Those of you who have been following along for a while know that I work for myself. I have a technical consulting firm. I am it’s sole employee (although I do subcontract others on occasion). I have had the business for about 10 years now. I have had other, full time, jobs off and on during this period. This being said, since last May my consulting practice has been my sole income source. So far, it is going well. I am able to pay all of the bills I am responsible for and it still affords Princess Bethany and I the type of life that allows us to go out to eat more often than we should (we love good food) and the occasional extravagance. This was not the case the last time I made my business the primary source of income.

The last time was about 5 years ago and I worked independently for almost exactly one year. At the time it was just me and my two sons. In other words, I was a full time single dad as well as trying to live of of the proceeds of my business. In that year, I made a total of $17,685.00. Please read that number again. To break it down and make sure you understand it, I took care of a family of three on a budget that was way below the poverty level. I did not rob, or steal, or depend on government handouts, or charity, or friends, or relatives to make it through. I can tell you that my sons never had to do without a meal. The mortgage and all of my bills got paid (not always on time but they got paid). I even made sure we could rent the occasional movie or other small extravagance.

Even in this economy the lessons I learned in that time still bear true. There are two ways to have more money – make more or spend less. You see, in order to make it through that time, I knew that the answer was not to somehow find more money. In a business like mine, people call when they need you. Therefore, I have very little control over that. What I did have control over though was my expenses. I knew that if I could just define the absolute baseline of what I needed to feed my family and keep a roof over our heads, while not subtracting everything that makes life worth living, we could make it through.

I can say confidently that, for that one year period, I did better than most would have in that situation. This is because I quickly learned that true wealth is largely driven by finding out what you can do without. For instance, if someone comes to me and tells me that they need $100.00 a week for groceries, I know it is a myth they have made themselves believe. I can tell you for certain that my family of 3 lived off of $100.00 a month for groceries and not a single one of us went hungry. The question is, what are you willing to eat? Are you willing to eat it every day? If it is all you can afford, if it is the difference between being able to pay your mortgage or not, you may find the answer you give surprising to even you.

Things are much better this time and I am not going through this movie-ready rags-to-riches story to give myself a pat on the back. I am simply saying that creativity is often born out of desperate situations and hard choices. It is one of the reasons that I believe the people of this world, despite the current situation, will come out on the other side of this a much better place.

As always, feel free to discuss any thought raised by this post in the forums.

P.S. All apologies to Ramit for the post title