Pardon me as I am distracted by a wobbly laundry machine, a furnace that had to turn on during a dismal Salish Sea Spring, and a useless but fun check on one of my YouTube videos. Hmm. Almost a thousand views in about a week. Not bad. It has been a year since I moved out of my small cottage on Whidbey Island and into a tiny house near Port Townsend. It also marks the end of an unfrugal year. I’m a fan of frugality, but such a dramatic change became a reason or an excuse to be a bit less frugal for a while. Here’s how it went.

Laundry
Ah, the washer/dryer I decided to buy commands my attention as it shakes the house. I guess I’ll mention it first. $2,000, on sale from $3,200. So much for frugal. For the first few months, I made the money-wise frugal choice which was to use the local laundromats. Ten or twenty dollars seemed like a lot, but was cheaper than buying a new machine, especially one that would fit into a tiny house. 

It’s actually an impressive machine. It is a combo unit, so it takes the same space as a regular washer, and space is valuable in a tiny house. That space is now a rack for hanging hiking jackets and foul-weather gear. It is also a sophisticated enough unit that it runs on 110 instead of 220, and has an internal heat pump for the dryer, which means there’s no need to vent to the outside. And, it has AI, which is lost on me, but it dutifully measures the load, reminds me that I haven’t used liquid detergent (because I’m still frugal enough to use up the powdered stuff first), and estimates the time it will take to run the load. My old mechanically driven machine had a thing called a timer. This one has to think about it, just to be sure.

The shaking, by the way, is simple physics. Rotating machinery shakes. In most houses, that may not be as much of an issue, but a tiny house built for the road is lighter. That makes it easier to shake. That makes it easier for me to want to watch it to make sure nothing goes amiss. If you watch the video, you can see the cardboard snubbers I’ve ‘installed’ that help. Sometimes, I have to steady it by hand.

Why go to this extent? Why spend $2,000? For my year of unfrugality, I didn’t forget the value of time. Having the laundry done here means less time and scheduling for traveling for the cleaning. The heat pump takes longer, sometimes a total of three hours, but I save a half an hour in commuting time. And, I can type this while it spins the clothes. As for the cost, the MSRP was $3,200. I got the floor model that they used for cleaning the installers’ grubbies. I suspect living with me is like a vacation for it.

Furnace
As for the furnace, it is not a furnace. It is a mini-split, a heat pump for the house that heats and cools. It is a luxury, to me, and it came with the house; so, basically, it was not negotiable. By the way, it is mid-May and outside it is 52F and raining. Welcome to life by the Salish Sea. 

Especially last summer, it was a luxury to have something like air conditioning. That’s a relief from the afternoon heat that came with my cottage’s great west water and mountain view. It could heat and cool automatically, but I don’t let it. 70F in winter can seem warm and 70F in summer can seem cool, so I make active use of the remote control to turn it on and off as I decide. 

It is hard to compare the prices between radiant floor heat in the cottage and the mini-split in the tiny house because the utilities are billed differently. Both are cheap compared to the price gouging I endured from a propane supplier. Everything is relative. 

Video
Almost a thousand views? Cool. A week ago, I posted a ~ten-minute video tour of my tiny house to answer lots of curious questions. It isn’t fancy because I’m not fancy. Folks appreciated the view, though one commented on me having too much clutter. I smiled. Too much relative to what, where, and who? Whatever I have fits in a 391-square-foot house, a ~150-square-foot storage unit, and some outdoor closets. Watch it to make your own judgments, which is a human thing to do. 

I purposely didn’t clean up the place too much because I thought some reality was a nice contrast to the purposely photogenic productions that are common in real estate presentations. And I chuckle that I took over ten minutes to tour a place that is less than four hundred square feet. I suspect there are suburban closets bigger than this house. 

By the definition of frugality that is to respect personal values and resources, my cottage and this tiny house have been my two most frugal dwellings. The cottage was more frugal because it had a utility room (where the furnace and the laundry could make noises I wouldn’t notice), a carport that acted as storage for stuff that didn’t need to be heated, a large kitchen cupboard that I treated as a small but well-stocked pantry, and enough yard for ornamentals, herbs, fruit trees, a perpetually-failed garden, and enough storage away from the house for emergency supplies like an earthquake kit and firewood. This tiny house is frugal because there is no wasted space. It has also been a lesson in what can live in a storage unit that’s about two miles from here, and what I can forget I own that is taking up space in that storage unit. Ah, but I’ll keep much of it because I may move – but that’s a story that must wait as we watch the world change.

