The Frugal Sears Family

The Scrooge Guide recently interviewed the frugal couple and Scrooge Guide readers Janet & Carl Sears. The Sears live in the St. Lawrence valley on the Canadian side.

Scrooge Guide: Carl I hear you retired at age 55. How were you able to do that?
Carl Sears: Just good planning. I started at age 25 and invested some money in a tax sheltered investment account.
SG: Why?
C: My employer (He owned a catering company) at the time said it was good idea.
Jan Sears (jumps in): Carl had a dream early on…
C: I think I was born with a dream of saving to accumulate cash, probably because my family had no money as I was growing up. My father’s philosophy was to always pay cash and never go in debt. He built the home I grew up in and the barns with no debt or mortgage. The wood came from the bush at the back of our property. The problem today is that municipality rules
don’t let you build like that in stages anymore. However, if you don’t have money you just can’t buy anything, if you live on a cash philosophy.
J: Carl’s first credit card came just before we got married.
SG: Why did you get a credit card?
C: I needed it for the honeymoon…to book a hotel room and so forth.
SG: How old were you when you got married?
C: 44
J: Same
SG: Do you think getting married later in life helped you accumulate wealth?
C: Yes, before I got married, all I did was work. I didn’t make a lot, but I spent very little. Many years I saved and invested $30,000 per year. Plus my investments were growing at over 10%. I remember one year I made $14,000 in investment income alone. I was only spending about $5,000 a year in those days.
SG: Jan, how were you doing financially before getting married?
C (smiling): She’s getting converted!
J: I was frugal to a point but not like Carl. I put money into some registered investments. I had a good example in the home I grew up in.
SG: What were your parents like?
J: Very frugal; generous to a fault, but also very careful with money. Dad used huge budget sheets to detail every projected and past payment, including medical - before we got coverage.
SG: Did that experience lead you to budget?
J: No, not really, arithmetic wasn’t my strong suit and I was a slow learner.
But I do think that this is something that should be taught to children from a young age onward.
SG: I hear you paid for your house with cash. Is that true?
C: Yes, it’s the least expensive way to do it.
SG: I’ll say! Was this the fruit of saving and investing over all those years?
C: Yes, the fruit and the reason for saving.
SG: What was the primary reason for saving so much?
C: I wanted to provide my future wife with a house someday.
J: Wasn’t it also for security, Carl?
C: I don’t know, I think the saving took on a life of it’s own after a while.
J: Saving can become addictive like spending.
C: No, it’s a habit.
J: It can become extreme.
SG: Are your habits extreme? Are you misers?
J: Not me! Carl isn’t either. Perhaps before he got married he was viewed that way.
C: I never deposited my money in the local drinking holes or pubs.
J: We are frugal in many ways. We have a big garden, keep chickens...
SG: What about smoking or gambling?
C: Never did either…we put our money in the church.
SG: Do you have a way to determine your charitable givings?
C: I go by a biblical 10%, plus above and beyond this I give to special projects such as tsunami relief, missions projects and others.
SG: Jan?
J: I go by 10% of income plus on top of that I give to help out as needs are presented to me.
SG: Do you track that, and cut it off at a certain level?
J: No! I give as the Lord leads me and I give as the need is presented to me. It could be half or even everything I have. But that’s never been the case.
C: It also depends on what you have!
SG: Would you go in debt to give?
J: No , debt is horrible and I can’t sleep at night when I carry debt.
SG: You mentioned gardens and chickens…
J: We are blessed with a bush to heat with wood, which cuts down on heating expense; also some of the wood is made into lumber to make toys for orphans. The shavings and sawdust is saved and so we saved on bedding for our meat chickens, laying chickens and turkeys. Sawdust then get mixed in the manure and goes on the vegetable garden. It’s a complete cycle.
SG: You have chickens for meat and eggs, Turkeys, and you grow a vegetable garden. How much do you save by having all this home grown food?
J: We grow open pollinated veggies to save our own seed. We basically don’t buy vegetables all year, perhaps potatoes for a month or two. The chickens are free because we sell the excess.
SG: The excess pays for all feed, etc?
C: Yes.
SG: Your grocery bill must be small?
C: About $280 per month for 3 adults…but mother only eats ½ an adult size.
SG: tell me more about your gardens.
J: We have crab apples for jelly, raspberry bushes for fresh jam and jelly, asparagus for fresh use. We freeze green beans, corn…
C: We buy broccoli and cauliflower when it is in season and cheap.
SG: Why not grow it?
C: Too difficult to grow.
J: Too labor intensive.
C: We also make sauerkraut from cabbage and pasta sauce from tomatoes.
J: We also make tomato chutney & tomato soup, and mustard pickles. We have a cold storage room for carrots, onions, beets, and potatoes. It’s nice in the winter because you don’t have to worry about getting out to the store. The only thing we are lacking is a cow or goat.
SG: Any plans for a cow or goat?
C: NO!
J: I’d like to find someone who will sell me milk to make my own butter and cheese.
C: It’s against the law around here.
SG: Against the law?
C: The milk marketing board controls all that…it can’t be sold at the farm gate.
J: As Christians we want to do what is right…it creates a dilemma…that law is unfair. I can’t see why the law tries to protect me from myself, I would only buy from safe sources…I think the government has gotten their nose too far into everyone’s business…I’d even sign a waiver if I needed to protect the farmer.
J (after a pause): I think with Carl and I, we always wanted to be self-sufficient.
SG: Is that your opinion too, Carl?
C: I suppose I did that with savings.
J: But not just with money, you also grow rather than buy. I think there is a misunderstanding between being frugal and miserly. Frugal is careful. We, for instance, live frugal so we can travel. We aren’t sitting on a pile of money and clutching on to it. We are being frugal for a reason - to do the things we want.
SG: Do you feel that frugality helped you retire early?
C: When you have no debt and live frugally you don’t need much.
J: A benefit I had from the example of my parents was that it lead me to sign up for a voluntary pension plan and a long-term disability plan when I was 20 years old…and years later I got a blessing from both of them. I never thought I would have to use them.
C: Doesn’t matter how much money you make, it matters how much you save. Some make $200,000 a year and blow it all.
J: Start saving young!
C: You can live well debt free.
SG: Some would say you can’t live well debt free. How would you reply to that?
C: If you can’t afford to live debt free how can you afford to pay the bank?
SG: What about borrowing to buy a house?
C: It’s about the only good reason to borrow, I suppose.
SG: How about borrowing to buy a car?
C: Nope. Save. You need to start this early.
SG: Any words of wisdom for young people?
C: Get in habit of saving, even before you have a full time job.
J: Pay yourself 10% before you do any thing else. I would say debt is the worst thing to get into. If you are in debt get out and stay out.
C: Plan to stay out of debt. Keep your wants in check. Most stuff just turns into junk anyway.
J: To have more, have fewer wants. I have a t-shirt that says “live simply that others may simply live”.
SG: Is that more of a global statement?
J: It can work locally in that when living simply others will notice you and it influences them and frees up what you have so you can help others. It also frees you up so you don’t need so much to live on and frees you from work. Like it says in the book “your money or your life”, for everything you want to buy (like shoes), equate how much you need to work to pay for them. SG: Thanks for letting us in on the secrets of your financial success. I think our readers will have a lot of good advice here.