It was January 15, 2016, I was freezing, it was sleeting, we were on what was soon-to-be-our driveway of what was soon-to-be-our Vermont homestead, and we were stuck. Or more accurately, our ancient minivan was stuck. The van went down the quarter-mile-long, hilly, ice-covered gravel driveway fairly easily, and it’d even backed into the parking area below the driveway without incident. But now it wouldn’t go back out. Nate, Stella, and I, plus Gracie the greyhound, had piled into the van at 6 a.m. that morning in Cambridge, along with an air mattress, a bassinet, a cooler of food, a box of wine (priorities), and a dog bed, and driven the three hours north to finalize the purchase of our homestead. The sellers had accepted our offer, the inspections had gone well, and here we were for the final walk-through of the property with our real estate agent. I nursed a six-week-old Stella sitting on the staircase, then changed her diaper on the kitchen counter, while Nate checked the barn, the tractor (which was included in the sale), and the house to ensure everything was in order and that the sellers had performed the two repairs we’d requested: fixing the master bathroom toilet and installing a radon-mitigation system in the basement. Finding no flaws, we loaded our menagerie back into the van (no small feat, since the dog was supposed to sit next to the baby in the backseat and was forever overdoing her jump into the car and landing on the car seat).
Nate turned the engine and we felt the tires skid underneath us. There was too much ice for our snow-tire-less van. After our real estate agent put some dirt under the wheels, we were able to squeal out of our parking spot. Nate gunned it up three-quarters of what was about to be our driveway, but the van surrendered on the final hilly crest that weaves around a tree just before you reach the road. We’d known this driveway would be a pain because it was steep and long and our sole responsibility to maintain. But the pros of this homestead—the land, the gorgeous house, the pond, the high-speed fiber Internet, and the good school district—all outweighed it. Or so we’d thought. The minivan was now entrenched on this hill like a dowager ensconced in her chair during a wedding reception’s devolution into the chicken dance, unwilling to move in either direction. Nate got out to hike back down to the house to ask our real estate agent to call a tow truck since, naturally, we had no cell reception. Sitting in the passenger seat, I turned up NPR and the heat and reached into the backseat to pat the girls. As I hummed along to the Morning Edition theme song, the van started sliding backward on the ice. I jumped out of the car and released a primordial scream—the scream that mothers over millennia have screamed when their babies were about to be eaten by a woolly mammoth/succumb to the plague/slide off an icy driveway. I started to run behind the van to stop it with my body when Nate jogged up the driveway and grabbed me to prevent me from being run over. The van gently slid into a snowbank on the side of the driveway and came to a smooth stop. I ripped Stella out of the car and sat in the snow sobbing hysterically. In the span of fifteen seconds, all the confidence I’d built this past month and a half that we were doing the right thing, that this homestead was the one, that we weren’t crazy to move to the middle of nowhere with an infant, was shattered. Obliterated.
I felt stupid, and not just for trying to bolt behind a moving car as opposed to climbing over into the driver’s seat to steer like a rational person. We knew this twenty-year-old minivan that lacked all-wheel drive and snow tires wasn’t optimal for driving in snow, but we’d done it anyway. As Nate held me holding Stella in the fifteen-degree air on the side of the driveway, our Vermont-native real estate agent managed to drive the car out of the driveway in what can only be described as a cannonball run. I cried and shook the entire drive to our lawyer’s office for the formal closing and paperwork signing. Nate asked if I still wanted to go through with it. I hesitated. This episode encapsulated all my fears about this move: that we’d be out of our depth on such rural land, that we weren’t prepared, and that there’d be no one to help me if something happened to our baby. However, we’d spent so much time researching this decision that, despite my misgivings, I was confident this was the place. I also considered the alternative of not following this dream, of returning to the city, of living with all-encompassing regret. That was an even worse fate. So I said yes, but with the caveat that I never wanted to drive that car down that driveway ever again. And we didn’t.
It was now a full hour past our scheduled appointment time with our lawyer, the seller, a banker, and both real estate agents. We burst into the office a hot mess: me having only recently stopped crying, Stella in a carrier snuggled against my chest in her best imitation of a marsupial, and Nate clutching our sixty-pound dog who was wild-eyed from the trauma of riding in a car and climbing up the three flights of stairs to the office. I’m pretty sure they all thought we were crazy. Not crazy in a fox-type way, but genuinely out of our minds. The papers were signed as our dog panted on the floor and Stella nursed, the keys were handed over, and we even remembered to have our real estate agent snap a family photo of us.
That night we parked the van at the top of the driveway and hiked down to the house in the dark, lit by the flashlights I’d thrown into the car at the last minute. Camping out in our new home, with a fire glowing in the woodstove and Stella snoozing on her bassinet mattress on the floor, Nate and I toasted with the box of wine we’d brought and agreed that this was, in fact, it. We’d done it. Or at least the first part of it, because that night was the start of the busiest four months I’ve ever endured. We’d be moving up to Vermont full time in May and before that happened, we needed to buy two cars and I needed to quit my job; we needed to rent out our Cambridge house, have Nate work full time at his office, build up my freelance business, and pack up all of our worldly possessions. With an infant.
