This morning, April wrote about trying to figure out how much house you need. In the comments, Tyler K. shared a photo of the house he and his wife live in. It has 450 square feet:
“Last year our joint gross income was about $170,000,” Tyler wrote, “but we still find this house plenty adequate, and it means our housing costs are proportionally half of the 30-35% of income that people generally recommend.”
I was intrigued (as were other readers), so I wrote to ask for more info. Here’s what Tyler has to say:
When we moved to Santa Cruz, we found this little tiny house one block from the beach. We loved it. We decided to take it as soon as we saw it. This house is a rental, but that’s something we’re okay with for now.
The big draws of Santa Cruz over Alameda were the beach (I surf and sail), the mountains and natural beauty (there are great parks, open spaces and roads for cycling), the weather (it’s sunny and 60 degrees out right now, which is typical for mid-November), my family, opportunities for my wife (she’s recently been participating in research on seals and sea otters). None of these things require a big house.
- I can ride my bike to go surfing, or go the other direction and be riding through the redwoods in the mountains in less than half an hour.
- We don’t have a TV room, but we don’t have a TV, so no need. We don’t have a guest room, but we don’t have guests but once or twice a month.
- We don’t have a “hobby room”, but my wife can knit on the couch, and it’s really sort of hard for me to surf, cycle, or sail indoors.
The house is small, but it’s not a compromise to live in. I love living here.
We’ll probably have kids in the next few years, and not too long after that, we’ll probably want a two-bedroom place, but it will still be small. That may be when we decide to stop renting and buy our own place, as well.
Obviously, Tyler’s house wouldn’t work for everyone. But I think it’s great that he and his wife made a conscious decision to live someplace smaller so they could focus on the things that really matter to them. This, my friends, is one of the keys to happiness (and financial success).
On a side-note, Tyler recently completed a fascinating 30-day-project:
Most of our lives are lived on average days, not big once-in-a-lifetime days when we get married, or pay off the house, or graduate from college. Yet, many people focus quite intently on these big goals, to the exclusion of day-to-day life. This is my effort to emphasize the days that make up 99% of our lives. For 30 days, I’m recording the regular things that I do, every day.
He spent a month photographing the little things that making everyday life worth living, from birds to biking to bugs. This being in the present moment is another of the things that can lead to happiness.
Thanks, Tyler, for sharing your story with GRS readers!
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Great project, I’m doing a similar one where I write down a few things I do/like about each day. Pictures would probably work better for me though since my memory tends to remember those more than written details.
Cool house, but it never ceases to amaze me the cost of living in CA. Here in MO that monthly outlay would get you a huge place – not by the beach though of course.
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Tyler, I love your 30 day project! It sounds like it would be very encouraging for making the most of each day or at least appreciating some aspect of each day, rather than take one’s life for granted. What a wonderful, meditative exercise.
I am a writer, and I am now inspired to try this experiment in my writing. . . a poem a day, honoring some aspect of that unit of time. It’ll help keep me from letting life pass me by without taking notice. Thank you.
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Wow – this is great – thank you so much for sharing!! I love this cute little house and I’m going to hop on over to Tyler’s blog to check out his 30 day project.
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You have a great life, Tyler! Nice house, lovely wife and cat.
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Tyler, you are my hero. I LOVE your little house! Santa Cruz is awesome; my husband & my sister are Banana Slugs.
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Love the little house. thanks for sharing your 30 day project. Very interesting and thought provoking.
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Ditto to what Kevin M said. $2200 or so (half of 32% of 170,000) for 450 square feet! Wowzers!
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Great stuff JD and Tyler! I don’t live anywhere near the beach (nor want to) but his reasoning is that of many of my friends and ex-colleagues in NYC; namely, we’re in a location where we’re close to the things we love, so we’re rarely sitting at home, so why do we need a big house?!
I’m compelled to ask though – is there anyone on the internets who isn’t a cat person?
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Tyler’s clarity of thought is what I like.
