One’s home is neither a big house or a small house, or any house for that matter, it could be an apartment or a condo, cabin, RV, or self built shelter. One’s “home” is their refuge from the world. It is one and only place you prefer to be at any time, ie: not feeling well, its raining, cold, hot, humid, or whatever outside, and you can go in your home and shut the door and shut it all out. We find a shelter, but we create a home. During Desert Storm, in Iraq, 1990-91, I shared a GP small four man tent with three really good friends, the Brigade XO, the Brigade Maintenance NCO, and our driver. The four of us made that hexagon tent our home sweet home. We had a short refrigerator in the middle, a microwave on top of that and our coffeemaker on top of that. We divided the space by four, and set up our cots and burned our mortgage the first night. We hated being there of course, but it WAS home for several months.
Some of the nicest homes I have seen have been small two-bedroom ones built in the 30’s to 60’s, and maintained with TLC. The old saying “a house does not a home make”, is so true. Most “treasures” we save up to reward ourselves with are eventually a disappointment, especially if they are a fad. “See it on TV this month, and in your yard sale next month”. My personal preference for taking a vacation is to:
1. Stay home
2. Not be bothered by anyone.
3. Relax by doing the things I want to do.
4. Not leave my property unless its an emergency.

Hey, I need that car so I can drive to the office! My commute is 20 miles each way because that’s the only place where I can afford to buy a house big enough to escape to after spending all day working!

I saw a post a while back (on a completely different topic) that used the term “design snowball” to refer to the fact that, in any complex design, huge numbers of things tie back to certain crucial decisions, and if you try to change one of those decisions, the whole thing snowballs, having effects on hundreds of other decisions. I even wrote a post about it, called Designing your life.

The example I used was choosing to have a car–it locks in thousands of dollars a year in expense, and if you use it, increases your carbon footprint and exposes you to additional risks from vehicle collisions. At the same time, it enables all sorts of activities that would otherwise be impractical.

The problem is getting people to realize that choosing to have a job is just that–a choice. You can lead people right to the brink and still have them fail to see that.

Yep. Strikes me as kind of weird that people work so that they can consume things that do not necessarily add to their quality of life.

Working to achieve a desired quality of life (or to provide necessities) is something else.

We have no car because we don’t need one and the pleasure of owning one will not come even close to compensating for the cost. Travel is something else – I enjoy going to different places, seeing more of the world and am prepared to work to earn the money to pay for that. If I didn’t enjoy travelling I would relax by staying at home and doing day hikes around where I live.

Aren’t most PF blogs the definition of Captain Obvious?

Spend less than you make is so painfully obvious and yet no one gets it.

I guess people do realize it in the back of their minds but sometimes it takes that “duh?!” moment, or push from some external source, to get going.

good point. now that we failed to sell our house and the listing has expired, we’re off to Ecuador to lick our wounds….

@Elizabeth – My buddy follows that strategy to the “tee”; he is a computer programmer but fails to see that designer clothing doesn’t help with your coding. To add to the fire, when I lived with him, he bought a bunch of new furniture to impress his co-workers with. This furniture replaced the new furniture he had bought 2 years earlier for the same reason… DOH!