After isolated appearances in the past, it’s now becoming an epidemic. More people are moving out, making the conscious choice to value quality of life over career and job security. There have always been dropouts but this time the demographic is different: 30-ish couples, usually with kids, around 8 or 10 years of job experience, owned your own house, sick of commuter hell. We’re looking for a vegetable garden and a place in the countryside, a village you can walk to, more time to spend on things we love, with life and consumption on a more personal scale.
The myths of our parents’ generation are dying fast and no one believes the ads any more. Making more money than your parents isn’t the key to happiness. There are no more jobs for life. No one selling anything has your interests at heart. Life doesn’t start the day you retire and in the meantime the right car, gadgets, and soft porn aren’t going to make the waiting any less painful.
But when downshifting, you’re still buying into a dream. I dreamed for years about getting out of London and our future house was often the backdrop. It’s easy for the house to become the key to the idyll and so you go looking for a house on the edge of your means. And then, especially if you’re renovating, it quickly moves beyond your means. Sure in our case our early optimism was based on the cost-estimates of a crook, but it’s happened in plenty of other cases too.
It’s important to love the house you move into but it could be so much easier if you fall in love with a smaller, cheaper, simpler house. Here’s the trap: you stretch to the house that you can just afford and it soon ends up costing more. So one of you is forced to return to the rat race in one form or another just to service the mortgage while the other downshifts. It’s not easy when two people in the same house are travelling at very different speeds and the consequences are predictable.
We’ve just managed to scrape over the line restoring our own place in the country, leaving us with plenty of work to do ourselves (with help from mates like Martin, Sundried Steve, and especially Jason H). But things would have been disastrously different if we’d bought the 6-bedroom bargain that we fell in love with on our first visit to Marche. If that had happened, our downshift would have been over before it started.
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7 June, 2007 at 16:24
Jason Hawkes
Right, thats it then
Gonna build me a small wattle and daub hut in a field- might have to beat up a poor tenant farmer to get it but, hey-ho- omelettes and eggs and such like.
Put a big plasma TV in it with loads of (soft) porn channels.
Every morning go to the office 10 metres away ( built from some old blue pallets and a tarpaulin) doubtless I’ll have to fight my way through the rush hour cows and sheep to get to it.
In that 10 metres will be the allotment, so I’ll do the weeding and tending in the morning on the way to the office, and pick dinner on the way home.
Best of both worlds!
7 June, 2007 at 19:18
Bealers
Great timing Casey and incisive as always.
A few observations:
It’s around a year since we did paragraph #1 and whilst obviously it was nowhere near as hard-core as what you guys did – a renovation project sounds frankly far too much like hard work – but it was still a massive upheaval for us nonetheless.
The thing we know we’ve done right is renting a house rather than buying. Not only did we save a packet in solicitors fees, stamp duty and surveys, but we can also afford to live in something bigger compared to that which we could afford to buy. I’ll admit that one loses a certain sense of stability with renting as the landlord could kick us out after the notice period and then eat our veg but it’s a risk we were (and are still are) willing to take. I guess the fact that we still own a house elsewhere has some part to play there.
Also I’m not sure how we’d have coped if I didn’t already have a self employed mind set. I think having some sort of trade (be that physical work or something virtual such as consulting) is A Very Good Thing because assuming that you can at least get *some* work there’s a certain degree of choice about how hard you have to do it; need a new soft porn channel subscription? Ok work harder next month.
Finally I’ve not had any issues going to work each day – OK it’s not like I’ve got a commute – as has been previously mentioned it’s much easier than looking after kids and the house!
It’s still the best thing I’ve ever done and I’m a better person for it but you’re definitely right to point out that the move needs to be well thought out and you need to be realistic. Those bills still need paying and you’re unlikely to have a massive personality change. If you’re the sort that doesn’t get off your ass to get things done then moving somewhere else with a nicer view won’t suddenly make all those new years resolutions like – say – ‘getting fit’ happen.
8 June, 2007 at 5:46
mom
Much easier to “drop out” in the EU where you all have subsidized health insurance…in the US I think there’s way more pressure to have both partners working at their peak, not only for the paycheck (and yes, I think Americans are as much or more materialistic than Europeans) but for the health benefits. New studies show that your generation in the US is NOT making more than their parents and can never hope to. (Actually Case, you wouldn’t have to work too hard to make more than YOUR parents…you might be the exception to the rule). No matter, I applaud the yearning for a simpler life, a great veg garden exploding w/ courgettes, a pile of dirt for the kids to play on, and Mom and Dad at home as much as possible…it worked 12,000 years ago….just don’t give up your good books, a good restaurant, a nearby museum, and a network of friends.
8 June, 2007 at 10:26
Jason Hawkes
It is a conundrum. Melissa and I often talk about leaving London, but we both see the trains vomiting out millions of rather pasty looking marching ants every morning. That thought, that we might have to do that, probably does more to keep us here than anything else.
It helps to live in a quiet area; a good, clean area with several parks and a fair sprinkling of culture as well. If I was still in a noisy shared flat on Walthamstow High St, the commute may look quite inviting. As it is, we regularly go to Melissa’s parents place in Sussex. Beautiful big flint cottage backing on to acres of woodland and a view of the sea. But so noisy, though. Next to an A-road where lots of middle aged bikers roar up and down at 8 on a Sunday Morning. We actually come back to London for more peaceful surroundings!
I guess I just have a hankering for a large shed/workshop to tinker in and a garden big enough to grow food
10 June, 2007 at 1:03
John Cole
In getting the house you want, it is important to get as much as you want as close to the edge. Go over the edge and downshifting is no more. We went looking at property on the Central Coast last weekend and we found houses we could afford and then added the extras and upgrades and suddenly you are alot closer to the edge than you think. Ouch.
I don’t think it is about happiness, but maybe contentment. An ability to appreaciate what you have and bask in it as much as you can. Our era of rising expectations creates a hunger that is hard to deny, especially over here. People what more here and don’t appreciate that they have more now than they might have with the newer, bigger house.
I am all for ambition but it has to be tempered with a time period of reflecting and appreciating what it is you have now. We spend so much time trying to get more, make it better, that we don’t appreaciate the tremendous amount of gifts we already have. After that it is opportunity cost, pure and simple.
Your mom is right, we, especially at our age, have to worry about some basics in life that have to be met and health care for us has moved to the top of the list. For you it needs to be the health of the family and such. We in this country want to see the benefit package before we want to see the salary. What does that say about the world we have created?
1 July, 2007 at 23:06
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