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Not Buying It
07/01/2009 11:23 pmThe Inner Serpent is a sneaky creature. It tosses subtle suggestions and little hints around when it wants its way and woe to the Izzie who does not listen
So there's Izzie minding her own business in the gardening section of one of many local libraries back in November. Potters off to the desk with a juicy catch and walking past countless shelves filled with temptations, one book screams 'me me'. It had the intriguing title "Not Buying It' and immediately appealed to the subversive side of this serpent
Tossed it on the stack along with the rest of the books when back in the Lair and promptly forgot all about it. That was until slinking about in Cyberia where one of the best books ever about personal finance kept popping up in all sorts of places. This book is called "Your Money or Your Life" and is one of the very few books that thinks of questioning why you would want all that money in the first place and what the real cost is in getting it. So that brought Izzie back to the other book. Especially interesting to be reading it at the time that a bunch of shoppers got killed in a stampede in a Walmart just after Thanksgiving Day in the USA
The basic story was about a woman who got such a severe attack of Grinchitis whilst in the middle of Christmas shopping that she decided four weeks later to try an experiment of spending nothing for a whole year. Well - of course - not quite nothing but as little as possible.
The book is basically a sort of diary of her experiences over the year.
It got Izzie thinking, while not in a position to spend nothing at all over a year, could at least make lots of progress on a whole bunch of things on that 101 list by setting a reasonably low but not ridiculous limit
Reading a whole bunch of books, keeping the evil plastic under control, shaking off the munchies hoarding habit and paying a decent chunk off the house could all get tackled as part of this project. But the big one is the rainwater tank
That one turned out to be the turning point. Got a big fat juicy tax refund cheque at the end of November. The exact amount needed to buy a 2500 litre tank. But there was a slight problem. The Izzie had been so busy slinking in the jungles of Amazon and giving in to other decadent indulgences that the old plastic had slowly but steadily snuck up on us. From little things, big things grow, so to say.
So it was time to wipe the slate clean and use the new year as a chance to keep it that way.
By turning the thing into a game and a grand project - it would feel more like fun and less like scrimping and scraping
A year of no booze and no Juicy Beetroot munchies would be just too much like deprivation. The original author's rules included no bought booze (they made their own) and no eating out
But sticking to a limit of disposable income per week rather than a whole bunch of rules would make the whole thing so much simpler.
It would certainly avoid the countless problems they encountered when trying to refine the rules and working out the limits of the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. You'd be amazed at what sort of decadent luxuries got sneaked in under the disguise of groceries. Champers was out but caviar and smoked salmon was no problem at all.
So the rules of the game so far are
100 silver sickles per week disposable income for stuff like groceries, coffees, eating out and bus fares
The unspent excess to be put in the plastic pot to be saved up to buy those rainwater tanks and other useful green things
Not included in the weekly allowance is stuff like the water and gas bills, the monthly internet bill, union fees, council rates and the annual termite inspection
So Izzie had been a very good serpent for the first week until the very last minute. Been lurking around the lair more, cooking stuff from the stash of stored munchies and even doing the odd bit of decluttering.
But it was the visit to the grocery store just before closing time that was the first fall into temptation. Went 20 silver sickles over the limit of 100 and that was due solely to six boxes of panforte for $$3.25 each. Panforte is normally a decadent unaffordable and unjustifiably expensive luxury. So when the remnants of the Christmas stash are being cleared out at rather less than the usual ridiculous price of $$10, then all those good intentions took a back seat.
But all is not lost. Can always make up by spending only 80 next week ;)
Still not decided which category prepaid phone top ups come under.
But presently, the big bad no nos way up there on the forbidden list are
books, tarot cards and seeds (trees are ok but only between March and September)
Not that there's inherently anything evil about such things but rather that there's more than enough of them in the Lair at the moment. It's time to use and enjoy what's there instead of constantly longing for the next perfect deck or unusual weeds and seeds
On the food front - rice, pasta, lentils, tea, cheese and sauce. The logic is that there's plenty of those already in the pantry so they got to go first before getting any new stuff
The point of the exercise - apart from saving money is to appreciate and enjoy the lots of stuff we already got rather than go off on a search for new bright and shiny things where the hunt is often more fun than the actual possession of the thing itself
And yesss - buying a book about pottery, paper making or felt making is not at all a substitute for getting out there and actually doing the thing itself
With a house full of unread books and several excellent libraries at this serpent's disposal, there simply is no excuse for adding more to the collection.
