Can a person live on $10,000 a year in a Colorado mountain town without giving up too much of what he loves about living there?
“Not possible,” said one friend.
“Doubtful,” another answered. “Unless he’s in his early 20s and can forgo a few things like a roof over his head.”
“Maybe, but why would you want to?” asked a stranger I met in a breakfast joint.
“Yeah sure, you can do it,” said my buddy. “If your hobbies are hiking and fasting.”
I have some idea of what it is like to live simply. I moved to Colorado with everything I owned stuffed in a hatchback. Even now, my possessions — if spread out on my driveway in Breckenridge as if in the aftermath of a tornado — would likely not equal 200 items.
Yet, a quick list of expenses revealed that I was spending 2 1/2 times that to live my dream in ski country. I needed an expert.
So I consulted with Jim Merkel, author of “Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on a Finite Earth” (New Society Publishers, Sept. 2003). In 1989, Merkel quit his job and has lived off of $5,000 a year ever since. When he married a couple of years ago, he upped his allotment to $10,000 a year, but that’s still just $5,000 per person, per year.
In his book, Merkel asks us to take stock of what we own and where we are at the present. We are asked to get real and to ask ourselves some tough questions:
What do you need? What do you want? How do you distinguish between need and want? What can you imagine living without? What are the things that eat away at your time and energy? Which items required debt to purchase?
For most of us, housing is by far the biggest expense. In Breckenridge, the median home price is more than $670,000 per year, while the average salary is about $30,000. Since people who make $30K generally cannot buy a house that costs $670K, they rent.
Minimum rents in Breck are around $500, but that’s communal living. I was lucky enough to have landed a caretaking situation in a home I could never afford myself. I still pay $600 a month in rent to the homeowners and occasionally have to share the place with them or their friends.
Since 1989, Merkel has had to be creative with his housing. He’s lived on inexpensive land with lots of people. He’s also had a caretaking position. He bought a small, non-traditional cabin with no plumbing — something in which most people wouldn’t be interested. Currently, he has bartered housing out of a volunteer executive director position he holds at the New Forest Institute.
So, after rent, if I’m still trying to live on $10,000 a year in Breckenridge, I’m left with $2,800 a year for everything else. That’s $233 a month, or $7.67 a day. A television came with my place, but I pay extra for the package that allows me to watch the sports I like. That would have to be cut. So would the wireless Internet that I pay for.
My car is my second-largest expense. Gas, maintenance, upkeep, registration and insurance eat away at my bottom line. A car payment prohibits one from living off of 10K a year in the mountains, unless you live in the car.
Merkel has been debt-free for 23 years.
“When I first started out,” Merkel said, “I went to talk to a financial planner. I told him the plan for my little nest egg. He didn’t like it. He warned me of inflation and dips in the market. I asked him ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’ He said that in 20 years, I’d have to go back to work. I told him ‘Big deal, I’ll have 20 years free. Twenty years to work full-time on issues that are important to me.”
Twenty-two years later, Merkel is still thriving and very happy.
When I spoke to him on the phone last week, he was in Homer, Alaska, overlooking Kachemak Bay, playing with his 19-month-old son, and getting ready to embark on a backpacking overnight trip across the bay in the Alaskan wilderness.
Few of us who live in Colorado, whether natives or transplants, dreamed of a Colorado where they sat in traffic, driving back and forth to a job that isn’t particularly satisfying.
Most of us dreamed of snowcapped peaks and meadows full of wildflowers bisected by gin-clear mountain streams teeming with trout. We pictured ourselves in these places, a part of the scene itself, as inextricable as the elk, deer, spruce or columbine.
Living on $10K a year is not an end in itself. That’s just a number, the value of which changes from year to year. But simplifying to that extent provides something else.
Freedom, values and less stress
According to Merkel, the three most important benefits of simplifying to this degree are freedom, alignment with your own values, and reducing your stress.
Living in Breckenridge, freedom means time to spend outside, hiking, fishing, skiing or whatever activity you like — and doing more of it. Doing work that is important personally. It’s the good life.
For Merkel, aligning with his own values means that by living on less than $5,000 a year, he is freeing up resources for people who aren’t getting a very big slice of the pie.
“All the people of the world deserve food,” he said.
Plus, Merkel argues that connecting regularly with nature can provide you with energy and renewal of spirit than can fuel your life as you pursue your values.
“Most people I ask tell me that we cannot continue as we are going. We will not consume our way to happiness. We’ve known it since the Beatles sang ‘Money can’t buy me love.’ But even with that knowledge, we continue to make lifestyle choices that oppose our values. It’s insane.”
When I thought about it, I realized that the only time I feel stressed about my lifestyle in Breckenridge is when I want something that I cannot afford — on $10,000 or otherwise. I want it now, typically a new toy of some sort. My friends or someone on the mountain has it, and I think that I’ll be miserable, that I’ll die without it.
It took me a long time to make that connection.
Merkel added, “When I ask people how they’re doing, more often than not they reply ‘I’m busy.’ Simplicity doesn’t automatically guarantee a life without stress, it just makes it easier.”
Merkel recalled an anecdote tailored to Summit County, about a ski instructor who was riding the chairlift with his client.
“You need a website so we can reach you and you can answer our questions any time we want. And a blog,” the client continued, “so we can keep up with your day-to-day life. Also, you need a Facebook page so we can follow you, and recommend you to our friends.”
“Why?” the ski instructor asked.
“So you’ll get more clients.”
“Why do I want that?””
“So you can make more money.”
“Why?” the ski instructor asked.
“So that you can save up and retire.”
The ski instructor thought about it.
“And do what? Move to the mountains and ski?”
Jeff McAbee (jjmcabee@yahoo.com) of Breckenridge is a campus supervisor at Summit High School. He writes for the Summit Daily News.
