There is  a desire in most of us to always make more money. I’ve found that one of the best ways to make more money is to simply reduce your unnecessary expenses. Here are a few ways that we’ve cut our costs to simplify our lives and have to work less:

• We have no credit cards (just one hooked up to my bank account for convenience, but I can’t go below what is in my account so no debt)
• We have no store credit accounts
• We have no cell phone..I use skype for my phone which cost me $7 a month for unlimited calls.
• We don’t subscribe to any magazines (plenty to read in the internet!)
• We don’t subscribe to cable television (just internet)
• We have one car that is used and that I paid cash for
• We don’t pay rent (we own our Yurt)
• We grow a good amount of organic produce in the summer
• When we go on vacation we almost always opt to go camping which we love. We despise campgrounds so go to wild places where it’s free. We can camp for weeks at a time having a blast for nothing but the cost of food which we eat anyway. We do love going to festivals too though.
• We seldom eat out (we’re raw foodist so mostly it isn’t even a temptation)

I think people living fast paced lives in the cities would think our lives quite dull, but we love it. We’re almost always having fun doing things that we love….art, reading, having dinners and get togethers or just hanging out…well we do have to work a little bit on the side..we both work pretty much part time at this point which leaves us plenty of time to explore other things that we actually have interest in. We may not go on luxury vacations or have the latest hi-tech gadgets, but what we do have is plenty of time to enjoy our lives!

Here is a good short article I just read on a couple who greatly simplified their life: