What do you consider your biggest simple living success?

[catherine]

In an effort shake off the winter blahs, let's face it. We've been simple livers for a while and now maybe we're getting a little complacent. So, I'd like to know, thinking back on your simple living journey, what do you consider your greatest personal success in living simply?

Mine is that even though I don't walk the walk as much as most of you and I still have a good bit of the mountain to climb, my kids think I'm a simple liver and they tell me that I've inspired them to live that way. And looking at what they value and how they live, they've been inspired to live simply by someone or something, so I'm happy about that.

How about you?

[iris lilies]

My success is that I can now freely spend money on whatever I want because I have trained myself over decades to truly understand what I want. And while I do still make kinda stupid purchases now and then, they are low dollar mistakes.

i wish I could say that I have inspired people, but I dont think I have.

[bae]

I think my biggest success was, a few months after reading YMOYL, quitting my job and retiring, in my mid-30s, instead of staying in the cube another few decades.

[catherine]

i wish I could say that I have inspired people, but I dont think I have.

Well, you and bae inspire me... you, for your financial prudence, discipline, and common sense, and bae for refusing to fall in line with the lifestyles of his comrades in the dot.com boom for a clearly superior life with meaning.

[happystuff]

I'm hoping I haven't made my biggest simple living success yet, because if I have... I'm very disappointed.

[SteveinMN]

Living simply enough to not have to get even a McJob when I closed my business. Pretty happy to be outside of the grind.

[Simplemind]

Like IL, I have trained myself to understand what motivates me and I know what I want. We were able to live simply and pay off our mortgage early. I saved and invested the better part of each paycheck. I was able to retire at 55 and can't imagine ever having to work for anything but the pure pleasure of it. We have worked at downsizing our parents as well as ourselves for the past 10 years. We have worked to get as much cash back on that as possible. We now have reasonable health, our time is our own and our finances are such that we don't have to think about what we buy. We travel and help out our friends and family. We feel extremely fortunate to be able to do so.

[razz]

Investing simply but wisely in real estate and basic savings and never buying more than could be paid back by one salary if necessary. Not sure if that is easily possible these days. Both kids do that as well.

I have lived a life of thrift so long that I still buy stuff on discount. It helps motivate me to watch my spending so that when something really important comes along, I can afford it.

[Yppej]

Raising a child essentially by myself on a nonprofessional income without taking government assistance.

[catherine]

Raising a child essentially by myself on a nonprofessional income without taking government assistance.

Kudos, Yppej. One of the things I most admire about my MIL was the fact that when her husband died unexpectedly with no life insurance in his mid-40s, she had 2 children, 12 and 3 years old. She didn't have a driver's license and this was in the 60s when women had very little earning power. She "made it work" to use Tim Gunn language, as a sales clerk in Macy's, never carried any debt, including a mortgage (I think she and her husband paid off their house in 5 years when they bought it), and managed a household by living simply. To the day she died she would carry tea bags in her purse when going to restaurants and then ask for hot water. Amazingly, most restaurants complied with her "take-in" free beverage.