Another Newbie

Hi everyone,
I'm Kaye and I live in Victoria Australia. I've been searching for an online community of like-mined people and found this one when I recalled the term "downshifter". The internet, its an amazing thing. I find that most of my friends, family members and work collegues are caught up in the whole consumer thing of buying the latest, newest cars, furniture, kitchen appliances, clothes, etc and although I keep telling myself this is not what I want, its easy to get caught in the trap of always wanting more. I've read various books of inspiration, like "Status Anxiety" but I'm easily influenced and its hard when you're surrounded by people like this (the majority of people in western society I guess). I read "Adbusters" magazine which keeps me down to earth and I realise how affluent my life really is and I should not always feel the need to fill the void all the time. So now I have found this forum I can log on and keep in touch with people that are less concerned with buying things and more concerned about the quality of their lives. I have had the dream of owning a property where I could be self-sufficient for nearly all my life and I'm closer to that goal now. Unfortunately, I have to work in a job which seems to have no purpose for me in order to save money to be self-sufficient or at least semi-self-sufficient one day. My partner has health issues so therefore has a limited earning capacity so I have down-shifted in a different way to a lot of couples who choose to earn less to decrease the stress in their lives, etc. I guess the downshifting for me is more of a realisation of limited funds and therefore the direction those funds should be going in. Anyway sorry about the long post, I'd love to hear from people who can relate to any of the things I've said in this post.
Kaye