to envy my friends stripped back life?

[lifeontheotherside]

I am just back from visiting my friend over the weekend and was struck by how lovely her life is compared to mine. She lives in an excouncil house in a semi rural area, with beautiful woods and countryside on her doorstep, she doesn't have a job but works from home part time on a hobby that also provides her an income. Her husband has a professional job, earns a good wage and they live well below their means so they always have money for treats and luxuries like a couple of holidays a year, nice skincare, books etc without buying into a lifestyle they don't want. She has quite a stripped down social calander and only makes time for people and things she really likes.

She seems to have the time to bake cakes, cook from scratch daily, read, exercise, have quality time with her husband. She looks about 15 years younger than me and I am the same age! I live in the city and juggle fulltime work, a 5 year old, my relationship, my social life, parents etc all on the fumes of my empty tank. My rent is very expensive for a pokey flat and even though I live in the city I spend hours a day commuting to and from work!

When I get home I don't even want to think about food so my diet is crap and I have no time for the gym. I feel like I am missing my son growing up and the stress of everything I have to do means I often don't enjoy my life very much. I can feel a sense of satisfaction if I meet a deadline or if my son seems happy but its mostly short lived as there is always something else to cope with!

My husband and I don't spend a lot of time together. I tend to veg out infront of some crap telly while he is on his laptop. We both like to be social and put pressure on ourselves to always be out doing something and challenging ourselves but again we just end up dragging ourselves through things we are meant to enjoy rather than truly enjoying it.

For many years I felt my friend was living a very limited life but now I can see that she was trying to make a life that would satisfy her and be a life she could actively enjoy instead of running around always on the go, too busy to really experiance it.

When I look around at my friends and workmates it seems like most people are just always on the go, exhausted, using or food to cope, not having the time or energy to enjoy their loved ones and children or to just be. I envy my friend her ability to see all that at a young age and take her life in a different direction but I think i'd be too scared to follow suit. I know I depend on my job for my identity and self worth, I worry that if our lives slowed down my marriage would fail or that I wouldn't have the inner recources to make a life for myself outside the mainstream life script.

I thought i was succeeding but now at 40 I wonder if I really made any choices at all. Does anyone else feel like this?

I'd only say that sometimes what looks like a great lifestyle is not so great when you are actually living it. Your friend's hobby/job must be extremely lucrative if she could live off it. I moan about my job and how frantic life is but i'd miss my colleagues and the satisfaction I get from my work. I like the financial security work brings and i don't want to be searching for the cheapest holidays clothes or cars all the time, that brings a different sort of stress. It might be wonderful but you might find that is you made these changes for our life it might not suit you that well. I think most of us instinctively find a life style that is best for us.

This slightly confused me as it sounds like she DOES have a job, she’s just one of the smart few who have turned their hobby into something that generates income. To say she doesn’t have a job is a bit unfair.

i understand what youre saying but she wasn't attacking her and is probably technically correct. in the sense a job normally refers to you working for someone else i mean if someone ask a selfemployed person what job they have they would answer im self employed doing xyz

My life sounds similar to your friends. When I was thirty we made the decision to buy a doer-upper and move out of the smoke to a more simple life in the country. We grow our own veg, take simple holidays where we try to be as adventurous as we can but don’t spunk money on five star all inclusive, send our kids to the good local state schools, shop at Aldi with a bit of Waitrose thrown in, cook from scratch and try not to get into debt by living within our means. I work part time so have been able to do all the childcare from an early age. Dh runs his own business doing a job he loves and is home most evenings by 5.30. My exercise is a daily dog walk in the fresh air. Whenever we visit friends in London or the Home Counties we come away thinking how bloody simple our lives are!

I’m not wishing to sound smug because actually there’s a flip side: we feel very poor compared to some of our friends; it’s been hard not to feel a touch of envy at their school choices (although we’re happy enough with ours), their exotic holidays, their new cars and their skiing and ponies etc. I also feel a bit guilty that I haven’t fully realised my career potential even though I like my job. But I wouldn’t change it for anything. We’re quite Scandinavian in our attitudes - worth reading up on their lifestyles if you want tips!

Capitalism obvioulsy wants us to buy buy buy, have more, go bigger etc; at the 'expense' of our well-being and our planet.

