Escaping the Job Trap-Its a Matter of Time, NOT Money!
By Thomas J. Elpel, author of Direct Pointing to Real Wealth
As someone who has successfully built a resource-efficient home and a green publishing business, people often ask me what they can do to make their own life situations more sustainable. That is a challenging question to answer, since sustainability issues tend to be tied to all aspects of the way we live and work. It can be difficult to make real change without changing everything. Creating a truly sustainable lifestyle can require a whole new approach to the way you make a living and achieve your Dreams. The key to success is in being able to escape the Job Trap.
I meet a lot of people with great Dreams. For many it is a Dream to own their own home without a mortgage. For others it is a Dream to start their own business, to be free from an existing job they are not satisfied with. Some people simply want to travel the world or be free to sit under a tree and play a guitar. Most people I meet have a million dollar idea they would love to bring to fruition, but neither the time nor the resources to make it happen. Other people have described to me their frustration with being trapped in a way of life they do not believe in and how they Dream of living a more sustainable lifestyle. Nearly everyone I meet is too busy treading water, trying to stay afloat among the bills and debt to even think about their
Dreams anymore. Like a mantra, I hear people say it over and over again: "I know I could break free if I could just make a little more money." That idea is one of the grand illusions of the universe.
It is unfortunate to see wave after wave of kids graduate from school and fall into the same trap. It is the powerful allure of money. Junior is delighted to get that first job, flipping hamburgers, making the minimum wage. Its new. Its different, and he gets more money than he ever had before. So he spends it. Stereos, CDs, clothes, movies, dates, Saturday night. It doesn't take long until what seemed like a lot of money is no longer enough. But then he discovers credit cards and payment plans and pretty soon he has a nice car and quite a bit of debt, and oh what a thrill it is to have his own apartment too!
Realizing that this flipping hamburger thing just won't do, Junior goes off to college, accumulates more debt for student loans and works an eight-hour shift each day after school to keep the cash flowing. All that studying and working makes him kind of crazy and reckless by the weekends, so he spends more than he should just to "loosen up and have a good time".
He goes back to the weekly grindstone, only to discover a couple months later that he on his way to becoming a Daddy. Suddenly there's another person and a baby in the picture and a whole lot more bills. But he makes it through college okay, gets a better paying job, rents a bigger house to have some "elbow room" for the family, and still can't quite make ends meet. He feels trapped, disillusioned and ultimately desensitized to his childhood Dreams, working not because he is inspired to, but because he has to keep going day in and day out to keep the trap from snapping shut and devouring him and his family completely.
The sad thing is that Junior could have gone into virtual retirement by age twenty-two, with just a little clairvoyance to avoid the usual pitfalls. Here's one simple example. Junior could have joined the military. That may not be everyone's dream job, but he would be accepted without any job skills at all. Starting with absolutely nothing, he gets paid to learn, with free room and board to boot. Being wiser than your average eighteen-year-old, he saves every penny possible, buys a house for $25,000 in a quaint little country
town where real estate is cheap because everyone else left looking for
work. Then he invests in some energy-efficiency measures to reduce the
power bills, and buys a secondhand car and some used furniture. When Junior leaves the armed forces a few years later he has some decent
job skills, but more importantly, no house payment, no car payment,
low energy bills, and no real need to work. Junior has the freedom to
do whatever he wants, to go hunting and fishing, to make a million
dollars, or to raise a family while working just two or three months a
year to buy basic groceries--easily supplemented by weeds out of the
garden and roadkill off the highway.
When you ask people what stops them from pursuing their Dreams to write a book, start a business, or spend a month watching polar bears in the arctic, it all comes down to the same mantra, "I know I could break free if I could just make a little more money..." The funny thing is, it isn't actually money that most people need. It's time.
Have you ever heard someone say: "I know I could make a million dollars, if I just had 250 grand to invest in my ideas." They may be joking, but they are also telling the truth. I bet you could invest 250 grand and make a million too. But where do you come up with the dough to start with? Well, if you had 50 grand and a few years of free time to pursue your ideas, I'll bet you could make that 250 grand. Simple enough. We can play this game backwards until you only need a thousand dollars and some free time to make the 10k you need to make the 50k to make the 250k you need to make a million. From that standpoint, you could make a million with the money you have, but not right now because you've got to go to work to pay the bills before the landlord bumps your family out on the street--or worse--the cable
company disconnects your Show Time channels. Most people are so busy
treading water trying to stay afloat, that they never have the Time to
make a million dollars or to pursue any of their other Dreams.
So you see, the key to success is simply Time, having the freedom to do pursue your Dreams without worry of being dragged under in a sea of bills. True, more money would sure help to eliminate those bills, so here's my suggestion: Go ask your boss to quadruple your hourly wage. But if you don't think that will work, then stay here and let's consider some alternative means.
I am frequently asked for financial advice, usually from people who earn a lot more than I do. Together we can review their life and work situation, but its not like we can just punch some numbers into a calculator, spin it around and come up with enough additional money to solve all their worldly problems. Real results require real change. It's not about working harder. The key is in conserving materials, energy, money and time to get more out of what you have. Since all things are connected, saving some of one tends to lead to savings of the others in a positive feedback loop that just gets better and better. Conserving energy conserves money which conserves time since you don't have to work quite as much. And if you have time to spare
then you can achieve your greatest Dreams. The opposite is also true,
wasting resources encourages a negative feedback cycle, encouraging
more and more waste.
Consider a lightbulb. An incandescent bulb is cheap up front, but costs more to operate and burns out quickly. A compact fluorescent bulb, on the other hand, costs more up front but lasts longer and uses much less electricity. In the long run you can realize a net savings of up to $40 for each compact fluorescent bulb you use. The trouble is that most people are already strapped for cash, and it is difficult to justify spending $120 on a dozen compact fluorescent bulbs, especially when there are a dozen incandescent bulbs sitting on the same shelf for only $12. So you buy the cheaper bulbs and pay the cost for more electricity, and guess what? When they burn out and need replacing, you are still strapped for cash, so again you go for the incandescent bulbs, virtually guaranteeing that you will be broke when those burn out too. It is a negative feedback cycle where poor choices lead to
further poor choices. Wasted energy translates to wasted money, which
translates to wasted time. And if you are short on time then you probably won't get around to weather stripping a leaky door either, in which case you will waste more energy, money, and time, and so forth. Follow this line of reasoning and eventually you discover that the whole reason that you are stuck in a meaningless job in a world where you cannot get ahead is simply because you bought the wrong bulb! Switch bulbs and you will be able to quit your job. Sound far-fetched? It may not by the time we get through examining these cycles of waste.
Let's take a look at the home mortgage, since that is typically
the biggest investment as well as the biggest loss that you will ever
make. Normally you buy the largest house you can possibly afford
payments on without starving your family for more than a few days each
month. Let's say the purchase price is $100,000 with payments of $665
a month at 7% interest for thirty years. In the beginning, most of the
payment is lost towards interest. Only $81 actually goes towards the
principle the first month. You might as well take a match and burn the
other $584 spent on interest. It's gone! Twelve and a half years
later, you've paid the bank $100,000 for the house, yet only $20,000
went towards the principle. By the time you actually own the building,
you've paid out about 2.3 times it's value. Is that a bad investment
or what?
Just think about how much you are paying for rent or a mortgage
now. Imagine if your home was all paid off and you could spend that
money in any way you wanted to, or simply quit your job. Sound
impossible? Not really. Regardless of their income level, most people
make enough money to pay off a house in just a few years, but waste
nearly 100% of their income on things like interest payments,
unnecessarily high energy bills, and garbage bags which are purchased
with the intent to be thrown in the garbage, if you can imagine such a
crazy thing as that!