He knows that it’s not the marriage ceremony that’s important, but the relationship. Not the size of your paid-off house, or even its property value in dollars, but its location relative to where you NEED it to be, and what it allows you to do with your life.
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I realize I made a bit of a mistake when calculating the “half of 30-35%” number that I sent to J.D. earlier. That’s only counting my base salary, not my wife’s or bonuses. Based on the adjusted gross income on last year’s tax return, rent comes out to 10.7% of our income, so more like a third instead of a half of the standard 30-35%.
I enjoyed doing the 30 day project. While doing it, it does made me think about what’s unique and interesting in each and every day. I decided to limit it to 30 days though, because it’s actually a challenge to carry a camera around all the time and try to remember to take pictures every time something interesting happens around you. Also toward the end of the project, coming up with new things that I hadn’t already posted started to get more challenging, I’d eventually have had to start repeating myself.
Thanks for the kind words everyone.
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Very cool, Tyler. I think that’s great.
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Great journey – it is true…. each day =- simplify life !
by the way Tyler – Stella could be cousins to my KC
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I always thought you were supposed to count the 30% from your net salary, not the gross. In the past, I’ve worried because thought the prudent advice was housing was supposed to be 30% of ONE of the net salaries in the home.
My home costs about half MY net income including ALL my utilities and our cells.
I love the pictures. It’s amazing how the world changes when you focus on seeing it in small pieces.
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My husband and I are in a similar situation, but living in 1040 sq ft with 2 kids — and no yard, patio or driveway. On the other hand, we’re on track to pay it all off in a few years and spend summrs in Provence, with any luck….
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What a thought provoking post. My husband has been a Mortgage Broker for 10 years. Day in and day out he sees people who are trying to buy way more house than they can afford, and I am sure most of the time it is more than they need. We’ve thought about moving to something to give us a little more space (it would be nice to have his gun safe and reloading bench out of what is supposed to by my dining room) but have decided against it everytime it comes up. We may add on a larger family room as the kids are almost teenagers. I’d like to have plenty of room at my house for them to hang out so that they aren’t hanging out someplace else getting into trouble.
I also love the 30 day project. What a really cool thing to do. Something I will definitely try.
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This is really a great post!
most of us think that greater ,bigger or pricier (if there is anything like that)brings satisfaction but NO.
I think we can learn from this post to make decision based on set priorities.
Great Job.
Joseph
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i am living a 1500 home and i find my home a little too big for me sometimes.
last night on tv i saw this guy who build a “green home” that is about 15,000 square feet.
think about that, a “green home” that is “15,000″ square feet and house 5 people.
what an idiot!
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I love the smart home books, well designed homes that make good use of space, but smaller than average home size.
I grew up in a small 20s home, 1500 square feet, but with basement and other storage, only 1 bath, 4 people, it was on the water.
Here in Florida, I sold my small 20s home 1500 square feet (just one person) when Mr. Sam and I bought a larger 20s home (2200 square feet plus a carriage house). We don’t need all the space (we have three bedrooms) but we grabbed the property, it is a unique historic home in a unique historic neighborhood, when we could because we plan to have kids and we were trying to figure out if we could add on to my old home (which was going to be complicated because it also was a historic home in a historic neighborhood).
In Florida, the problem is lack of storage (no basements, limited attic if at all) and my old home did not have a garage.
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What a lovely little house! Unfortunately in many places it is NOT LEGAL to live in a house that small–many towns have zoning ordinances that require a minimum square footage. Additionally, many houses which are considered “manufactured” are also prohibited.
If you want to live in a small house like this one, remember to check your local laws to see if it is permitted–or encourage your local zoning board to amend their laws to permit smaller lot sizes and houses.
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Sounds perfect! I would personaly love to see photos of the inside of the house.
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Love the 30 day project, and the house. (And it’s always amazing when orchids bloom; it’s worth the wait.)
