People took out a second mortgage, spent the money on consumer goods, and then when the housing market collapsed, they ended up upside down in their mortgage. The spending cycles couldn't last: "We've been overextended for a long time.
Now spending turns to the government. What does she think about the bailouts? Propping up already-inflated housing prices won't let them come to a more realistic level, she said. And she's concerned that in the long-run, that won't solve the problem - particularly when the government steps in on individual mortgages. She also questions the automotive bailout. Her objection centers on the pay scale for U.
In the past, she said, "I could gauge the health of the economy by the number of phone calls I got Because, she points out, if everyone had behaved in a financially responsible way, by showing spending discipline, "We wouldn't be here right now.
That attitude means that, like in her s article "Whoopee, we can spend again! Which brings her back to her fundamental point: Americans need to spend less than they earn. And by maintaining a consistent lifestyle, they'll build the financial stability to withstand downturns - while, it's likely, re-setting lifestyle expectations to what an income can support.
Then when there's an economic downturn, it doesn't really change anything. The Dacyczyn family's spending was very public during the newsletter years. Their habits have not changed much, even as her children prepare for college and weddings. We talked as her husband, Jim, prepared a dinner of scratch macaroni and cheese, one of their favorite low-cost meals.
The family closed off part of their large farmhouse to save heating oil this winter. She was a spendthrift graphic designer, who lived in big cities and spent big money. After she got married to her husband Jim, they started a family. And she had the crazy idea that they could have a large family, own a beautiful home, and do it all on a single income. He was in the military — specifically, the Navy.
They did this while they had four, and later six, children. On a Navy salary. They bought their dream home in Eventually, she was picked up by the mainstream media of the day Parade magazine and her newsletter took off.
Jim retired from the Navy to help run her business, and she hired employees to help her. She and her husband worked together to get their expenses as low as possible, while still using creativity to live a fun life, all to achieve their dreams.
Her extreme focus on decreasing expenses led to a lot of mockery. Almost everything for her family came from thrift stores and yard sales. After seven years of the newsletter with over , subscribers at some point or another , at one time at the peak , and three books that together sold at least half a million copies , she decided to retire early. Today she still lives a quiet and tightwad life up in rural Maine, where they bought their dream home all those years ago.
Amy was all about living, and spending, in alignment with goals and dreams. She had a very straightforward dream — to have a large family, and a large old house on land, on a single income. All the choices she and her family made were in pursuit of this dream. Her initial goal was not to retire early. It was to achieve her dream, and to share all the fun and frugal things her family was doing with the country.
Someone pointed out to her that her ideas were very much in alignment with those of Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, and she listened to their program while scraping paint off her porch. For her family, she credited the fluke of the newsletters success.
However, she also mentioned that another with-kid option was achieving increased freedom from being a slave to your paycheck. One of her staffers was able to quit a job he disliked, and take on freelance assignments he enjoyed, because of frugality. The quote from the end of this section stayed with me for the past twenty years, and shaped how I think of FI.
Pages , The Complete Tightwad Gazette. I also enjoyed her perspective on selective squeamishness a la the brown bananas , the gift fulfillment curve, stocking a pantry, and how to shop for the least expensive food options by focusing on the all-in cost per meal. Although the dollar figures in pretty much all of her examples were out of date by the time I read the book, and are even more out of date now, most of the concepts and ideas still hold true today.
Don't know if you'll even get this, being so long ago that you posted. I was struck by something you wrote--"not take on a life that existed in the 30s Very interesting for me, thanks.
I enjoyed reading the interviews with Amy - I really wish she was still actively writing! I miss her, and her quirky sense of humour and good sense. All of the frugal writing available today is really based on Amy's work - thanks for making those links available. Post a Comment. That was absolutely intentional. The decision to do books was made so that they would be around for the long term in libraries and other places and it would be free and accessible to anyone.
One librarian in Maine says that The Complete Tightwad Gazette is the most frequently stolen book in the Maine library system! No, no. It really was a grind, a lot of work … I like privacy. After six and a half years, I was really ready to retire. The internet, without a doubt. There are countless ways to save money and stretch your dollar online: selling used stuff, buying used stuff you need, comparison shopping, inexpensive entertainment, inexpensive educational materials — for the price you pay for it, the internet is a spectacular bargain if you use it well.
The advice I wrote about the internet in The Tightwad Gazette in and are now embarrassingly dated — those pieces should basically be ignored today.
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