So here is one alternative: Buy a house that costs half as much
($50,000), but pay the same $665 a month that you would for a $100,000
house. At that rate you will have the house completely paid off in
less than nine years and you will have $50,000 in equity, which you
can still put towards a bigger house if you want.
Now a lot of people pay a premium for rent, only because their
work demands it, or so they say. They have a great paying job, but
they have to pay high rent to stay in the area, so they remain
trapped, making a great income, but having absolutely nothing to show
for it. A $64,000 income and they can barely scrape by from paycheck
to paycheck. That's bull! Buy a house for the family in a small
country town for next to nothing. You can keep your fancy, schmancy
high paying job in the city and pay off the house in less than a year
while you live in a camper parked alongside all the other truckers at
the travel station. Then you won't need the high paying job and you
will have the freedom to pursue other avenues that could ultimately
bring you much greater rewards. Sound a little extreme? Not at all! A
year of discomfort versus a lifetime of slave labor? I'll take the
short cut any time.
I had one marketable skill when I graduated from high-school: I
could start a fire with a bowdrill set, basically rubbing two sticks
together. At the age of twenty I got a job as an instructor, taking
troubled teens on wilderness expeditions. I earned $1100 for three
week segments of hiking around the desert with these kids that were
only a few years younger than I was. The food was free, even if it was
only rice and lentils and ashcakes. The rent was free too, since we
each carried a wool blanket and poncho and slept on the ground. Soon
Renee was leading these trips too, and our incomes went up with
experience. In the summer we quit, bought land, moved into a tent and
started building our Dream home. That was in 1989.
With a combined income averaging $10,000 to $12,000 a year we
lived simply and invested everything we could in building materials.
Building the house more than doubled the value of our income, while
avoiding interest on a home loan doubled it again. Construction
proceeded slowly throughout the process, due to our chronic lack of
money. We moved into the house after the second summer, with no doors,
few windows, and no insulation in the roof. Winter stopped about three
feet from the stove. This might all seem a little rough, but I later
realized that we saved at least $150,000 in interest payments by
eliminating the need for a loan. That is not a bad wage for a couple
years of camping out!
If you averaged our total income over several years, combining
our wages, plus home improvements, plus avoided interest payments, we
were squeezing at least $50,000 a year from our marginal income. Given
that all things are connected, how much do you think we paid towards
income taxes? Practically nothing. Our W-2's said we were only making
ten to twelve grand a year!
I have given these different examples for paying off a home
mortgage quickly and efficiently because that is usually one of the
biggest expenses people ever face, and because it is a limiting factor
that governs so many other decisions. For example, as long as you are
obligated to make a $1,000/month house payment then you are less
likely to do something risky like quit your job and start your own
business. But if you first find a way to eliminate the mortgage, then
you can easily afford to make $1,000 less each month, for as long as
it takes to get your business up and running. That alone can make the
difference between success and failure in a new enterprise.
I can tell you with absolute certainty that I would not have
made it as a writer and publisher if we were making mortgage payments
through all those years while I stared at the computer learning to
write, but not having much to show for my efforts. Nor would we have
been able to afford to adopt three children or to buy a fancy canoe
and spend a couple weeks each year as a family paddling down scenic
rivers.
With mortgage payments we would have been dependent on a regular
income instead of our own resourcefulness. We would have been forced
to take lower paying local jobs, only because they were steady and
dependable, unlike the higher paying opportunities that come and go on
short notice. We would have spent more time commuting back and forth
each day, and we may have frittered away more funds just because we
were in town and tired of working. We could have become cogs in the
machinery of the world, supporting an unsustainable way of life
because there seemed to be no other way out. Treading water in a sea
of bills, we would have bought those incandescent bulbs because the
compact flourescents were way to expensive up front. One decision
limits another, and it is difficult to make real change without
changing everything.
When you do successfully eliminate mortgage payments, high
energy bills, and other similar limiting factors, then you will find
that the world is a new and exciting place full of grand
opportunities. You can continue to be idealistic and optimistic
because you have a unique freedom to pursue your Dreams, whatever they
might be. If you want to spend a season photographing polar bears in
the arctic, then go get a job for a couple months and save up your
money. It doesn't take long to save up a pile of money when you have
few other expenses. This is true financial freedom--or should we call
it freedom from finances?
Let me emphasize that the path we took was not always easy, nor
is it the solution to everyone's problems. For years, while struggling
to launch my writing career, we often felt both immensely wealthy and
desperately poor. Our house is the sort that people look at and
exclaim, "Those people must be loaded!" Yet we could rarely scrape up
enough change to go to the movies.
The point that I want you to take home from this is simply a
different way of looking for solutions. Sure, making more money is
definitely helpful, but not always something you can control. If you
find yourself chanting the mantra, "I know I could break free if I
could just make a little more money." then maybe it is time to look
for another way out.
Transitions
One question that must be faced is how do you change your life
situation from where you are? I know my wife and I had a pretty
idyllic situation when we started out. No debts, no payments, no kids.
Just the two of us and an old, but very reliable car. Other people I
talk to have big credit card debts, or student loans left to pay, and
dependents. Certainly, these factors make it more challenging to pay
down a mortgage and quit a job, but also probably more worthwhile to
really go for it.
I do want to point out that the reward for your efforts will be
directly proportional to the amount of change you decide to make in
your life. Switching lightbulbs, riding a bicycle to work, or eating
the garden weeds will make small, yet positive differences in your
financial situation while also helping to make the world a slightly
better place. But, if you want to make real change--to be out of debt
and successfully unemployed--well, then you need to stack up as many
changes as you can. You need to step outside the cycles of waste and
create a whole new lifestyle, conserving energy, resources, money, and
time whereever you reasonably can. It is almost like creating a whole
new identity--you as a person who is free from the treadmill of waste,
free to do whatever you want for the rest of your life. Let me give
you an idea of what can be achieved, based on the success stories of
people who are making real change in their lives.
The first is of a school teacher who read the early draft
versions of my book Direct Pointing to Real Wealth. He wrote to me to
say how he was deeply in debt, but very inspired by my book. In fact,
he moved out of his apartment and into an old chickenhouse on a
neighbor's property! Now, I wasn't quite sure what to make of this. I
found it a bit alarming that this otherwise rational person "flew the
coop" after reading my book. But later he sent pictures of a small log
cabin he was building. He did not own the land, but had permission to
build the cabin and live there for twenty years. The last time I heard
from him he had just been fired--or at least forced to quit--his
teaching job. Apparently he left work without permission to audition
as a candidate for the Survivo show. He wasn't selected for the
program, but didn't mind losing his job either. In our three or four
years of correspondence he went from being deeply in debt to being
debt-free, with enough money left over in the bank to live on for the
next two years without working. More importantly, he had Time on his
hands to pursue all of his Dreams. So I consider that a true success
story and I hope to inspire a lot more people to get fired from their
jobs too!
Another man I know is losing his job in phases. He works as an
environmental economist for the state. I met him while I was working
on the current edition of Direct Pointing to Real Wealth, and I asked
for his help editing the book. In the process he became sufficiently
inspired that he has since undertaken several projects to increase the
energy-efficiency of his home, plus he paid off the rest of his home
mortgage in short order. Now, he wasn't 100% satisfied with his job,
but not at all ready to drop the pay and benefits cold turkey either.
