We live here now.

Summerside PE offers quite a low cost of living, and for the time being, any other place we try to live will need to compare favorably on basic living expenses. For our purposes, “basic living expenses” includes housing, taxes, insurance, food, electricity, heating or cooling, and communications. Put differently, we need to be warm, dry, fed, in contact with the world around us, and mildly entertained. We evaluated the financial aspect of our experiment on this basis.

Villa Serena, Mazatlán, México

On the advice of relatives, we chose to experiment with living at Villa Serena, located in Mazatlán’s old downtown. We found a one-bedroom apartment for USD 653 per month. This price included MXN 300 worth of electricity per month, and access to the amenities, although we did have to pay an additional MXN 150 per month to use the laundry facilities and MXN 25 per 19-litre bottle of water. We ended up spending a total of CAD 1129 + MXN 13942, or approximately CAD 2280 on housing costs for three months. That makes CAD 760 per month for rent, cooling, water, cable TV, and internet. The corresponding items cost us CAD 782 per month in Summerside. That makes it possible to live in Mazatlán quite inexpensively. We love that.

Cooking with my youngest sister-in-law, Mary

We ate quite well, mostly cooking, but occasionally eating out. We certainly enjoyed a lot of Hector’s bread at Molika Bakery, which we mentioned in a previous article. We spent about CAD 2280 on food for three months, or CAD 760 per month, which makes for a telling coincidence: we value food. We spent about CAD 183 on our Molika Bakery habit, CAD 32 on coffee beans, CAD 934 on shopping at the big grocery store, CAD 156 at the local market , CAD 216 on pizza, and the rest (about CAD 759) on eating out. After we returned home, we computed what we spent on food in June unrelated to travel, and it came to just under CAD 1000.

Traveling in style with our good friend, Jen

We love how little transportation costs at home, and in Mazatán, the taxis and pulmonías didn’t disappoint. We spent CAD 136 on transportation, excluding the trips to and from the airport, which totaled an additional CAD 53. Given the flat rate of CAD 6 or 7.50 per trip in Summerside, CAD 136 would buy about 17 trips, or 8 round trips, at home. We probably use about 4 rounds trips per month at home, which costs around CAD 180-200 over three months, depending on where we need to go. While we encountered some trouble flagging down a pulmonía in Mazatlán, we found the service overall both efficient and pleasant to use. I also owe the taxistas a debt of gratitude for letting me practise Spanish with them.

I think I can make a strong case that Mazatlán offers us an excellent place to live, with a cost of living very similar to Summerside. We consider our experiment a financial success, at least on the surface. We couldn’t resist looking at some real estate listings, and while houses cost considerably more there than at home, we had to double-take at the property taxes those listings quoted. As a single data point, a house listed at USD 250k carried property taxes of USD 200 per year. This compares favorably to the CAD 1250 per year we pay in Summerside. Although we would need a cash infusion to move there, it appears that we could live in Mazatlán spending under our arbitrary limit of CAD 2000 per month for basic living expenses.

At iwillteachyoutoberich.com, Ramit Sethi asked this recently:

It seems like 98% of personal-finance material (blogs, magazines, books) focus on spending LESS — keeping a budget, saying “no, no, no” to lattes, jeans, and vacations.

Why?

Why don’t they cover earning more, or negotiating, or increasing your responsibilities at work, or understanding the psychology of your own behavior, or all the other things besides cutting down on spending?

I’m trying to formulate 3 crisp answers.

So, what do you think? Why is the vast majority of personal-finance material focused on cutting down on spending?

I answered in his comments, but I wanted to repeat that answer here. I hope you find it useful.

I learned from Your Money or Your Life that for most people, most of the time, spending less is easier than earning more. I found that to work for us, and it was a key step in retiring at 34 instead of in our 50s. Unfortunately, most people conclude that they must limit spending to a predefined budget, and find that difficult to make work. I don’t set budgets.

Budgets don’t work because there’s no such thing as a typical month. I also learned that from Your Money or Your Life. For this reason, we never budgeted, but instead, tracked our expenses, looked for wasteful expenses, then eliminated them. We asked ourselves the question, “Do I value this expenditure?” When we answered “No”, we stopped spending that expenditure. We made a quantum leap when we decided that we didn’t value living in an expensive city like Toronto any more.

Now, fortunately for us, when we reduced our expenses, we had an active profit each month, which we turned into passive income generating assets, and the compounding effect took care of the rest. Some families can’t do this. Even after eliminating expenditures they don’t value, they still run on an active deficit each month. These families need help to start earning more money, which usually demands an investment they already can’t afford.

