Selfsufficientish.com

fifi folle wrote:Interesting to note it's all Scots on this thread!?!

haha, was about to join in the conversation too.....
Average wage in Argyll is about £15k which is considered pretty low......

Before I semi retired, my income tax bill was 10k a year that was 7 years ago, we now have a much nicer life on a fraction of what I used to earn, and my tax bill is peanuts

Currently rufffing it in the South of Spain

Dave

fruitcake wrote:Average wage in Argyll is about £15k which is considered pretty low......

We aren't in Scotland but if that's the case we are living below the poverty line! Not that we actually notice as we have everything we need, everything we want and some left over to share! I guess that makes a decent salary!

Got to agree with a lot of people here. After years of effort, I ended up (oh, 12 years ago) earning 50k per annum. Seemed great - it wasn't enough. My income now is much, much less than that, but I've never been happier. Perhaps salaries should be measured by what they do for you in terms of contentment, rather than buying power.

Option 1 - a million pounds and a barrowload of stress.

Option 2 - tuppence, but a guarantee of complete happiness.

And you go for ... ... ???

Mike

I suppose in all this it also depends if you like the job you do. If you earn 50k but you hate your job, you are not going to be happy and if you earn 15k and love your job, you will be happy and the rest falls into place around what you earn. State of mind is probably also a big important thing as even if you like your job and you earn lots of money, if your taste in life is all expensive stuff, wanting to impress everybody with your latest gadgets, you will still be unhappy as you still do not earn enough.... This is good too for the lower salaries. And then people become sour and jealous and generally unhappy....

For some reason'it's the norm for people to be accorded status largely in relation to their salary.Granted Nurses/Teachers etc, are seen to do aworthwhile job,even though they are not particularly well-paid,but generally you seem to attain status in relation to your salary(wethet you deal in building houses ,or selling armaments doesn't seem to make much odds).
People who reject this,me,(and others above ) who profess that the quality of their life is more important than the level of their income,are just attaining their status in different ways,'I grow all our veg',bake my own bread' 'recycle everything' knit yoghurt' etc etc etc.
Despite the temptation to add that I'm misanthropic enough not to care enough to be in either of the two above,it's not true.Which goes to show how powerful this status thing is.

oldjerry wrote: knit yoghurt.

So thats how you make it ........no wonder we haven't had much success

Dave

Your right oldjerry.............I sometimes come in full of the things I have managed that day get onto a forum not this one and find out that "SuperOverachiever"did twice that waiting for the kettle to boil for the breakfast coffee.............I don't drink coffee maybe thats where I am going wrong.

TheGoodEarth wrote:
IMHO if I didn't have any mortgage or rent payments and had a super insulated house with a renewable energy supply - so minimum bills - I would be very happy with £12,000 pa (£1,000 pm)

.

We are fortunate enough to not have any mortgage or rent payments and live in a super insulated house with a certain amount of renewable energy supply and manage very well on about that amount

MandyWB wrote:

TheGoodEarth wrote:
IMHO if I didn't have any mortgage or rent payments and had a super insulated house with a renewable energy supply - so minimum bills - I would be very happy with £12,000 pa (£1,000 pm)

.

We are fortunate enough to not have any mortgage or rent payments and live in a super insulated house with a certain amount of renewable energy supply and manage very well on about that amount

I DO have a mortgage but I also have a pretty well insulated house and lots of big jumpers , and I still manage really rather well on about that much!

oldjerry wrote:People who reject this,me,(and others above ) who profess that the quality of their life is more important than the level of their income,are just attaining their status in different ways,'I grow all our veg',bake my own bread' 'recycle everything' knit yoghurt' etc etc etc.

I know you're being ironic but I've just wasted 10 minutes of my life looking for a pattern for knitted yoghurt. 5 million bloody cupcakes and no yoghurt! I think there's a gap in the market.

5 million knitted cupcakes??........ That explains those queues outside Greggs...

I agree with all of the above - particularly that your happiness depends on how you construct your own idea of 'status'.

However, it is not always the case that being on a low salary automatically means that you don't have any stress - 90% of our arguements are caused by not having enough money - e.g deciding which bills to pay when we don't have enough to pay them all or being stuck in the house because we can'f afford the petrol to go anywhere. There is also the stress of not being paid what you think you deserve for a job which is stressful!!

And one thing you can't do on a low income is trave, which I would love to do more of. I know, you can do it on a shoestring, and I have done so in the pas (in fact, I wouldn't want to do anything but backpacking), but even that costs the price of airfares and cheap hostels, which is above our means at the moment.

I've lived on €200 per month... Paying for rent, internet, phone, and beer =).

Food was dumpstered, any needed purchases we shared (like onions, salt, spices).

And then we went travelling! Hitchhiking, couchsurfing, living in squats that we snooped out, dumpsterdiving. We payed for two airplane rides (to Berlin and from Barcelona), two trainrides (from some shittown in Holland where we got stuck to Amsterdam, and from Amsterdam to Hilversum), 1 night in Amsterdam, 4 nights in Barcelona and some food where dumpstering wasn't enough.

Cost me €750 for three months =)!

And then I went to India for three months, it landed on €830 including the airfares and paying for all food and almost all beds =).

Living cheaply, no problem!

But now my boyfriend earns a LOT of money and somehow we spend it all anyway? Weird.

Please forgive me if I appear argumentative - it's not what I intend.

bonniethomas06 wrote:I agree with all of the above - particularly that your happiness depends on how you construct your own idea of 'status'.

The word "status" used in this context confuses me. I am who I am, I do what I like, I make sure that I don't deliberately cause any ill to anyone and compare my self to no-one - as such I hold no "staus" by comparison to anyone.

[/quote]However, it is not always the case that being on a low salary automatically means that you don't have any stress - 90% of our arguements are caused by not having enough money - e.g deciding which bills to pay when we don't have enough to pay them all or being stuck in the house because we can'f afford the petrol to go anywhere.[/quote]
It concerns me that people have to decide which bills to pay. Surely the priority is to pay the essential ones, electricity, water, food etc. If someone is having difficulty paying those why are the running up others (please believe me that this is not criticism directed at you BT - it is simply that, having experieced, such stress,(xhusb!) I now don't understand how people willingly put themselves in such a position) I'd say it's more fulfilling to simply enjoy the company of your loved ones than to try to make it more exciting by throwing money at it. It makes me sad that people argue and destroy themselves over something as dead and unfeeling as money

[/quote]And one thing you can't do on a low income is trave, which I would love to do more of. I know, you can do it on a shoestring, and I have done so in the pas (in fact, I wouldn't want to do anything but backpacking), but even that costs the price of airfares and cheap hostels, which is above our means at the moment.[/quote]
I have to confess that I'm not much of a traveller, which is probably very ignorant and insular of me, but I wonder how much of our own stomping ground we actually explore as if travellers? I confess that we are lucky enough to live in what is considered a tourist area, I've lived here most of my life and yet each day it shows me something new and amazing - without costing me a penny.
It seems to me that the issue is not one of money, but rather one of desires.