“Replace minivan” had been sitting on our to-do list for some time, but after its performance on the driveway, we hurried that line item along. Moving to the woods from the city wasn’t merely a change in scenery, it was a sweeping lifestyle revamp; we needed two reliable cars instead of one geriatric van. There’s no public transit in rural Vermont, and we had no desire for one of us to be unable to leave the property if the other was out. Nate had been doing car research for years so that when the time came, we’d be prepared to buy. That spring, we paid cash for a used Subaru Outback and a used Toyota Prius, which allowed us to achieve our dual goals of excellent gas mileage (via the hybrid Prius) and all-wheel drive (via the Subaru) for Vermont’s snow and mud seasons.
Paying cash in full for two cars just three months after having our first child and a month after buying a homestead without needing to first sell our Cambridge home was our extreme frugality in action. We’d saved for years by forgoing unnecessary luxuries and economizing on necessities so that we could do exactly this: spend on the things that mattered to us. Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that buying a new car has to be one of the worst financial decisions humanly possible. Cars depreciate the minute—yes the minute—they’re driven out of the showroom, and the markup on a new car is egregious. A used car, on the other hand, allows you to let someone else suffer that initial depreciation while you get a vehicle that’s still perfectly safe, drivable, and vastly less expensive. Want real numbers? Here you go: in 2016, we bought a 2010 Subaru Outback with 100,000 miles for $12,000 and a Toyota Prius, also a 2010 and also with just under 100,000 miles, for $9,000. Brand new in 2010, that Outback retailed for $26,790 and the Prius for $23,800. That means we realized a 55 percent discount on the Subaru and a 62 percent discount on the Prius. We spent $21,000 total on two reliable cars that were just six years old and in excellent condition, versus the staggering $50,590 price tag of new. And don’t fool yourself into thinking you need a new car for the safety features or the all-wheel drive, because you can find all these amenities and more in cars that are just a few models earlier than the current.
Owning a car at all is a luxury, and I’m of the belief that all luxuries, from chocolate to elective home renovations, should be paid for in full and with cash. If you can’t pay cash? You don’t get to buy it. In the spirit of keeping the cycle of used cars alive, we sold our 1996 Honda Odyssey minivan for $1,000 on Craigslist in Cambridge because it was still a great car, just not a car equipped for life in the rural wilds. That resale illustrates another cardinal truth about used cars: you can usually resell them at a rate that nets you a fairly reasonable return on your initial investment. You probably won’t make all of your money back, but since the initial, colossal depreciation already took place, your resale price will be much closer to the price you paid. This as opposed to the remarkable discrepancy between the price of a new car and its resale potential.
Paying cash for cars is also a perfect illustration of the fact that frugality is a compounding game. By never having car payments or any other non-mortgage debt, and the often-exorbitant interest rates that go along with such debt, Nate and I have always been able to save at a high rate, which means we’re able to avoid having car payments, which means we’re able to save at a higher rate . . . it’s a virtuous cycle of low spending and high saving that’s self-perpetuating. The less money you need to live on, the more you save, and the less you need to earn. Plus, when you’re paying off a car loan or other debt with interest, your money is compounding in your creditor’s favor. When you instead invest that money in low-fee index funds, for example, your money is working for you and compounds in your favor. And it doesn’t take all that much money to yield substantial dividends in the future. Since I’ve already gone there, let’s do another example with real numbers. For this exercise, I’m going to use cable television, which has to be my all-time favorite budget scapegoat.
Here’s the premise: Would you rather watch TV or have $91,000? Permit me to explain. Let’s say you spend $75 a month on cable. I’ll grant you that doesn’t sound like a huge amount of money on its own. But multiplied by twelve months, that’s $900 a year on television. Now, let’s say you instead invested that $900 in low-fee index funds and realized a 7 percent return, which is considered an average annual market return over the long term. Imagine you kept that same $900 invested for decades, which is the wisest way to invest, and added $900 to your investments every year instead of paying for cable. In thirty years, your annual investments of $900 would’ve grown to $91,865.74. Yeah, you read that right: $91,865.74. Now ask yourself again: Would you rather have $91K or watch television?
That is the power of frugality (coupled with diligent investing) to transform your net worth. When you turn your money over to someone else, a cable company for example, you’re not just giving up that dollar amount, you’re giving up all of the potential gains that money could have for you. In other words, the opportunity cost. And that was an example using just one useless monthly bill totaling a measly $900 per year. Imagine what the total would be in thirty years if you eliminated haircuts, movies at the theater, manicures, new clothes, new furniture, takeout, new cars, lattes, and everything else that’s a drain on your monthly expenses. The heart of extreme frugality is the knowledge that the compilation of seemingly piddly amounts of money yield tremendous dividends over time. It’s not like Nate and I have been invested for thirty years yet; we were only thirty-two years old at the time; but we’d saved at such a high rate that we’d walked our way right out of the culture of more and right into financial independence. Nearly anyone with a decent job could do what we’ve done, yet very few do. Why? Because it takes short-term sacrifice, long-term planning, and a conviction that what we want out of life isn’t sold in a store.
