💰EXTREME BUDGET | Can You Be Happy Without Spending Money? #debtfree #frugalliving #offgrid

several times a year on my channel I like to share with you guys my monthly budget just to kind of show you the progress that I have made in getting my family to live a more self-sufficient Frugal lifestyle this month I was able to get our budget down to just $850 that is how much money we need to live survive thrive I'm going to share with you guys like a complete budget breakdown but before I do that I want to explain to you why we live this way and how we are able to live on such a low amount of money even in today's economy the first thing that really allows us to live on such a low budget is just our overall lifestyle we are very low maintenance people we do not require a lot of things to make us happy when it comes to me for example I do not ever go to the hair salon I have locks it is a very easy to maintain hairstyle I wear very little makeup I do not buy into all of the different types of beauty products I use Dr Bronner's Soap for everything to wash my face my body my hair I don't use any sort of like anti-aging creams or lotion like I just don't buy into that our culture and Society has really taught women especially to not want to age which is like just a natural part of life I don't have a problem with aging it's just something that's going to going to happen I will age and be very grateful that I was able to be older every single year I don't wear jewelry I don't wear name brand clothing and I wear comfortable clothes we prefer to do free activities as a family we don't go on expensive vacations we go hiking and camping we just did a several weekl long road trip across the United States and we slept in our Rooftop tent and was able to travel the country very very affordably we can still do really fun things but you can do those things at a really affordable cost we don't go to expensive events we try and find free events we don't spend a lot of money on food because we don't go out to eat we cook at home from scratch we also cook foods that are really low cost things like beans lentils rice potatoes and in season produce we're very aware of what the price of food is in what season and and what costs less money and we just base our meals around inexpensive but healthy ingredients before I explain our living situation I want you to understand our commitment to being debt-free so we decided years ago that we wanted to be completely debt free and that includes not having a mortgage so we worked really hard to renovate our house sell it and use that money to invest Les than something else we recently bought Seven Acres of property in Virginia and are working on building our Dream housee our Dream tiny house a small house it's not going to be anything big but the goal is to do it completely debt-free and to for the most part build it ourselves to save cost and to learn skills so in order to do that the way that we want to we have decided to live in a camper on our property while we are building our home that is not a living situation that Society tells us is okay it is something to be frowned upon or embarrassed about but we know that for our goals for being financially free independent and living the life that we want that that is what is best for us temporary sacrifice for long-term gain our monthly expenses are really low because we do not have any debt payments we have no mortgage we have no car loan we have no credit card bills we do not pay any interest to anybody in addition to living in our camper while we're living on our property we bought this land as raw land so we are actually living completely off grid meaning we have no running water or electricity temporarily while we initially have moved on to the property all of those things are to come we have a well schedule to be dug on the property we're working on getting a complete solar system set up and we will have those things in time it is something that people don't think they can do or is extremely uncomfortable or inconvenient but it's really not and it's been an amazing learning experience and we have had a great time on our property I have done a lot of videos discussing like how we're living without running water how we're living without electricity I will link a playlist so that you guys can go and watch those while we're living off grid we are so connected to Nature we are in touch with the cycle of the Sun the outside temperature what is going on in nature the animals around us the plants and we forget that we as humans are part of Nature and we are so disconnected and out of touch with our natural environment we spend 90% of our time indoors most people do spend about 90% of their time indoors they're not even spending very much time outside we're stuck on screens and like social media and and work and all of these things that are taking us away from who we really are we often forget that we are nature nature is not something separate from us so when we say that we have lost our connection to Nature we have really lost our connection to ourselves but just our overall commitment to living debt free and being able to live an unconventional lifestyle has really allowed us to live on a very low budget and do things a little bit differently than other people it is about intentional living where you are spending money on the things that you really want to spend money on and not what Society tells you that you want to spend money on we live in a culture that is very materialistic and tell you that you need to have all of these things in order to be happy and that this is what a standard life should look like and if you don't have those things then you are less than or you should be unhappy without those things and being able to step back and live our own life away from what Society tells us that we need and want has really allowed us to be able to think about what we really value and if spending money on certain things is really worth it to us because every time you spend money on something you are trading your time for that item one of my very favorite books is Walden by Henry David throw it was one of those books that I read that was kind of life-changing and really altered the path of my life for the better and I want to read you a quote from that book the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it immediately or in the long run for the vast majority of people when they start making more money they start spending more money and that is why even when you're making $100,000 a year or more you still could be living paycheck to paycheck 78% of Americans are currently living paycheck to paycheck which means they are spending way more money than they should be spending because