As the year comes to a close, it worth relecting on what we’ve accomplished. Even though we’ve slowed down by choice, it often feels as though we’re not doing as much as we would like. This sort of reflection helps us to put things in perspective. A reminder that a little bit each week still adds up over the course of a year.
Below are some highlights, broken into the same categories as our blog posts for ease of navigation.
Give
Throughout the year we celebrated our great fortune of being born in Australia and enjoying a frugal lifestyle by supporting communities and individuals near and far with our time, money & blood.
- Saved the lives of 5 to 10 people by donating more than $50,000 to the most effective charities
- Improved the lives of 1000+ other people through preventative health measures and reduced exposure to disease
- Emelie made her pledge with Giving What We Can to giving 20% of her income
- Jon made 3 blood donations and Emelie organised a giving drive, resulting in at least five additonal people giving
- Supported our local 24/7 food bank with about 100kg of donations purchased from local limited hours charity food store
- Participated in 2 tree planting days in our local community to improve waterway health
Live – At Home
We have begun to really make the most of the flexibility afforded by our frugal lifestyle to do more of the things that really matter.
- Jon retired from regular employment and Emelie has taken at least an extended break
- We cut our personal expenses by an estimated 15% compared to 2024 to approximately $40,000. Last year’s figures here.
- Took on tenants in our converted shed, providing affordable housing and boosting our net income by about $10,000
- Shifted to almost entirely freegan diet, with some dairy for Adam and Dani and 50c chicken frames the remaining animal product purchases, averting ~19 T CO2-e and 95% land-clearing pressure
- Improved our vegan cooking and captured the key learnings with the acronym POMPS.
- We dumpster dived for the first time in November and are now regularly rescuing 20+ kg per week, saving $7000+ per year at current rate
- Guerrilla planted food for first time, working to improve community resilience. Replacing roadside weeds with cassava
- Added bananas to our home garden, tended the Scouts gardens and harvested about 3% of our dietary needs, sharing the excess:
- 2kg of nuts
- 2kg of legumes
- 10kg of tubers
- 30kg of fruit
- 80% of our salad greens
- Exchanged 1kg of our limes with a neighbour for ~50kg of excess oranges
- Exported 3,100 kWh of excess power from our rooftop solar, displacing about 2.2T CO2-e
- Added a $50 timer to our solar hot-water electric booster, cutting approximately 1,700 kWh, generating ~$900 additional feed-in credit
- Purchased 3,500 kWh of 100% green power, including our tenants, averting about 2.5T CO2-e compared to regular grid supply
Live – In The Community
- We attended an average of one or two community events per month
- Deep Adaptation
- Hot Futures
- Repair Cafe
- The Life You Can Save
- Effective Altruism
- Action 4 Animals
- Northey Street City Farm
- Darra Community Festival
- Connected with several local groups with aligned purpose
- Our closest Repair Cafe, sharpening 50+ knives & secateurs and fixing 10+ other items, as well as introducing new volunteers
- Hot Futures forum, connecting food rescuers with food banks looking for food
- Vegan board game community
- Turnstile bike repair hub
- Met 20 new neighbors across eight households, hosting three dinner parties and joining two others
- Hosted eight miniature festivals for friends and community, sharing seasonal abundance
- Joined a networking ride with Hot Futures members and applied emergency medicine after a head-on collision between cyclists
- Assisted a friend with insulation and maintenance issues, saving him $10,000+ and substantial emissions
- Jon shifted superannuation to an ethical fund
- Wrote three letters to government, one to a superannuation fund and one to our bank regarding changes in climate change commitments and greenwashing
- Signed several petitions calling for greater action on key issues
Live – For Fun
While many of the other activities that help to make the world a better place are rewarding in themselves, it’s worth mentioning some other activities and experiences, where fun was a primary motivator. We are living more by making time for
- Zumba and zouk for Emelie
- Scrabble and squash for Jon
- Books, books, books
- Dani: Harry Potter series
- Adam: Artemis Fowl series
- Sunday family movie and finger food
- Soccer, swimming and scouts for Adam and Dani
- Dani has also enjoyed learning piano, crochet & making clothes for pengui
- Emelie has enjoyed curating her thrift-shop wardrobe and adjusting clothes
- Role playing games for Adam, Jon and Emelie
- Colouring and crafting
- Board and card games
- Exploding kittens for Adam
- Harry Potter for Dani
- So Clover and Ecosystems for Jon and Emelie
- Adam has enjoyed Roblox Rivals and Dani Minecraft
- Emelie, Adam and Dani started learning Mandarin
Move
We are still working on plans and capabilities for visiting Southeast Asia next year. To stay within our share of planetary boundaries, we will only do this if we can hitchhike on sailing vessel(s) going that way and back. So practicing sailing has been an important and time consuming, though rewarding activity.
