How expensive is it to live as you do, once you are set up?

Some folks think that living simply is a moral duty. Some others think that living simply improves their quality of life. Either way, I will discuss our present money situation, and a few of our unusual lifestyle choices.

But first, I will tell you about two billboards I saw while driving down highway 580 in Oakland years ago. They were both advertisements for the California lottery. They were quotes by recent lottery winners. One was,”I threw away my alarm clock”. The other read,”I burned my ties”. My point is, in my present lifestyle, I can connect with the glee, and the freedom they expressed.

It’s been 10 years since I bought this farm and started working on it. At this point, Karin and I are basically done with expanding the infrastructure. The orchards are at 10-20% of their eventual production, so there are still shortages of some desirable foods. We are still experimenting with new projects, and adding new orchards and wood lots, but we’re not putting much money into that.

The two of us are living on a total household income of about $700 per month, here in Hawaii. That’s about $4,000 per person per year. This includes everything! (land taxes, dentist, house repair, transportation, etc.) Every month, we portion out our $700 into various envelopes for each category of expense.

Here is what our envelope looks like:

land tax                               25
telephone                            35
dial up internet                    10
long distance card               10
computer replacement         20
solar electric                         20
medical & dental                 120
propane                                15
office & household                15
farm (tools & maint)            125
scooter (repair & gas)           15
Scott (food & clothes & etc) 100
Karin (food & clothes & etc) 130
chainsaw & weedeater         30

This comes to $670. We’ve been using this system for over a year, and it is actually working very well, and it’s a pretty accurate measure of our actual expenses so far. We occasionally need to ‘borrow’ money from another section for sudden expenses, but we have usually (not always) paid it back. It’s been very successful, and an educational experience for us to keep track so thoroughly. Some things just don’t get purchased, and our lives just keep running along smoothly.

We are not poor, we are not living in poverty. Though our income is below the poverty line, I consider my life luxurious. This budget doesn’t encourage off-island travel, dentist bills seem huge, I would love to replace my old guitar, and so on, but we are living quite nicely.

Living on the cheap has been partly about working the land, but mostly about letting go of habitual beliefs.

The biggest recent money savings came from selling our motor vehicle. The trick here is not so much that we saved on gas, insurance, and repairs, (though we did) but there is now less opportunity to buy comfort foods, impulse purchases, reward purchases for how much suffering I went through during my time in town, and so on. It is surprising how much less we spend, and it doesn’t reduce my contentment. We just stay around Kapoho area, and it’s much nicer. If the truth be told, I fought tooth and nail for the past few years against divesting ourselves of our farm truck. My wife, Karin, was more committed to a car-free life than me. I was afraid that we would have trouble getting materials and salvaging things. But the time finally came when our infrastructure was basically complete. The seemingly endless period of bringing supplies onto our farm has indeed passed its peak. Now, we only seem to step into an automobile about once per month. It is a very sweet life. And Karin was right; there were unforeseen benefits to getting rid of our farm truck.

In the process of getting rid of our automobile, I noticed (at least) two things: First, it took a certain amount of readjusting my lifestyle to be happy without a car, and second, it never felt like the right time. I always felt insecure. I kept imagining emergencies, or other events where a motor vehicle would be indispensable. We live in a close knit village, and a few neighbors made standing offers to hitch a ride with them on their town trips. That helped.

One of the factors that encouraged me to get rid of our truck was doing some math. We calculated that, all inclusive, it costs us at least 50 cents per mile to drive our ’91 Toyota truck. That means a trip to Hilo town costs about $35. This makes hitching, bicycle, bus, and even taxi look pretty good. For a year, whenever we drove, we checked our odometer, and put our driving cost into an envelope labeled “truck expenses”. We watched lots of money go into that envelope during the year. This made the cost more visible to us.

I could get my food expenses down to zero if I were really committed to eating only what I grow. However, I am spending some money to buy certain foods that I find delicious and satisfying. $40 per month goes to cheese, butter, ice cream, cookies, and cooking oil (all organic, and priced to startle). The other $30 goes to a local farmer/friend who sells fresh milk, which I allow to culture into something like yogurt. I harvest, forage, or hunt the rest of my food.

My carbs are mostly breadfruit, bananas, taro. My greens are mostly sweet potato greens, edible hibiscus, chaya, and moringa. I eat fruit all day, if it is available. I feel no reason to buy carbs, greens, or fruit. I have been trading for off-grade mac nuts this month. Last month, I received some lamb meat in exchange for slaughtering and butchering it.

Travel is probably the second biggest potential expense, next to medical emergencies (knock on wood). With a yearly budget of less than $8,000, a trip for two to the mainland would eat up about four months of our annual income. This was one of the factors in my decision not to go to my brother’s wedding a few years back. This was confusing and painful for several of my family members. I dread having to make some difficult funeral decisions in the coming years. I haven’t left the island since ’03. Maybe that was my last time.

In terms of medical treatment for accidents, the last time I accompanied a friend to Hilo hospital to get stitches, I watched very carefully. The procedure cost over a thousand dollars, yet my do-it-yourself material cost would have been under ten bucks. There are many things like this to consider.

Reducing expenses is often more practical than increasing income. When confronted with something that “needs” to be done, I’ve learned that doing nothing can sometimes be a viable option.

I am still startled by the puny pathetic girth of my money savings account. We have intentionally converted any spare money we had into actual durable objects, and it is curious how insecure this occasionally leaves me feeling. I am familiar with the unconscious act of “investing” in another entity that I know very little of, like a bank. When I had a chunk of extra money, I used to buy stocks. It is strange and wonderful to invest in my own family economy. I now have an abundance of things, like orchards of trees, beehives, machetes, tools, nails, work clothes, bike parts, and so on. I have a small number on my bank statement. It means that if life gets rough, I won’t have the option to write a fat check and make things all better. I’ll have to make other arrangements.

It’s funny, as I get out of the habit of actually handling money, it becomes less enjoyable. It feels like I am recovering from an addiction of the process of exchanging money. It’s not just the thrill of getting the object of my desire; there’s an oddly comfortable feeling from just shuffling around the stuff. So now, money appears less frequently in my daily life. Yesterday I picked some tangerines off a tree, and no money changed hands. Sounds like I am being sarcastic, but I am gradually learning that money is not the source. Seriously. In my gut, it used to be that a pile of money was going to keep me fed. Now I know in my gut that a row of trees will keep me fed. Money comes from other people (like bosses, customers, the government), but trees grow right out of the ground. It’s a nice feeling knowing that I can stay at my farm nurturing trees instead of, for instance, standing behind a counter and saying,”may I help you?” to strangers all day. It’s very exciting, and it makes me want to be more self reliant in other ways besides food.

I am sometimes sad when I must forsake some useful gadget. I am like the monkey who loves shiny things. I want heaps of nice stuff. I want a cordless drill, that aluminum cargo trailer, a durable guitar, waterproof hiking shoes, stainless kitchen items of all sorts (very shiny), and so on. I love to gaze and admire at the cleverness, imagine the future utility, and appreciate the integrity of a well made useful item. This ancient, and very important trait seems to be getting my species in big trouble. So, as my wife occasionally says as I sadly place the item back on the shelf, “we can make it out of bamboo”.