they are not able to put any money back in savings for an emergency fund I've been living this way most of my adult life and I have gone through periods where I have made very little money in periods where I have made a little bit more money way more money than what I have budgeted even in the time periods when I have made more money I still continue to live this lifestyle and that is what has enabled me to live Deb free and to have money and savings and I really get that things are exive right now and things are a struggle I have struggled a lot in my life financially that is the reason why I decided I never wanted to be in that situation again and why I was going to live really frugally and figure out ways to cut my required monthly expenses so that I was never in a bad financial situation again I was a young single mom and I was the Sole Provider for my kids but at the same time I also wanted to make sure that I was there for them and that I was not working all the time because that's what I started to do and I realized that I really needed a complete mind shift and lifestyle change in order to live the life that I really wanted for myself and my family so while things financially economically suck right now we really have to figure out a way to live on less money and make sure that we can take care of ourselves and our family financially and not be so stressed out and have a little bit more freedom to live the life that we want and that starts at reducing your budget and trying to figure out and manipulate ways that you can save money and for me that meant cutting things out like streaming services cable internet a mortgage it meant not paying for daycare and ultimately not sending them to school and homeschooling them and it also meant looking at all of my bills and trying to figure out ways that I could save money for example I don't have a monthly phone bill because I go ahead and pay for mmobile for a year upfront so paying for that one fee upfront $180 a year reduces my cell phone cost drastically not only do I not have a payment to worry about every month because I paid it upfront but it also in the long run saves me money because you get a huge discount when you just pay for a year upfront $180 which is what some people pay just a month for a phone bill I'd like to challenge you to think about ways that you can reduce your monthly budget you might not be able to get it down to $850 but what could you get rid of to decrease your monthly expenses things that you don't really need that maybe it's not really valuable to you it's not worth your time that you spend going to work to pay for that item when you would rather be spending it doing something that you enjoy spending time with your family or maybe working on an important project that you have been thinking about that you don't have the time for and think about these changes not just in the short term not just I'm gonna save money by not eating out this month but think about the long term too like maybe what would happen if you sold your house that was maybe a little bit bigger than you needed and you went and downsized and bought something smaller that you not only saved on the purchase price of the house the mortgage but you're also saving in taxes utilities Furnishings a smaller house has a lot of added cost to it that is going to reduce your expensive just across the board our core values have really led us to live this lifestyle also we really value time together as a family time with our kids and we didn't want to be away from our children working all the time and the way around that is to decrease your budget as much as possible because I was really Frugal in able to live a lowcost life I was able to homeschool all of my kids my oldest has graduated and I started homeschooling her when I was a young single mom and public school just wasn't working out for us and I will continue to homeschool my now toddler and I have no intention of ever putting my kids into a school system we have time together as a family to learn things together to go on adventures together to just live life together if you have a family then that should be the most important thing to you your your partner your children that Core group of people is what has been my main focus my life in where I wanted to spend the vast majority of my time another core value that we have is just self-sufficiency being financially self-sufficient but then also being able to grow our own food fix things for ourselves build our own things like being self-sufficient and not having to rely on anyone else is really comforting to be able to do it might be necessary in the future and it is also a way to be frugal living that lifestyle is a Frugal lifestyle so you could either spend your time doing them learning how to do them or going to work and then paying somebody else to do it we have just chosen to learn how to do those things ourselves for a multitude of reasons another core value we have has been animals we are huge animal lovers and I get a lot of fck about this especially in the homest setting space that we are in right now that animals are only useful to have around if they're benefiting you and that is not something that we have as a value in our family we love animals just for the innate purpose of being an animal and being alive and being a living creature we love animals we like surrounding ourselves with animals so while we bought our s Acres we will continue to put unuseful animals on our property rescue animals that don't necessarily provide us with a financial value but they provide us with an emotional value so because we are so Frugal and have chosen how we want to spend our money we can choose to spend our money on things that we really want to spend our money on like rescuing animals and providing a good home to animals that is the whole reason why you would be frugal is so that you get to choose how you spend your money if you live frally and then never spend any money on things that are valuable to you then you know you're you're missing out once you have your budget down low once you are debt free once you have money and savings then you can spend your money on things that you really eny enjy doing you do not have to hoard all of your money Forever and Always and that just comes down to Freedom having the freedom to spend your money the way you want to to spend your time the way you want to doing things that are of value to you spending time with people that are valuable to you it gives us the ability to be able to change our minds change our location and have experiences that are valuable to us some people think that because our monthly budget is only $850 that we are depriving ourselves depriving our children of