Accomplishing the bare necessities of life is stressful. Just getting through every day so you can wake up tomorrow and do it again is a lot. Then, you’re expected to keep up with the Joneses, stay fit, lose weight, maintain hobbies, advance your career, buy bigger houses, keep up on reality TV and world affairs, have the latest gadgets, have a family, go out on weekends, stay abreast of the local gossip, remember to change the air filter, drink 8 glasses of water a day, save for retirement, keep up the yard, stay hip to the latest fashions, and keep the houseplants alive — all just so you can say “I have a life“. It’s no wonder that everyone is stressed out and broke.

We used to be like that — a couple of twenty-something college dropouts with a whole lot of debt, no time, and no real direction in life. Now, less than a year later, our debts are nearly paid off, we’re both going back to school, and we’ve both discovered that, more than anything, what we wanna be when we grow up is retired. By examining our motivations and priorities, we figured out how to simplify our day-to-day, how to hack our budget to live more frugally, and still maintain the fabulous quality of life we’d come to enjoy. We stopped fighting to stay ahead of the curve.

LivingBehindTheCurve.com is our attempt to document and share our experiences with the world. Maybe we’ll help a few people along the way, too, with our unique blend of lowbrow frugality, simple living tips, and radical re-envisioning of what success in this day and age actually means.

To launch our site this week, we’ll be providing overviews of our scheduled daily themes, which you can poke at here if you’d like. You can also read about who exactly we are here. Welcome to Mer and Dani’s house — make yourself comfortable, and feel free to raid the fridge.