At the same time, Rich Dad, Poor Dad has pointed our attention to the tendency of families to spend more as they earn more. As a result, earning more does not translate to increased active monthly profit (nor reduced active monthly deficit), meaning that it does not lead to increased passive income and more financial freedom.

I would conclude from all this that first focusing on spending less leads to better results than first focusing on earning more.

I had started to write this post as “Saving money at the Farmer’s Market*.”  But then I realized that I don’t actually believe in saving money at the farmer’s market: if something looks good or we know we need it, we buy it.

We came back from our very first market trip saying, “Well, I didn’t think we were going to need a cheese budget to live here!”  We probably spend between $15 – $25 on cheese alone each week.  If you think this is just another latte factor, then you’ve likely never had applewood smoked cheddar, Le Sieur de Duplessis, organic PEI Gouda from the Cheese Lady or truffle-infused brie.  These aren’t luxuries in our household; they’re essential staples.

Even produce can be more expensive at the farmer’s market: cucumbers are $1.50 and a bag of salad greens is between $2.00 and $3.00.  But, we’ve had greens last over two weeks in the fridge (undertaking no special freshness-extending methods) so not buying food to feed the compost bin is a definite financial win.  Not to mention that the delicious salad greens we’ve been able to get have caused us to swear off iceberg lettuce forever!

Every Saturday, during our walk back from the market, we tally up what we’ve spent.  This week, it was about $120.  (We have a house guest coming this week, so we were buying for an extra person, too.) $46 of that went to fish truck guy for salmon, smoked salmon, haddock (Heavenly Halibut was sold out by 9:20 a.m.!) and scallops.  About $35 went to cheese, shitake mushrooms ($11) and a package of German sausage.  $21 was spent on produce (greens of all kinds, onions, herbs, peas, cucumbers).  And rounding out the spoils, $5 for chorizo (our first purchase so far from Pleasant Pork, since we don’t eat a lot of pig) , $5 for eggs and beef from “eggs and beef guy” and $4 for PEI strawberries.

So far it doesn’t sound like we’re much of a financial role model, especially given that we still need to use ValueFoods to supplement with things like milk, cream, butter, flour, rice, snacking fruit (apples, oranges, pears, bananas), lemon and limes, tea and cat treats.  But in many ways, our farmer’s market shopping is completely in tune with our financial philosophy: spend your money on what you value.

Even when we don’t necessarily spend less in absolute dollars, shopping at the farmer’s market significantly ups our value per dollar spent.  Here are just a few of those values we get for our money at the farmer’s market:

1. Quality: How many times have you bought a cucumber or an onion from a store and, totally seduced by the aroma, had to try it right away and then make everyone around you try it.  An onion for crying out loud!  And how many times does the captive audience think, “Oh, I’ll try it to be polite and shut this guy up,” but then exclaim, “Hey, that is pretty awesome!”  When every meal or quick snack of apple and cheese turns out to be a local food love-fest, I’d say you’re doing pretty well.  We value knowing where our food comes from, who produces it and knowing that we never have to eat crap again. (Can you believe we’re worried about the quality of food we’re going to find in Toronto because we’ve been spoiled by PEI?)
2. Quantity, or lack thereof (ie. “enough”): Good food comes in smaller packages, or at least has a higher unit cost.  We naturally, therefore, think more carefully about exactly how much to purchase.  Will we eat this all before it goes bad?  Do I really need this much? Compare that to how many $0.59 heads of cabbage we’ve never fully used.  Waste is waste, and if we’re willing to waste pennies, we’re willing to waste dollars.  Cutting waste by buying products that are too dear to waste has made us carefully and consciously consider how much is enough.
3. Intention: Yes, there are jewelery and craft vendors at the farmer’s market, but honestly, the chances of us walking out with a wooden lighthouse as an impulse purchase are slim.  When we go to the market, we’re there to buy food (specifically the basics) and there are no new shiny kitchen gadgets or snack food sales to steer us off course.  Although $120 for our weekly basics may seem high (and this week we’re expecting company this week so we erred on the side of being over stocked), if we’ve ever walked out of the Superstore paying less than that, and with only food items in our cart, I’d be shocked.  Shopping at the farmer’s market is our equivalent of the “make a list and stick to it” tip.  If we are tempted by something we hadn’t intended to purchase, at least we know it will be quality local food and our money will go to someone in our . . .
4. Community: OK, I know some people are still “eggs and beef” guy or “fish truck guy” in my mind, but at least we recognize each other and enjoy our transactions.  I’ve always said that one of my reasons for eating local was to have a network so that if ever the *&?!%# hit the fan, we’d have a food source.  And in a strange turn of events, while buying the Succulent Shitake this week, Tina confided that she’d never tried them herself and she asked me how we prepared them.  I never thought we’d have the chance to give back to the community anything other than our cash.  But, since I take pictures of everything we make/eat anyway, it might be nice to give the vendors something (a scrapbook page, a recipe?  Sadly I’m not the crafty/creative type) showing how we used and enjoyed their food.  Since we travel too often (as it stands now, anyway) to actually grow anything ourselves, this interaction and participation with our food supply gives us a connection to our food that we enjoy.

