanwhile, they've begun to hire in my wife's specialty. In India.)

So all is well for now, but if my wife loses her job before I get anything that has insurance, we're SOL. As you edge into your 50s and beyond, you find that it's not only harder to get hired some places, but it's harder to get hired for the type of jobs that include the benes that are becoming more and more important to you. (Based simply on what she is -- mid-50s with health issues -- my wife might never be able to get another job like the one she has now.) We have money in the bank, but we also know how quick a castatatrophic illness could wipe it out.

So, downsized? Sure. Feeling deprived? Nope. Feeling secure? Not on your life.

maleficent

It's actually a lot less scary than the mountain of debt that some people have. It's something to think about while you are still so young and just starting out. If you don't dig a hole of debt, then you don't have to spend years and years getting out of it.

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gar1976

The problem is, most people have the wrong kind of debt. Sometimes, leveraging the equity in your house or leasing instead of buying a car is a good idea.

AlBob

Hi Rodney, I share that same sense of insecurity, My medications cost a bundle and we could drop into true poverty. I certainly empathize with your situation. But getting off the wheel was sure liberating. I don't want to give the impression that we have achieved some ultimate suburban white flight, and indeed I am concerned every day about the horrible social darwinism gripping our country and our suicidal foriegn policy. The spare time I now have does afford me the time to be a political activist and try to help socially working at a kitchen for the homeless and hungry etc. I moved to a very small working poor community and am proud to live here. Every day I see people helping one another in ways I never would have imagined in my former yuppie enclaves. I'm also no candidate for a Mother Teresa award but I do like being part of a very real community. The isolation of living to aquire goods and position blinded me to that opportunity before.

La Petite Moi (very sweet handle),
Go for it whatever it is!! At 18 I didn't even have the intelligence to ask the question and I see from your posts a keen intellect, that with a good heart will take you far.

roboshark

I guess I'm lucky because I've never been the kind to pursue material goods. I never really want anything. Things just don't interest me. Sure, over the years I've acquired things, enough possessions to fill a house with. But if that house should burn down tomorrow, I can't think of one thing that I'd really like to keep. (At least, this is what I tell myself.)

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I want no escape.

la petite moi

Thanks for the compliment. Recently, I've been wanting to move out of my parents house, but I'm still in college and will be for four years. My boyfriend is living in San Jose, and I really want to live with him and get married, but we can't seeing as though I'm going to college three and a half hours away, and if we got married my parents wouldn't help me out anymore probably. I just got a job at Starbucks, so I'm working for 6.75$ an hour for four hours a day. Yeah, I don't make very much.