Blix and Heitmiller Retiring…Again?

After a good long run, we decided to retire from doing public talks and workshops at the end of 2002. Although we’ve enjoyed doing these speaking gigs on Simple Living and Your Money or Your Life over the last 7 years we decided that it is time to move on. Each presentation requires significant preparation and energy. Furthermore, we feel we’ve lost our “edge” and, perhaps some of our enthusiasm. Don’t get us wrong, we believe as strongly as ever in Simple Living and the Your Money or Your Life program. We still practice the concepts in our own lives. And we talk informally about them almost every day with people we meet, in groups we belong to and on the Web. We’re just tired of talking about them in formal settings.

As mentioned in the Headline News, this website will be the new platform for presenting our ideas instead of live, formal talks and workshops. Finally, we think its time for a new generation of people to step up to the plate and carry on this work. If you think you qualify as such a person, we encourage you to let us know and we’ll put you in contact with a couple of Speaker’s Bureaus that would love to have you on their list.

So what will we be doing instead? David is thinking about writing a new book and hopes to get that project on the front burner in 2003. Keeping this site up-to-date with new content will be another of his ongoing projects. In addition, he feels drawn to the work of the Simplicity Forum and hopes to work for the simplicity movement at a more strategic level. Jacque is expanding her interest in yoga. In addition to teaching Bikram’s Method yoga since November 2001, she is exploring other forms of yoga in her own practice. She also continues to volunteer as a Master Gardener and pursues her interests in knitting and quilting.

The Simple Life in a Yurt

Although our permanent home is in Seattle, we’ve decided to spend part of the year in the San Diego area, not only to escape Seattle winter rain, but more importantly, to be active grandparents to our grandson Erik and be closer to our daughter Kimberly and her husband Felipe for at least part of the year. We’re also spending some time with Jacque’s parents, John and Kay Blix who live in Oceanside, just north of San Diego. We left Seattle in early December and will return in early March. While away, another Getting a Life couple, Kevin Cornwell and Catherine Dovey, are house-sitting for us in Seattle

So how do we do it on a simple living budget? We took up an offer to stay in a guest facility owned by Getting a Lifer Jeff Saar in Jamul, CA, just east of San Diego. The facility is a Yurt – a modern version of the traditional Mongolian dwelling. The yurt is 22 feet in diameter and is made of a heavy vinyl skin stretched over a wooden frame. It rests on a large deck and has a hardwood floor, woodstove, kitchenette, skylight and phone with dial-up Internet access! The bathroom facilities include a composting toilet and hot shower in a small separate building a few steps from the door of the yurt.

So far we’ve enjoyed picking fresh oranges, grapefruit and lemons off the trees on the property, hiking and bicycling in the nearby mountains and continuing our yoga practice at a nearby studio. We’re spending two or three days a week “in town” with Kimberly, Felipe and Erik, about 16 miles away. In exchange for our accommodations, we’re providing some cooking, cleaning, pet-sitting, pruning and gardening services for our host Jeff. We’ll provide a full report on our experience in “Yurt Living” in the next edition of the News.

Health Insurance, a Simple Living Dilemma

We’ve mentioned in recent issues of the Getting a Life Report that the one issue that we have struggled with the most on our simple living journey is the increasing cost of private health care insurance. It’s the one (and only) category of expense that we dramatically underestimated when we determined what our “Enough” income was back in 1994. Over the last 8 years the premium for the Blue Cross Individual Plan that we joined went from $173 per month to $847 monthly as of June 1, 2002!

With the latest increase we resolved to make a change and researched all our options…again. The result is that in August we changed to coverage provided by the Group Health Co-operative (GHC), a not-for-profit HMO here in the state of Washington. The downside was that we had to change to doctors within the GHC system. The BIG plus was that we cut our monthly premium by more than half to $402 per month!

We mention this here because we want to you to know that research and shopping around pays! Although the nuances of coverage are somewhat different from our previous plan we’re happy with our decision. GHC is the only provider that we found that actually rewards healthy lifestyle choices. For example, we receive an extra 10% discount in our premium because we qualified for their “Health Pays” option. In addition, preventative care such as annual physicals and eye exams are included in our policy and are not subject to the deductible. Alternative care providers are also covered within certain limitations. GHC is allied with Kaiser Permanente which means we can go into any Kaiser clinic in California while we are in San Diego this winter.

