Today’s post is the reduce your lifestyle to live totally free overview. This step is the first one in the plan and is quite long because it covers the following topics:
- Housing
- Transportation
- Healthcare
- Debt
- Variable Expenses (like groceries, household goods, etc.)
In this post I give an overview of each of these topics before I write about them in detail. If you missed any of the other posts you can view them all here.
Reduce Your Lifestyle To Live Totally Free Overview
I will break up the five topics relating to lifestyle in future posts, starting with housing tomorrow. Since these topics are quite extensive I will break up each post in multiple parts so readers won’t be bogged down reading a long post.
Here’s the outline of each lifestyle topic:
Housing
- Living with multiple people in a home or apartment to minimize costs for everyone.
- Renting a cheaper place or buying an inexpensive home.
- Moving to a lower-cost-of-living area to reduce expenses.
- Selling your home to buy a cheaper one and save the profits from the home sale.
- Living in a RV or a van.
- Living off-grid in a pre-built shed or even in a tent is a possibility.
- Going homeless can work for some people.
Transportation
- Giving up your car to save on those costs.
- Selling your car and replace it with a scooter or bicycle.
- Sharing a vehicle with a trusted person to share costs.
- Don’t use a vehicle at all and walk everywhere.
- Use public transportation.
- Driving only once or twice a week.
- Performing car maintenance yourself.
Healthcare
- Reviewing the types of health insurance available to you (COBRA, private health insurance, government-subsidized, etc.).
- Getting a cash-only doctor.
- Purchasing a discount program directly through the provider.
- Going without health insurance completely.
Debt
- Consider getting debt-free
- Eliminating all debt except mortgage before starting the journey
- Avoid accruing new debt unless absolutely necessary.
Variable Expenses
- Develop a budget and keep to it.
- Reducing the grocery bill by fasting.
- Living a hotter and colder house during Summer and Winter.
- Used goods are a must.
- Restaurants and eating out is no more.
- Treats are rare and for special occasions.