My wife and I have also followed this path of paying off our debts.  To say she has not been impacted by the financial crisis is not entirely true though, as she states she has a 401(k).  I'm sure the value of this account has dropped sharply in recent months as mine has.  However, I can also see how this has not had a significant impact as it has not on us either as we know this money is for our future, not right now.

Good to know there are other women out there doing the exact same thing I am. Hooray for not spending money on luxury items, even when we're not in a recession. I love seeing strong women like myself making good choices and taking control of our finances!

www.naturaltwenties.blogspot.com

Sounds like she has no quality of life----sad, but I guess you have to do whatever it takes. When your matress is your best piece of furniture, is it really worth being that frugal????

Yeah, that would be us, too.  Except we haven't gone out to eat in months.  

What can I say, we're poor!  J/k--but we know what we want and what we need, and the one thing we both want (free time) can't be bought.  

Sparkito...

Her quality of life is probably much, much higher than you can imagine.  She has no financial worries regarding what is happening with the economy.  She apparently doesn't have a lot of "stuff" that needs to be maintained.  Her place is probably very zen like because of less clutter.

The interesting thing about her stance in life is, if every American adopted this idea, consumerism would drop drastically and those on Wall Street would have less "money to play with".  This country has forgotten its roots and a lot of power brokers are making money on the movement of money and aren't producing anything of value.  More money only buys more "stuff".  

Congratulations to this young lady for being able to march to her own drum and not listen to the myriad of advertising that tries to tell her how much better her life would be if she just purchased their widget, made in China of course.

Wanda---I am not implying that accumulating stuff is where happiness lies. I believe that many people have become  superficial and that their desire for things that they can buy has led to the excessiveness that has made many wall street fat cats even fatter and at the same time it has created a society of shallow, spoiled brats that need immediate gratification. The issue I have with this girls post is that it proves to me that we (Americans) are going into a period of acceptance that  having much less than we should be able to have  is becomming okay. I have been posting on many message boards for the past two years on how we will become a very glorified third world country in the near future, and when someone can post a message that basically states that they are proud to have nothing then my greatest fears for us as a nation are coming true. This girl has nothing--if you believe that her matress is her best furnishing---people who feel that she is on the right path are basically accepting that to live like an immigrant that just got off the boat is  in fact the way of the future, as an American---I realize that it is a better option than going into credit card debt to have things BUT it is an alarming fact that this is the best way for most people---it shows me that we have become a semi third world country and that most of us don't realize it yet.

Kudos to her for not getting caught up in credit card debt and living beyond her means.  

But, that is not the same as not getting caught up in the current financial crises.  Her 401(k), small as it may be, took a hit.  She doesn't have a car, but the public transportation she is likely relying on has gone up in cost, and in some places the increases in fuel alone have caused holes in city budgets.  She eats at home and the price of basic food stuffs has increased dramatically in the recent past, and will likely continue to do so, especially if the government continues to push ethanol with all of its false economy and impact on foodstuffs.  

Living frugally is one thing, and that may lessen the impact of across the board increases in the cost of living, but it does not insolate from it completely.  As much as this woman deserves applause for not getting into the same credit trap/I gotta have it now trap, she is not unscathed by the current mess we are in.  As for that, she is just ahead of the curve in terms of scaling down on expenditures, and perhaps the insight of the story really is more of a "Look at what we have to look forward to", as opposed to someone having escaped the financial mess that is creating a relatively bleak future forecast for us all.

I, too, can say that the current financial mess has not really impacted my day-to-day life much.  I am 55 years old and it's true that my husband and I have seen our investments lose quite a bit of value, but we didn't plan to touch that money for at least 10 more years anyway, so hopefully things will be in a much better condition then.  Our home will be paid for in 17 months.  We do eat out a lot less, and I'm VERY glad I had not jumped into remodeling my kitchen and bathroom, which we were just about to contract for when all this mess hit.  I cancelled all those plans immediately.  But I don't feel deprived.  The remodeling has just been postponed.  We bought two new LCD TVs a few months ago and I don't regret that for a moment, since that is our main entertainment.  We never did go to movie theaters, because I'm cheap and don't want to pay the high ticket price, and we never did take high-priced vacations.  Since we're homebodies at heart, we haven't felt the pinch much.  But I agree with sparkito about people becoming okay with having nothing.  That's not the way Americans should be looking at this.  Yes, it's a good thing to be careful with your money at ALL times, not just the bad times, but this is a temporary bad time.  Everything will swing back to the good side and then we can loosen up a little.  It shouldn't permanently change people's mindset into  "poor me, I can never have anything again".  2009 may not be very good, but I'm already looking forward to 2010, when I believe we will start coming out of this funk.  Guess I'm just one of those people who think the glass is half full, not half empty.  Buck up everybody!  This country will come out on top!

You know what I do not get, is why people are so obsessed with junk.  I think this girl is doing what is right for *her*.  Sparkito is obviously obsessed with accumulating crap.  I am not.  There is no reason to blow $900 on some stupid TV set.  We aren't living in a third world country...we've been living in materialism for far too long.  What is wrong with not using credit cards until you're up to your armpits in Hoc?  I don't get Sparkito's attitude about needing so much junk.  I pared down years ago, and other than a computer, it's the best thing I've ever done.

Many people haven't been impacted by this mess in the sense that it has required them to make changes to their daily lives.  We've "lost" better than 500K in savings over the last year, but we have no debt; the kids continue to go to school and we write the checks; they play soccer with their teams, and we spend way too much time in motels; our kitchen is full and we haven't gone without; we still go out to eat (but less often perhaps); and at the end of the day, nothing has changed.  We still look at prices, make decisions based on value, clip our coupons, try to conserve on fuel, and buy things on sale, but we have always done that.  

Others don't have as much, whether it is because of poor credit habits, earning less, having more fixed obligations, or a combination of it all, and this current mess is enough to push them over the edge.  I see it among some of our friends, our co-workers, and in stories from total strangers.

This mess hasn't impacted our daily lives yet, but only because we are fortunate and have so much.  (BTW - we are both from blue collar families, paid for our own educations, and have worked for years to get to were we are, and it has all worked out for us).   The fact that our daily lives haven't changed doesn't mean that the mess isn't there, or that it hasn't impacted on us.  My wife desperately wanted to retire this year, and now it is put off until 2010, and even then we have our doubts about just how much more our savings are going to shrival up.  Our eldest is completing four years of college in three, and we are reconsidering giving her the cost of the fourth year as a gift, and instead apply it to the college educations of the next two kids, particularly since the 529(c) plans set up for their college expenses have seen 42% drops in the value of the post tax money paid into the funds.  There are also other ways this has impacted on us, with one of the more far reaching being that we are now seriously considering moving out of the country in retirement as the cost of living here promises to be too high, and the general economy and standard of living is going to be going down whether we like it or not.

But back to the story - this is more of a "you can have a good life with less" tale than having somehow managed to evade the financial mess all around us.  There is nothing wrong with that - and in general we think Americans really don't enjoy what they have, but are constantly looking for getting more, and that needs to change.  But, having said that, don't peddle the story as a solution to the financial mess, because it isn't.