Every state has different health insurance rules, options and rate structures so, if you are shopping for coverage, we encourage you to do your homework. It’s a mind-numbing process but is worth the effort.

Givin’ it Away

One of the fun things about figuring out what is enough is giving away the excess. For us that’s meant giving away almost all the proceeds from Getting a Life over the last few years. In 2002 we were happy to be able to donate $16,000 to worthy causes around the world. Organizations helping people survive, save the environment and support simple and sustainable ways of living. For a complete listing of the 2002 recipients, see Where Did the Money Go?

News from the Home Front

We continue to find ways to make our home more ecologically friendly. Sometimes its little things together that add up to make a difference. We’ve almost completely replaced all our incandescent light bulbs with energy efficient compact fluorescents. As cooler weather approached, David replaced the rubber door seal and checked the caulking around the windows and doors. As the electric, water and solid waste bills come in we scratch our heads to find ways to reduce our usage.

Once or twice a year we make a sweep through the house to reduce clutter and accumulated or unused stuff…an unending task in the material world we live in. Recently we donated eight grocery bags full of stuff to a church rummage sale. We find that this regular practice keeps the project relatively painless and we always feel better when we’ve “cleaned out.”

Despite a cool early summer in 2002, our garden finally got going in July and we had a pretty good harvest. We continue to enhance our soil with compost and minerals and the results are paying off. We also struck a deal with the neighbor (who owns the other side of our duplex townhouse) to expand our garden into his side of the backyard. Because our yard is entirely in garden, he agreed to let us place our solar clothes dryer on his side too.

Fun Stuff We Did Last Summer

Simple Living isn’t joyless living. We try to take plenty of fun breaks and the summer of 2002 was no exception. In late May we flew to San Diego for a 10 day visit with our daughter Kimberly and family and Jacque’s parents. We did some sight seeing in San Diego and took a side trip to see the La Brea Tar Pits, a fascinating natural wonder in the middle of L.A.

In June we celebrated Jacque’s birthday with a hike in our beautiful Cascade Mountains and in July we marked our 16th wedding anniversary with a day trip to Mt. Rainier. The wildflowers were in full bloom and the weather was great!

We expanded David’s trip to the Simplicity Forum in Oberlin, Ohio into a mini-vacation spending several days with Jacque’s Chicago area kin and another few days with YMOYLer’s Linda and Mike Lenich in South Holland, IL. While there we checked out the Chicago Botanic Garden, did an architectural tour of Chicago by boat and visited the famous Chicago Art Museum on a free admission day. Mike and Linda took us on a day trip to Amish country in Indiana where we saw how the professional simple livers do it! With an extra day to kill in Cleveland due to the flight arrangements, David and Mike were “forced” into checking out the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a surprisingly good and reasonable attraction. (Cashing in on one of the few advantages of getting older, David got in at the reduced “old rocker” rate!)

In September Jacque squeezed in a needle work retreat and while David attended the IASBO conference, she checked out the Grandma Moses Exhibit at the Portland Arts Museum. Too bad simple living is so boring!

Our Recommended Reading List

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. We both read this one over the summer and really enjoyed it. We found many hidden statements regarding simplicity, sustainability and spirituality in this fictional work that takes place in the Congo, Africa at the time of “independence” from colonial rule.

Spirit and Reason by Vine Deloria, Jr. A compilation of Deloria’s writings on Native American issues and perspectives. David found this one illuminating.

Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures, published quarterly by The Positive Futures Network. We’ve subscribed for years and especially recommend the Fall 2002 Issue #23 on Living Economies. Check it out if you’re tired of hearing only the bad news.

Getting a Life: Strategies for Simple Living by Jacqueline Blix and David Heitmiller. Stories of how real people actually GOT a life using the world famous Your Money or Your Life program. We found this to be a great read! ;-)

Living Simply with Children: A Voluntary Simplicity Guide for Families by Marie Sherlock. Three Rivers Press. January, 2003. We got to read the final manuscript. Sherlock soundly debunks the commonly held belief that living simply with kids cannot be done. Great information even if you don’t have kids but want ideas on living a more meaningful, ecologically sound life

Simple Gifts: A Memoir of a Shaker Village by June Sprigg. Linda Lenich passed this one along to Jacque over the summer.