It suits Governments to have us all with our heads down 'striving' - it keeps us from looking at exactly why we can't have more time to just 'be'. Remember how many times the "hard working families" line was trotted out? Work for work's sake. Enslavement to the Capitalist system.

Universal Income is one solution to quiten down all the busyness of work and commuting but is considered too radical and freeing for most governments to consider.

If you have plenty of money, or you reduce your needs and wants so can live on less money, then work becomes less both in time it takes up and headspace. so I am bit confused by this OP - are you saying that you want to have her lifestyle AND her money! Or are you saying that you're not willing to sacrifice your job I still want that prestige even though I know deep down its not really worth much - ?

And of course if she doesn't have a child then she will have more time to herself and things will be simpler!

Bless.

You probably don't really look fifteen years older than your friend, that's just your perception. In the midst of work and child rearing, most of us don't look their best but it does Improve, I promise you. I suddenly became very attractive at 46/47, the change was remarkable but I was not alone, other friends seemed the same, as if we all came into our own.

As for not being interested in food,I presume you cook something nice for your five year old - and eat at the same time. Routine cooking can be a bit of a bore, same old, same old, but we still do it. I'm sure you are quite involved in your little one's life too.

You are on a treadmill at the moment but, trust me, things will improve.

I’m aiming for the lifestyle that your friend has and I’m quite close to it tbh.
Children imo make things harder. You have less time to do some baking, exercise etc... but a lot of the things you mentioned are easy to achieve.
Starting with stripping your social calendar to people you actually want to see and spend time with.
Living below your mean as you describe is about making choices and not constantiy buying into what ‘you are supposed to have’. All the gadgets, asking products, new clothes etc etc. We do that a lot tbh which means we have the money to do things we enjoy and want to do (a specific hobby for H and the dcs that has taken them away each weekend for the last two months for example).
Rushing is a choice. You can decide to Organise yourself in a different way to avoid that.

What IS harder is the near rural, lifestyle when you are in a busy town centre. Which then adds hours of communities in the top of it.
The answer wouod Be to move away (also usually houses costs less which is making buying a house more affordable....).
But it’s worth thinking about what you wouod miss that you find in a busy town centre but not in a rural location....

Links please @FabulousTomatoes

I think our society makes ppl who are not super ambitious feel like they are flawed. It's like if you're not busy 24/7 building your career and aspiring to get to the top, being 'productive' etc. then you're not a worthy person. Sometimes I wonder whether we're all just distracting ourselves from things we don't want to think about.

This.

My life is simple, not through choice, but because I had to give up work at 45 due to ill health. I'm a single mum to a teenage DS, we don't live an extravagant life, but we are comfortable, have enough money to manage within reason, we can do most things we want to do, the only restriction is my health. Life is what you make it, if you want a simple life, make it simple.

Well she is child free so has way more time to spend on her self, and needs less money! Children are expensive in terms of time, energy and money.

I don't think you're BU at all. My lifestyle is much more like your friend's than yours and that's taken a certain amount of effort to achieve. We're sold the idea that more stuff will make us happy, and for some people that's true but if it isn't for you, you're in square peg round hole territory.

That said, they evidently have either a higher income than average or much lower housing costs, or both- in general, having more money is nicer than having less. And to some extent, if you have a young child then some chasing your arse is inevitable. Part of the reason her life looks so relaxed is the lack of 5 year old.

But the more important question, I think, is are you going to do anything to improve this situation? Can you? I appreciate that you probably can't just decide to buy a property or move to a different area of the country tomorrow (but in the long run?) but there are things you could remedy straight away. If you want to spend more quality time together, prioritise that over being social butterflies. Even just one weekend a month.

I live much like your friend, OP. It's not entirely stress free as I am a carer for my partner. This time two years ago we were both in mega busy London jobs. We now live on the outskirts of a small city on a quarter of the income we had then. I sometimes feel a pang for that London life, but now have simple pleasures like feeding the birds, having a coffee with my partner, growing stuff...and time, space and peace to think.

As PPs said, the only way you can begin to have (and be at peace with) a more stripped back life is if you can let go of the need for "stuff".

You don’t mention whether she has kids, I assume she doesn’t from what you’ve said?

That might put a different complexion on how she seems to be able to glide through a simple pared-back life. Not to say kids make that impossible, but it certainly shifts the goalposts.

