Some of us write posts about the simple life, and some play the simple life on tv, but few of us actually do it. This past weekend I spent a good amount time chatting with my brother about an old friend of his from college with whom he had just met up with for lunch. His friend and his wife whom I’ll Joe and Susan both went to the same college with my brother, a top liberals art college in the northeast.  Joe graduated with a degree in Geology, and Susan a degree in Biology. Today they are primarily farmers in New England, and have been so since the day they graduated well over a decade ago. They have taken the road less traveled while many of their classmates went on to become lawyers, doctors and bankers.

They slaughter their own chicken, pigs, and cows. They sell bales of hay, chop cords of wood, make and bottle maple syrup. With three children, ranging in age between 7 years and 6 months, they are tired but happy. Financially, however, they could be in better shape. Joe has a part time job with UPS, mostly for the insurance coverage, and Susan is considering waitressing to earn a little extra money once the children are older.

As much as Joe and Susan love the type of life they lead, the simple life for them is also fraught with risk. For example this year they’ve been able to sell 10,000 bales of hay to the drought stricken southeast. 10,000 bales sounds like a lot, but given that these small bales of hay sells for about $2.45 in the midwest, 10,000 bales does not generate all that much income given the amount of work that goes into each bale. Hay has to be grown, harvested, and dried. While Joe has a tractor attachment that does much of this work, such machinery is not free. A 20 year old bottom of the line baler still costs close to $7,000. While this year they have been fortunate that the demand has been high for hay, they could have just easily been the victim of bad weather.

In addition to the risk of drought, Joe constantly faces physical dangers that I can hardly imagine sitting at my desk job. Apparently last year while he was cutting some trees down, he ended up getting pinned to the ground by two fallen trees. He was alone in the forest that is his backyard, and was only saved when Susan found him after he didn’t come home.  I worry about paper cuts.  Joe worries about trees falling on him.  I don’t know how much life or disability insurance Joe has, but whatever he does have he’s paying out of his own pocket given that he’s mostly self-employed.

Both Joe and Susan wake before the crack of down. Joe logs a couple hours at UPS warehouse and comes home to work the farm. Susan milks the cows, feeds the chickens, and gets the children ready for school. They effectively work from 4 in the morning to 6 at night. That’s a long day in the “office.” It’s not like he and Susan can take time off either. Farming doesn’t lend itself to long vacations even if they could afford it. They have not gotten in a plane in over 10 years. I probably don’t go 10 weeks without stepping onto a plane.

I admire the alternate life style that Joe and Susan have chosen for themselves. They did not subccumb to the many temptations for things and status that so many others do They have chosen a simple existence and one that is very much in touch with nature that I think many of us think about wanting. However their life is also representative of how even living the “simple life” is not as simple as we might think.  It can be fraught with risk and stress.  While Joe and Susan certainly practice a frugality forced upon them by their lifestyle where they grow and raise their own food, the rest of their financial life is under constant assault.  Because they have chosen to eschew more lucrative careers, saving for retirement is difficult. The biggest challenge for them is properly guarding against risks via insurance or a sizeable emergency fund. In their case, the emergency fund is not just personal but one for their farm. Can they survive one bad year? Can they survive a broken tractor? We should all be so lucky to be able to choose the “simple life”, but the choice is also one that requires immense financial preparation and hard work.