I continue to read blogs by other people struggling to pay off their debt, and once in a while I find something that really strikes me. I just finished reading a story about downsizing everything in your life and learning to live simpler. The idea is that you will adapt to living this way, and you will end up just as happy as you were with all of your stuff. Now, coming from someone who has a ton of toys and extra stuff in their life, it is totally believable. However, even he said that he was pretty miserable for the first 3 months, he missed his cars and trips to see friends and other hobbies. By month four he was just getting used to some of those changes, but not entirely.
However, the whole reason I'm writing this blog is because I don't have 3 extra cars to sell and I'm not trying to cut extra vacations out of my budget. I'm trying to pay extra out of the little bit that we do have, and while that means cutting back on fast food, it's nothing really drastic. In some cases, I agree that downsizing is better. After moving my furniture 5 or 6 times over the last few years we have decided to just sell the bedroom set. It is extremely heavy, and the house has a lot of stairs to get up to the master bedroom. I don't want to even think about it. Jason's dad had a spare bed frame sitting in his hay loft, which he is giving to us. He also gave us a box spring because ours decided to splinter and break several times in the last month. The money that we get from selling the bedroom set will be put toward buying a new (smaller) dresser, and perhaps have a little bit left over for anything else we need to buy last minute, like a night stand.
But there is some furniture I will not give up. I will have a computer desk and a computer. Jason and I both depend on the internet for work. Our only entertainment is completely centered around online gaming, which is $15/month each. We will also have bookshelves. One of THE MOST important parts of growing up to me was reading tons and tons of books about all kinds of things, fiction or non-fiction, poetry or philosophical essays. I read everything. Jason reads everything. And it is extremely important to us that Logan grows up learning to read and be interested in reading. Our combined library is enough to fill at least four 7' tall bookshelves, and we continue to buy books. Sure we have a kindle, and we do have a small library on that as well. But I love our bookshelves, and we actually need to buy more because we don't have enough space on ours anymore. Logan will also have his own bookshelf eventually with his kiddy books on it, which we have a growing stock of. Jason and I typically read different kinds of books at different times, so even though we have all of these books and continue to buy more, I have read less than half the ones we have. Someday maybe when Logan is grown up and not interested in our outdated sci-fi I will consider donating them, but for the time being they are a part of our home and will continue to be. And when I say we continue to buy books I mean we bought a ton when Borders went out of business, and if either of us is following a particular series we usually pick up the remaining books if it is worth finishing, so it's not a huge expense for us, but it is ongoing.
Anyways, back to the topic at hand. There are some parts of our life where we can downsize. Bedroom furniture is one of them. There are other areas where we can't. Having 1 car and having to orchestrate how to get Logan to daycare is a pain enough as it is. I wouldn't want to do it without a car, but then again I wouldn't be able to get to work without a car, so it might not even matter at that point. Nonetheless, we aren't getting rid of that. And we are actually upgrading from this apartment to a house.
For all the preaching about how money can't buy happiness I have to say, it does make a difference. We can adapt to living with less, and Jason and I have had our fair share of "less". On the other hand, privacy and stability don't have a price, but they can certainly be bought. Just last night I was sitting at the kitchen table in boxers and a bra when some stranger marched right into our apartment. This is not the first time this has happened. I hate feeling like I have to lock myself in or lock myself out. This apartment complex also has a knack for inventing "welfare" inspections for all sorts of things. Every single month somebody comes into our apartment and checks our bedding for bugs, or checks the blinds to make sure they aren't damaged, or checks the general "safety" of the apartment. I'm tired of it. I hate having to let these guys in to walk around and judge us every month in the name of "preventative maintenance". Any little thing they find that breaks their rules, they fine us for. It's not like they do a damage check when you move out and take the money out of your deposit. They just add a fine to your month's rent bill for whatever they say you've done wrong. So while upgrading to a house is not in the heart of living a simpler life, it does provide us with more stability and control in that we (hopefully) won't have strangers marching in on us all the time. (Plus it is providing us with an opportunity to actually save more money than we are in this apartment, and pay off debt faster.)
The other issue I find with this whole theory of not depending on money for happiness is a psychological one. I have always been taught about budgeting from a very early age. I have been instilled with a sense of urgency to pay off debt and to never let my bills be late. I consider these good qualities. On the flip side I suffer from really really bad anxiety and depression that is directly related to our financial problems. After we found out that our mortgage fell through last year I locked myself inside for a week and went through bouts of crying and screaming and just a complete lack of willingness to continue to work towards anything. There were days at a time when I couldn't force myself to get out of bed to deal with Logan or anything else. I just let it all slip through the cracks because there was no end in sight. At that point all I could see was that we already had a mountain of student loans, we were forced to find this apartment in 2 days, give up our pets, move yet again, all with the knowledge that in less than a year we would have to pack up and move. This apartment is costing us way more than our last several "homes", which meant that it would be even harder to save or to pay extra on loans.
I cannot handle the idea of moving over and over and over for countless years with no destination. I can't handle not having the freedom to put up pictures in my home. I can't handle having landlords coming and going, adding to my bill every month as they see fit. I can't handle not having animals because the deposits are so ridiculous. So what I'm saying is that while money may not buy happiness directly, it can provide me with stability, which keeps me from being a complete basket case. If you have 3 cars and one breaks down, you drive a different one. If you have 1 car and it breaks down, you miss a day of work, which eats into your paycheck, which makes you late on your bills, which frustrates most people, but sends me into a completely different state of meltdown. I don't want to live in a mansion with a pool (actually, I have expressly forbidden Jason from ever buying a pool). I don't want a fleet of cars. I don't want to go on a vacation every other weekend. All I want is to know that if one thing breaks it isn't going to send us into a financial tailspin, and that makes me happy.
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