Living Outside A Tiny House
Living inside a tiny house has involved some less-than-perfectly frugal choices, most of which involve living outside a tiny house. The longer post is on my tiny house blog (Living Outside A Tiny House – Living Outside A Tiny House). It shouldn’t be a surprise that there are things that don’t fit into a tiny house, and they’re not stuff. I miss having parties. I miss having an empty room to use as a gym. I sometimes miss a change of view.

So, I go to dances. I rent workout spaces. I spend a couple of afternoons each week working from coffee shops, and occasionally a library. Now that I am not on an island, I am within an hour of a mountain range and a national park, and still near the ocean, old forts, a tourist town or three, and the festivals they celebrate. I’m on the edge of farm country, so there are farm stands that have wisely added places to hang out, buy and eat fresh food. I wish I could enjoy the drinks, but despite what my doctor expects, I do refrain from some indulgences. It is easy to live outside my tiny house because of where it is. I also suspect the same would be true if I was in wilderness on land that I owned because land always provides an opportunity to get stuff done, sometimes even fun.

Luxuries
For this first year in my tiny house, my main excursion from frugality has been to spend money. Duh. 

I’ve undeferred lots of deferred expenses. The car got some work done. I’m getting some work done on me. Unwinding the mental knots created during a decade of despair is taking time and money, both of which I am glad to spend because I might stay stuck in the mental world otherwise. A tiny house does not encourage buying more stuff, but I have swapped out some clothes and gear, most of which became an opportunity to donate the old.

I’ve spent money on time. The last time I took more than a couple of weeks off work was 2010, and that was in defiant response to conventional medicine. (Read Walking Thinking Drinking Across Scotland for that story. Note: There wasn’t enough drinking.) I’ve become so unfamiliar with vacations that I am having to add them back in gradually. The Pacific Coast is about three hours away, which is about right for a three-day vacation. I’m more likely to take a morning, afternoon, or evening off. If that sounds strange, remember that for a few years I worked 361 days per year, usually with 10-14 hour days. An unhealthy habit. Earlier this year, I almost took a week or two train trip, but Amtrak canceled it. Maybe I’ll try again this autumn.

Finances
This blog is about personal finances, so I’d be remiss for not mentioning what’s happened with the money.

The short version is that I’m up about ten percent. My net worth has increased by about ten percent since I sold/bought my cottage/tiny house. I’ve gone from a mortage plus a HELOC (Home Equity Line Of Credit) plus HOA dues, to owning my tiny house, renting my spot in the mobile home park, renting a storage unit, and … that’s about it. 

So, how did my net worth increase? 

The value of the tiny house hasn’t increased. That much. Living off food from farm stands is nice, but expensive, so that’s not the reason. The community grocery on Whidbey made life much more affordable there. (Thank the Goose.) Utilities are possibly similar, including internet. I’m earning less money (~zero). I’m spending more on dances and eating out. 

It is the stocks. The money I freed up by selling the cottage went partly into a cash cushion, partly into un-deferring deferred maintenance as mentioned above, and part into stocks. By the time I decided to sell my cottage, my portfolio was down to a few struggling stocks. (See my semi-annual portfolio reviews for details – https://trimbathcreative.net/?s=semi+annual .) They’ve barely budged despite making progress. 

My new purchases, my new investments, are doing surprisingly well. Next month, I’ll update the review. (It is a semi-annual thing, eh?) But, I’ll mention two: LUNR, QBTS. Let me check while I type. Let’s see, LUNR is up 130% from a year ago, and QBTS is up 842%. My returns are detailed enough because I made several purchases at different times, but returns like that explain a lot. Returns vary every trading day, every moment in those sessions. For a while, the returns were much higher. They may go there again. I have reason to believe they can exceed their highs. I am an optimist and can imagine the same thing being true for some of my other stocks, too.

Using money to make more money has been more powerful than my frugality. My frugality by necessity got me through my direst situations. I will continue to be frugal, though now it is more by choice, which is a good feeling.

Side Effects
A year of unfrugal living hasn’t been very unfrugal in comparison to mainstream life. I suspect my expenses have been higher, but I still prefer to cook at home, mow my own lawn, donate one thing when I buy a new thing, and keep in mind that not buying something saves 100% unless it is a need and not a want.

The more important news may be what my friends have delivered. They’ve made some observations I would’ve missed. Evidently, I smile more. Evidently, I look more relaxed. Evidently, my face looks less worried. I can’t put a numerical value on any of that.

Maybe I should take a vacation and think about that – and probably write about it, too.