Living within means with your workscape

What if the key to working less isn’t about earning more, but needing less?

In a world that encourages hustle, growth, and continuous upgrades, there’s a quiet act of sovereignty in defining enough. Not as a sacrifice. Not as scarcity. But as a conscious strategy.

There’s an old word that rarely gets used these days: subsistence. It conjures images of survival and hardship. Yet, when reframed, it becomes an invitation to examine what’s truly needed for a meaningful and satisfying life. Not the marketed ideal. Just your version of enough.

Redefining subsistence: income isn’t just money

In many lives, income has come to mean only money. A salary, a contract rate, a weekly wage. It’s counted in currency and chased with intensity.

But income can be broader than that. What flows into your life and sustains you might include:

• Fresh food from a home garden.
• A friend offering child-minding.
• Tools borrowed instead of bought.
• Emotional support that replenishes energy.

These are legitimate forms of incoming value. If subsistence is about sustaining life, then these items surely count.

It’s useful to pair that idea with subsistence expenditure that is the minimum viable outgoings for the kind of life you want. This isn’t about scraping by. It’s about setting a baseline, knowing your numbers, and aligning your lifestyle with your priorities.

A spreadsheet, not a dream board

In 2018, my partner and I sat down at the dining table with a spreadsheet, two years’ worth of bills, and our credit card transaction history. We weren’t looking to create a dream budget. We wanted data and reality.

We were both self-employed at the time, middle-aged, with no kids or pets. We had two cars, one mortgage, and no private health insurance (fortunate to have free healthcare here in Australia!). At that point, we’d owned a home for only eight years, so there wasn’t a lot of equity. What we were after was clarity: What did it actually cost to live our version of a modest life? What would we need to continue that lifestyle into retirement? What was our impact on the planet now?

We excluded housing costs (rent or mortgage payments) because we wanted to assume we would be mortgage-free when we retired. We stripped out the extras. We left out holidays or some luxuries like dining out. We included the essentials: utilities, food, modest clothing allowance, transport, insurance for house, contents and cars. What we landed on shocked some people.

$30,000 AUD nett per year. That was the figure (c. 2018). After tax. For both of us.

It surprised us, too. However, it felt accurate. Not aspirational — actual.

What made it even more striking was hearing friends with six-figure household income (after tax) lament their lack of money. Their lives had expenses that were assumed necessary, but could be considered optional.

Our figure gave us something else: resilience. When COVID pandemic hit in 2020, and our business income plummeted, we didn’t experience the level of financial shock that others did. We already knew how to live with less. And more importantly, we knew we’d be okay.

Scarcity as a teacher: learning from real limits

Long before that spreadsheet exercise, other experiences had already begun to shape how I thought about resources and what it meant to live with less.

Living in Australia brought with it a different experience of water — one that I hadn’t encountered growing up in New Zealand. There, town water came freely to everyone’s home. It was plentiful and it was rarely considered in daily choices, except extreme circumstances. That changed when I moved across the Tasman Sea.

In my new Australian context, water was a commodity. It was measured and it was charged. It came with restrictions as reservoirs dried up and dropped low. There were rules about whether you could water the garden or wash the car. I had to learn how to conserve and plan usage. Every drop became a choice. I began to appreciate rain and natural reservoirs in a new way, and I realised how much I had taken free limitless water for granted.

Another vivid lesson in scarcity came indirectly, through people I knew. Christchurch (in New Zealand), is a city I once called home. When the 2011 earthquakes struck, I wasn’t there but many of my family and friends were. Through their stories, I heard about a new way of living, thrust upon them overnight.

Power was lost. Water stopped running. Sewerage was hindered. Rubbish collection ceased. Supermarkets and pharmacists were inaccessible, if indeed they could open for business. So, people shared what they had. They cooked with neighbours. They reused grey water and repurposed anything at hand. Out of crisis came the discovery of what was possible with less. Some of those practices stayed, even when systems were restored.

These experiences, whether lived or witnessed, offered sharp clarity. They showed what truly matters, and how resourcefulness can thrive when assumptions are stripped away.

Seeing what friends and family in Christchurch went through was eye-opening in other ways. They spent long hours queuing for drinking water. They had to search for basic groceries. Damaged roads turned short trips into long, exhausting journeys. It showed me that managing resources is not just about money. It’s also about energy.

A double budget: money and energy

Someone who has done their own rethink about their work life balance is Koren Helbig. She wrote an article (July 2024) about her exploration and described living on a financial budget and an energy budget. It wasn’t just about dollars. It was about recognising a limited capacity to give time, attention, and emotional labour.

She made choices to reduce paid work and in return found increased wellbeing and presence in other areas of life.

What might change if you adopted an energy budget as well? What if the question wasn’t “Can I afford this?” but “Do I want to spend my energy here?”

From Buyer to B-innovator: Five ways to meet your needs

It’s time to get creative about how to meet needs. Buying is just one way. It’s the most visible and often the most immediate. However, it’s not the only way and it’s often not the most sustainable.

Here are five other ways to consider, especially when aiming to live within means:

• Borrow:  Make use of what’s already in your circles, from tools to time. The rise of community toy and tool libraries (in addition to book libraries) are a great option when you don’t even know those whom you might borrow from.
• Barter: Offer something you have in exchange: skills, services, produce. Start by making a list of what you have to offer. Have some conversations to see if and when others might take you up on your offer.
• Build: Create, make, or cultivate something from what you already have. From vegetable gardens to preserving, and sewing your own clothes.
• Bring Back: Restore, reuse, repair. Let something old serve again. Use your own supplies or visit the Trash and Treasure section at local garbage station. Check out the local Men’s Shed (AU) (an Australian innovative movement) or Women’s Shed (AU), they often have projects where you can learn skills for repairing and building.
• Buy (secondhand): When buying is necessary, seek pre-loved goods, or local goods that help the local economy and didn’t have big carbon tickets attached. Visit Opportunity shops, swap meets, garage sales and farmers markets.

Each of these actions can reduce dependency on financial income and build a stronger, more resilient life and change the financial dynamics of your workscape.

Choosing less as a strategic move

Living within means isn’t about going without. It’s about going with intention. With clarity. With care.
This approach touches three key areas of a Self unLimited life:

• Reign – leading with purpose and vision
• Revenue – redefining what value looks like
• Resources – caring for what enables good work and good living

Defining your version of “enough” creates freedom. There’s less pressure to earn relentlessly. More space to breathe, rest, and create. And a stronger alignment between how you live and what you believe.

There’s dignity in choosing what matters. Power in redefining what is needed. And grace in stepping away from the noise of more.

So ask:

• What could be let go?
• What other forms of income can be welcomed and used?
• What habits are driven by assumption, not intention?

In choosing to live within your means, you are not retreating — you are reasserting sovereignty. You shape your workscape not by accumulation, but by alignment.

And that’s a deeply Self unLimited move.

 

Author

Helen Palmer is a workscape navigator, and creator of the Self unLimited philosophy. She helps people take ownership of their workscape, which includes exploration about the real costs of working to live. She shares from her own experiences so others can see possiblities for crafting a workscape that is meaningful and valuable.

 

This article was written with creative assistance from ChatGPT (generative AI tool).

 

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

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