Hello–I’m Jessica. Thanks for taking the time to visit me here at my Penny-wise family story.

Please indulge this first post as an explanation of how this blog came to be.

I’m a professional person and a college graduate. I put myself through college on student loans, thiftyness and dumb luck. Let me illustrate: I was fortunate enough to benefit from a program that allowed me to attend two years of community college during high school saving me tuition funds. Mom and Dad helped with the books, and I took a part time job. After junior college, I moved away from home to a state college that offered a great education at a great price, which was still far more than I could afford.

I took a work study job working at the college gym (though anyone who knows me knows that I am far from being an athlete!) I had another work-study job working on the college’s two sailboats doing woodworking (thanks dad for the woodworking education!) I volunteered like crazy and by then the faculty knew me so well, that one professir asked me to house-sit her home for a semester while she taught abroad. That led to another referral and I ended up spending a year, rent free caring for other people’s homes–at a time when I really needed to save a few bucks in rent!
I whittled my food budget by using a co-op and doing some gardening to $50 a month and took advantage of the free bus pass offered by the college, and I finally graduated, though sometimes I wondered how I would do it (wow, was I ever broke!).

After graduation I moved to an apartment in the city to start looking for my dream-job—right in the middle of a recession. I found a job, but my apartment was 2/3 of my monthly income, and just 325 square feet. I remember that every time I turned on the toaster and the hair-dryer at the same time, the whole place would go dark because it was all on one electrical circuit.
Yes–I could reach the toaster in the kitchen from styling my hair in the bathroom!
I moved in to that apartment with a rocking chair, ten boxes of books and a fouton that I borrowed from my boyfriend (now, my wonderful husband). And again, I took advantage of that bus pass!

One day, as I was trying to figure out how to make the rent and the phone bill and if I could buy a monthly bus pass or if I should stick to daily bus cupons, I realized how much waste I really had. I owned ten boxes of books… which I was paying approximately $2 per square foot per month for. (You could seriously measure my net worth in old textbooks). The next several weeks on the way to work each day, I boarded the bus with a wheeled bag full of my beloved books which I sold at Half Price Books. It earned me enough to buy my next month’s bus pass, and I decided that recessions come and go, but if I were going to provide myself with any security, I must find a way to live below my means (even if my means were pathetic at the time!)

As the years have gone by I’ve sometimes been better and sometimes been worse at staying not just within, but below my means, but one thing I have found is that it takes extraordinary effort to do so!

My family and I have discovered that we can *do* so much more, when we have so much less, and we find it more satisfying than trying to keep up with Joneses. We enjoy supporting charitable causes and volunteering our time, and we believe that it’s our responsibility to help others, and like John F. Kennedy said, that a rising tide should lift all boats.

I had the opportunity to visit Ethiopia this past fall, and was stunned by the resourcefullness of the people there. Practicality to a point that I had just never thought of. Like my great-grandmother’s thriftyness–only so much more. I was also inspired by how little greed I saw there. People were just helping people, there were no “Jonses” to keep up with, and furthermore, it seemed that those who had the least, gave the most.

I’ve been inspired by this latest recession, and the great need of others around me, to see how I can do more with less–and help others along the way.

If you’re intrested in using less, and doing more–I invite you to follow along, or participate–chime in and provide your suggestions for using less and doing more.

Tags: IntroductionView Comments