life but that couldn't be further from the truth we are Frugal and we live on such little money because we don't want to deprive ourselves and we want to be able to live the life that we choose to live so this is the clever Fox budget planner I've been using it for a couple years I absolutely love this budget planner it helps me meet all of my goals this is my July budget um this is the calendar page there several different pages I'll show you the other page too um this is my monthly goals for July just the plant fall Garden to lower our groceries we have a garden now and so like I want to lower our groceries from the prod produce that we are producing from the garden work on potty potty training our one-year-old because I am um ready to be done with diapers we it's warm outside so we have been spending a lot of time outside trying to figure that out and it's going pretty well some Greenhouse planning because we would like to build a greenhouse so that we can continue to grow stuff even when it's a little bit colder this year and you can just write generally like all of your bills and stuff down on this calendar page uh we don't really have very many bills so um I don't super utilize that page this is our detailed monthly budget so our housing expenses are zero right now because we do not have a mortgage we have already paid our yearly property taxes when we bought the property they are just about $400 a year but that was included with our the closing cost so we won't have to pay that again until next year um and then we don't have like utilities or anything like that we do have propane but we only have to fill our propane up every few months we're only using it for cooking and we just don't use that much propane so we just don't have any housing expenses we do not have internet we use free Wi-Fi and you know I explained about the cell phone we don't we paid a year upfront we actually paid that last month so we don't have a monthly cell phone bill or any typical household bills our food budget is 3 $40 I lowered it a bit this month to just $80 a week for my entire family and we're going to be using some stuff out of the garden that we've been growing and then I do want to spend $20 on seeds to plant like a fall Garden I have done a lot of previous videos on how we eat really cheaply and I have a whole playlist um I haven't done any super recently because we're living in a camper and it's just really hard to film cooking videos in the camper I do want to do some more though and I will work on that but for now um you can go check out some of my older videos we eat very similarly um next is health insurance cost I have a $28 life insurance plan we do not pay for health insurance we go through healthcare.gov and are able to qualify for a z zero plan um there's a bunch of different plans that you can choose from it's income based and just family size and all of that stuff you can choose plans that are higher co-pays and such that will get you like a z monthly premium which is what we did everybody's different go to healthcare.gov and see if you qualify for for anything uh credit and loans we have have no credit card debt no debt at all so we don't have any credit payments our personal expenses this month are $150 that's $10 for laundry I handwash a bunch of stuff we go to a very cheap laundry mat twice a month and do you know a couple loads of laundry every couple weeks and and that's it we're just very frugal with our laundry it is possible our animals is around $100 um we're still working on that because we've added a bunch of new animals but I think I can honestly get it under $100 I might do a video on how I'm able to feed all of our animals for $100 uh but that's what I think we can do this next month miscellaneous $40 uh diapers and any other soaps toilet paper stuff like that we use a lot of reusable stuff so we don't actually buy a lot of like toiletry type items other than diapers which we're working on potty training so entertainment Z dollars we're not doing any type of paid entertainment this month plenty of free stuff Lots stuff at the library our local library has a lot of stuff we live next to a bajillion hiking trails Parks events at summer there's lots of local events museums so no entertainment there's plenty of free things to do Transportation this is where I really saved a lot of money this month if you've been watching my other monthly budget videos car insurance is 136 we don't need any maintenance done this month gas I dropped it because because we're not driving as much but then car insurance that was cut in half because I have two teenagers and they are taking over half of the car insurance payment because they are driving and they have jobs so we have two vehicles they are going to be driving our Toyota Corolla and are responsible for the car insurance on that vehicle so because that's their responsibility it's not part of my budget anymore and then that brings our total budgeted amount down to $854 at the end of the month I can go through and fill out this is my favorite part of the whole budget planner this analysis sheet and like how things went this budget planner also has in the back it comes with cash envelopes we don't really use cash envelopes because we don't really use cash we don't spend that much money it's not really useful to us I know a lot of people like cash envelopes comes with all these directions on how to use the budget planner and stickers which you know stickers are fun it also has a monthly expense tracker where you can track every single dollar that you spend through the month this is really helpful when you're getting started budgeting I don't use this because I don't really spend that much money anymore when we went on our cross country road trip and kind of as we were transitioning into our new life I was tracking our expenses a lot closer and then on all of our like Homestead stuff like our big bigger project s that we're doing I do track our expenses there let me kind of show you last month so that you get an idea of like what this coloring thing looks like so this is just where I spent um the cost Upfront for a year of mint mobile phone service so that was like 380 some odd dollars of our budget just to go and pay for a year Upfront for two bone lines I went to the woods because I wish to live deliberately to front only the essential Facts of Life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not when I came to die discover that I had not lived Henry David throw [Music] Walden hm look at it what is that there

Channel: Raising Wildflowers

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Id: ewsiHkHWjC8

Length: 24min 47sec (1487 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 07 2024