I’m thinking in buying a land and a trailer so I can stop paying rent and start producing as much of our food as I can. I liked your idea. But I still have to find good affordable land. And save some more money! But I’m beginning to get rid of things.

The short answer: Around 5500-7000.

The long answer: The bare bones budget is a little less than 6000/year or not quite 500 a month. Hockey would fit within that, but martials arts wouldn’t.
I don’t keep track of all my spending, because I’m lazy, but I think a fairly decent estimate of “running” costs would be about $500 extra a year which you could call entertainment and repairs (RV and dog). I can estimate this based on bank statements from our joint account and my credit card statements. Naturally it’s a bit skewed currently since we “just” got the RV. Shinkendo would materially impact this. I plan to downscale the hockey.
But yes … it comes down to accounting. For instance, how do I depreciate a $2000 sword were I to buy such one. The important thing is really running costs vs one time charges.

Going back half a year the purchases I remember were the sword ($110), bike tires ($20), trickle charger ($50), sweater ($5), propane stuff for the RV (about $150/2), pressure cooker valve ($22/2), RV battery ($110/2). Shinkendo lessons ($70), grado headphones ($70), half a season of hockey ($40), eating out twice ($30), There was some more stuff for the RV which was about $200/2, but the RV stuff are essentially one time charges. I think spring 2008 was comparably quiet. I remember the grados breaking a long streak of not spending anything and we didn’t have the RV stuff at that time.

I understand that you choose to spend your time working and can identify with that. For my husband and I, we would see the full-time jobs as rather major obstacles in our path of freedom.

I also agree that freedom is definitely attainable on minimum wage. It is SO NOT about how much one earns and ALL about how much one spends. Even my sub-teen children have made that connection! Why educated adults don’t get it is beyond me!

(*) Seriously, people don’t have to work. If I earned minimum wage and lived paycheck to paycheck, I only needed to work 3 hours a day to maintain my lifestyle. More work is simply more wants and/or spending inefficiencies.

That merely shifts the philosophical problem of course. I was, maybe still am, one of those who wanted to go to Wall Street, but frankly, the talents of the brightest which could have been used to significantly reduce total risk (expectation value of cost) was used to maintain risk (although the relative risk was reduced) but leverage profits instead, so instead of having tolerable financial destruction, we now have massive destruction. Brilliance without wisdom. Gaaaah! As I would have said … that was not what I signed up for. In retrospect it is amazing to think not only about the financial crisis but in the opportunity cost of the massive amounts of brainpower that has gone into shifting money around so it ultimately ended up in the hands of people who couldn’t afford their houses and banker bonuses.

I’m in one of those essential careers you talked about, but I still have trouble assigning more importance to medicine over banking, for instance. I’d be sticking my money under the floorboards and hoping not to get robbed were it not for a safe, reasonably regulated bank (ha! no comment on the “safe” or “reasonably regulated” these days). In an ideal world there would be better money for some of these essential jobs that pay squat (like ag work) while other specialties are grossly overpaid (Wall Street banking, some surgery). Anyhow, thanks!

We both agree that we’re not spending $150k to clone him though. That’s just weird. I think we also agree that preserving his dogginess (wagging, jumping, running, gnawing, eating, … and in his case snoring and farting) is more important than keeping him alive for our sentimental reasons.

@Scott – When we moved here two years ago, I had this idea of getting back into the martial arts (I did some full contact karate many years ago, but I had to stop due to conflicting schedules from my high school). I saw that shinkendo was taught in a local dojo. Then forgot about it. About half a year ago, I got interested in kendo. I don’t know how (I read a lot, things catch my attention and then they sit in my brain and germinate). I ordered a ton of books from the library and liked the philosophy. Unfortunately the closest place meant leaving directly from work and engaging in the public transportation system for 1.5 hour or so each way and not getting home before 11pm, so that was out. Then about a month later I saw an ad for some introductory shinkendo classes in the local paper. More research followed (reading all of the website/newsletters/forums) and it sounded quite attractive. Most martial arts focus on a few of the following. 1) Fitness 2) Fighting 3) Tradition 4) Sports. I’m mostly into 2 and/or 3. The zen philosophy and the do or die and death before dishonor attitude is right up my alley. I have also considered krav maga. I’d say much as hockey (1,4) is fun, at my level, there’s no structure or practice of skills. People just play to have fun even in the leagues. There’s no practice other than what you do at home and there are no traditions or overarching philosophy. I missed that.