I want to take a step back for a moment and acknowledge the privilege inherent to our situation. Although Nate and I didn’t inherit money and our parents didn’t fund our adulthood or buy us a house, we’re both profoundly privileged. We made some good financial decisions, sure, but we also got supremely lucky and, in many ways, the game was rigged in our favor. We were raised by well-educated, financially and emotionally stable parents who taught us to read, made sure we went to school, and shepherded us through life. These parents helped us pay for college and gave us advice on how to write our first résumés and did practice job interviews with us. The deck was stacked in our favor before we were even born. Our financial advantages are the product of our socioeconomic status, our education levels, and most of all, the benefits we both had while growing up. I believe that people—Nate and me included—aren’t successful simply because they’ve made a few good decisions. I never want to lose sight of the fact that privilege courses through our lives and that Nate and I would be nowhere without this lucky start. We were born in the right country at the right time to the right people. All beyond our control, yet all largely responsible for where we are today.There’s a great deal of institutional privilege and straight-up luck that goes into the success Nate and I have enjoyed.
Amid these sound financial decisions and ability to pay cash for used cars and math about cable TV and the fulfillment of our dreams, Nate and I were mired in the often baby-spit-up-covered, often sleep-deprived, often harried trenches of our four months of insanity. As if it weren’t enough to parent a three-month-old, buy cars, and rent out and pack up a home, Nate and I experienced a string of homeowner nightmares (all in our Cambridge house) that we’ve come to call Revenge of the Appliances. I wish this were hyperbolic, but it’s pretty much not. First, one of the pipes in our Cambridge home froze and burst on a particularly frigid night, which we discovered after arriving home at 8 p.m. on a Sunday after a weekend in Vermont. Nate taught himself how to install PEX plumbing and replumbed our entire kitchen at 10 p.m. Next our oven broke. Nate took it apart, replaced several pieces, put it back together, and it still didn’t work. We called oven repair people who did the exact same thing and it still didn’t work. We bought a new oven. The closet door in our master bedroom came off of its rolling track and we had to dismantle, repair, and reassemble it. Our main water valve wouldn’t shut off all the way and had to be replaced, which necessitated turning the water off to our entire street one morning. We had to replace two upstairs ceilings that threatened to collapse. The downstairs bathtub required refinishing. A hole in the floor needed fixing. And the Subaru’s windshield broke, which necessitated replacement. Also something happened to our toilet; Nate did something to make it all better. Our freezer started dripping water into our fridge, which was DIY-able after considerable time spent on diagnostics. I also interviewed property managers for our soon-to-be-rental as well as moving companies for our soon-to-occur-move and contractors for those two ceilings, which had to be demolished and installed afresh . . . and then needed crown molding to conceal the gap created between the old walls and the new ceilings. Not to mention the bottomless reams of paperwork and logistics surrounding moving (see me picking up free moving boxes from my Buy Nothing group), becoming landlords (see me cleaning the house in preparation for it to be photographed and rented out), two new cars (see me at the DMV getting licenses and registrations), and welcoming a new human to the universe (see me in line at City Hall buying copies of her birth certificate).
I always like to think that I can do anything for a short period of time and, in retrospect, this seems like a hilarious rundown of mishaps; but at the time, I was exhausted and nearly burnt to a crisp. I was figuring out how to be a parent, Nate was still working at an office all day every day, stuff kept breaking in the house we were trying to rent out, we had another house 150 miles away that we drove up to check on every weekend, and I forgot to mention that I was also growing my online business. We’d decided long before finding our homestead that I wouldn’t go back to my nine-to-five job after my maternity leave ended. I’d been building Frugalwoods in addition to my day job for two years at that point, and writing freelance articles for other financial sites. That fall, we’d realized Frugalwoods was a thing and an actual revenue-generating business. Next to birthing my child, I was birthing this passion project that let me espouse my beliefs about frugality and simple living. And it was working. People were reading it! Lots of people! But the thing about a baby and a business is that they both need to be fed. Fortunately, I could multitask these dual needs. I’d snuggle Stella on top of a pillow (a hand-me-down My Brest Friend, if you must know) and wedge her between my body and the kitchen table so that she could nurse while I worked on my laptop. It was an epitome of the third way that Nate and I were carving out. We didn’t want to outsource our daughter’s care—not to mention the fact that daycare in Cambridge costs more than our mortgage—but we also didn’t want to give up doing work that was meaningful to us. I don’t work because we need the money. Our frugality allowed me to quit that lifestyle before I turned thirty-two. I work because I enjoy it. Because it enriches me and brings deeper fulfillment to my days.
May 2016 finally arrived, we had tenants and a signed lease for an amount of rent that was revenue-generating after expenses, and we were miraculously packed and ready to go a full three days before a moving truck and my blessed in-laws showed up at our house to schlep me, Nate, one dog, one baby, a household full of (mostly used) material possessions, and two cars from urban to rural.