Principles
What is A Frugal Prosumer?
Do not confuse living as a Frugal Prosumer with a life of deprivation. Living the Life of a Frugal Prosumer is About:
- Making deliberate choices that will not let society or the robber barons tell you what you need and what will make you happy.
- Increasing satisfaction and lowering costs by eliminating things that drag you down.
- Securing a source of income outside the hyper-consumerism workplace where stress is huge and where you don’t want to be.
- Living and working in ways that don’t cost you as much, thus freeing you to work less, get less in debt, and live what you consider the good life.
- Eliminating things that rob you of joy and replacing them with things that help you accomplish your goals in terms of happiness, health, and well-being.
- Learning how to live and work in ways that don’t jeopardize you or your family’s spiritual, mental, physical, or financial well being.
- Reducing the stress of thinking, “I just can’t keep this up”
- Not suffering from the common stress related illnesses of high blood pressure, obesity, heart disease, diabetes etc.
- Freeing yourself from the unceasing demand to spend more and more of your time and energy working to make more and more money.
- Not doing things to our environment that make us more susceptible to environmentally related illnesses such as, cancer, stomach ulcers, asthma, autoimmune disease, and psychiatric problems.
Why Become a Frugal Prosumer?
- It safeguards our livelihoods, families, and future. Cutting expenses (we like to call it UnIncome) makes us less dependent on having a well paying job or the continuation of Social Security. It is a great form of retirement benefits and health insurance.
- We cannot depend on the economy to turn around, the government to save us, or winning the lottery. That is becoming increasingly clear. We must start now to think in a NuWay and make choices that will secure our future and allow us to live more freely. Fortunately there are many choices out there if we take a look. These may involve little tweaks or major life changes.
- Our incomes are highly vulnerable in a business world that survives on cheap labor or providing the fewest possible benefits. Not too long ago most people weren’t totally dependent on selling their labor for wages and working at a job with benefits. Frugal Prosumers are freed up from some of this dependency by providing more of what they need themselves instead of being so dependent on the money economy.
- By producing and using what we ourselves consume we can regain some of our lost independence over what, when, how often, and how many hours we work for money. Being a Frugal Prosumer makes a goal of retiring at 65 or earlier more attainable.
Keys to Becoming a Frugal Prosumer.
- Individual desires, needs, and circumstances are different. The changes individuals and families want to make to be Frugal Prosumers are different as well. Becoming a Frugal Prosumer means making innovative, bold, and creative choices that will work personally for you. Courage is necessary to look beyond the usual way things have been to what could be.
- Avoid debt as much as possible. Many would be doing fine if they didn’t have so much debt. Instead of thinking “more will make your life better,” think of how less debt would be even better and less stressful.
- Feel free to change, experiment, and adjust any decisions you make.
- Make only those changes that genuinely make your life simpler and don't eliminate things that are really important to you.
- Don’t expect perfection or think you have to do everything at once.
- Don’t assume your family and friends will support or even share your efforts to be a Frugal Prosumer. If they are not interested, let them find their own way.
- Expect disapproval. Disapproval is a typical reaction to anyone who dares to step out of the box, but take heart. Sometimes those who disapprove will eventually see what you have and want it too.
- Relationships are vital. Find and associate with others who want to Live Free by being Frugal Prosumers. It can be hard to do by yourself. Remove yourself from people or situations that are highly consumerism oriented. Have Frugal Prosumer gatherings!
- Balance is needed. Be wary of swinging too far to either extreme on any issue.
- The ability to recognize deception and avoid the robber barons is crucial.
Art, creativity, sustainability, and relationships
The Frugal Prosumer way is an elegant lifestyle of combining art, creativity, sustainability, and relationships that explode into love.
Even though many say they embrace it there is bias against creativity. Creativity is doing something differently than you've done before (change). And most people are afraid of or shun change.
I have many who say they like the Frugal Prosumer idea and even think that's what they should do but are afraid of creativity/change. Therefore it just remains a good idea to them.
The other problems I see is that people believe life/work and creativity are two separate things.
The Frugal Prosumer philosophy is that life does not imitate art but is art. It's about why we do all our sustainable things as art and lavish in the creativity of it. There is a great pleasure of being a creative"MacGyver".
We have a hard time not having fun with being Frugal Prosumer artists.
- The Frugal Prosumer way enables one to have resources to allocate to ones passion, creativity, and art. The many "starving" artists, entrepreneurs, religious leaders, movers and shakers through out the centuries have been able to do what they do because unlike so many others, they were Frugal Prosumers (even if they didn't know it). They knew how to live on less so they had more time and resources to be creative and invest in their "art".
- The Frugal Prosumer is also a deeply spiritual person that can work with those of many political and religious stripes but does not get sucked into the dogma that bogs so many down. They are ones who are practical and look for what works to build love and relationships.
Even though many say they embrace it there is bias against creativity. Creativity is doing something differently than you've done before (change). And most people are afraid of or shun change.
I have many who say they like the Frugal Prosumer idea and even think that's what they should do but are afraid of creativity/change. Therefore it just remains a good idea to them.
The other problems I see is that people believe life/work and creativity are two separate things.
The Frugal Prosumer philosophy is that life does not imitate art but is art. It's about why we do all our sustainable things as art and lavish in the creativity of it. There is a great pleasure of being a creative"MacGyver".
We have a hard time not having fun with being Frugal Prosumer artists.