'We are not hardcore hippies': why our family chose a low income in order to have a richer life

Despite a typical suburban upbringing - and two PhDs - Jonathan Cornford and his family decided to restrain their consumptionChange by Degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household's carbon footprintGot a question or tip for reducing household emissions? Email us at changebydegrees@theguardian.comWhen my wife, Kim, and I got married in 1995 we decided, in our youthful idealism, that we would try to "live simply so that others might simply live". It turns out that living simply can sometimes be quite complicated. Nevertheless, from the outset it was clear to us that living simply should involve living on a lower income than the Australian norm. We were sort of downshifters, except we had never shifted up in the first place.The bulk of our married life has been spent living at an income level that put us in the bottom 20% of Australian households. We now have two older teenagers, and for most of their lives our family technically hovered around the Australian household poverty line. But "poverty" has been very far from our experience. Continue reading...