You’ve said she could support herself on her own which suggests she has no significant mortgage nor high rental commitments which is also quite a rare luxury...

I feel like I have a sort-of "stripped back life" - including part-time job working from home. But I can't make the money part of it work! Stripped back or not, some things cost the same: dentist appointments. School dinner money. Clothes and shoes the children need. I could go on

they evidently have either a higher income than average or much lower housing costs, or both- in general, having more money is nicer than having less. And to some extent, if you have a young child then some chasing your arse is inevitable. Part of the reason her life looks so relaxed is the lack of 5 year old.

Exactly this. Put much more eloquently than I could.

It's far easier to follow the flock and live a conventional lifestyle.
it takes a lot of effort to go against the grain and live your life how you choose.
But you too can live the same or similar if you choose to, nobody forces us into making the decisions we do.

I think it’s all ingrained in us to be achievers and have a sense of failure when we aren’t that.
I find working in a posh area of a city makes me crave Prada shoes and beautiful things. But if I stop and think for a moment, it’s all bollocks.
That saying I do think it’s much harder to achieve these days, there is no way I could work outside of a city in my field, so I’m in sort of limbo. I think about leaving all the time, but practically I can’t

I've done this. I'm in my fifties and work a lot from home. I have downsized my house and am now mortgage free. I am lucky that my husband has a well paid job but we prioritise time together and don't do loads of socialising. We spend a lot of time with our children and have time and money for nice holidays etc.
I could still be working a million hours at school but my life suffered.
My ex h was all about status and buying things which partly explains our split. To me that is not what success is.

We do something similar.

We live well below our means. We save lots of money, so we don't worry about finances or unexpected costs.

We live in a (relatively) cheap house that is small and scruffy, we prefer to prioritise being in a nice community with good public spaces and community services nearby as that helps our wellbeing a lot more than a larger or smarter house, or the financial stress of paying for a fancy house in a nice area.

Apart from food, we don't buy much. I used to buy quite a lot of stuff online, I've stopped now. We only buy things we genuinely need and can't borrow/ get second hand. Although we can afford to buy new I prefer buying second hand as it keeps me out of the cycle of craving shiny new things.

Work-wise we have done it differently to your friend: in our 20s we worked hard to progress, but chose careers where once established we could earn a decent amount, work flexibly and where we are in demand from employers, so we hold the cards. I think other careers might have been more fulfilling, but now we have kids we would rather work less and be able to easily take time off than have a super-interesting job.

We eat well and exercise.

We are both really happy with our lives. We have young kids and I think for many parents this is a really stressful time, but we are really enjoying it and feel like we have plenty of time.

We actually don't go on holiday as much as we plan to, because in honesty we don't feel the need as we are happy day to day. I have friends who really look forward to an expensive holiday as an escape from life, if you can change your life to make it less stressful I'd do that rather than having to work more to pay for an expensive holiday.

The main thing we do is figuring out what actually makes us happier in life, and stop comparing ourselves to other people who make different choices. There's an instinct to want to keep up with the Jones' and I think this leads to a lot of unhappiness.

I think it’s all ingrained in us to be achievers and have a sense of failure when we aren’t that.

I don't know that it's ingrained in us, but it's ingrained in our culture. However, we can fight it. And define achievement differently and in ways that make us as individuals happier.

Thank you vivipru!

Reading this though, I'm not sure I do chase material wealth just for the sake of it. The kids and I wear second hand clothes, the car is ten years old, the furniture is mostly from Freecycle. I do spend on good food, wine, activities and outings for the DC. It'd be hard to cut back on those things and be sure it was worth it. I'm in a privileged position that I could afford to reduce my mortgage, but that would involve moving and starting over, which would be a leap of faith in terms of whether it's in our/the DCs' best interests. So maybe you're being hard on yourself. It's hard to step off a treadmill if you don't know what's in the floor below.

We have only ever had one low income and lived our lives accordingly.
Our dc never went without anything they needed and we managed some wants too. Both parents were here for them a lot more than if we'd both worked for employers.
We don't have much ito stuff, but we aren't materialistic and have usually gone for dooer uppers that have allowed us to go bigger when we needed to.
Now, looking at downsizing as only one at home now. The money we save from the house will be enough for our pension.

I get it. I try not to let it get me down though.