I understand that completely. It took me about eight years of
tinkering at my own business before it finally produced a sustainable
income. So, he asked to have his job cut to a four day work week, and
got it! Now he has three day weekends to go play, or to work at other
jobs. Suddenly he is exploring all kinds of new frontiers, learning
nature awareness skills, working with disabled people, editing other
books, and working part-time for an energy-conservation company. He
even took fire-fighting training just for the experience of it. He has
opportunities "coming out of his ears"!
A third success story-in-progress was a family I met while on a
business trip to Saint George, Utah. Being a thrifty kind of guy, I
drove around looking for a quiet and safe place where my son and I
could roll out our sleeping bags on the ground for the night. We found
a good spot early in the day, then didn't make it back to camp until
well after dark. I was surprised upon our return to find that the
place had become a kind of transient subdivision. Except our neighbors
were not in sleeping bags. These were landless families who lived in
motor homes and just drove out to park on this piece of state land
each night after work. The family I camped next to actually owned land
farther away and were getting ready to build their own home, but for
now they were minimizing expenses where they could, raising their kids
in a motor home. They also had a small commuter car, but basically
they drove their house to work each day, successfully avoiding rent
payments to save up for their own home.
In other words, where there is a will, there is always a way.
The key to success is in being able to escape the job trap. Having
great debts or being straddled with dependents will not make the path
to freedom and sustainability any easier, but there is always a way
out, if you commit to finding and achieving it. When you successfully
eliminate most of your expenses and the need for a regular income,
then you will find clear sailing ahead, and a freedom that you
probably have not experienced in a long, long time.
Letters from those who are Breaking Free
Hello,
I was threading thru your website and found some of your work very
inspiring. My name is Jim Smith. I'm 29 years old living in San Diego
(yes, the biggest little town in the country). I discovered myself
about 2 years ago when I went thru a life changing event.
I was in the rat race, living from paycheck to paycheck. When I
discovered myself, I also discovered that I was making about $80k/yr.
Going with the territory in San Diego, a 1 bedroom condo would cost
about $300k, so there were very few places that I could afford.
Well the funny thing is, my dream was to wake up in the South Pacific,
in the tropics somewhere, enjoying the warm air, warm water and
gorgeous beach. Of course going there would require me being a
yachtsman's making millions.
Well, after a little research and patience (and a lot of people,
including my parents saying that I'm crazy) I got myself a $1,500
boat. It's a 25 foot sailboat. It has a galley and a head. I modify my
V-berth into a closet, converting my saloon into a 6'x3' bed. Put in
solar power. So now it's pretty much my bachelor pad.
I looked at options to anchor my boat at different places for free,
but restrictions would require me to move it and my job would make it
hard for me to commute. I ended up with a mooring about 1/4 mile from
a parking lot (10 minutes of exercise rowing) for $120/month.
I now live on less than $12k/year (all expenses, including treating
friends out and major repair) and everything else goes into my
savings. I plan to work for another 6 years (nothing like have a
bundle of money to give you all sorts of options) and learn more about
boating. I found the boat that would be perfect for me, costs about
$25,000 brand new.
I'm also learning about ways to live off of the ocean, fishing, beans,
and seaweed. I'm planning my first trip to Mexico when I retire (6
years from now). The cost of living in the Baja peninsula is about
$200/month for me if I choose not to fish or harvest seaweed. It would
be practically free for me if I choose the more natural ways. Of
course, as of this moment, I could quit my job now and still have
enough money for the rest my lifetime (but having more options is
cooler).
I try to preach this to some of my friends and co-workers; they all
look at me kind of funny. I guess it's hard for them to see that I'm
not really dependent on a job to maintain my life and would go sailing
to the south pacific at a moment's notice when my job no longer needs
me.
I think you did great and you are fortunate to have a partner who
understands your journey. Maybe I will see you some day in one of your
wilderness classes, as basic living is one of my interests. Keep on
teaching people how to break free. I guess you can say that I'm a fan
of living wisely. -Jim Smith (used with permission)
Tom(and Renee),
I attended your school for a few days back in 1994 and will remember
the enlightening experience forever. I didn't want to leave. However,
I did return to Bozeman and eventually finished my degree in
Architecture. I was very glad to see that you made it into Fine
Homebuilding as I think this is one of the greatest magazines (no BS
and good hands on info) and I have been collecting them since I was a
student and working summers in Bridger Canyon as a carpenter's helper.
I don't exactly fit the mold when it comes to Architects. I tend to
like projects more along the lines of what you are doing and have no
desire to build tall glass corporate monuments or McMansions in the
suburbs of Denver.
In fact, everything that you have done from building sustainable
buildings to teaching primitive skills is what I always dreamed of. I
admire you for finding your vocation so early in life.
However, at a point in my life back in the late 80's while I was
living a simple life, I was convinced by friends and relatives with
good intentions that I "needed to get serious about a career". So I
committed to enrolling at MSU and finishing a degree program.
I now find myself with a very good career but trapped in a way by the
modern world. I have student loan debts and a mortgage which are
substantial but not really overwhelming like many people I know living
here in Denver. Most aspects of my life are modest and in control and
I am quite happy and healthy.
I have been heavily influenced by the writing of Thomas J. Stanley
PhD.. I would describe the way I live my life here in the big city as
a combination of "The Millionaire Next Door" and "Direct Pointing to
Real Wealth" with a little bit of "Participating in Nature" thrown in
for excitement. I am definately an anomoly among my peers.
My perception of the success to your approach is that Montana is a
very free place to "Do it yourself". This equates to not necessarily
needing; formal education, running water, conventional toilets or code
compliant anything. This gives the average hardworking individual an
opportunity to improvise and live cheaply without some standard or
restriction enforced by your local government. This also leads to a
much less infrastructure dependant lifestyle. You obviously have
flourished in this environment. I wish I went to Montana when I was
unmarried and living a low drag lifestyle. I probably would be
following in your footsteps right now.
My questions to you are......
1) Do you think you could be as successful if you were required to
apply your philosophy and skill in a major metro area where
regulations abound?? I have done some work with Habitat for Humanity
and it is amazing how the building code gets in the way of doing the
right thing for the right price.
2) What means do you use in your current lifestyle to plan financially
for; childrens education, emergency healthcare and retirement (in the
event you can't continue to work)? I currently utilize IRAs, and have
extensive benefits via my employer. This seems like a real costly
challenge for most independant business owners.
3) Do you know anybody that has "undone" conventional
committments(house, job, college/retirement saving etc) in an ethical
way to return to a way of living similar to yours?? I hear many
stories of "City People" selling their assets for a simple life in the
country. This only works if you are already affluent. We are not. We
are already simple and struggle to survive in our current environment
without becoming infrastructure-dependant-brainwashed-consumers like
most people we know here. It is actually quite funny, they all say "if
only I could make more money, my problems would be solved". NOT!!!
I am curious to know if you think a happy medium is achievable in this
day and age for the average person? Many of the options are very
attractive to me, but may be considered extreme by my wife and
daughter. I am not optomistic that people will realize the benefits of
sustainable living and control over consumerism in the near future.
Most do not even realize they are being manipulated by marketing and
they sure don't understand the exchange of calories for $$$$ concepts.
I hope you don't mind me asking these questions. Your opinions would
be greatly appreciated. I really hope that I can join one of your
school functions in the future with my wife and daughter. I really
believe you are a pioneer in your thoughts and lifestyle and I am
proud to have been able to experience this for myself back in the
early days of Hollowtop Outdoor Primitive School.
Take care and thanks for any advice you can offer,
Edward "Lee" Taisarsky
(used with permission) Lee,
Thanks for writing. It is good to hear from you.
