Simple living is what it's all about

When people come visit me, one of the things they comment on is how much they like the lifestyle and habits they pick up while they're here. Sometimes it takes a trip away from home to give you the courage to do something drastic with your life, like lose weight, or clean up your financial messes so that you can travel abroad more often. For me, moving to Trieste meant new beginnings as far as family (I met Sweetie, moved to Trieste and married him all in 8 months, 8 years ago) and finances. I was happy to downsize my everything, get out of debt (got rid of my car, paid off car loan and credit card with money I got for it, and paid off school loans as fast as I could once I moved here-- it took me about four years), and buy an apartment that we could afford (we have 8 years to go on a 15-year mortgage, and that's debt too, but different).

At some point Sweetie and I (also a Simple kind of guy) made frugal living a kind of game. It started out as Hey, let's see how low we can keep the thermostat in winter (I'm from Wisconsin, so Triestine winters seem like Florida to me). Answer: 15 degrees C, after which we let the furnace kick on. Then we said Hey, let's ONLY keep the lights on that we're using. All others OFF! Then, Hey, let's see how long we can go without eating out, and then Hey, let's see how many Family Fun for Free things we can do from now on, and finally,  Hey, let's see if we can live on just one salary (even when we had two decent ones).

And that was good timing, because about a year after we started, I lost my job, and, shortly after, so did my husband.

Well, that frugality gave immediate, and long-lasting results which made it possible for me to start my own little free-lance business (translating, teaching, language consulting) and allowed Sweetie to play full-time Dad for the first six months of Eva's life. Don't get me wrong, though. Living simply isn't for everyone, and we received enough criticism from friends who thought we were ridiculous for trying it that we eventually kept the project to ourselves. Our circle of friends changed somewhat, too, in that we started to hang around more with outdoorsy types and like-minded people as a result of our lifestyle change.

Now that we're both working again (as of exactly one week), we are keeping up the same lifestyle. We meet friends for hikes rather than dinner, and we still play our save money games. Now we have added washable diapers to the mix. As far as temperatures go, with the baby we put our limit at 18C. What awful parents we are, I thought, when I went to a friend's house with baby the same age and saw the thermostat was at 25C, but felt better when I had to take off Eva's sweater because she was dripping baby sweat.