It's not easy to change your life. But sometimes your finances insist on it. 'Impossible NOT to spend money'

My husband and I found ourselves in a financial headlock as the due date for our first child approached in the fall of 2006.

There we were, living in a cramped apartment atop five flights of narrow stairs in one of the world's most overpriced cities. Our rent was about $1,225 a month -- a steal by some standards. And we had a slightly bigger fixer-upper cottage in the country; the monthly payment on that was $751.

Altogether, our overhead was still less than what most of our friends were paying for a single home. We felt swell about that.

But the truth was we were stretched. With the baby coming, and because I worked at home, we would need a larger apartment soon -- at a market rate of about $3,000 a month -- or, a friend suggested, we could move to the country. How much did we save?

5 reasons to move

At first the idea seemed ludicrous. Far too complicated. We laughed. Why on earth should we uproot our lives, change our habits, leave our friends, forward our mail and embark on a completely strange and radically rural -- cows in the backyard and everything -- lifestyle?

Then again, what was our alternative? Stick with the status quo and keep struggling? My husband and I started talking, took out a calculator and talked some more.

Talk back: Are you trying to simplify and save?

It turned out there were several good reasons to make this leap.

• We were tired of doing New York City math and always coming up short.

• We calculated that even with my husband leaving his job, we could save money.

• Living outside New York would cut our cost of living in half.

• Besides, if we stayed in the city, the only other option was for both of us to work even harder to make even more money.

Often more money is not the answer, although most people think it is. It's not how much you have that brings you quality of life. It's learning to spend on quality of life. And that was the fifth reason. Given how much moving would boost our standard of living, the country life looked like a bargain. A million-dollar lifestyle

Even though I'd written a book about this very issue, I don't know if my own supposed wisdom had sunk in quite the way it did when we finally shook the dust of Brooklyn off our feet and slouched up to the Catskills.

Unexpected, radical change

Looking back, we were prepared for some things to change. I don't think we were ready for how radical and far-reaching -- and life-enriching -- those changes would be. Trip to the babysitter

First, the economic trade-offs didn't balance out as planned. Some things were a lot cheaper, such as the fully licensed $4-an-hour day care. Other things were more expensive:

• We spent more on heat. Who doesn't in a 145-year-old house?

• Living full time in our little fixer-upper also meant . . . fixing it up! Hello, Home Depot.

• It was pricier than we thought to keep up a steady round of visits to family and friends, now hours away.

On the other, money-saving hand:

• We spent far less on going out to eat, buying coffee and other random acts of shopping that city life demands. Saving on the little things

• Even when we did go out -- and being new parents, those occasions were rare -- the cost of a beer, a martini or almost any meal was about half the price it was in the city.

• People living in a small, rural community focus more on shared meals, swapping goods and helping each other out, and that collective emphasis on spending less meant that we saved more.

And -- a nice bonus after living in the financial one-upmanship of the city -- there was no pressure to pretend any differently.

Coming out ahead

In the end, financially, I thought we would break even. I was pleasantly surprised when 2007 turned out to be my most profitable year ever.

We had expected to lose about $1,500 a month when my husband quit his job to become a stay-at-home dad (except for two afternoons a week when our son was in day care). Instead, with my husband not only taking care of our son but also running the house and being Mr. Fix-It, I was able to work more.

But the real gain has been getting control, real control, over our finances and our priorities.

It's hard to stay on top of your money, never mind make progress toward your goals, when you're trying to live a low-cost life in a high-priced environment. You're always cutting corners, promising yourself you'll save more next month.

Living the simple life, for us, has meant having the breathing room to decide where we really want our money to go.

Well, I'd really like our money to buy us a few weeks in Italy, Spain and Greece -- and that will come, I hope. Meanwhile, our priority was and is financial stability.

We had gotten used to almost but never quite reaching stability. We needed to get a grip on it.

This is a work in progress. But in the past year we've paid off more than $6,000 in credit card debt and almost $5,000 in back taxes (oops), installed four energy-efficient windows in our first house (a $4,500 investment), socked away more in savings and bought a new house (renting out the old fixer-upper to cover those costs).

Some readers thought it was fiscally imprudent to buy a new home, given that we still have about $5,000 in credit card debt to blast. We'll see. For the moment, I can assure readers that our family's investment in a simpler way of life has been nothing but profitable, so far.

Published June 16, 2008