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That’s amazing. Way to go, Tyler and wife! I think your house is actually smaller than the studio apartment my husband and I live in, but, just like you guys, we don’t need anything bigger right now, because we don’t have kids, and our hobbies either don’t take up a lot of room or involve going out of the house to do. It’s so nice to see other people “living small” like us!
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We have a small – 415 ft. square apartment behind our house (1200 ft square) that we rent. People FLOCK to it – it is just big enough, and the lower rent allows us a prime pool of tenants to select from. The tenants LOVE living there. Our own house seems way too big for the two of us – there are rooms we don’t go in everyday, and empty stretches of living room that are just, well, empty. Living in Texas, you see the biggest of the big – we are both attorneys, and our house is 1/2 the size of the house of a paralegal that works in my firm.
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I’m curious as to what the actual amount of your housing expenses are each month. How much is rent and utilities?
You said that your housing expenses were half of the 30-35% everyone else spends. For a house of that size, it seems as if your housing expenses would be a less than that.
- Single Guy Money
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As Tyler’s Wife, I feel like I should chime in here, mostly to reinforce Tyler’s point that living in our small house is NOT a compromise – in fact it has become a very intentional lifestyle that we love, and it works well for us.
(And yes, I think he did his calculations wrong, because our rent and utilities combined add up to a fairly tiny % of our income)
We share our tiny house quite happily with our 2 indoor cats (Stella’s brother Roscoe refused to pose long enough for a decent photo for the 30 Days project). It’s easier to keep clean, there’s room for overnight guests on our couch, it forces us to have less “stuff” due to lack of storage space, and the small kitchen is still plenty big enough for my frequent and elaborate forays into experimental cooking and baking. I even think we can keep living here comfortably even after we have a child, at least for the first few years, and that our lives would be better in this small house.
If a marriage can happily survive in a tiny space with very few material possessions to distract you and no separate space to retreat into, you’ve got a good thing going on.
Also, I just discovered that Santa Cruz actively encourages people to build tiny houses like this on their property in order to combat urban sprawl and increase the availability of affordable rental housing without encroaching on the surrounding wilderness areas, which I think is an awesome concept. http://www.ci.santa-cruz.ca.us/index.aspx?page=1150
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Neat project. Great pics – what camera did you use?
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We have a 445 square foot apartment, two bedroom, with three kids, babies really, as they are three and under. It works great for us now, and we never want a large home, not even cose.
Planning for our future, we are disturbed to see that building small is not legal in all places, as Eva said. It’s unfortunate, because with the economy and more people going green, this SHOULD be the future of housing.
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I love this house . Wish I could find one in Ohio like it.
Eva#19 poster ~` Where is it illegal to live in a small space? And please give any more info or sites you have about that. That’s just crazy that anyone can tell you where or what you can live in!
I prefer small places. We have an apartment around 750 square feet with 3 adults & think it’s too big. We spend at least 3/4 of our time in 1 room. I would like to get an efficiency apartment & have a futon with ottoman that opens to make bed, so could save up money for land .
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Tyler and Jaime’s attitude on their little place reminds me of a song.
But you know, love grows best in little houses,
With fewer walls to separate,
Where you eat and sleep so close together.
You can’t help but communicate,
Oh, and if we had more room between us, think of all we’d miss.
Love grows best, in houses just like this.
- Doug Stone (Little Houses)
The fact that they don’t have a TV just adds to the charm.
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We are in the process of downsizing having determined that we could live comfortably in something easier to care for and free up funds for other purposes.
For anyone out there looking for more info on living in tiny houses, visit the Tiny House Blog at http://tinyhouseblog.com/. There are tons of examples as well as a diverse bunch of reasons why people are choosing this lifestyle.
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Your home really should be what you want it to be. I could never live like that, but its what you guys want and that’s wonderful. You can use your money in other areas that benefit you more. I spend more money on my house, but its where I want to spend it. Of course I have to say, I could never afford the size house I have now if I lived in Santa Cruz! But your home should be exactly what you want it to be and its sounds like you guys are plenty happy with what you have.