So, just like we make a distinction between “retired” and “rich”, we also differentiate between “spending less” and “spending well.”  Our goal isn’t to reduce our spending to the bare minimum.  Reducing our spending at all costs would at times be at odds with our values of purchasing high quality, healthy local products and supporting our community. Our goal is to reduce our wasteful spending to the bare minimum, spending that doesn’t give good value in return.

We’re saving money by not wasting money, and thereby able to feel like we’re living rich even though we’re clearly not. When you can get so much value from purchasing the basic necessities, things you have to buy anyway**, then maybe you’ll be less likely to make impulse or excess purchases that don’t really make you happy.

Do you think it’s crazy to get excited over your particular choice of laundry detergent?  TP? Olive oil?  Toothpaste? Maybe if you allowed yourself to buy the stuff you really liked (or to spend the time on making your own) rather than picking up the cheapest no-name brand or whatever’s on sale this week, then you’d feel more satisfied and less deprived as you navigate the superstores.  Maybe you’d feel a greater connection to a community (“Hey, you use the soap in the bottle covered with crazy, religious rants, too!”) or maybe you’d just feel good every single time you washed the dishes that the suds going down the drain aren’t causing shrinking testicles in frogs.  Maybe you’d be more likely to tell yourself, “I can’t afford this Meatball Grill Basket (thanks, Unclutterer.com!) because I know I spend a little more than the average person on good cheese every week.”

Spending well can lead to spending less.  Take the time to think about what you truly value — and more importantly, what you spend money on that you don’t actually value.  Then, even if your absolute dollars spent figure doesn’t change significantly (though there’s a good chance it will), at least you’ll gradually reallocate your resources to align with your values.  That’s true “retail therapy.”

* It seems like it really should be farmers’ market or maybe even farmers market.  My last choice would be farmer’s market (there’s definitely more than one farmer), but that’s what’s on the sign outside the building, so that’s the phrase I’m using.

** Not everyone needs to buy food, but most of us aren’t farmers.  For us, food shopping is a necessity.  But, everyone has their own list of essential purchases; even our local farmers need to buy TP, I’m guessing!

I have just now read an article at consumerist.com that gives 15 ways to save money when shopping for groceries. We do not hold saving money as our primary concern when shopping for groceries, but the desire to save money does inform our decision-making when our other basic rules don’t do the job, so we don’t always follow all consumerist.com’s rules. Unless saving money is your top priority, I don’t think you should follow these rules blindly either. Let’s go item-by-item:

