What brought you to the forums?

[fidgiegirl]

For me, it was an intense need to find some people who would SUPPORT my interest in YMOYL and seeking to get out of debt. The message I was getting loud and clear from everyone IRL was to not worry so much about it and that debt is a fact of life. Up until our new house purchase we were debt free for 3 years. (We did finance our appliances on 0% for 2 years, but I'm not thrilled about that. All the rest of our remodel has been cash.)

I found that here. How about you? What drew you into this community?

[razz]

I was considering retiring and wondered what to consider. Got lots of help and advice so made the leap in Dec 2003 with no regrets ever.

[Bill]

I have lived the YMOYL example and been debt free for many years. However my friends, family and past co-workers don't understand and have no interest in living a simple lifestyle. Soooo.... I come here (mostly to read) to feel a part of what I consider an important form of support.

[Stella]

I think I read an article somewhere that mentioned the forums. Vegetarian Times maybe? It was a long time ago. I was seriously considering bailing on my fledgling IT career and about to move from a really expensive apartment to a semi-communal artist's warehouse in Northeast. The kind of place with shared bathrooms (the only tub was in someone's kitchen area) and no real kitchen, but an in-house band and an art gallery. I was pretty sure everyone I knew was going to think I was nuts (because I am never happy unless people are questioning my sanity ) and this was the only place I found where madness like that is encouraged. You people are game for anything. I love it.

[gimmethesimplelife]

For me it was a variety of things. Some of them being - the shallowness of my relationships at the time (mostly work based) - the fact that I finally figured out spending more than I earned was not making me happy but instead causing me stress and causing me to live on a treadmill - the fact that the American work ethic has never really appealed to me - the fact that employers can chew you up and spit you out and this is perfectly acceptable in society - the speed of the life I was living no longer worked for me - so many things. Disgust with living on soda and fast food to keep moving fast, the fact that what matters most in most people's lives is not how things really are but rather how they appear to be (that's a big one for me), and learning more about how the life most Americans live is really really really bad for the planet. I could go on, there's more, but you'all get the drift I'm sure. Rob

[lhamo]

I read YMOYL while DH and I were finishing up our dissertations (I think after Joe and Vicki were on Oprah and she did that whole "Read this book -- it will CHANGE YOUR LIFE" thing) and I got to thinking pretty seriously about what our options were. We were finishing up academic degrees in the same field, having worked under the same advisor, on very closely related topics -- pretty much dual career suicide. At the very best, we probably would have ended up with one of us getting a tenure track position and the other one having to do the whole trailing spouse/adjunct thing. We would have been applying for all the same positions. To be honest, I don't think our marriage would have survived the stress of that. As luck would have it, we ended up applying for a non-profit position -- one position was advertised and we asked if we could both apply, and let them know we were interested in discussing option, including a possible job share (thinking that way we could at least continue our research/teaching on the side, maybe). Ultimately they ended up hiring BOTH of us. So then we had two newly minted Ph.Ds., decent management-type jobs, and a totally different way of looking at the world. I had found this community probably around late 1997 or early 1998, but wasn't quite as active posting here (I think I lurked a lot in those early years). Got more active around 1999-2001. Then, when we moved to China in 2002 this place really became a central part of my life. This is the community I find so difficult to find in real life. there aren't many people in the expat world who share our lifestyle/ethos. We make decent money and live very comfortably, so that makes it a little awkward sometimes to hang with the real NGO types -- one look at our apartment and they know we make decent salaries. But yet we do NOT fit in with the typical expat-on-a-package types. There is an organic group here where I have found a few friends, but that group seems so much more holier than thou and judgemental than you guys are. Working moms are mostly too busy. I don't have much in common with typical SAHMs (STella, you are not typical -- I have a lot in common with you!). I've always been a bit of an oddball and a loner, so I'm kind of used to it. But if it weren't for you all I probably would have lost it a long time ago. This community was a real lifeline for me during some very, very dark days a few years ago. And you all were a big part of the reason I had the courage to stand up for myself and make a change -- which has turned out incredibly! So. That is a long way of saying that what brought me here -- and keeps me here -- is that it feels like home. And that means a lot when family/friends are an ocean away.

lhamo

[herbgeek]

I was on a mailing list in the mid 90's (called Maxlife) that did a book study on Your Money or Your Life. Not only was the book tranformational, I found I really liked having the support. I'm kind of a loner type, although I do have friends, I tend to work on issues more in my head. After a couple of years, the interest in the mailing list waned so I started looking around for other avenues and have been here since almost the very beginning. Mostly as a lurker at first, more active since we switched over to this new board because of nudging from Mrs M - she made me feel a little guilty that I didn't contribute more.

[Float On]

I needed someplace safe to talk simple lifestyle because my husband isn't on board yet.

Another simple frugal board I was on got very depressing, I was almost afraid to check in daily. This one has been more upbeat and encouraging.

[catherine]

I don't really know...the best I can do is trace it back to about 1999-2000 when there are a bunch of entries in my journal about my quest for simple living. The internet of course at that time was somewhat of a new tool, and I had gone exploring in search of a simple life on my computer: I have references in those "millenium" entries of Peace Pilgrim (who I NEVER would have known about without the computer), St. Francis, Thomas Merton, Thich Nhat Hanh--and also it seems I had read YMOYL by then because I have a letter talking about books being my "gazingus pin"

So, I suspect it was a google search that got me here. But I was certainly on a quest to learn.

[Selah]

I found "YMOYL" while living in Ireland and implemented the tracking-every-penny strategy immediately, and made a wall chart. I think I found this forum a year or so later, when I moved back to America. I, too, was going against the grain of the prevailing ethos of the time: debt is not only the natural state of things, but the only way to achieve true wealth is to get leveraged up to your butt using other peoples' money. I came back to America wanting to become a real estate maven, conquer the world, etc., and instead got myself deep into debt and in a series of HSSJs. I now own the grand total of one upside-down house in the black hole of real estate known as the state of Nevada, with flighty tenants and negative equity of about $50K. Oy!

But thanks to these forums and my own hard, tedious, boring choices to NOT spend anymore, I am out of debt-except-for-the-house. We just sold our last car and will be moving to Israel in two weeks, leaving no debt behind us, enough savings to last us until we can learn Hebrew and find work, and have paid three month's rent in advance on our apartment there. What a GREAT feeling! I have done an amazing turn on attachment to "stuff," and there is a great freedom in being able to appreciate things but not covet them anymore.