How Can We Simplify Our Solo Lives?

Reader recommends "Living Small," but how do we do that?

After my last post (How Many of Us Can Afford to Live Alone?), a reader chided me for not really knowing what it is to have no one to support me. That’s not quite true. For two 10-year stretches of my life, I did not have anyone else supporting me and I did not have enough money for all that I wanted or thought I needed.

But it is true that up until my father died in 2019, I could always go live with my parents if my life went completely belly-up. So yes, it could have been worse. I have never had to live on the streets or in my car. I was lucky.

This reader mentioned that to survive, she learned to cut corners and “live small.” I keep thinking about that. “Living small” does not mean a person has a small life, a life that doesn’t matter. To me, it means looking at every expense and asking, “Do I really need it?” or “Is there another way to manage it?”

The reader said she depends on a network of friends to help with the things she can’t afford. We can certainly work on doing the same. I suspect it would bring us closer to other people while helping with the budget.

Even though I grew up in a no-frills life where I wore plenty of hand-me-down clothes and never got the piano lessons I craved, even though our vacations were camping trips close to home, and our entertainment was TV, radio, board games, or badminton on the lawn, we never went without. Not really.

We didn’t go to the theater or fly to Europe. A fancy dinner out was at the Burger Pit, but we had plenty of food. We lived in a three-bedroom house with a big yard. We had heat, electricity, water, and a good car. We always had medical care, including the braces I wore to fix my crooked teeth. We had two loving parents and four loving grandparents. Financially, we lived smallish, but in the things that matter, we lived large.

When I was growing up in San Jose in the 1950s and ’60s, the men in my life worked in construction or at lumber mills, factories, and canneries, doing hard physical labor while most of the wives stayed home. I never knew how little money my parents had to spend. Mom and Dad’s considered their finances none of our business.

It was only when I got married and my husband and I tried to live on the GI bill and various part-time jobs that financial reality set in. It was tough. Our apartment was in a bad neighborhood. We were burglarized three times. We borrowed money to pay our bills, and then we couldn’t pay off what we borrowed. But still, we had two sets of parents to fall back on. We had two cars, we had insurance, and we never went hungry.

After we split up, and I lived alone, my life got smaller. Boxes and a crocheted beanbag for furniture. A cassette player for entertainment. A car that kept breaking down. But it could have been worse.

What does it take to live small enough to survive as a single person if we don’t have a trust fund or earn a ton of money? What if we can’t work a full-time job due to age or health problems? Somehow, we need to live with what we have, to live smaller. How do we shrink our expenses to fit our means?

Most people’s biggest expense is lodging. Experts say we should spend no more than one-third of our income on rent or mortgage payments, but a lot of us spend more. Is there a cheaper way to go? The obvious answer is to not live alone. Sharing space with others means less cost for each individual.

Many older people on their own move to senior residences of some sort, but that’s not necessarily cheaper, and there goes that solitude so many of us love.

Can we downsize to a smaller place or move to a less expensive area. Could we be happy in a “tiny home”?  

Bartering is a possibility. Can we do some kind of work in exchange for lodging?

How do we cut back without punishing ourselves? We all need shelter, food, warmth in winter and a place to escape the heat in summer. If we don’t live in a city with public transportation or Uber rides, we need a way to go places.

Look at all the “necessities” we spend money on: Internet, streaming services, cell phone, gas and electric, water, trash pickup, rent or mortgage, insurance, groceries, clothing, medical care, and car maintenance. That doesn’t include haircuts, upgrading our computers, tithing to our churches, going out to eat, buying gifts for birthdays and holidays, out-of-town travel, tickets to concerts, plays, and sporting events, taking classes, participating in group activities, etc. Life is complicated. Life is expensive.

Think back to our ancestors who grew their own food, cooked without microwaves or air fryers, made their own entertainment, lived without telephones, walked or shared rides, and repaired, repurposed, and recycled everything they could.

Can we do that in the 2020s? Do we want to?

What do we really need, and where can we get it as cheaply as possible?

Readers, help me out here. What have you changed or sacrificed to afford your solo life? What advice can you offer for living small (inexpensively) while living large?

Further reading:

https://financeoverfifty.com/how-to-live-below-your-means

How to Start Living Below Your Means (kindafrugal.com)

How to Live on Less Money: 42 Hacks to Thrive - Budgeting Couple

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How did I end up alone? I didn’t have any kids. After my husband and I retired to the Oregon coast, far from family, he died of Alzheimer’s. You can read our story in my new memoir, No Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer’s, available now at your favorite bookseller. Visit https://www.suelick.com for information on all of my books.