ECONOMY: Living simply provides economic shelter

Tough times mean many are pooling resources

By From staff and wire reports | Monday, August 4, 2008 7:10 PM PDT ∞

While many Americans are scrimping for every penny, a growing number of Americans hardly feel the pinch.

Consider Keri Rainsberger of Chicago. She still tithes 10 percent of her income to her church, even as other members have cut back. She rarely worries about rising gasoline and food prices. And she never bothers to balance her checkbook, because she doesn't come close to spending what she has.

"I live so far below my means that it doesn't really register," said Rainsberger, 31. "I don't have to think about money."

How is this possible?

For starters, she has no car and commutes to work by bicycle. She also has no mortgage payment and chooses to live in an "intentional community," a partly shared space where $775 a month covers everything from utilities to meals.

"In one fell swoop, I pay for the roof over my head, the food in my stomach and the lights to read by. That's a big advantage," said Rainsberger, whose high-rise living space is part of the residential program at the Keystone Ecological Urban Center in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood.

Her private quarters ---- larger and a bit more expensive than some ---- are about 400 square feet, divided into a sitting room, a craft room and a small bedroom.

She shares bathrooms, showers, a kitchen and a large dining room with 28 other residents whose ranks include young professionals, professors and retirees.

"It's like a college dormitory, but with better conversation," she said with a laugh.

The concept of sharing resources has been around since the beginning of time and is used today from Amish farms to the Israeli kibbutz.

For low-income families, it's often simply a matter of survival.

Those who track consumer habits say a growing need to cut costs, along with a wish to be more environmentally or spiritually conscious, is causing even more people to pool their resources, whether they define themselves as an intentional community or not.

"The economy starts to tank. People get tired of it," said Daniel Howard, an expert in consumer research and behavior at the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University. "It's people saying, 'Let's get together and help one another.' And it works."

Few may have the desire or even the ability to live the Spartan lifestyle that Rainsberger learned from her Depression-era grandmother.

But those who advocate a simpler, less consumer-driven life say there are lessons in the strategies Rainsberger and other intentional communities use.

By buying their food in bulk, for instance, Rainsberger and her neighbors spend $100 to $150 per person each month for meals. Consider that the U.S. Department of Agriculture "thrifty plan" for a single person is $200 a month.

Intentional communities economize in almost every arena of life. They trade child care to keep costs low enough to allow more parents to stay home or work part time.

The Valley Center location of Twelve Tribes, a chain of communes modeled on the lives of early Christians, maintains herds of cows and goats and grows a variety of its own crops.

It also earns money through the growth and sale of avocados and grapefruit, which are subject to many of the same ups and downs as other economic activities, but that isn't the point, said Paul Gregoire, a 20-year resident of the commune.

"We'd rather talk about love than about how we're not worried about the economy," Gregoire said.

The Fellowship for Intentional Community, a Missouri-based nonprofit that has kept a directory of such communities since 1990, estimates that at least 100,000 Americans live in intentional communities.

The communities are defined as groups of people living together who share common values that are religious, economic, environmental, social or any combination of those. Sometimes members own property. About a third live in urban areas, while the remainder are rural.

Laird Schaub, the Fellowship's executive secretary, said he has little doubt that intentional communities are better equipped to weather hard times.

"We're pretty isolated from the ups and downs of the regular economy," said Schaub, who has lived at the Sandhill Farm intentional community in Rutledge, Mo., for 34 years.

The farm's 10 residents grow most of their own food and sell organic produce to the surrounding community. Some have other jobs and all share their income with the group, as do about 13 percent of the intentional communities in the Fellowship's directory.

"You don't have to chase as many dollars to have a quality of life," Schaub said.

And that is freeing in other ways, says Duane Elgin, an environmental activist in California who focuses on simplicity.

"It isn't just cutting back on things. It's about people not needing so many things and putting more attention into their personal interests and their family and friends, being creative, being of service," said Elgin, author of the book "Voluntary Simplicity," a concept he began fostering 30 years ago. "As a result, they are richer individuals."