- We all sailed for the first time and Jon covered a total ofover 1200 nautical miles with more than 20 days and 18 nights at sea
- Jon hitchhiked for first time, covering ~1,100km with 9 drivers and one sea crossing under sail
- We returned from visiting family in Canberra by rail from Sydney, saving about 2 T CO2-e compared to flying
- We had 2 bikes stolen from home, recovered one of them, donated three outgrown bikes and bought two second-hand replacements, saving about $2,000 compared to new purchases
- Adam and Dani had their first bikepacking experience, cycling ~50km over two days
- Free camped first time since 2008, Jon spent 5 nights with no tent, whole family 1 night with tent
- Cut our car use to <1000km, saving as much as $23,000 and 5T CO2-e compared to typical household use
Reflect
We learned, and we shared:
- Read 26 relevant books and hundreds of papers. Top recommendations are on the Resources page
- Recorded nine interviews and have published four of them
- Gave two formal presentations and one informal
- Issued two formal media releases and had no responses
- Contacted two experts and had two responses, interviewing one of them
- Launched Living More with Less website in April
- 50 posts
- 64,000 words
- 2,800 visitors
- 4,800 views
- 6 reader comments
- 35 subscribers
- Top post was How We Afford to Give: A Story of Privilege, Choice and a Few Missteps with 540 views
- Our top referrers were Facebook (1,000), Search Engines (200), Reddit (170) and X (90)
- We launched Facebook page in May
- 39 reels
- 73 other posts
- 3,560 three second+ views;
- 818 one minute+ views
- 34 hours watch time
- 547 interactions
- 82 comments
- 10 shares
- 135 followers
- Top content was the Brisbane to Airlie Day 1 Reel with 1,100 views
- We launched our YouTube channel in May
- 61 shorts
- 21 long form videos
- 16,900 engaged views
- 242 hours watch time
- 418 likes
- 32 comments
- 71 shares
- 102 subscribers
- Top content was Shelling Pigeon Peas by Hand with 1,100 views and 11.5h watch time. Now blocked due to copyright challenge…
- Launched TikTok in May, but it has never had any views
- Launched our Instagram Page in December
- 2 posts
- 12 views
- 5 interactions
- 6 followers
- Lauched our Reddit page in April
- 14 posts
- 305 comments on others’ posts
- 2,400 karma
- 17 followers
- Our top posts were all in Dataisbeautiful community and all have been removed by Moderators without explanation. Typical views of 100,000+ with many positive comments and dozens of shares.
Looking Ahead
Part of our plan to address a common barrier to effective giving is to visit the communities we have been supporting to show how real the people are who have benefited and how real the benefits are. Not content with putting our money where our mouths are, we are going to put our mouths (and the rest of us) where our money has gone and take our audience along for the ride. This would be hitchhiking across the oceans, and to the extent possible, the land to stick to our ethos of one-planet living.
But, we are only going to do so if our audience reaches a critical number. This is balance, where the likely good we will achieve will be greater than if we stay in Australia, return to work and crank our giving to the next level. That number is 1000 followers across all platforms before we commit to joining a vessel. The weather is most appropriate to commence the journey between May and November so that sets out timeline to build from the current number of approximately 300.
Like to Help?
The very best thing is to start giving to an effective charity and let other people know you are doing it. Then, if there is anything you’ve seen or read on this blog or any of our social media, please comment and share with other people you feel might be interested.
Don’t forget to check out the Make a Change page if you’re contemplating your own next steps.