I know what you mean about taking advice from well-intentioned people
who think you should have a good career. I hear that from a lot from
people. I never experienced too much of that myself, or maybe I just
never heard any of it, since I was so stubbornly focussed on doing my
own thing. I do recall that my mom offered repeatedly to pay for a
college education for me. I think I turned 30 before she gave up.
As for your questions:
1) Do you think you could be as successful if you were required to
apply your philosophy and skill in a major metro area where
regulations abound?? I have done some work with Habitat for Humanity
and it is amazing how the building code gets in the way of doing the
right thing for the right price.
Answer: I think that building codes generally serve a good purpose,
and I always recommend that people build to exceed code. On the other
hand, strict codes tend to suppress innovation. For example, while
strawbale houses are commonly accepted by code now, I highly doubt
that the first few were built where there were any codes. If we didn't
have places where codes were lax, then strawbale construction may have
never emerged as a viable building technology.
Nevertheless, I think that it is very possible to live a truly
sustainable, even "wild" lifestyle in the city. For example, one of
the things we do here is to find some way to improve our household
energy situation every year, regardless of the price of energy, and
you can do that wherever you live. Projects have ranged from sealing
the mortar chinking between our logs with latex to block air
infiltration, to building a masonry fireplace, to replacing poor
quality doors and windows--even insulating under a flower bed to keep
cold air from creeping under one wall of the house. Sometimes we
strive to reduce our need for firewood to heat the house. Other times
we strive to reduce our electricity needs. Last year we bought a
super-efficient front-loading washing machine, which uses less hot
water. We heat our water in a wood cookstove and by solar panels, so
getting a more efficient washing machine helped to give us longer hot
showers. Last fall we installed a 2500 watt photovoltaic system here,
so we are now producing all of our own electricity. If you do just one
energy-efficiency project a year, you will slowly but steadily wean
the household from fossil fuels. Now that our house is no longer
dependent on fossil fuels, we are inspired to get a super-efficient
car to reduce our gas consumption. Conserving resources is quite a
good sport, I think, and you can do it no matter where you live.
You might also check out the book "Extreme Simplicity: Homesteading in
the City" for some good ideas.
As for the "wild" part, I've always been fascinated by how many wild
food resources are available in the city. That is because cities were
often founded in places of great abundance. Someday I think it would
be fun to shoot a series of urban "wilderness" survival videos. In
each one we could go to a major metropolitan area like Portland, Los
Angeles, Denver, etc. and take a group of people out to live for a
week or so migrating across the city, foraging and camping all the
way. We could release them with titles like "Wilderness Survival in
Dallas, Texas" and so forth. Sounds like fun, huh?
2) What means do you use in your current lifestyle to plan financially
for; childrens education, emergency healthcare and retirement (in the
event you can't continue to work)? I currently utilize IRAs, and have
extensive benefits via my employer. This seems like a real costly
challenge for most independant business owners.
Answer: For most of our adult lives we have done nothing about these
issues, simply because we were living on $10,000 to $15,000 a year and
either building our house or raising our kids.
We initially had no house insurance, but we did build our house to be
resistant to disasters, so there was no real great risk in not having
house insurance.
We had no retirement fund, but no debts of any kind either, so we
could retire on next to nothing if we had too. However, the way I
figured it, if we had no debts, than it shouldn't be too hard to
eventually make enough money to put away some kind of a nest egg.
Income-wise we finally made it into the middle class for the first
time in 2001. The fact that we have no mortgage payment or any other
debts means that we are doing pretty well. In 2002 we had enough extra
cash sitting around to open an IRA. We picked the greenest fund we
could find (Portfolio 21) and put in $5,000 to help lower our tax
bill.
We still don't have health insurance, but we live a pretty healthy
lifestyle. We've been talking about getting a health insurance policy,
or at least opening a health care fund of our own, but haven't gotten
around to it yet. Our three adopted kids have Medicare, and our fourth
child qualified for "Blue Chip", a lower-income program that we expect
to be dropped from this year because of our higher income.
At this point our business is booming, and it would not be too
difficult to support our kids in college. We intend to support their
choice to go to college or not, and we try not too influence them
either way too much. However, the lifestyle we role model for our kids
is that you can do just about whatever you want in life without a
college education, if you want to. You just have to start doing it.
One thing to keep in mind is that the lower your income is, the more
subsidies there are to support your family. For example, we used to
get free school lunches for the kids because of our income level. We
also used to look forward to tax time because our income was so
low--and with multiple kids--we paid nothing in and got back a couple
grand every year from the IRS due to the Earned Income Credit (EIC).
There were a lot of perks like that. The EIC always seemed like a
crazy waste of public dollars to me, but we certainly didn't refuse
it. Instead, we've tried to make wise decisions with our own spending,
and we've always invested our time and money in ways to make the world
a better place.
Question 3) Do you know anybody that has "undone" conventional
committments (house, job, college/retirement saving etc) in an ethical
way to return to a way of living similar to yours?? I hear many
stories of "City People" selling their assets for a simple life in the
country. This only works if you are already affluent. We are not. We
are already simple and struggle to survive in our current environment
without becoming infrastructure-dependant-brainwashed-consumers like
most people we know here. It is actually quite funny, they all say "if
only I could make more money, my problems would be solved". NOT!!!
I am curious to know if you think a happy medium is achievable in this
day and age for the average person? Many of the options are very
attractive to me, but may be considered extreme by my wife and
daughter. I am not optimistic that people will realize the benefits of
sustainable living and control over consumerism in the near future.
Most do not even realize they are being manipulated by marketing and
they sure don't understand the exchange of calories for $$$$ concepts.
Answer: One of the first people who read my book Direct Pointing to
Real Wealth was a teacher heavily in debt with student loans. Inspired
by the book, he moved into a chickenhouse with no rent, paid off all
of his debts in a very short time, and no longer had to work full time
for a living. He left his teaching job when he no longer needed it and
has been off on many creative ventures since then, including a boxing
career. He sent a postcard just a few days ago to say that he and his
girlfriend now go around to schools and businesses as motivational
speakers. I think he includes primitive skills in his talks.
Now, I highly doubt that you and your wife and daughter are going to
move into a chickenhouse tomorrow, but you don't have to either. I
would start with some creative imagining as a family... "If we could
live our lives absolutely any way we wanted, what would we do?" The
possibilities are quite limitless.
In 1999 we had a net income from all sources of $14,000. That was
enough to support Renee and I and our first three kids. That summer we
spent $2,000 from that income on a fancy canoe and a two-week canoe
trip down the Green River in Utah. In spite of our income, I felt like
the richest guy in the world to be able to take our family on that
kind of an adventure. This might seem surprising, but we always
schedule our family vacations first, then fit our work goals in around
that. One year we home-schooled our kids, learned a little Spanish,
and spent three weeks touring in Mexico when it was cold and snowy in
Montana. I'm not trying to brag about our lifestyle. The point is
simply that you can do absolutely whatever you want in this life.
I think one of the most damaging things that our schools and society
teaches people is that you Cannot go live any way you want to. You
have to get a respectable degree and jump through the right hoops to
get anywhere in this world. I think people (parents, teachers, media,
peers) are well-intentioned in that respect, but it is hard for people
to "think-outside-the-box" when they never realize there is an outside
to the box. The one thing I've learned more and more over the years is
that the outside of the box is a heck of a lot bigger than the inside.
There are simply too many rules inside the box to get anything done.
But I also realize that the transition from one lifestyle to the other
requires a significant re-wiring of the brain, and that's not an easy
thing to do. We've been trained to see the world one way. But to jump
the tracks and make your own path, you will have to learn to see the
world in a completely different way.
I hope this helps!
