p. 12 | How to Live Cheaply

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 14, 1903

How to Live Cheaply

One of the subjects talked and written about a great deal at the present time is how to live cheaply. Prices of all the great staples of life are high. Rents are enormous. Fashions are exacting. Wants multiply while resources diminish. How to make strap and buckle meet is the problem which presses on hundreds of housekeepers. It is what is done to keep up appearances that destroys the equilibrium between outgo and income, and makes life a drudgery and vexation. How to live cheaply is a question easy enough to answer if one will be content with a cheap living. Substitute comfort for show. Put convenience in the place of fashion. Study simplicity. Refuse to be beguiled into a style of living above what is required by your position in society, and is justified by your resources. Set a fashion of simplicity, neatness, prudence, and inexpensiveness, which others will be glad to follow, and thank you for introducing. Infuse dignity, sincerity, kindness, virtue, and love into your simple and inexpensive home, and its members will never miss the costly fripperies and showy adornments, and they will be happier in the cozy and comfortable apartments than most of their wealthy neighbors are in their splendid establishments. It does not follow that in order to live cheaply one must live meanly. The best comforts of life are not costly. Taste, refinement, good cheer, wit, and even elegance are not expensive.—Domestic Magazine.