A reply to Dawn's questions

In the comment section of the previous post, Dawn asked:
What is the easiest way that you have found to live a simple life?
What to you is the difference between simple living and frugal living, if there is one?
How would explain what your goal is by leading a simple life?

I'll take them one at a time.

Q: What is the easiest way that you have found to live a simple life?
A: I think for me, the answer to this boils down to some questions that I ask myself:

• Do I really need it?
• What will I do if I don't buy it/have it? (In other words, can I substitute something else?)
• How will this impact my overall financial picture?
• Will what I'm doing have an impact (on my life or someone else's) a year from now, and is it a bad or good impact?
• Will it enable me/my family to save time, money, space, energy, etc. in some other way?

Q: What to you is the difference between simple living and frugal living, if there is one?
A: I think the 2 work together. When you're trying to live frugally, you also live simply. When you're trying to live simply, you also live frugally. For me the 2 go hand in hand. I think of living simply as being more related to the things I surround myself with, while I think of living frugally as more of a commitment to financial health.

Q: How would you explain what your goal is by living a simple life?
A: Gosh, good question. I hadn't thought about this. I think that, in a nutshell, it's about not complicating the heck out of things (which I have a tendency to do). It's about accepting that some things don't need to be perfect, that they can be "good enough". For example: Do I REALLY need a new (blender, car, house, etc.) or is the one I already have good enough?

One of the areas Fidget and I have been discussing is the difference between "simply living" and "simple living". To me the difference is pretty big, and includes the difference between a basic need (food, water, shelter) and the "needs" to be able to enjoy life (electricity, cable, running water).

"Simple living" is merely finding out how much we can do without.
"Simply living" is what we need to continue existing.

In looking at our cable needs, we had discussed getting rid of it completely. The problem with that is, because of the area we live in, we cannot get ANY channels with the rabbit-ears. So that wasn't really an option we liked (and Fidget threatened to self-destruct if she had to miss Desperate Housewives). We finally decided to go back to the basic package, just ABC, CBS, NBC a couple of others. That would save us $20/month over the package we had and still provide us with some entertainment. When we called to change our service, we were offered a promotion to save $30/month on the package we already had. So we did that instead.
In addition to that, we were offered $15/month internet (which we already had for $55/month with the same company). Now, these are promotions and won't last forever, but for the next several months, we're $ ahead.

So, in the above example, by my definition (dunno whether it's right or wrong), "simply living" would dictate that we don't need cable or TV or DVDs or anything like that. "Simple living" is cutting back as far as we can, or in this case saving the most amount of money that we can.

Good questions, Dawn! Thanks for asking!