living small

[heathercm26]

How big is your home in square feet?

How many kids/ people in your family?

Do you think u could alter your lifestyle a bit to save? Like taking your kids to the park rather than a water park. Or down sizing your stuff, and house. Perhaps giving up a car or getting a used or more used car etc.

I'm looking at building again and building smaller sounds interesting. there is a big movement. Off course there r the people living basicly in a home made camper with composting toilets and thats a bit extreme. Buuuttt what about having one bathroom instead of 2?

Hace you considered it?

[heathercm26]

Smaller the home, the less principle, less interest, less maintenance, less heat, less cooling, less cleaning, less time into your home. Less time at work.

All leading to financial freedom, more freedom with your time. Etc. I see peers who say they save but I see their groceries and I know I could never afford them. Or have such a big house that they don't have time to clean it and can barely afford it so they are working allthe time. Small seems nice

[heathercm26]

And small does mean smaller. You don't have as much room in your home but hey, now you have more room in your wallet for fun.

[pinkcoffeecup]

We already live fairly small. 

[a_and_j_momma]

My house is just shy of 1600 square feet. We have 3 people under my roof.

I do not need to save more money so wouldn't consider downsizing. If something were to happen and I needed to, I would give up outside activities first, certain luxuries, before downsizing

[Mommy4-27-08]

Our house is 1400 sq. Ft, with four of us in the house. In our area, this is considered small for a three bedroom house. And actually, we have three bedrooms, only one bath and the garage got converted into a small utility room and a second living room. The kids bedrooms are pretty small (9ftx9ft) and the master is like 10ftx14ft so none of my house is that big. I couldn't really downsize much more without getting an apartment, which would cost us more than our mortgage.

We set ourselves a family budget and we live in that budget. Sometimes our family money decreases and so do our activities.

I think that the real issue here is priorities. Some peoples #1 priority is to save a lot of money, others is to own a bigger house, and for some others it is to be able to go out a lot more. To each their own. The trick is finding your priority and then living the way you need to in order to reach your goal.

[my4boys2002]

My house is 3,000 sq feet there's 7 of us here. I can't wait to downsize. I try to budget everything and do free things with the kids. Being a large family gets costly.

[michiganmom116]

My home is 2000 sq. ft., 5 bedrooms/1 bathroom, we currently have 5 people living here but it was just a couple of years ago we had 7 here (2 parents, 5 kids). We already live a "downsized" lifestyle when compared to the average person.  We don't go on vacations, we drive old vehicles (my vehicle is a 1999), and we use wood for heating fuel.

I have considered downsizing as the kids leave the house.  I'd want a 2 or 3 bedroom/1 1/2 bath home, square footage depends on the layout of the house.  Then again, we do plan on combining 2 bedrooms into a family room when those bedrooms are no longer needed...a place for the grandkids to play/watch TV when they come over.

[Debmomto2girls]

We have a twin... 3 bedrooms, one bath, basement. My mortgage is $780 a month which is dirt cheap living in a major city. I cannot downsize anymore. But, I like living in a smaller house. We bought a camper and are able to go camping a lot plus some smaller vacations.

[Stacie03]

Our home is 2300 square feet 4bed, 3 bath and we love it. There are 5 people in the house right now. We love the house, we looked at some 15-18,000 square feet and felt they would be ok but may get tight down the road. With our current house we are able to host family holidays and not have to be cramped when there's 30+ people inside. Our mortgage is cheaper than we were paying on rent for a small duplex.

[karla41164]

Our home is 14000 2 bedroom/2bath We have 3 people in the home since our kids are all grown we bought this house, Payment is just under 900.00 a month

We save money by not eating out,And when shopping with coupons we take the savings and use that money for Christmas