Sincerely,
Thomas J. Elpel
By Thomas J. Elpel, author of Direct Pointing to Real Wealth
As someone who has successfully built a resource-efficient home and a green publishing business, people often ask me what they can do to make their own life situations more sustainable. That is a challenging question to answer, since sustainability issues tend to be tied to all aspects of the way we live and work. It can be difficult to make real change without changing everything. Creating a truly sustainable lifestyle can require a whole new approach to the way you make a living and achieve your Dreams. The key to success is in being able to escape the Job Trap.
I meet a lot of people with great Dreams. For many it is a Dream to own their own home without a mortgage. For others it is a Dream to start their own business, to be free from an existing job they are not satisfied with. Some people simply want to travel the world or be free to sit under a tree and play a guitar. Most people I meet have a million dollar idea they would love to bring to fruition, but neither the time nor the resources to make it happen. Other people have described to me their frustration with being trapped in a way of life they do not believe in and how they Dream of living a more sustainable lifestyle. Nearly everyone I meet is too busy treading water, trying to stay afloat among the bills and debt to even think about their
Dreams anymore. Like a mantra, I hear people say it over and over again: "I know I could break free if I could just make a little more money." That idea is one of the grand illusions of the universe.
It is unfortunate to see wave after wave of kids graduate from school and fall into the same trap. It is the powerful allure of money. Junior is delighted to get that first job, flipping hamburgers, making the minimum wage. Its new. Its different, and he gets more money than he ever had before. So he spends it. Stereos, CDs, clothes, movies, dates, Saturday night. It doesn't take long until what seemed like a lot of money is no longer enough. But then he discovers credit cards and payment plans and pretty soon he has a nice car and quite a bit of debt, and oh what a thrill it is to have his own apartment too!
Realizing that this flipping hamburger thing just won't do, Junior goes off to college, accumulates more debt for student loans and works an eight-hour shift each day after school to keep the cash flowing. All that studying and working makes him kind of crazy and reckless by the weekends, so he spends more than he should just to "loosen up and have a good time".
He goes back to the weekly grindstone, only to discover a couple months later that he on his way to becoming a Daddy. Suddenly there's another person and a baby in the picture and a whole lot more bills. But he makes it through college okay, gets a better paying job, rents a bigger house to have some "elbow room" for the family, and still can't quite make ends meet. He feels trapped, disillusioned and ultimately desensitized to his childhood Dreams, working not because he is inspired to, but because he has to keep going day in and day out to keep the trap from snapping shut and devouring him and his family completely.
The sad thing is that Junior could have gone into virtual retirement by age twenty-two, with just a little clairvoyance to avoid the usual pitfalls. Here's one simple example. Junior could have joined the military. That may not be everyone's dream job, but he would be accepted without any job skills at all. Starting with absolutely nothing, he gets paid to learn, with free room and board to boot. Being wiser than your average eighteen-year-old, he saves every penny possible, buys a house for $25,000 in a quaint little country
town where real estate is cheap because everyone else left looking for
work. Then he invests in some energy-efficiency measures to reduce the
power bills, and buys a secondhand car and some used furniture. When Junior leaves the armed forces a few years later he has some decent
job skills, but more importantly, no house payment, no car payment,
low energy bills, and no real need to work. Junior has the freedom to
do whatever he wants, to go hunting and fishing, to make a million
dollars, or to raise a family while working just two or three months a
year to buy basic groceries--easily supplemented by weeds out of the
garden and roadkill off the highway.
When you ask people what stops them from pursuing their Dreams to write a book, start a business, or spend a month watching polar bears in the arctic, it all comes down to the same mantra, "I know I could break free if I could just make a little more money..." The funny thing is, it isn't actually money that most people need. It's time.
Have you ever heard someone say: "I know I could make a million dollars, if I just had 250 grand to invest in my ideas." They may be joking, but they are also telling the truth. I bet you could invest 250 grand and make a million too. But where do you come up with the dough to start with? Well, if you had 50 grand and a few years of free time to pursue your ideas, I'll bet you could make that 250 grand. Simple enough. We can play this game backwards until you only need a thousand dollars and some free time to make the 10k you need to make the 50k to make the 250k you need to make a million. From that standpoint, you could make a million with the money you have, but not right now because you've got to go to work to pay the bills before the landlord bumps your family out on the street--or worse--the cable
company disconnects your Show Time channels. Most people are so busy
treading water trying to stay afloat, that they never have the Time to
make a million dollars or to pursue any of their other Dreams.
So you see, the key to success is simply Time, having the freedom to do pursue your Dreams without worry of being dragged under in a sea of bills. True, more money would sure help to eliminate those bills, so here's my suggestion: Go ask your boss to quadruple your hourly wage. But if you don't think that will work, then stay here and let's consider some alternative means.
I am frequently asked for financial advice, usually from people who earn a lot more than I do. Together we can review their life and work situation, but its not like we can just punch some numbers into a calculator, spin it around and come up with enough additional money to solve all their worldly problems. Real results require real change. It's not about working harder. The key is in conserving materials, energy, money and time to get more out of what you have. Since all things are connected, saving some of one tends to lead to savings of the others in a positive feedback loop that just gets better and better. Conserving energy conserves money which conserves time since you don't have to work quite as much. And if you have time to spare
then you can achieve your greatest Dreams. The opposite is also true,
wasting resources encourages a negative feedback cycle, encouraging
more and more waste.
Consider a lightbulb. An incandescent bulb is cheap up front, but costs more to operate and burns out quickly. A compact fluorescent bulb, on the other hand, costs more up front but lasts longer and uses much less electricity. In the long run you can realize a net savings of up to $40 for each compact fluorescent bulb you use. The trouble is that most people are already strapped for cash, and it is difficult to justify spending $120 on a dozen compact fluorescent bulbs, especially when there are a dozen incandescent bulbs sitting on the same shelf for only $12. So you buy the cheaper bulbs and pay the cost for more electricity, and guess what? When they burn out and need replacing, you are still strapped for cash, so again you go for the incandescent bulbs, virtually guaranteeing that you will be broke when those burn out too. It is a negative feedback cycle where poor choices lead to
further poor choices. Wasted energy translates to wasted money, which
translates to wasted time. And if you are short on time then you probably won't get around to weather stripping a leaky door either, in which case you will waste more energy, money, and time, and so forth. Follow this line of reasoning and eventually you discover that the whole reason that you are stuck in a meaningless job in a world where you cannot get ahead is simply because you bought the wrong bulb! Switch bulbs and you will be able to quit your job. Sound far-fetched? It may not by the time we get through examining these cycles of waste.
Let's take a look at the home mortgage, since that is typically
the biggest investment as well as the biggest loss that you will ever
make. Normally you buy the largest house you can possibly afford
payments on without starving your family for more than a few days each
month. Let's say the purchase price is $100,000 with payments of $665
a month at 7% interest for thirty years. In the beginning, most of the
payment is lost towards interest. Only $81 actually goes towards the
principle the first month. You might as well take a match and burn the
other $584 spent on interest. It's gone! Twelve and a half years
later, you've paid the bank $100,000 for the house, yet only $20,000
went towards the principle. By the time you actually own the building,
you've paid out about 2.3 times it's value. Is that a bad investment
or what?
Just think about how much you are paying for rent or a mortgage
now. Imagine if your home was all paid off and you could spend that
money in any way you wanted to, or simply quit your job. Sound
impossible? Not really. Regardless of their income level, most people
make enough money to pay off a house in just a few years, but waste
nearly 100% of their income on things like interest payments,
unnecessarily high energy bills, and garbage bags which are purchased
with the intent to be thrown in the garbage, if you can imagine such a
crazy thing as that!
