Living Lean

I was blessed to grow up in one of the richest counties in America.

Hamilton County, Indiana. You don’t have to be rich to live here. My family certainly never was. But there are pockets of wealth throughout the county that raise the standard.

Over the years, Hamilton County has become an escape from the “big city” of Indianapolis. People work in Indy and come home to Fishers, Noblesville, Carmel, or Westfield.

The population of this county has exploded in my lifetime. When I was a kid, Fishers was a town. Now it’s so busy that even driving during a weekday afternoon can be infuriating.

And now, I’m getting a taste of how expensive it is to live here.

My parents moved here at a good time. In the early 2000s, it wasn’t crowded yet and houses were cheap. 25 years later, I’m finally moving out and that isn’t the case anymore.

I was thrown a handful of curveballs after graduating from college in 2020, so I decided to stay at home. It was damn-near impossible to find a job for my first year of true adulthood. Then I found one, but didn’t make much money.

Then I started touring, and it made no sense to spend $1K+ a month when I was going to be home half of the year, if I was lucky.

Now, I’m done touring, have a job close by, and am ready to leave. But it’s expensive as hell.

Apartments in this area are $1,000 a month if you’re lucky. Many studios with less than 500 square feet of space are over $1,200 a month. My job pays fine, but I’m certainly not killing it out here.

So there are a few options I have…

The first is to find a roommate. 2-bedroom apartments are a lot more palatable. But my brother has decided he doesn’t want to work for the foreseeable future and my friends are either married or living in another state now. I’m open to the idea, but it doesn’t seem likely at this point.

The second and more controllable path is living as lean as possible.

I’d say I prefer this path over finding a roommate for a couple of reasons. One is that I want to control my interactions with others a little bit more. I am pursuing myself this year, which sounds incredibly corny but it is the truth. I’ve spent a lot of time people-pleasing over the years and chasing people that didn’t want me in their life as much as I wanted them.

It all came to a head last fall, and I felt so broken that I drowned myself in alcohol for a good two months. I’ve spent this year correcting some of those past mistakes.

So living alone feels like the better pathway for me.

Living lean also sounds like a fun challenge. I’ve always been interested in money, hence this newsletter. Every day we make choices with our money that can either set us up for future success or cripple our potential.

I spent a lot of money while touring and that was money well spent. Being in that unique position, I wasn’t going to cheap-out on amazing experiences because I felt like being frugal. That is the kind of fearful attitude that leads to unfulfillment and regret down the line.

My days of being frugal are now — where I have nothing but time on my hands and a lot of cool experiences in my back pocket.

I’d love to buy Pokémon cards and play golf every week, but I don’t need to. I was able to easily do those things in the past when I had no rent to pay.

But the rent is about to be due, so I’m cutting costs. I’m grocery shopping a lot different now and making coffee at home.

Eventually, the salary will grow. The books will sell and the newsletters will pay off. But for now, the credit card isn’t going to see much action.