Living Small and Saving Big
Living small is a great way to save money. Today we’ve got a guest post on 1500 Days To Freedom about how our family of four lives in just 1,000 square feet.
1500 Days To Freedom is a blog written by Mr.1500 (he blogs anonymously). The blog is about his family’s goal to achieve financial independence by amassing $1,000,000 of investments in just 1500 days. Check out our guest post about living small and please make sure to check out the rest of the site too!
In the guest post you’ll find a detailed layout of our house. We live in a three bedroom bungalow that measures just 40ft by 25ft. We have a full size kitchen, living room and dining room but our bedrooms range from just ~80 square feet to ~120 square feet.
We chose to live small for many reasons, all of which are covered in the post, but one important reason was that it lets us save big. Our annual housing costs are approximately $15,000 lower than other family homes in our area.
Living small also allowed us to buy a house in a great location. This helps us save big on transportation every year.
In total, for both housing and transportation, our annual budget is only $13,220 per year.
For the full post click the link above!
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I’ll have to head over and check out the full post! I’ve been trying very hard to embrace living small. We essentially only use the first floor of our rambler (1,000 square feet) with some storage in the basement as well as a rental unit. Many friends of ours are buying homes in the 3,000+ square foot range. While the houses are big and have so much space, I am confident the longer we can stay in our home the more we can build up investments, pay down debt, etc. without having a huge mortgage hanging over our head.
Living small is definitely good for your wallet! There are other advantages too, mostly the time savings, but also just less stress in general. Three thousand square feet is a big home. I have to expect there are rooms that are never used in those. That or rooms are very large. Either way its a lot of money to tie up into something you don’t use 100%. I think your 1,000 sqft rambler sounds awesome. Especially if it has a rental suit for extra income. Thanks for the comment DC.
I just checked out the post, you have a lovely home! I love the brick exterior. Also your lawn looks really nice. I’ll have to message you on tips for lawn care sometime. haha.
Currently we are 2 adults 1 toddler and 1 dog in 450 square feet. It’s a bit tight but temporary.
Thank you GYM! We love the brick too! We looked around for a long time to find the right home. One of our criteria was a brick exterior.
That’s amazing that you live in just 450 square feet! I would love to know how you do it. I’m a big fan of living small. It’s not just a financial benefit but also a lifestyle and environmental benefit.
My wife and I lived in a small 500 square foot condo before buying our first home and we often discuss how we’d make that work with two kids. We think we could do it, but it would be at the extreme end of what we could do. The nice thing would be that it was in an extremely urban location, so we would basically spend most of our time out of the condo.