So where do you keep your bike, surf board, etc? I don’t see an outside storage shed, but you must have something outdoors to keep them in.
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I glad that Tyler is as happy in his 450 sq. ft. house as we are, my wife and me, are happy in our 3600 sq. ft. home.
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Great that you don’t have a TV but how much time do you and the wife each spend on the internet?
-Mike
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The location of the house sounds awesome! Now if I could only fit my 125 lb bull mastiff into a smaller house without him destroying the place …
(and my wife and daughter and our other dog and our cat and my home office… lol)
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All I’d need is a nice, spacious garage for my babies!
I’ve always thought of building a nice garage, and adding a loft above it to live in…. Just not sure where we’d decide to settle down and what not.
Hate to say it, but I would need some room for my nice tv. It was an early Christmas gift/partly hubby’s birthday present after all… (And will be way more handy when I get it set up with my computer, so I can watch hulu on the huge screen.)
Sometimes it’s funny, but I miss the days when I lived at home and just had my own room. Everything in that room was mine and I loved it, and it was so tiny that everything was so carefully selected. I’m afraid that with more room I’ve sprawled quite a bit, but I definitely miss the cozy charm of having a tiny space that’s all mine.
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When we moved to Israel, we spent a few years in what is called a “trailer park” home in the US (here it’s called a “caravan”).
It was 48 square meters – about 400 square feet.
All our furniture and fancy stuff stayed in storage.
It was a great time in our lives – and when we moved out, we chose a MUCH smaller house than we would have before.
And when we finally unpacked our old stuff… it was amazing how much of it we realized we really didn’t need… we could have left it in the States instead of all the packing and shipping.
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Tyler – That’s a small house, but a pretty big yard! Whatcha do out there all day?
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I’m a first time poster…I’ve been lurking this blog for a while now, and I must say, I love what I see. Reading all of these responses, and especially the responses for the previous post written by April reminds me of a wonderful book I read: The Not So Big House by Susan Susanka, which basically advocates creating homes to fit our lifestyle. Reading stories of people who found that they could successfully live with less- and love it as long as their homes fit their lifestyles reminded me of this great book. The book also explores the common tendency of “Keeping up with the Joneses” when buying homes, which is certainly relevant to any homebuyer…
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I noticed at the end of the 30-day project that the microwave is taking up a lot of counter space. I also see they have a range hood.
It might be a decent investment to search around for a deal on an over-the-range microwave. It shouldn’t bring that hood down too much and would free up all that counter space, which is pretty valuable in a 450 sqft house.
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There are no 450sq foot houses where I live. Unfortunately, many of the post WWII under 1000 square feet houses have been bulldozed to make room for much larger monster houses.
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Hey Tyler, I started reading your 30 day project a couple weeks ago (got there from a comment you posted in this blog) and it inspired me to do my own! It’s less daunting than the Project 52 or Project 365 that most people do (taking a photo per week, or per day, for an entire year). I haven’t had a chance to start mine, though. I really should get on that, but I was waiting for the first of the month to start it. I guess there’s really no reason to wait, though.
That said, I could never live in that house, nor in that location. I wouldn’t enjoy either, though I might find it enjoyable if you could swap the ocean for a fresh water lake (my parents live on Lake Huron and it’s just gorgeous).
@FourPillars – if you click on the photos through to the Flickr page where they are stored, the camera information is there. “Taken with a Canon PowerShot SD970 IS.”
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It’s so interesting to read the comments and see what everyone brings with them as they comment.
I love the house Tyler and Jaime have. I’d be curious to see the interior as well if they wanted to share it.
I live in a little old New England house, about 1300 sq feet officially, and I love almost everything about it. I have two young boys, a husband, a dog (lab mix, so not small), and some goldfish. Most of the time I think we have plenty of room, but I sure do wish we had another bathroom!
One comment from an acquaintance that offended me, possibly for life, is that I have the smallest house in my town (which isn’t true, anyway). I see I should have thanked her and said I loved my lovely small home. Oh well!
