Years ago, a friend and I spent a day wadding up Saran Wrap, dipping it in paint, and painting a faux finish on the walls in my stairway and hallway. The finish is beautiful and it cost me just $15 for the plastic wrap and the paint. Painting is not my most favorite project to tackle, but the finished job was worth the effort.

After spending the past year writing my newest book Living With Less So Your Family Has More, I’ve really been thinking about the reality of adult peer pressure.

The words “peer pressure” usually refer to the pressure to conform that teenagers experience. But if we’re honest, peer pressure doesn’t stop after the teen years…it continues right on into adulthood.

A mom stopped me last summer after reading a newspaper article that stated the average cost of a wedding was now $25,000.

“Jill, did you read that article about the cost of weddings these days?” I replied that I had seen the article to which she referred. She continued with, “I know your daughter is getting married next month. Please tell me that you can do a nice wedding for less than that.”

I responded that indeed we were spending far less than half of that number.

It's 5 p.m. and you haven't given dinner a thought. What can you throw together?

The neighbor just called. Suzie, the young mother down the street, just had her second baby. The neighbors are organizing meals this week. Could you provide a meal tomorrow evening?

A new family just moved in across the street. You'd love to go meet them, but you'd really like to bake them something first. You don't really have the time to today, though. What do you do?

Parents often ask me, as a former piano teacher, when they should begin their child in piano lessons. When I recommend no earlier than second grade, they are amazed.

Part of my answer comes from my experience teaching young children and finding that second grade is the earliest most children have the ability to sit still to practice and have the reading abilities that allow them to read music.

Today I said “no.” It was in response to something someone asked me to do. I wanted to participate, but I realized that doing so would put too much into one day. I needed to simplify. To leave some margin in my day. To choose less.
 
Living with less doesn’t always have to be about money. It can also be about living with less stress or living with less activity. 
 

Three weeks ago the transmission went out in our van. The van is our primary family vehicle and a new transmission isn’t in the budget right now. Putting the cost of the $4,000 repair on a credit card isn’t an acceptable option in our eyes. We do have an emergency fund, but we’re not even considering this an emergency. 
 
We’ve decided to simply do without…at least until we have the money to pay for the repair.