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Please don't remind me that I'm poor; I'm having too much fun pretending I'm simply "living green" like everyone else these days.


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Saturday, April 10, 2010

My front door

This is my front door.  (yes, I see it needs to be painted again)  Anyway, do you realize that everytime you leave your house it's going to cost you?  It doesn't matter where you are going or what you are planning to do... you will be spending some of your hard earned money.  Even if you only drive around for awhile and go back home you will have spent money on gas.  Think about it.





I'm just as guilty as anyone else who has repeatedly slipped back into the spend, spend, spend mode.  I see, I want.  Yup, I see things I want and
wind up getting them even though I really want to save money.  Maybe it's a kitchen gadget I believe will make my life easier.  Maybe it's a thrift store find that I've convince myself is a fantastic bargain.  Maybe a visit to the fabric store has me thinking about quilts to be made so I bring home more fabrics.

We are all taught from the time we are born that spending is what we should do.  Heck, sometimes our first real outing without adults is at the mall.  We're given some money and told to meet the adults back at a certain spot at a certain time.  Then, we are also taught to have more and do more than the neighbors.  A bigger boat, a newer kitchen, a fancier car, or even a movie theater in our house.  Get the idea?  It's called "keeping up with the Jones".

What it all boils down to is accumulating stuff.  The more stuff, the better.  So I got to thinking about it.  Is it really better to have an abundance of stuff than an abundance of money?  Sure, I might tell myself that all this stuff will help if for some reason the economy takes another nose dive.  At least I won't run out for a long time. A good justification for my over spending.  But..... will it really help?

Will a few hundred yards of fabric stash pay an electic bill?  Will a dozen tubes of toothpaste in the cabinet buy me a bag of flour?  Will a dozen pairs of pants hanging in the closet do anything to help me if I must pay for medicine?  I hope I'm making my point here.  The point is that I need to stop accumulating so much stuff and start accumulating a bigger stash of money. 

I don't know why.... but lately I've been thinking about how little we owned when I was a child.  We had "enough" to get us by and that was fine.  We didn't have electricity or indoor plumbing or even inside walls in the house but we ate well and were happy.  I want that feeling again.  The happiness that comes from knowing I have enough.  There is no need to accumulate more.  So in my quest to be even more frugal I'm including accumulating far less stuff while getting rid of the excess.  No, I won't go pitching and tossing things just to get them out of the way.  Rather, I will be using up what I have before seriously considering more purchases.

4 comments:

kathi said...

Oh Anita. THAT is exactly what i NEED to do. USE UP what i HAVE. and what did i do? went out with a friend, quilt shop. YUP. bought MORE fabric. WAAY to much more. HOW does one SAVE when one keeps SPENDING? I HAVE VOWED over and over to NOT buy any more fabric UNTIL i use UP the MAJORITY at least of what i HAVE. only to break that vow. over and over. I feel like the apostle Paul. i DO the things i DO NOT WANT to do. and DO NOT DO the things i WANT to do.. ohhh poor pitiful creature that i am. Let us BOTH hope we can KEEP that "vow",, this time.. well atleast for a WHILE.. i hope.

Anita Estes said...

Ok Kathi, maybe together we can figure out how to keep our vow not to purchase?

lw said...

For me, money has never been the problem (as an adult, anyway. We were pretty broke when I was a kid.) What I have never had (since I work full time or more) is time.

It takes time to save money. It takes time to plan meals, clip coupons, shop wisely. It takes time to mend clothes instead of buy new ones. It takes time to research large purchases (like cars or washing machines) and make sure you get value for your money.

If you save money, consider it payment for the time you took to plan how to do it.

Anita Estes said...

Ooo, good point lw!

Personally, I consider time as spendable as money. If I spend 30 minutes to repair something that saves me $100 then I'm earning $200 an hour. That 30 minutes spent is just as important as the 30 minutes I would work at an outside job to earn the money which would be used to pay someone else to do the repairs.

Finding time to do things is just as difficult for some as finding extra money is for others. While one might not worry about finances another might not worry about the time they can spend. We all have out strenths and weaknesses concerning time and money.

I hope that makes sense. It's difficult to judge what I typetalk is understandable or not.