So here is one alternative: Buy a house that costs half as much
($50,000), but pay the same $665 a month that you would for a $100,000
house. At that rate you will have the house completely paid off in
less than nine years and you will have $50,000 in equity, which you
can still put towards a bigger house if you want.
Now a lot of people pay a premium for rent, only because their
work demands it, or so they say. They have a great paying job, but
they have to pay high rent to stay in the area, so they remain
trapped, making a great income, but having absolutely nothing to show
for it. A $64,000 income and they can barely scrape by from paycheck
to paycheck. That's bull! Buy a house for the family in a small
country town for next to nothing. You can keep your fancy, schmancy
high paying job in the city and pay off the house in less than a year
while you live in a camper parked alongside all the other truckers at
the travel station. Then you won't need the high paying job and you
will have the freedom to pursue other avenues that could ultimately
bring you much greater rewards. Sound a little extreme? Not at all! A
year of discomfort versus a lifetime of slave labor? I'll take the
short cut any time.
I had one marketable skill when I graduated from high-school: I
could start a fire with a bowdrill set, basically rubbing two sticks
together. At the age of twenty I got a job as an instructor, taking
troubled teens on wilderness expeditions. I earned $1100 for three
week segments of hiking around the desert with these kids that were
only a few years younger than I was. The food was free, even if it was
only rice and lentils and ashcakes. The rent was free too, since we
each carried a wool blanket and poncho and slept on the ground. Soon
Renee was leading these trips too, and our incomes went up with
experience. In the summer we quit, bought land, moved into a tent and
started building our Dream home. That was in 1989.
With a combined income averaging $10,000 to $12,000 a year we
lived simply and invested everything we could in building materials.
Building the house more than doubled the value of our income, while
avoiding interest on a home loan doubled it again. Construction
proceeded slowly throughout the process, due to our chronic lack of
money. We moved into the house after the second summer, with no doors,
few windows, and no insulation in the roof. Winter stopped about three
feet from the stove. This might all seem a little rough, but I later
realized that we saved at least $150,000 in interest payments by
eliminating the need for a loan. That is not a bad wage for a couple
years of camping out!
If you averaged our total income over several years, combining
our wages, plus home improvements, plus avoided interest payments, we
were squeezing at least $50,000 a year from our marginal income. Given
that all things are connected, how much do you think we paid towards
income taxes? Practically nothing. Our W-2's said we were only making
ten to twelve grand a year!
I have given these different examples for paying off a home
mortgage quickly and efficiently because that is usually one of the
biggest expenses people ever face, and because it is a limiting factor
that governs so many other decisions. For example, as long as you are
obligated to make a $1,000/month house payment then you are less
likely to do something risky like quit your job and start your own
business. But if you first find a way to eliminate the mortgage, then
you can easily afford to make $1,000 less each month, for as long as
it takes to get your business up and running. That alone can make the
difference between success and failure in a new enterprise.
I can tell you with absolute certainty that I would not have
made it as a writer and publisher if we were making mortgage payments
through all those years while I stared at the computer learning to
write, but not having much to show for my efforts. Nor would we have
been able to afford to adopt three children or to buy a fancy canoe
and spend a couple weeks each year as a family paddling down scenic
rivers.
With mortgage payments we would have been dependent on a regular
income instead of our own resourcefulness. We would have been forced
to take lower paying local jobs, only because they were steady and
dependable, unlike the higher paying opportunities that come and go on
short notice. We would have spent more time commuting back and forth
each day, and we may have frittered away more funds just because we
were in town and tired of working. We could have become cogs in the
machinery of the world, supporting an unsustainable way of life
because there seemed to be no other way out. Treading water in a sea
of bills, we would have bought those incandescent bulbs because the
compact flourescents were way to expensive up front. One decision
limits another, and it is difficult to make real change without
changing everything.
When you do successfully eliminate mortgage payments, high
energy bills, and other similar limiting factors, then you will find
that the world is a new and exciting place full of grand
opportunities. You can continue to be idealistic and optimistic
because you have a unique freedom to pursue your Dreams, whatever they
might be. If you want to spend a season photographing polar bears in
the arctic, then go get a job for a couple months and save up your
money. It doesn't take long to save up a pile of money when you have
few other expenses. This is true financial freedom--or should we call
it freedom from finances?
Let me emphasize that the path we took was not always easy, nor
is it the solution to everyone's problems. For years, while struggling
to launch my writing career, we often felt both immensely wealthy and
desperately poor. Our house is the sort that people look at and
exclaim, "Those people must be loaded!" Yet we could rarely scrape up
enough change to go to the movies.
The point that I want you to take home from this is simply a
different way of looking for solutions. Sure, making more money is
definitely helpful, but not always something you can control. If you
find yourself chanting the mantra, "I know I could break free if I
could just make a little more money." then maybe it is time to look
for another way out.
Transitions
One question that must be faced is how do you change your life
situation from where you are? I know my wife and I had a pretty
idyllic situation when we started out. No debts, no payments, no kids.
Just the two of us and an old, but very reliable car. Other people I
talk to have big credit card debts, or student loans left to pay, and
dependents. Certainly, these factors make it more challenging to pay
down a mortgage and quit a job, but also probably more worthwhile to
really go for it.
I do want to point out that the reward for your efforts will be
directly proportional to the amount of change you decide to make in
your life. Switching lightbulbs, riding a bicycle to work, or eating
the garden weeds will make small, yet positive differences in your
financial situation while also helping to make the world a slightly
better place. But, if you want to make real change--to be out of debt
and successfully unemployed--well, then you need to stack up as many
changes as you can. You need to step outside the cycles of waste and
create a whole new lifestyle, conserving energy, resources, money, and
time whereever you reasonably can. It is almost like creating a whole
new identity--you as a person who is free from the treadmill of waste,
free to do whatever you want for the rest of your life. Let me give
you an idea of what can be achieved, based on the success stories of
people who are making real change in their lives.
The first is of a school teacher who read the early draft
versions of my book Direct Pointing to Real Wealth. He wrote to me to
say how he was deeply in debt, but very inspired by my book. In fact,
he moved out of his apartment and into an old chickenhouse on a
neighbor's property! Now, I wasn't quite sure what to make of this. I
found it a bit alarming that this otherwise rational person "flew the
coop" after reading my book. But later he sent pictures of a small log
cabin he was building. He did not own the land, but had permission to
build the cabin and live there for twenty years. The last time I heard
from him he had just been fired--or at least forced to quit--his
teaching job. Apparently he left work without permission to audition
as a candidate for the Survivo show. He wasn't selected for the
program, but didn't mind losing his job either. In our three or four
years of correspondence he went from being deeply in debt to being
debt-free, with enough money left over in the bank to live on for the
next two years without working. More importantly, he had Time on his
hands to pursue all of his Dreams. So I consider that a true success
story and I hope to inspire a lot more people to get fired from their
jobs too!
Another man I know is losing his job in phases. He works as an
environmental economist for the state. I met him while I was working
on the current edition of Direct Pointing to Real Wealth, and I asked
for his help editing the book. In the process he became sufficiently
inspired that he has since undertaken several projects to increase the
energy-efficiency of his home, plus he paid off the rest of his home
mortgage in short order. Now, he wasn't 100% satisfied with his job,
but not at all ready to drop the pay and benefits cold turkey either.
