Fabulously Frugal: Living Well on Less Money

AARP’s April Bulletin served up stories of two FIer couples who live my perennial motto: “I buy my freedom with my frugality every day.” I don’t own stuff, stuff owns me, so it has to earn its way into my life. I do still get “possessed” – but only at the Thrift Store, and that supports a good cause. Now that I am moving, a quarter of my stuff is going back whence it came – supporting that same good cause one more time. It’s good local money – just keeps circulating, making people happy. Anyway, read about Sky and Jane and Helen and Phil and get inspired.http://bulletin.aarp.org/yourmoney/personalfinance/articles/fabulously_frugal.html

“Your Money or Your Life changed my life…”

Here are some gems from recent emails. Individual identities are left off but the sentiments are so universal they bear sharing…

“We first read Your Money or Your Life four years ago and it changed our lives. Since we have already started on the path to financial independence, we find that our lives haven’t been effected as greatly by the economics of the day.

Planting Seeds of Prosperity

As I was asking a new client to describe her earliest memory around money, she started recalling how her parents dealt with money. She remembered how often they disagreed about managing their money, how often she remembers hearing her Dad say how “you kids are going to drive us into the poor house”. She grew up in Long Island and was raised in a Irish Catholic family with 9 kids. There was a constant sense of scarcity in her life and that feeling of never having enough stayed with her as adult and permeated her relationship with money in many ways that were unconscious. At the current age of 58, and by all intents and purposes, very well off financially, she still feels, after all these years, that if she’s not careful, she’ll wind up in the “poorhouse”.