TRULY BASIC
No frozen pizza or tater tots. No boxed mac and cheese. No steak or chops. Eating hamburger meals with no wine or alcoholic beverages. Making cookies instead of buying cookies. Canceling cable, and movie apps. No restaurants. No food delivery services. Now we are talking BASIC.
No clothing or shoe (or purse) purchases, eliminating name brand phone services, no Uber, no flights, no Air B&B.
Forget sports, plays, movie theaters, or musical events which cost more than $10 per person. Forget hosting parties, buying gifts for anyone (under $50 each for birthdays and Christmas) other than family. Forget hiring a lawn service or someone to take care of your landscape or pool. Forget buying new potted flowers or decorative stuff for outside or inside. Now we are talking BASIC.
NOW you can pay off your credit card, usually within just a few months. Doing your own lawn and landscaping you can drop your gym membership. You don’t have time for golf, so you can drop that membership. Now we are talking BASIC.
Now you have time to wash your own windows. That isn’t hard if you do a couple at a time. You can change the air filters in your own car for half what the shop charges (no used oil collected). You have time to find those summer clothes you packed away last fall instead of buying more. You have time to find that tent and camping supplies you haven’t used. You have time to pull out the games and puzzles you no longer use. Now we are talking BASIC.
To be clear, I am not talking about a scarcity mindset, but a sincere decision to change your well-being destination. You have CONTROL, no one else is making these decisions for you. Soon you find your bank account is growing fast. Where did all this money come from? You never had any left over before!!!!
I grew up in a poor, one-income household. We had few extras. When someone had a birthday the family had cake and ice cream and sang happy birthday. There were presents on one’s 7th birthday (why 7?). We never ate at restaurants, never went to shows, never paid for hotels, did not have cable (or even a color TV). We never had a BBQ grill, or steaks to grill on it. But we were happy. In the fall we canned vegetables. Around Halloween we fried home-made doughnuts. In the spring we went on hunts for wild leeks. In June we went hunting for wild blackberries and wild strawberries (you don’t know tart if you’ve never had them). We planted our own garden. We hoed and pulled weeds and plucked the snap peas and green beans, onions, cucumbers, leaf lettuce, radishes, and corn. It was amazing how many of those never made it to the kitchen to be cooked or cut up. Now we are talking BASIC.
The point is, I don’t know how NOT to be BASIC. There’s no pop bottle return law in our state. I pick up aluminum cans as a hobby. The other day, on a walk, we picked up 40 cents worth that others carelessly tossed. It isn’t worth recycling aluminum in Michigan because the state has a bottle return law. But here that metal is 50 cents per pound (in California almost $2), or about 2 cents per can. When I was a kid growing up in Michigan I funded my fun by picking up pop bottles. 10 cents per can or bottle, it didn’t take long to have a few dollars. One year I walked to middle school and made about $4 a week just picking up discarded money (bottles and cans). I didn’t have an allowance, so I created one for myself. There are places an enterprising young teen could make more than $10/hour without a boss and without sweating behind a push mower. Now we are talking BASIC.
Truth is that deciding to be TRULY BASIC requires a seriousness that most can’t endure. Most have been led to believe that they can delete a cup of espresso once a month and a miracle will happen. There is no miracle. This requires mental muscle. Nothing but the BASIC means absolutely no excuses, no detours, no lying to yourself or others. You need to eat, but you don’t need Angus steak. You need water, but you don’t need Avialousious Water. Need transportation, but nothing more than your own car or bicycle. Need clothes, but you already have all you need. Entertainment, but not $174 per person Funny Mouse tickets. Maybe fresh fruit, but (think carefully here) not Tradesman Pete food (why are you paying 3x for an orange that you could have gotten at a normal grocery store?) Unless you have a grave illness you probably don’t need to pay twice the price for non-GMO, farm-fresh, range free rice. Tuna in the can IS fish. Most people I know who claim they are on a budget are not really serious. Not at all. Not on day one and not a month later either. I know almost none who are TRULY BASIC.
I read an article by a writer who CLAIMED she went on a budget and saved $100 in the month she did. To me that was a joke. $100 can be saved merely by making your own coffees at home instead of buying them at the Cafe. It is a chain-restaurant meal per week. It is less than one pair of shoes or a leather purse. In other words, the article writer was not serious. She didn’t scrimp on anything except a few grocery items she didn’t need in the first place. Second, ONE month? What serious person goes on a budget for a single month (only someone who wants to write an article, I guess)?
Most families would save more than $1,000 per month with a TRULY BASIC budget. They could save more if it weren’t for the credit card and car payments. That has to be goal #1…deleting debt. You can’t save long term if you are always paying interest to some “piper.” Throw that extra Grand against that Credit Card, Auto Loan, or Student Loan balance. If you still owe $12,000 on that car you could pay it off in 12 months. Then you have $1,600 to throw at the Credit Card balance every month. Two years in on a serious budget the loans are paid and you have money in the bank. From where did it all come? Toys, restaurants, Harvey’s “Special” Spanish Olives, and glitz you didn’t buy.
When your loans are all paid, you are in a much better financial position. TRULY BASIC allows you to pay off your future bills. When loans no longer steal money from your life you can enjoy some things again, without abandoning your new TRULY BASIC lifestyle. How much interest are you paying for that car, those fine meals out, those shoes, your student loans? The average American family pays just shy of *$650,000 in lifetime interest (according to Self: Money), throwing away over $106 in interest every month just on credit card balances. (*I believe this number is too high). Time right now to dig out of that pit.
Copyright 2025 Donald Whelpley
[PLEASE NOTE that Don is always open to discussing the thoughts and opinions he shares here and welcomes comments as shared in the comment section. He doesn’t use other social media platforms and won’t see whatever you’d like to share with him if you post it elsewhere.
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Name one friend or relative who lives BASIC, not because he must, but because he can.
I bet you don’t know ONE person like that.