1. Make a list and stick to it. Lists focus your shopping and are the single best way to save money.
   I strongly prefer to do this, not just to save money, but because grocery shopping is not a pleasurable task for me. I don’t hate it, but I also don’t particularly like it; I do it because it needs doing. A list is a way to know when I’ve done enough shopping. Not only that, making the list at home encourages us to think about what we are going to eat, not only to buy just enough, but also to be sure we plan to eat what we buy. I strongly dislike wasting food by letting it rot. Since we travel so often, we need to be especially careful about this in the 3-4 days before we plan to leave. The fact those who make a list tend to buy fewer impulse items, which helps them spend less is a happy side-effect.
2. Compare unit pricing, not box size. As with good things, good prices sometimes come in small packages.
   Since we shop 2-3 times per week, we tend to buy smaller quantities at a time anyhow, which means I only reach for larger quantities of non-perishable items when the unit price of the larger package is considerably lower. Buying smaller quantities of items means buying them more often, which means storing less at home and more easily taking advantage of deep sales.
3. If you only need a handful of items, use a basket, not a cart. Empty space cries to be filled.
   I like to do even more: we have made the ecologically-minded choice of reusable cloth shopping bags. We take 2-4 bags with us, fill them, then stop. If I can’t carry my groceries around the store, I surely won’t find it easy to carry them home. While I don’t believe that I need to fill empty space in a cart, I do know that I eat all the food in front of me, so I can’t claim to be entirely immune to this psychological phenomenon.
4. If it’s not on your list, don’t pick it up. According to Paco Underhill in Why We Buy: “Virtually all unplanned purchases…come as a result of the shopper seeing, touching, smelling, or tasting something that promises pleasure, if not total fulfillment.”
   While I don’t follow this rule in a draconian fashion, I do strongly question everything we pick up that isn’t on the list. I know this annoys Sarah, and I understand that the question “Do we really need this?” sounds condescending, but the technique works.
5. Shop at the edge of the store. That’s where the healthier, cheaper items hide.
   For me, this is a health-minded choice, rather than a wallet-minded choice. The only items we purchase regularly from the stacks include vegetable broth, canned tuna, turbinado sugar, spices, canned tomatoes for chili, honey, peanut butter, cleaning supplies, storage bags and paper products. We just don’t buy processed snack food or pop anymore, and I don’t miss them.
6. Disavow brand loyalty and swear allegiance to the lowest price.
   This is one area where our desire for good products trumps our desire to save money. If we know the cheaper product is inferior and we care about that, we buy the better product, such as when we spend $15/pound on Kicking Horse Coffee. We also buy local products where we can, which represents a longer-term saving strategy, including Giguere Farms honey (Winnipeg isn’t local, but it’s more local than the US). That said, we are not loyal to brands, but rather loyal to products that give us something great beyond the price. If Kicking Horse Coffee started to suck, we would buy Folgers. If Giguere Farms moved to Montana, we’d buy something else. In all other cases, we tend to go with the lowest-priced product that we don’t know we can enjoy.
7. Consider generics. You usually get the same quality, without the unnecessary branding.
   Since we buy mostly produce, this doesn’t concern us as much as it used to. We do like to buy bread baked in-store.
8. Learn to love coupons. With practice, you can buy almost $150 worth of stuff for $5.
   I’m not a coupon kind of guy, because too often coupons require me to buy products I wouldn’t ordinarily buy. Rather than focusing on coupons, I like to keep my list flexible enough that I can take advantage of sale prices. If we have “berries” on the list, and blackberries are on sale, I might buy more blackberries than raspberries. Perhaps we are missing out on coupons, but given the items we tend to buy, I don’t think the potential savings are anywhere near 97%.
9. Make one big shop, rather than several small ones. You’ll save on gas while inoculating against wasteful spending.
   We save on gas the old-fashioned way: we walk. This means we buy less, get a little more exercise, and think more about what we buy.
10. Buy from bulk bins. Why pay for packaging and marketing when you can reach right in and scoop out exactly what you need?
    We don’t buy much of the stuff you find in bulk bins, but when we want nuts and seeds, we head to the bulk bins.
11. Check your receipt. Don’t let an errant scan ruin your hard work.
    We shop at Safeway, who have a “club card” program, which essentially gives lower prices to anyone willing to fill out an application form for a card. Occasionally the point-of-sale system registers the regular price, rather than the club price. I try to pay attention. Given that we shop more often and buy less stuff, I find it relatively easy to remember the low Club prices and notice when the point-of-sale system has the wrong price. It’s harder to do that when you buy $250 worth of groceries at once. We buy less, we spend less on errant prices.
12. Shop alone. Science shows that we spend more when we’re with company.
    Sarah and I go to the store together, but shop separately: I take half the list, and she takes the other half. I find we spend less time in the store that way.
13. Track your spending so you can see what’s eating your money. Committed receipt hawks can spot price cycles to help guide their shopping.
    We have tracked all our spending at points in the past, per the recommendation of the classic Your Money or Your Life. We haven’t done this recently, mostly because we have kept our spending well under control the past year. We might benefit from doing this again, especially since we travel so much and we might find it easy to spend “in vacation mode” while on the road, even though when I work, we don’t exacly find ourselves on vacation!
14. Eat a meal before shopping. Shopping on a full stomach tamps down impulse spending and keeps you focused on your list.
    I have never been concerned about this. If anything, when I’m hungry, I want to buy exactly those things I want to eat right now, then leave the store. This helps me buy less, not more.
15. Shop without a car. Nothing limits spending like knowing you’ll have to carry your goods home.
    I find it sad that they have this tip last. I would put it first. Nothing limits spending in general like not having tens cubic meters of space to put all the crap you might buy, groceries or otherwise.

I hope you have found this useful. Take care, and I wish you efficient shopping!