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I especially like the last quote, where he states that we focus too much on the out of the ordinary days, if I may paraphrase. I believe this leads us to do things (and acquire things) that don’t really matter. “I need two ovens to cook the turkey and all the sides”. Really? What about the other 364 days? We need furniture and an outdoor kitchen for when we entertain. Really? How often do you really entertain? I bet it’s 25% of what you think it is.
I think Tyler has it right.
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I love the post, the house, and the project. Just perfect!
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Very inspiring. While I love many aspects of my 700 sq. ft. condo, I have often contemplated upgrading to get more sun and maybe a balcony.
But the truth is I can’t afford to upgrade. I just need to enjoy what I have and sleep well knowing that I am financially responsible. Time to stop the daydreaming and live in reality. Just because my friends have more doesn’t mean that I need more – if I want to barbeque, I’ll go to their places!
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About the 30 days project — the fact that it wasn’t easy not to repeat photos as the project ended may point to the possibilities of finding pleasure in ritual and repetition. It’s wonderful when the things we do often are things that bring pleasure, and when we identify things like that I think we should look for ways to do them more often/regularly.
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Ahh..that’s nice for the little neo-hippies.
Now if they actually had kids I think it’ll be a much, MUCH different story.
Honestly I am more of a middle-of-the-road kind of guy. This, people, is extremism, and is just as extreme as is the other way with a family of 5 and a McMansion and a three car garage.
They live in a Mediterranean-like climate, have no kids, and make more money that the other 90% of the population so they can have this kind of lifestyle. It’s nothing to laud them for. It’s just another extreme.
“This, my friends, is one of the keys to happiness (and financial success).”
That’s a little bit of a generalization. In your opinion, yes, but I think having a more practical approach to get ahead in life and finances and not jettison everything for “freedom” would be more effective…but oh well.
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Awesome setup, hey Tyler, your name sounds familiar. You ever spend time on ATOT anymore?
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@Johnny – I’m pretty sure the “keys to happiness” JD refers to are conscious decision making and focusing their time and money on things they really value, rather than just keeping up with neighbors to “prove” their worth. I hardly see them jettisoning everything for the sake of freedom – the guy owns a boat after all!
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I thought I’d check back in one more time and address some of the questions people have posed.
@SingleGuyMoney:
Our actual rent is $1450/month. Our energy bills for the last few months have been between $35 and $42. Water is billed separately, and I don’t have those numbers handy, but it’s not particularly expensive.
@KC:
There actually is a little storage shed behind the house, there are some bikes and surfboards in there. Although, I do keep one surfboard inside the house, and I could find a place to squeeze one bike inside, too, if I needed to.
@Mike Hunt:
We spend a fair amount of time on the internet. I have to, it’s my occupation. Still, even at home were online a lot, and I see where you’re going with this. I don’t think the internet is quite analogous to TV, though — it’s more like reading (most of it *is* reading) than watching TV. It also has no commercials (especially with ad-blocknig software), which are probably the worst thing about television.
@Financial Samurai
The yard isn’t tiny, but it’s certainly not huge. I planted the lawn a few months ago. Will probably plant some flowers and other pretty plants this spring. Having a yard is kind of fun, I’d never really had my own space for gardening before moving here.
@(Anyone who commented about seeing the interior)
. I could do a video tour or something, maybe I’ll post that on my website sometime in the near future.
I don’t actually mind showing the interior, as long as I get to clean up first
@Johnny
I don’t think I’ve ever been called an extremist before. It’s funny that of all the personality traits that could prompt such a statement, living in the wrong sized house was the thing that did it. You’re entitled to your opinion, but I don’t think we need to change much to get ahead in life — I already feel like we’re ahead.
@MattCo
I haven’t visited that site in quite a while. I found myself wasting too much time on it, and moved on.
I’m glad I was able to make an impression on some people and spark some discussion. It’s an honor to be featured on a site with such a great community.
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