I understand that completely. It took me about eight years of
tinkering at my own business before it finally produced a sustainable
income. So, he asked to have his job cut to a four day work week, and
got it! Now he has three day weekends to go play, or to work at other
jobs. Suddenly he is exploring all kinds of new frontiers, learning
nature awareness skills, working with disabled people, editing other
books, and working part-time for an energy-conservation company. He
even took fire-fighting training just for the experience of it. He has
opportunities "coming out of his ears"!
A third success story-in-progress was a family I met while on a
business trip to Saint George, Utah. Being a thrifty kind of guy, I
drove around looking for a quiet and safe place where my son and I
could roll out our sleeping bags on the ground for the night. We found
a good spot early in the day, then didn't make it back to camp until
well after dark. I was surprised upon our return to find that the
place had become a kind of transient subdivision. Except our neighbors
were not in sleeping bags. These were landless families who lived in
motor homes and just drove out to park on this piece of state land
each night after work. The family I camped next to actually owned land
farther away and were getting ready to build their own home, but for
now they were minimizing expenses where they could, raising their kids
in a motor home. They also had a small commuter car, but basically
they drove their house to work each day, successfully avoiding rent
payments to save up for their own home.
In other words, where there is a will, there is always a way.
The key to success is in being able to escape the job trap. Having
great debts or being straddled with dependents will not make the path
to freedom and sustainability any easier, but there is always a way
out, if you commit to finding and achieving it. When you successfully
eliminate most of your expenses and the need for a regular income,
then you will find clear sailing ahead, and a freedom that you
probably have not experienced in a long, long time.
Letters from those who are Breaking Free
Hello,
I was threading thru your website and found some of your work very
inspiring. My name is Jim Smith. I'm 29 years old living in San Diego
(yes, the biggest little town in the country). I discovered myself
about 2 years ago when I went thru a life changing event.
I was in the rat race, living from paycheck to paycheck. When I
discovered myself, I also discovered that I was making about $80k/yr.
Going with the territory in San Diego, a 1 bedroom condo would cost
about $300k, so there were very few places that I could afford.
Well the funny thing is, my dream was to wake up in the South Pacific,
in the tropics somewhere, enjoying the warm air, warm water and
gorgeous beach. Of course going there would require me being a
yachtsman's making millions.
Well, after a little research and patience (and a lot of people,
including my parents saying that I'm crazy) I got myself a $1,500
boat. It's a 25 foot sailboat. It has a galley and a head. I modify my
V-berth into a closet, converting my saloon into a 6'x3' bed. Put in
solar power. So now it's pretty much my bachelor pad.
I looked at options to anchor my boat at different places for free,
but restrictions would require me to move it and my job would make it
hard for me to commute. I ended up with a mooring about 1/4 mile from
a parking lot (10 minutes of exercise rowing) for $120/month.
I now live on less than $12k/year (all expenses, including treating
friends out and major repair) and everything else goes into my
savings. I plan to work for another 6 years (nothing like have a
bundle of money to give you all sorts of options) and learn more about
boating. I found the boat that would be perfect for me, costs about
$25,000 brand new.
I'm also learning about ways to live off of the ocean, fishing, beans,
and seaweed. I'm planning my first trip to Mexico when I retire (6
years from now). The cost of living in the Baja peninsula is about
$200/month for me if I choose not to fish or harvest seaweed. It would
be practically free for me if I choose the more natural ways. Of
course, as of this moment, I could quit my job now and still have
enough money for the rest my lifetime (but having more options is
cooler).
I try to preach this to some of my friends and co-workers; they all
look at me kind of funny. I guess it's hard for them to see that I'm
not really dependent on a job to maintain my life and would go sailing
to the south pacific at a moment's notice when my job no longer needs
me.
I think you did great and you are fortunate to have a partner who
understands your journey. Maybe I will see you some day in one of your
wilderness classes, as basic living is one of my interests. Keep on
teaching people how to break free. I guess you can say that I'm a fan
of living wisely. -Jim Smith (used with permission)
Tom(and Renee),
I attended your school for a few days back in 1994 and will remember
the enlightening experience forever. I didn't want to leave. However,
I did return to Bozeman and eventually finished my degree in
Architecture. I was very glad to see that you made it into Fine
Homebuilding as I think this is one of the greatest magazines (no BS
and good hands on info) and I have been collecting them since I was a
student and working summers in Bridger Canyon as a carpenter's helper.
I don't exactly fit the mold when it comes to Architects. I tend to
like projects more along the lines of what you are doing and have no
desire to build tall glass corporate monuments or McMansions in the
suburbs of Denver.
In fact, everything that you have done from building sustainable
buildings to teaching primitive skills is what I always dreamed of. I
admire you for finding your vocation so early in life.
However, at a point in my life back in the late 80's while I was
living a simple life, I was convinced by friends and relatives with
good intentions that I "needed to get serious about a career". So I
committed to enrolling at MSU and finishing a degree program.
I now find myself with a very good career but trapped in a way by the
modern world. I have student loan debts and a mortgage which are
substantial but not really overwhelming like many people I know living
here in Denver. Most aspects of my life are modest and in control and
I am quite happy and healthy.
I have been heavily influenced by the writing of Thomas J. Stanley
PhD.. I would describe the way I live my life here in the big city as
a combination of "The Millionaire Next Door" and "Direct Pointing to
Real Wealth" with a little bit of "Participating in Nature" thrown in
for excitement. I am definately an anomoly among my peers.
My perception of the success to your approach is that Montana is a
very free place to "Do it yourself". This equates to not necessarily
needing; formal education, running water, conventional toilets or code
compliant anything. This gives the average hardworking individual an
opportunity to improvise and live cheaply without some standard or
restriction enforced by your local government. This also leads to a
much less infrastructure dependant lifestyle. You obviously have
flourished in this environment. I wish I went to Montana when I was
unmarried and living a low drag lifestyle. I probably would be
following in your footsteps right now.
My questions to you are......
1) Do you think you could be as successful if you were required to
apply your philosophy and skill in a major metro area where
regulations abound?? I have done some work with Habitat for Humanity
and it is amazing how the building code gets in the way of doing the
right thing for the right price.
2) What means do you use in your current lifestyle to plan financially
for; childrens education, emergency healthcare and retirement (in the
event you can't continue to work)? I currently utilize IRAs, and have
extensive benefits via my employer. This seems like a real costly
challenge for most independant business owners.
3) Do you know anybody that has "undone" conventional
committments(house, job, college/retirement saving etc) in an ethical
way to return to a way of living similar to yours?? I hear many
stories of "City People" selling their assets for a simple life in the
country. This only works if you are already affluent. We are not. We
are already simple and struggle to survive in our current environment
without becoming infrastructure-dependant-brainwashed-consumers like
most people we know here. It is actually quite funny, they all say "if
only I could make more money, my problems would be solved". NOT!!!
I am curious to know if you think a happy medium is achievable in this
day and age for the average person? Many of the options are very
attractive to me, but may be considered extreme by my wife and
daughter. I am not optomistic that people will realize the benefits of
sustainable living and control over consumerism in the near future.
Most do not even realize they are being manipulated by marketing and
they sure don't understand the exchange of calories for $$$$ concepts.
I hope you don't mind me asking these questions. Your opinions would
be greatly appreciated. I really hope that I can join one of your
school functions in the future with my wife and daughter. I really
believe you are a pioneer in your thoughts and lifestyle and I am
proud to have been able to experience this for myself back in the
early days of Hollowtop Outdoor Primitive School.
Take care and thanks for any advice you can offer,
Edward "Lee" Taisarsky
(used with permission) Lee,
Thanks for writing. It is good to hear from you.
