Category Archives: Small-House Living

Get and Stay Debt-Free While You’re Young

By Claire Middleton Posted in Debt-Free, Simpler Living, Small-House Living Tagged , ,

This 68-year-old woman had a good income and assets, but thought she was rich and lived like it, buying stuff like there was no tomorrow. She ended up in bankruptcy court. The native Californian ended up moving to the Midwest, where the cost of living was cheaper than it was on the west coast. Now, she finally has a handle on her finances, and sees hope for the first time.

But had she become debt-free back when she had decent money coming in, she could have had a much easier time of things as she approached her old age. This is why it’s so important to work toward debt freedom while you’re young.

We became debt-free at age 44 when we paid off our mortgage. A few years later, a failed business (our main source of income) forced us to sell our house. The proceeds paid for a small house in a cheaper area, and left us money to live off of while we figured out what we would do for a living in the future. I don’t like to think what would have happened to us if we were not debt-free before the business failed.

Too Much House

By Claire Middleton Posted in Simpler Living, Small-House Living Tagged , ,

A dear friend in her early 60s complains that it takes her all day to clean her house, and afterwards she is exhausted. I feel sorry for her, but the truth is that her house is way too big for her. She raised five kids in it, and is emotionally attached to it, but the kids are grown and gone and she doesn’t need all that space anymore.

Maybe it’s just as well that I was forced to give up my big house. It held many memories and I miss it, but I love having a small house now. I remember after we made the offer on it, and I drove by it with my daughter, who hadn’t seen it yet. She exclaimed, “It’s so small!” and I responded, “That’s what I’ll say about my electric bill each month when I open it,” and that’s exactly what I do say every month.

As King Solomon said in Ecclesiastes in the Bible, there is a time for everything: the time to have a big house is when you have lots of people to live in it. Once they’ve grown, the small house becomes a great idea for so many reasons:

  • It takes me about two hours to clean my little house (except for the basement, which I clean once in a while), leaving me more time to do things I enjoy.
  • Our utility and property tax bills are small, which helps us stay debt-free. We had to sell our big house because we couldn’t afford the $7000 property tax bill anymore and didn’t want to risk losing a paid-off house to unpaid taxes.
  • I always wanted to live on acreage, but now that we’re pushing 60, I can see that our modest yard is more than enough work for us at this stage of life.
  • Whenever we have to make an improvement to the house, it costs less time and money than it would on a big house. We replaced eight of the ten windows in this house a few years ago, and that was expensive enough. The rental house we used to live in had 56 windows. Can you imagine what those would cost to replace? Yikes!

I feel sorry for my friend, but I think at some point she’ll be ready to give up her big house. Or I guess she could just hire a cleaning crew. Personally, I’ve found that downsizing is the way to go.