Kevin Hendricks

1. What does living simply mean to you?

Living simply means getting by with less and living a lifestyle with fewer complications. We have so many things going on and vying for our time, money and energy. It’s too much. Living simply is about trying to scale back and make life a little more sane. In some ways it’s about living within our means, but I think it’s about more than that.

2. Why is it important to you?

I’ve got a two kids–a four-year-old and a 1-and-a-half-year-old–and that can make life crazy. My wife is a teacher and I watch the kids during the day and do my freelance work at night. That means I don’t have much of a social life or time to unwind. I’m stretched pretty thin, so it’s important to me to minimize the distractions and complications. Fewer bills means less hours I need to work to make ends meet. Fewer commitments means more time with my family. For me it’s more about sanity than anything else.

I also think it’s important because it gives us greater freedom. A few weeks back my wife came up with the idea that she wants to go to Ethiopia (where my son was born) to teach during the summer. It’s an exciting idea, but it’s not going to be cheap or easy. Making it happen is going to require a lot of planning and a lot of cutting back to enable us to do something like that. But if we can make that a lifestyle, if we can live more simply, get by on less, spend less, need less–then it becomes a lot easier to up and move to Ethiopia for six weeks every summer.

3. What steps have you taken to live simply in your day to day life?

This is where it’s hard. It’s one thing to think romantically about living simply and cutting out expenses and reigning things in, but it’s a lot harder to actually do it. The biggest thing my family has done is that we’ve always been a one-car family. When I worked outside the home I took the bus and now at home with the kids we either take the bus, share the car or go without. It’s not easy or always convenient, but it’s been good for us.

I’ve also tried to avoid many of the expensive electronic goodies that are so tempting–the iPhone, the Wii, the flatscreen TV, the DVR, etc. I’m a big fan of technology, but I’m also just fine with the 19″ TV we got as a wedding present more than 9 years ago. We used to have Netflix and I loved it, but we’ve been without it for a couple of years now and don’t really miss it. There are so many things like that that we think of as necessities, but they’re really not.

You just have to make the hard choices and figure out where you can cut back. Right now we’re thinking about cutting back our cell phone plan from a two-phone family plan to a single phone. It’s kind of the opposite of what everyone else is doing with their cell phone, but I think it’ll work for us. And that’ll be another $30 a month we save ($360/year!).

4. What’s the hardest part of your simple journey?

I don’t really think of myself as being on some kind of ‘simple journey’? I’m a cheapskate at heart and I like trying to cut back and get by with less, but I’m not any kind of crusader or great activist at this. I’m just another guy trying to make do. I think the hardest part is that life seems to be geared for complication. If you’ve ever bought a house you know complication. It’s not just the complication of a mortgage payment (which is pretty complicated), but it’s everything else. It’s the insurance, the repairs, the redecorating, the yard work, the garbage bill, the water bill, and on and on it goes, all because you made the decision to buy a house. It’s the same with everything else. You buy a new electronic gizmo, but it doesn’t end there. You have to be three new cords so it connects with your old stuff and suddenly the price balloons and you’ve got more junk cluttering up your office. Nothing is ever simple.

5. What advice would you give others who are on the living simple journey?

I think planning ahead and being dedicated to this idea is really what makes a difference. If you’re not dedicated to it, if you’re not thinking about how you can cut back and live simply, then you just wont’ do it. And you have to plan ahead. You have to save up money, you have to think about where you want to be and how you want to do things. Otherwise your car breaks down and it’s more convenient to buy a new one than to explore other options. Planning and thinking it through and being strategic needs to become a way of life, otherwise it’s a plan B and it just doesn’t happen.

Kevin D. Hendricks is a freelance writer, editor and web geek. He’s the head monkey at his communications company Monkey Outta Nowhere and blogs at KevinDHendricks.com. Kevin and his wife, Abby, life in St. Paul, Minn., with their two kids and two dogs. You can follow him on Twitter: @kevinhendricks.

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