I know what you mean about taking advice from well-intentioned people
who think you should have a good career. I hear that from a lot from
people. I never experienced too much of that myself, or maybe I just
never heard any of it, since I was so stubbornly focussed on doing my
own thing. I do recall that my mom offered repeatedly to pay for a
college education for me. I think I turned 30 before she gave up.
As for your questions:
1) Do you think you could be as successful if you were required to
apply your philosophy and skill in a major metro area where
regulations abound?? I have done some work with Habitat for Humanity
and it is amazing how the building code gets in the way of doing the
right thing for the right price.
Answer: I think that building codes generally serve a good purpose,
and I always recommend that people build to exceed code. On the other
hand, strict codes tend to suppress innovation. For example, while
strawbale houses are commonly accepted by code now, I highly doubt
that the first few were built where there were any codes. If we didn't
have places where codes were lax, then strawbale construction may have
never emerged as a viable building technology.
Nevertheless, I think that it is very possible to live a truly
sustainable, even "wild" lifestyle in the city. For example, one of
the things we do here is to find some way to improve our household
energy situation every year, regardless of the price of energy, and
you can do that wherever you live. Projects have ranged from sealing
the mortar chinking between our logs with latex to block air
infiltration, to building a masonry fireplace, to replacing poor
quality doors and windows--even insulating under a flower bed to keep
cold air from creeping under one wall of the house. Sometimes we
strive to reduce our need for firewood to heat the house. Other times
we strive to reduce our electricity needs. Last year we bought a
super-efficient front-loading washing machine, which uses less hot
water. We heat our water in a wood cookstove and by solar panels, so
getting a more efficient washing machine helped to give us longer hot
showers. Last fall we installed a 2500 watt photovoltaic system here,
so we are now producing all of our own electricity. If you do just one
energy-efficiency project a year, you will slowly but steadily wean
the household from fossil fuels. Now that our house is no longer
dependent on fossil fuels, we are inspired to get a super-efficient
car to reduce our gas consumption. Conserving resources is quite a
good sport, I think, and you can do it no matter where you live.
You might also check out the book "Extreme Simplicity: Homesteading in
the City" for some good ideas.
As for the "wild" part, I've always been fascinated by how many wild
food resources are available in the city. That is because cities were
often founded in places of great abundance. Someday I think it would
be fun to shoot a series of urban "wilderness" survival videos. In
each one we could go to a major metropolitan area like Portland, Los
Angeles, Denver, etc. and take a group of people out to live for a
week or so migrating across the city, foraging and camping all the
way. We could release them with titles like "Wilderness Survival in
Dallas, Texas" and so forth. Sounds like fun, huh?
2) What means do you use in your current lifestyle to plan financially
for; childrens education, emergency healthcare and retirement (in the
event you can't continue to work)? I currently utilize IRAs, and have
extensive benefits via my employer. This seems like a real costly
challenge for most independant business owners.
Answer: For most of our adult lives we have done nothing about these
issues, simply because we were living on $10,000 to $15,000 a year and
either building our house or raising our kids.
We initially had no house insurance, but we did build our house to be
resistant to disasters, so there was no real great risk in not having
house insurance.
We had no retirement fund, but no debts of any kind either, so we
could retire on next to nothing if we had too. However, the way I
figured it, if we had no debts, than it shouldn't be too hard to
eventually make enough money to put away some kind of a nest egg.
Income-wise we finally made it into the middle class for the first
time in 2001. The fact that we have no mortgage payment or any other
debts means that we are doing pretty well. In 2002 we had enough extra
cash sitting around to open an IRA. We picked the greenest fund we
could find (Portfolio 21) and put in $5,000 to help lower our tax
bill.
We still don't have health insurance, but we live a pretty healthy
lifestyle. We've been talking about getting a health insurance policy,
or at least opening a health care fund of our own, but haven't gotten
around to it yet. Our three adopted kids have Medicare, and our fourth
child qualified for "Blue Chip", a lower-income program that we expect
to be dropped from this year because of our higher income.
At this point our business is booming, and it would not be too
difficult to support our kids in college. We intend to support their
choice to go to college or not, and we try not too influence them
either way too much. However, the lifestyle we role model for our kids
is that you can do just about whatever you want in life without a
college education, if you want to. You just have to start doing it.
One thing to keep in mind is that the lower your income is, the more
subsidies there are to support your family. For example, we used to
get free school lunches for the kids because of our income level. We
also used to look forward to tax time because our income was so
low--and with multiple kids--we paid nothing in and got back a couple
grand every year from the IRS due to the Earned Income Credit (EIC).
There were a lot of perks like that. The EIC always seemed like a
crazy waste of public dollars to me, but we certainly didn't refuse
it. Instead, we've tried to make wise decisions with our own spending,
and we've always invested our time and money in ways to make the world
a better place.
Question 3) Do you know anybody that has "undone" conventional
committments (house, job, college/retirement saving etc) in an ethical
way to return to a way of living similar to yours?? I hear many
stories of "City People" selling their assets for a simple life in the
country. This only works if you are already affluent. We are not. We
are already simple and struggle to survive in our current environment
without becoming infrastructure-dependant-brainwashed-consumers like
most people we know here. It is actually quite funny, they all say "if
only I could make more money, my problems would be solved". NOT!!!
I am curious to know if you think a happy medium is achievable in this
day and age for the average person? Many of the options are very
attractive to me, but may be considered extreme by my wife and
daughter. I am not optimistic that people will realize the benefits of
sustainable living and control over consumerism in the near future.
Most do not even realize they are being manipulated by marketing and
they sure don't understand the exchange of calories for $$$$ concepts.
Answer: One of the first people who read my book Direct Pointing to
Real Wealth was a teacher heavily in debt with student loans. Inspired
by the book, he moved into a chickenhouse with no rent, paid off all
of his debts in a very short time, and no longer had to work full time
for a living. He left his teaching job when he no longer needed it and
has been off on many creative ventures since then, including a boxing
career. He sent a postcard just a few days ago to say that he and his
girlfriend now go around to schools and businesses as motivational
speakers. I think he includes primitive skills in his talks.
Now, I highly doubt that you and your wife and daughter are going to
move into a chickenhouse tomorrow, but you don't have to either. I
would start with some creative imagining as a family... "If we could
live our lives absolutely any way we wanted, what would we do?" The
possibilities are quite limitless.
In 1999 we had a net income from all sources of $14,000. That was
enough to support Renee and I and our first three kids. That summer we
spent $2,000 from that income on a fancy canoe and a two-week canoe
trip down the Green River in Utah. In spite of our income, I felt like
the richest guy in the world to be able to take our family on that
kind of an adventure. This might seem surprising, but we always
schedule our family vacations first, then fit our work goals in around
that. One year we home-schooled our kids, learned a little Spanish,
and spent three weeks touring in Mexico when it was cold and snowy in
Montana. I'm not trying to brag about our lifestyle. The point is
simply that you can do absolutely whatever you want in this life.
I think one of the most damaging things that our schools and society
teaches people is that you Cannot go live any way you want to. You
have to get a respectable degree and jump through the right hoops to
get anywhere in this world. I think people (parents, teachers, media,
peers) are well-intentioned in that respect, but it is hard for people
to "think-outside-the-box" when they never realize there is an outside
to the box. The one thing I've learned more and more over the years is
that the outside of the box is a heck of a lot bigger than the inside.
There are simply too many rules inside the box to get anything done.
But I also realize that the transition from one lifestyle to the other
requires a significant re-wiring of the brain, and that's not an easy
thing to do. We've been trained to see the world one way. But to jump
the tracks and make your own path, you will have to learn to see the
world in a completely different way.
I hope this helps!
Sincerely,
Thomas J. Elpel
A NEW START!!!
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