Great advice, Michelle. Frugality can also be applied to the fun stuff like vacations. My son and his girlfriend are visiting us from San Francisco. They're filmmakers who pay the bills working as a math tutor and baker, respectively. The other day, they visited a friend in Brooklyn, NY, which is about an hour and 15 minutes away from where we live. (We loaned them our car and paid for gas and tolls.) Unlike many visitors to NYC, they didn't have the money to splurge on a Broadway show or going to the top of the Empire State building (surprisingly expensive, BTW). Instead, they rented e-bikes in Brooklyn for $5 an hour and rode across the Brooklyn Bridge. They went to Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The museum admission was cheap as their friend gets a New York resident discount. They finished the day at a fantastic, yet inexpensive, Jamaican restaurant in Brooklyn, took lots of pictures and had a terrific time for a fraction of what many spend on a day trip to the Big Apple. Best of all, there will be no credit card bill waiting for them when they get home.
That sounds like a very interesting lifestyle. I’d never make it as a math tutor but I’m a pretty decent baker — I bake sourdough every week. I loved writing and directing video scripts when I worked in advertising and I now realize (far too late — nobody starts in this biz in their 50s) that I’d have loved filmmaking.
The sad reality is that people think of being frugal as denying themselves pleasure and happiness.
And yet sadder is thinking that having more or getting more is somehow going to bring or increase happiness and contentment. Every event/holiday is focused on spending more and more and not actual celebration. The consumerism has reduced everything to just shopping more for more 9f the same.
I’ve shifted my pleasures to simple ones. As this exact moment, I am seated in a hammock swing I bought for $25 last year. I am drinking coffee I made myself in a yellow mug that brings me great pleasure because I had wanted a set of fiestaware for decades and finally bought some from my first good month on Medium. I’d not have enjoyed them as much if someone had given them to me when I was 20. My swing hangs from a pergola my husband built from free scrap wood, and I’m looking at the fishpond I dug myself. Much of my lifestyle rests upon my decision to purchase an affordable house in a cheap area. I can only afford this cheap house because I’ve opted out of materialism — an absolute necessity as a writer.
I loved this. I agree with all of it,which is a boring reaction I guess. I love the soup recipe. I do more or less make that myself in a variant of it. I've come to the conclusion that the food industry and the media are in collusion to keep simple food mystified. A TV chef might show you "how to bake bread" but they keep it off-putting looking by making it look comical,kneading that sticky dough,laborious,that ball of dough is massive,and time consuming,it takes hours when if you know how(and I do) you can knock up a bit of bread to eat in about 20 minutes. (Includes cooking time) That's what Sourdough is about. A pinch of dried yeast is just as good but it lacks the mystical appeal. I must admit I'm a fail at real frugal living as I don't stick to it enough. I know what I should do but ...I go to Paris instead.Oh,the pain now!
It’s a great basic soup that I think almost everyone who cooks at all has some version of. Sometimes I throw in a cubed sweet potato instead of shredded carrot, too.
Great advice, Michelle. Frugality can also be applied to the fun stuff like vacations. My son and his girlfriend are visiting us from San Francisco. They're filmmakers who pay the bills working as a math tutor and baker, respectively. The other day, they visited a friend in Brooklyn, NY, which is about an hour and 15 minutes away from where we live. (We loaned them our car and paid for gas and tolls.) Unlike many visitors to NYC, they didn't have the money to splurge on a Broadway show or going to the top of the Empire State building (surprisingly expensive, BTW). Instead, they rented e-bikes in Brooklyn for $5 an hour and rode across the Brooklyn Bridge. They went to Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The museum admission was cheap as their friend gets a New York resident discount. They finished the day at a fantastic, yet inexpensive, Jamaican restaurant in Brooklyn, took lots of pictures and had a terrific time for a fraction of what many spend on a day trip to the Big Apple. Best of all, there will be no credit card bill waiting for them when they get home.
That sounds like a very interesting lifestyle. I’d never make it as a math tutor but I’m a pretty decent baker — I bake sourdough every week. I loved writing and directing video scripts when I worked in advertising and I now realize (far too late — nobody starts in this biz in their 50s) that I’d have loved filmmaking.
Thanks for recipe. And yeah, I'm retired and on a fixed income but by living modestly I don't have to become a greeter at Walmart.
The sad reality is that people think of being frugal as denying themselves pleasure and happiness.
And yet sadder is thinking that having more or getting more is somehow going to bring or increase happiness and contentment. Every event/holiday is focused on spending more and more and not actual celebration. The consumerism has reduced everything to just shopping more for more 9f the same.
I’ve shifted my pleasures to simple ones. As this exact moment, I am seated in a hammock swing I bought for $25 last year. I am drinking coffee I made myself in a yellow mug that brings me great pleasure because I had wanted a set of fiestaware for decades and finally bought some from my first good month on Medium. I’d not have enjoyed them as much if someone had given them to me when I was 20. My swing hangs from a pergola my husband built from free scrap wood, and I’m looking at the fishpond I dug myself. Much of my lifestyle rests upon my decision to purchase an affordable house in a cheap area. I can only afford this cheap house because I’ve opted out of materialism — an absolute necessity as a writer.
Totally agree. We have the same approach.
I loved this. I agree with all of it,which is a boring reaction I guess. I love the soup recipe. I do more or less make that myself in a variant of it. I've come to the conclusion that the food industry and the media are in collusion to keep simple food mystified. A TV chef might show you "how to bake bread" but they keep it off-putting looking by making it look comical,kneading that sticky dough,laborious,that ball of dough is massive,and time consuming,it takes hours when if you know how(and I do) you can knock up a bit of bread to eat in about 20 minutes. (Includes cooking time) That's what Sourdough is about. A pinch of dried yeast is just as good but it lacks the mystical appeal. I must admit I'm a fail at real frugal living as I don't stick to it enough. I know what I should do but ...I go to Paris instead.Oh,the pain now!
It’s a great basic soup that I think almost everyone who cooks at all has some version of. Sometimes I throw in a cubed sweet potato instead of shredded carrot, too.
Kale is good in soup. Escarole tho: next level.
Just like we cook, and it's fun.