So there's Izzie minding her own business in the gardening section of one of many local libraries back in November. Potters off to the desk with a juicy catch and walking past countless shelves filled with temptations, one book screams 'me me'. It had the intriguing title "Not Buying It' and immediately appealed to the subversive side of this serpent
Tossed it on the stack along with the rest of the books when back in the Lair and promptly forgot all about it. That was until slinking about in Cyberia where one of the best books ever about personal finance kept popping up in all sorts of places. This book is called "Your Money or Your Life" and is one of the very few books that thinks of questioning why you would want all that money in the first place and what the real cost is in getting it. So that brought Izzie back to the other book. Especially interesting to be reading it at the time that a bunch of shoppers got killed in a stampede in a Walmart just after Thanksgiving Day in the USA
The basic story was about a woman who got such a severe attack of Grinchitis whilst in the middle of Christmas shopping that she decided four weeks later to try an experiment of spending nothing for a whole year. Well - of course - not quite nothing but as little as possible.
The book is basically a sort of diary of her experiences over the year.
It got Izzie thinking, while not in a position to spend nothing at all over a year, could at least make lots of progress on a whole bunch of things on that 101 list by setting a reasonably low but not ridiculous limit
Reading a whole bunch of books, keeping the evil plastic under control, shaking off the munchies hoarding habit and paying a decent chunk off the house could all get tackled as part of this project. But the big one is the rainwater tank
That one turned out to be the turning point. Got a big fat juicy tax refund cheque at the end of November. The exact amount needed to buy a 2500 litre tank. But there was a slight problem. The Izzie had been so busy slinking in the jungles of Amazon and giving in to other decadent indulgences that the old plastic had slowly but steadily snuck up on us. From little things, big things grow, so to say.
So it was time to wipe the slate clean and use the new year as a chance to keep it that way.
By turning the thing into a game and a grand project - it would feel more like fun and less like scrimping and scraping
A year of no booze and no Juicy Beetroot munchies would be just too much like deprivation. The original author's rules included no bought booze (they made their own) and no eating out
But sticking to a limit of disposable income per week rather than a whole bunch of rules would make the whole thing so much simpler.
It would certainly avoid the countless problems they encountered when trying to refine the rules and working out the limits of the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. You'd be amazed at what sort of decadent luxuries got sneaked in under the disguise of groceries. Champers was out but caviar and smoked salmon was no problem at all.
So the rules of the game so far are
100 silver sickles per week disposable income for stuff like groceries, coffees, eating out and bus fares
The unspent excess to be put in the plastic pot to be saved up to buy those rainwater tanks and other useful green things
Not included in the weekly allowance is stuff like the water and gas bills, the monthly internet bill, union fees, council rates and the annual termite inspection
So Izzie had been a very good serpent for the first week until the very last minute. Been lurking around the lair more, cooking stuff from the stash of stored munchies and even doing the odd bit of decluttering.
But it was the visit to the grocery store just before closing time that was the first fall into temptation. Went 20 silver sickles over the limit of 100 and that was due solely to six boxes of panforte for $$3.25 each. Panforte is normally a decadent unaffordable and unjustifiably expensive luxury. So when the remnants of the Christmas stash are being cleared out at rather less than the usual ridiculous price of $$10, then all those good intentions took a back seat.
But all is not lost. Can always make up by spending only 80 next week ;)
Still not decided which category prepaid phone top ups come under.
But presently, the big bad no nos way up there on the forbidden list are
books, tarot cards and seeds (trees are ok but only between March and September)
Not that there's inherently anything evil about such things but rather that there's more than enough of them in the Lair at the moment. It's time to use and enjoy what's there instead of constantly longing for the next perfect deck or unusual weeds and seeds
On the food front - rice, pasta, lentils, tea, cheese and sauce. The logic is that there's plenty of those already in the pantry so they got to go first before getting any new stuff
The point of the exercise - apart from saving money is to appreciate and enjoy the lots of stuff we already got rather than go off on a search for new bright and shiny things where the hunt is often more fun than the actual possession of the thing itself
And yesss - buying a book about pottery, paper making or felt making is not at all a substitute for getting out there and actually doing the thing itself
With a house full of unread books and several excellent libraries at this serpent's disposal, there simply is no excuse for adding more to the collection.
