How to Love your Life and Live Frugally at the Same Time

Living the life you love. Isn’t that what we all want? However, some believe it isn’t possible to live in a way that allows you to absolutely love your life while being frugal at the same time.

I believe you can live a life full of joy, beauty, and excitement on a minimal budget. You can build the life you want without being rich.  You can accomplish your goals and dreams for your life, even if your bank account isn’t overflowing.

Okay, let’s be honest though. If you want to live a life full of mansions and extreme luxury, then I guess the truth is, you do need money for those things. But if what you want is only achievable by being rich, it might be time to consider a life you love that looks different than the original plan.

Frankly, I believe we can have multiple dreams of what a beautiful life looks like. If our number one plan of what we want for our life is out of reach, it doesn’t need to be the only option.

LOVE YOUR LIFE BY MAKING SOME TRADES

When it comes to building a life you want you may be discouraged when you look at your bank account. You might believe you’ll never get there. But I believe it is possible.

But you have to be willing to make trades.

What am I talking about? Well, the world tells us we can have it all. I don’t believe that. Or at the very least, we can’t have it all at the same time.

And so, we have to be willing to decide what we want most, and be willing to put aside the other things in an effort to reach our goal of what is most important for our life.

We’ve had to do that in our home. Anyone who knows me well knows that over the past 7 years or so I’ve developed quite a fever for travel. I want to see and experience the world. I especially wanted to do that with my children.

The problem is, I also want to build up our homestead. My kids want to help raise animals as well. And while there ARE people who travel AND homestead, it isn’t easy. You have to make sure you have the money to hire a very reliable person to watch your animals while you are away, and you are most likely limited to how long you can be gone.

So my husband and I had to make a decision: which one would we focus on right now in this season of life we are in? And we’ve come to the conclusion that right now is the time to build the homestead, while later we hope we are given the chance to travel. We will take this time to live the life we want on the homestead.

We had to trade one dream for another. We couldn’t have them both at the same time. We can’t afford to travel AND build up a homestead.

We still get to incorporate things we love into our life. Just because we can’t have it all right now (or maybe even ever) doesn’t mean we aren’t living a life worth loving. It does mean finding joy in the life we DO have, and not looking to the dreams we have yet to accomplish. Moving to a place we could homestead was a huge dream in itself.

That brings me to an example of another trade we needed to make to achieve our goal of a homestead in the first place on our very limited budget. When we were looking for a house the market was tough. Finding land in our area for an affordable price closer to the city where my husband worked felt impossible.

When we found an old farmhouse with a layout we weren’t really excited about along with outdated floors, walls, and cupboards, on only 2 acres that was 40 minutes away from my husband’s work, we knew we had to make a decision. We knew finding more acres may not happen. We knew finding a house with a better layout in our budget on even 2 acres, let alone more would be difficult. We knew that if we moved closer to my husband’s work we could probably only afford a house on one acre.

So we made trades. We traded a better layout, a newer home,  and a shorter drive for a farmhouse on 2 acres of agriculturally zoned land.

Does it cost more for gas? Definitely. We afford it by only owning one vehicle.

Rarely we can have it all, so we have to be willing to make trades.  Have you thought about the trades you can make in your own life?

If you are not living the life you want, but have a fire in your belly that just won’t quit, start thinking about what trades you can make to get to where you want to go.

IF YOU FIND YOURSELF SAYING, “I WANT TO CHANGE MY LIFE,” BE WILLING TO TAKE THE STEPS TO GET THERE.

You have to decide what is most important to you and be willing to give up what isn’t as important to reach your goals.  If you lie awake at night and all you can think about is living a different life than the one you are living, you have to be willing to take risks, make trades, and step out of your comfort zone to get you there.

If the money just isn’t there to get you to where you want to be, it’s time to start thinking what you can give up to free up more money to help you live the life you want.

It might be buying that old farmhouse and living with the outdated flooring and other problems that come with old homes to allow you to start homesteading like you always dreamed.  You might have to give up the part of the dream where your house is newer and doesn’t need repairs.

Or maybe your dream is to travel full time, but it means leaving your comfort zone and switching jobs so you can work from home.  You might have to give up that amazing benefit package.

Maybe you want to stay home with your kids, but it means drastically downsizing your life, to the point that you may even have to move to a smaller home.  You might even give up that extra vehicle and learn to function as a one vehicle family.

Whatever it is, what steps can you take to get there? What can you give up, to create a life you love?

Don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely scary to change our lives and move away from where we are comfortable. However, I know I don’t want to look back and wonder, “what if I had just made this change? What if I had just tried to do the hard things to reach my goals?”

And let’s talk about not only the financial sacrifices we often have to make to get where we want to go, but also the reaction we may suffer from friends and family.

I‘m just going to say it.

You are most likely going to get eyerolls.

You might even get negative comments.

There might be an attempt for an intervention. 🙂

Some will be well-meaning, and some will just be said because it’s hard for others to understand why you would do what you are doing. People who love you often want the best for you and it starts to make people nervous when we make drastic changes in our life.

The good news is, if you keep your eye on the goal and keep trudging along, often people will see the positive in the change you are making and jump on board.  And those who don’t eventually get over it.

Speaking from experience, it is so worth it to make those changes in your life, no matter what the reactions around you may be.

YOU CAN DECIDE TODAY TO START WORKING TOWARDS LIVING THE LIFE YOU WANT

Are you going to make mistakes along the way? For sure. Our path to a live worth living is rarely without bumps and bruises. That’s what makes the destination so much sweeter.

Don’t let the chance of messing up on the way to living your best life scare you of going for it. It’s better than looking back and always wondering what if.  Don’t let the fact that you live on a tight budget hold you back either.  Find other ways to get there.

Related: How to Keep Going When you Want to Give Up