@Tracy – I think most of the time is spent working or practicing. There’s the full time job, a freelance job, the nonprofit startup, this blog, and the book I’m writing (only the first two pays anything at this point in time). DW spends more time on her full time job. She’s in a senior position in a small company, so long hours. We both spend one night a week (soon to be three) practicing shinkendo (about $1000/year/person). I play hockey twice a week (about $300-400/year). DW likes to read (free), watch TV ($600/year) and go to dog play groups (where everybody knows each other as “Fido’s mom” or “Hunter’s dad”) (pretty much free). We’re definitely homebodies. I remember one of the first parties we were invited to as a couple. We sat in a corner most of the time staring with flatlined brains. Then after an hour decided that we had fulfilled our social duty and went to my place and talked for hours. We moved cross country about two years ago and have only recently begun to expand the circle. There simply isn’t time. People we know are either colleagues, team mates, or some dog’s parents . FI is not about not working. It’s about getting the time. If I wasn’t FI, I would be very concerned about putting in 150% effort on my salaried job, getting laid off or polishing my resume. With FI I can take a lot more (“career”) chances and I don’t care about my interview skills. I want to work, but I don’t need to, see [I have never competed for a job and I'm not about to start. I follow a blue ocean strategy.. the red sea is not for me]. Externally we keep a pretty good facade. Few people other than the nearest family know that we spend far less than the so-called poverty line and I still don’t think they fully understand how we do it or how FI is actually achieved. The extent of the earn-to-spend brainwash is widespread. When we get a money gift for birthdays it usually comes with the “go and spend it on something”. And I’m like “how? why?” when using a combination of skill and patience I don’t have to. For instance, I got two book store gift cards I don’t know what to do with. I haven’t needed to pay for a book or a CD in a looooong time. Travel is a bit of a problem. There are two ways to travel. One is to quick in and out of hotels and airplanes. I have done 40+ of those (in connection with conferences) and if given the choice I’m staying at home. I’d like to hike the AT. DW would like to take the RV and visit all the lower 48. Unfortunately full time jobs prevent both.

P.s. I’d love to hear sometime the reasoning for the pursuit of Japanese swordsmanship. I’m not being sarcastic, only curious.

I wonder how far (financially) you 2 would go for your little dog?

I consider our family to be very frugal. Most of our friends and family consider us extreme because I refuse to waste a cent or spend it unecessarily. However, I have a full dinner service because we like to have friends over. The meals I serve are still frugal (eg: using meat bought on sale etc) but I certainly don’t feed my guests lentils! We enjoy going out for dinner or breakfast occasionally, sometimes just us as a couple, sometimes with the children, sometimes with friends. Sometimes we watch a movie (at the cinema) or go to a live theatre production. Do you guys do any of this sort of thing?

Financially, our goals are not that different to yours. My husband works, but running his own business from home we enjoy flexible time and he LOVES his work and gets to take on the jobs he WANTS (ie: work that excites, challenges and stimulates him). Seriously, he loves what he does so it isn’t a chore.

We go on holiday regularly (at least 8 times a year, all kinds of holidays, sometimes we camp, sometimes we stay in hotels, sometimes we get on a plane and fly to another country for a week or even up to a month) and enjoy fairly relaxed days when we are at home. We have nice plump savings funds, full medical insurance etc and own a car (no public transport in Africa). As I said, my husband works but he doesn’t slog and he is certainly not in bondage to the rat-race or any boss. We live free, full lives.

I guess what I am trying to say is that we don’t only see money as a means to not work, we see it as a means to enjoy our lives and have fun. Do you see it differently? You may not work, but do you live a fulfilling life and are you able to do anything you’d like to do (other than not go to work every day)?

If you have no ambitions other than to simply not have to work, I could understand and respect that. I am just wondering how your relationships with others (family, friends) and vacations, entertainment etc fits into plan, if at all. I realize that money doesn’t HAVE to be spent in these areas, but personally I’d be rather unhappy if we couldn’t enjoy the occasional night out with friends or visit all the places we want to and do the things we enjoy (such as camping, painting, tending my garden, my husband is a competitive sportsman). If we couldn’t afford it then it would be another issue, but we rather like to be able to afford these things, even if it means a few hours of work each month.