Live Like a King

Are you feeling the pinch?

Some aren’t. Most are. Everything costs more now than a couple of years ago, and wages haven’t increased enough to make up for it.

According to polls, something like 65% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. A similar number couldn’t cover a $400 emergency if it came up. Also consider that not only has credit card debt reached an all-time high, but also credit card delinquencies are soaring, along with car repossessions and home foreclosures.

And yet, we all carry around tiny supercomputers in our pockets. We have personal transport machines that take us anywhere we want to go at superhuman speeds. We have a magic spark that obeys our every order to light this room, chop these vegetables, heat this water, freeze this meat, turn this fan.

But it’s not enough. We need to stream lots of shows on Netflix. We need to eat out. We need to take a vacation once a year. We need logistics companies to drop off packages of cheap Chinese junk at our front door every day.

Remember, the majority of us are living paycheck to paycheck. Why?

Sure, we could answer that question by blaming taxes, inflation (but I repeat myself), slow economy, etc. And those would all be true. But they answer the more specific question of why Americans are living paycheck to paycheck while still trying to maintain the same spending habits.

Let’s get into a better question. Why are Americans not changing their spending habits? If they don’t have enough money, why are they still spending it?

The answer is, of course, because they have no choice. Either they are forced by law to pay certain bills (taxes, car insurance) or they have been brainwashed into thinking they are forced to pay for certain products and services (more on that in a bit). One is a slavery to the government, the other is a slavery to their own desires. Either way, they are unable to choose not to spend that money.

But what if you could break free? Not from the government portion, I don’t recommend that—they will squash you. What if you could have more control over where the rest of your money goes? Instead of saying “I can’t afford it,” when the $300 electric bill comes in, what if you said “I can’t afford it,” when it was time to turn on the air conditioner, take a hot shower, or run the clothes dryer? What if your electric bill was $50 instead, because you didn’t use electricity that you simply couldn’t afford?

For the last several years, my family and I have been living with less. Our priority as a family was to be together. We wanted to actually raise our kids ourselves instead of handing them over to the state for 8 hours a day. That means Mom has to be a mom, not a career woman. And that means Dad has to earn a living himself so that his work is proximate to and visible by the family, instead of handing himself over to an employer in exchange for a predictable paycheck.

So we had to learn to live with less. We decided to live in a single-wide trailer with four (then five, then six!) kids. We decided to homeschool. We decided to grow our own food. We decided to shop at thrift stores. We decided to eat at home and cook from scratch. We decided we didn’t need fancy perfumes, shampoos, makeups, and other personal “care” products that are full of harmful substances anyways.

We were definitely doing with less than the average American.

And then we decided to live off-grid. And boy was that an eye opener to what you can live without. We don’t have light fixtures in our house, just lots of windows for daytime and a lamp in each room at night. We don’t have air conditioning or central heat, just lots of windows for ventilation in the summer and a wood stove for heat in the winter. We don’t have a hot water heater, we just heat water on the propane stove or wood stove when we need it. I built the house myself and to be honest, we still haven’t painted all the walls and still have not put in baseboards or door trim.

So with no mortgage, no electric bill, smaller grocery bill, no commute to work, only one car, we are a lot more free to decide each week where our money goes.

Don’t get me wrong, we are still feeling the pinch too. Especially because we have had completely unnatural weather this year, which sometimes made farming too unpredictable to get a marketable crop, and other times made it impossible growing anything at all. But despite the tough times, we are for the most part free to choose if the frayed pants get replaced yet, or whether we have Parmesan cheese on our spaghetti.

And you know what? I still feel like I’m living like a king! My solar electric system allows me to have a freezer. What king up until a hundred years ago could cause ice to be made? I have a house full of pipes through which water can run in, get used, and run out. Kings might have had some kind of water ducting system in their house before a hundred years ago. But not your average person. And I can get fire on my stove the instant I think of turning it on, for just a few bucks worth of propane. Before the late 1800s, anyone who wanted to cook had to have a wood or charcoal fire, including kings.

Maybe we need to really rethink what is necessary to survive, thrive, and be happy. Maybe the answer to our freedom, at least in part, is just retraining ourselves to be satisfied with what would have been luxury even to kings for most of history.

What about you? Are you making it right now? Are you free to choose what you do with your hard-earned money every month?

Do you want to read more specifics about how to live with less? Let me know in the comments below.