If you read my guest post over at Carson Brackney’s blog and are now thinking that you can take the leap from part-time writer to full-time writer, I’m thrilled.  One person actually called me her hero.  And then I looked her up (the name was familiar but I didn’t make the blog/name connection right away) I found out that she’s the owner of  SoloMompreneur and now I’m even more honored!

What Makes Me Different?

But then I got to thinking – why can I do this while others are still struggling with multiple jobs and doing what they love on the side?  I know it’s not because I’m “better” than them (I’m not) and I know it’s not because I’m more prepared than them (I’m not).  So what is it?

I thought about my life and the way we live and what is important to me.  And I realized that I live my life very differently from other people.

One thing that a lot of people don’t get is the fact that I am almost 40 and have never owned a house.  Never.  I’ve lived in an apartment for the past … years (since I was 19) and only once lived by myself.  I always had roommates or a spouse.  It’s not because I can’t – I could stretch it and afford it if I wanted to – but I like having others around.  My friend and I actually dabbled with the idea of community living for awhile.  We were going to find a big massive house that three families could live in with our children (none of us were married at the time) and we’d share money responsibilities, parenting, etc.  Of course, one of the mom’s decided that wasn’t for her and we put it on hold.

Anyway – what’s my point?  Oh ya.  I don’t own a house – and I don’t have any intention to in the near future.  Why?  In the short term it costs me less.  I don’t have to worry about broken pipes, leaky roofs, mowing the lawn, fixing the driveway, doors being slammed off their hinges, and so on.  Those things are all my caretaker’s/owner’s problems.  And their financial problem, too.

I know this doesn’t make sense to anyone in the modern world.  After all – house ownership is what we are all trained to want.  And even to believe we need.  But think of it this way.  If I lose my job tomorrow and have to pick up a lower paying job I can just move to a cheaper apartment.  It may not be the one I want or in the area of town I want but guess what?  As soon as money issues get sorted out (and trust me, when you’re living in a dumpy place where the noise outside is even louder inside that’s pretty damn good incentive to find a better job!) I’ll be moving again into something I can actually live with.

This thinking has carried on in other parts of my life as well.  For example, I’ve never owned brand new furniture.  Ok – wait.  When I was 19 I bought a brand new bed. It cost me $99 plus tax.  I got it from the retail store I worked at with my Christmas employee discount, which cut a fair amount of the main price.  But other than that, furniture never comes into my house brand new.  I remember a neighbor came to my door once and told me that they’d bought a new bed and they were going to throw out the old one but it was actually in pretty decent condition so they thought they’d check with me first (how did they know to do that?  No clue.).  My first thought was, “If the old bed is in decent condition why are you buying a new one?”  My second thought was, “Let’s see it!”  And you know, that bed was fine.  No stains, no smell, springs were great – it wasn’t even dusty when I pounded on it!  So, ya, I took it and my son got a double bed that barely fit in his room.  He loved that he could jump to his bed from the doorway.  And because I didn’t pay a thing for it I didn’t care how much he jumped on it.

Couches, tables, chairs, office desks – all of those things have come either free or bloody cheap.

Ok – they don’t match.  So what?  If I had friends that cared about matching furniture I’d find new ones.  Really.  You sit on it.  That’s all it is for.  Even when it doesn’t match you can still make your place look great.

A True Story

I know this is getting long but before I get to the point of the title I want to tell you about the parent of one of my daughter’s friends.  She has multiple children (let’s say more than 5) and some of them weren’t in school yet and others were finishing high school.  So she needed a lot of room.  In Canada we have a social system that helps out people in that situation.  They are able to find housing that actually suits their needs.  Not my point though.  Well, I went to pick my daughter up from her place one day expecting they typical housing set up (basically it feels like you’re living in a ghetto) but instead walked into a home that looked like it should be in a magazine.  She had furniture of different shapes but it was all covered in this great striped fabric.  The curtains didn’t exactly match but they went very well with the decor.  She had all these great touches that made the place look like she’d paid someone to decorate it.

I had to ask: “How can you afford this?”

She hesitated for a moment before she said, “Well, you’d be amazed at what people throw in the garbage.”

My jaw dropped to the floor.  Really?  Could all this be people’s castaways?

She confessed that she regularly found furniture, slabs of carpet (completely unused), reams of material (also unused) and all sorts of things in the trash of rich people’s houses.  And yes, she took them.  She took them right back to her place and made it all work.

Now, I’m not suggesting that y’all take up dumpster diving (although I have been known to grab a thing or two that is sitting beside a dumpster and fix it up) but what I’m saying is that our society is trained to believe that everything we have needs to be brand new or that we need to replace things as soon as they start to show some age or that we can throw out stuff just because it doesn’t suit our immediate needs.  If we started questioning that train of thought, I’m tell you that we could all live on a lot less and our lives could be much less expensive!

The Book That Changed My Life

Now – to the point of the title.  Until a few years ago, I never had a salaried job.  I worked a lot of split shifts and my income was never guaranteed.  And it was friggin’ hard.  Until I came across this book called How to Live without a Salary by Charles Long.  It’s about “living the conserver lifestyle” and his book changed my life.  I don’t want to go on and on about what’s inside because that will make this post insanely long but to sum it up (from the back of the book)

As a Conserver you will learn how to:

• avoid consumer traps
• budget effectively
• analyze your true needs
• plan your personal attack on inflation
• make a casual income
• utilize second hand buying and auctions
• find alternatives to buying
• save on taxes and insurance
• begin the Conserver lifestyle yourself

(Want the book? Just go click on the picture. And yes, if you buy from this link I’ll get a tiny little kick back!)

This is an OLD book (my version is a reprint from 1991).  But the wisdom in it is especially pertinent to today’s life.  We’ve gotten carried away with what we think our needs are.  We don’t need cell phones (I know you think you do but people did just fine without them before they existed) and we don’t need to replace everything on a regular basis and we don’t always need to buy retail.  You don’t have to own a brand new car (and sometimes you might not need to own a car at all!  What a concept!).

Now, if I didn’t subscribe to this Conserver Lifestyle there is NO WAY that I could be dropping a salaried job with benefits included and a regular pay check.  Not a chance. But because of the way I choose to live my life I can now work at home full-time doing what I want to do.

You Can Do it, Too!

If you really, really want to work at home full-time I encourage you to consider what sacrifices you are willing to make.  Consider what you have that you don’t really need.  Consider purchases you’ve been planning to make that you maybe don’t really need to make right now.  Be realistic but don’t buy in to our societies ideals of everything needing to be bought right now, right off the shelf.

Think about it.  Maybe you could go full-time a lot sooner than you thought!

(BTW – I will be honest that there is one thing we pay for – computers.  Although we do still save money by buying refurbished but that is our one big expense every 3 years or so!)