Simplify Your Life, Live with Less !!!

As each day seems to bring more bad news about the economy, people around the country are learning tough lessons about their money.
“Having the best things is no substitute for having the best life,” Oprah writes in her What I Know for Sure column in the March 2009 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine.

People with and without jobs are using our national financial crisis to get back to basics. Is it possible to live with less? What truly matters?

If you’re in debt, one way to see what it’s like to live with less is to take Suze Orman’s three-step money pledge:

•Don’t spend any money for a day.
•Don’t use your credit card for a week.
•Don’t eat out in restaurants for a month.

Jennifer and David, parents of two, are almost done with their third week on Suze’s pledge.

Jennifer says the first goal—not spending any money for a day—was easy. The second goal—not using credit cards for a week—didn’t really faze them.
“We never had a problem with using a credit card,” David says.

“We can’t pay for it today, we don’t get it today,” Jennifer adds.

The third goal—not eating at a restaurant for a month—has been hard, but they say there are benefits to staying home.
There’s more time to talk, play games or watch movies as a family.

The experience has taught them just how little they need to live and how much they had been spending unnecessarily,
Jennifer says. “We stood back, and we looked at our budget,” she says. “We looked to see what we have been doing, and it hasn’t been smart.”

Widowed mom Candice lives in California with her sons, Derek and Darrien, in a seven-bedroom home.
Their closets are full of clothes they don’t wear, and Candice has $500 Jimmy Choo shoes she has never worn.
She even refinanced their home so she could pay off her car…so she could purchase a new truck.

While Candice and her sons eat out almost every night, she still spends $400 a week on groceries.
Much of that food ends up wasted, thrown away after it expires on the shelf or in the refrigerator.

Candice wrote in to The Oprah Show, pleading for someone to help her learn how to be happy
with less: “I submit myself to you—mind, body, soul and shoes.”

Candice, Derek and Darrien agree to a challenge that will force them to live more consciously for a week. Your family can do it too!

•Limit driving. Derek and Darrien have to start making the seven-minute walk to school.
•No shopping online or in stores, except $100 for groceries for the entire week.
•No ordering out, getting takeout or going out to restaurants.
•Turn off the TV and Internet for the week.
•Candice has to box up everything from her closet that she has not worn in two months and put it in storage for the rest of the week

By making changes to live with less, Candice must confront difficult emotional issues. She reveals that her husband died in 1997
while saving one of their sons from drowning during a fishing trip. Candice says after his death, she began spending money as a
way to demonstrate her love to her children and in an attempt to soothe her own pain.

“I’ve been hiding behind the shoes and the house and the clothes for so long. … Since I lost my husband, it’s all been about
masking the pain,” she says. “I didn’t want my friends to see that. I didn’t want my children to see that. I didn’t want them to know that.
So I would just keep shopping so I could look good on the outside to cover up what was on the inside.”

With the challenge, Candice says she had light bulb moments beginning on the very first day. “No TV allowed me to sit down with
my children and just have a conversation about their day, my day. We had dinner together, and there were no outside distractions,” she says.
“There has been a huge shift in my thinking. I know that I don’t need the stuff. I know my children don’t need the stuff.
All I ever needed was them, and all they ever needed was me. And that’s been the most amazing feeling.”

See how Candice cleared out her closets!

To read more interesting stories on how to simplify your life with less and enjoy life,
visit Oprah Simplify With Less