Talking about finances this week as part of the Clutter Cleanse. More money talk here and here.
One thing I’ve learned since reigning in my spending and going minimalist with finances: you can’t have it all.
We’re lucky to have a good, I think great, income. However, even with good income we have to decide what’s important to us and spend accordingly.
Things I spend a lot of money on:
- Food: we eat a lot of vegetables and I try to buy high quality eggs and meat. We eat grain-free about 80% of the time which I find to be more expensive than when we ate bread, rice and pasta.
- Travel: each month we put aside money for vacations and travel. We travel a lot compared to when we lived in Canada and usually have a small – three days in London – or big – two weeks in Canada – trip every other month. Some of it we ‘fund’ with airline points or piggy-back off of one of my husband’s work trips, plus we get free flights back home once a year from my husband’s employer. But five or six trips a year for a family of four is still a lot of money.
- Health & Fitness: our budget for Crossfit fees, running shoes, a visit to the Chiropractor, is close to what we set aside for travel. It’s also more than we spend on transportation each month.
Thing I don’t spend a lot of money on:
- Transportation: we have a little old car that we bought last summer with cash after living without a car for two and a half years. I use the bus and walk a lot. Gas is the equivalent of $9 USD a gallon. We don’t drive much.
- Furniture & Home Decor: we live in a furnished rental. It’s simply decorated and I’ve put a few family photos up (velcro strips for hanging pictures are awesome for rentals and vinyl wall decals spruce up kid’s rooms). When it’s clean and most of the kids toys are in their homes it looks very nice but it is nothing that you would find on Pinterest or in a home decor magazine. We don’t even have a separate budget item for home decor or furniture because we spend so infrequently in that area.
- Clothing: my husband and I each have a modest wardrobe budget. I don’t shop casually for clothing and my wardrobe is pretty small. I am not a style maven and I don’t shop for fun. I like to look somewhat current in styles but I don’t follow the latest trends.
Hopefully clearing your home and closet has given you a clearer picture of what you really use and enjoy.
Casual and emotional shopping: not so fulfilling. The thirty minutes you spend before bed reading a book from the library: a relaxing way to end your day. Hopefully you’ve found that you really don’t want or need it all and that you’re willing to cut some things – like lunches out at work – so that you can enjoy other things – like living in the country and spending a bit more time and money on your commute – more.
It’s a fine balance.
Someday we’ll probably spend more on our home, furnishing it and creating a beautiful space to enjoy, but I am pretty sure when that time comes (it will definitely be once our children are older) we won’t be traveling as much.
If it scares you to put an area of spending on hold, to effectively say ____ isn’t that important to me, just give it a try. You might find it’s quite freeing. I did.
I’m no longer pining for or trying to have a magazine worthy home or a closet full of au courant clothing. The family car gets us places but certainly not with style (and really, not a lot of comfort – the radio doesn’t even work). But realizing these things aren’t that important to me right now has made me see and appreciate the things that are important to me. With that clarity I’ve found it easy to spend according to what really brings us value instead of what our friends and peers value or what I see in a magazine.
How do you decide which areas to spend on and which to scale back or forgo entirely? It’s a personal question but I would love to hear how you make that decision in your household. My husband and I review our overall budget and spending annually and discuss any unusual purchases over $50.
Next up: Week Five is Kid Clutter!
thank you for this very timely post! I’ve recently changed what I do and took a cut in salary. and suddenly we faced the problem of our lifestyle being too expensive for our income. cutting old habits is hard. you want to look good, your home to look good, to feed your family well, to move in style and also to travel. but you can’t indeed have it all. you have to compromise and you have to sacrifice. we are now experimenting with the cold turkey approach (we have to live off certain amount of cash) and I think we will discover where the money was going. we will also probably have to re-prioritise certain things, like you say in your post. so you are right – realising that you can’t have it all is necessary, liberating and stress reducing. one thing at a time more like! thank you, thank you so much!
Lola – good luck! Sounds like you have a good plan in place.
We as a family have decided to spend less on stuff and more of activities / experiences that make us happy. For example, now during the winter, most Fridays we go for frozen yogurt even though is freezing here. We know that once of twice a month we go ice-skate or see a movie. Those are not cheap considering its for four kids, and usually a meal out can be involved. But those times we cherish more than buying a lot of crap for the apt. During summer we don’t spend as much as free parks and lakes gives us more entertainment on weekends that we can actually handle. We also do once a month or so trip to a new town in our state or a neighbor state and learn about it.
I found this really in line with what I do, and a good reminder as one month into the year, I’m reassessing.
I’m a single mom with no support living what is considered to be well-under the poverty line, as I am trying to further my education to provide a better future. However, I find the more I stay committed to what’s important and aware of alternatives, I have been able to create a live that we love. For example, we eat really well, but by investing in a yogurt machine, I save $500/year on greek yogurt and skip all of the hidden ingredients in commercial.
We go on a real vacation at least once per year, that I spend a few months planning for, so last summer we went to Chicago, stayed in the university’s “hotel” dorms for less than a weekend at a mediocre hotel, and bought a CityPass for 5 days and several restaurant and groupon vouchers — the trip REALLY struck home how important educational opportunities are to my family, and how unimportant things like souvenirs and clothing are for us. Clothing gets possibly one of the smallest fractions of our budgets, but I’ve joined a couple of online clothing swap groups and often get gorgeous brand-name, new clothing for a super-cheap.
Like you we spend a lot on food. We don’t eat out but buy good quality food at home and don’t cut corners there.
We don’t spend much on travel these days, choosing instead to be tourists here in Chicago. We’re both from here and we’ve finally realized that most friends travel through at some point and it’s more fun and less expensive to show them a good time in our hometown than to travel to them with a toddler. When we need a change of pace we have generous friends who are frequently happy to let us borrow their cabin “up north” and we drive up there for the weekend (nearly free, but for gas).
In contrast, we spend a fair amount of our budget on improving our home. We’ve stayed… and stayed… and stayed… in my husband’s “bachelor pad” through marriage then a baby (now toddler). We felt stressed for some time that the house wasn’t a good fit but were unable to find something in our budget that was. We finally realized that our current home could meet our needs with some changes and updates – and that this was a less expensive and more practical solution than moving. We’re slowly but surely doing renovations and redecorating to make the space function better for our current reality. It’s been well worth doing without in other areas to make the place where I spend nearly all my time actually work for me and my daughter!
We splurge on high quality food and we try to travel a bit. But our income isn’t high enough to have any other areas of high-ish spending. Our clothes can sometimes be ratty, our car is 9 years old (and we only have one), our furniture, while quirky, was not expensive, and the activities we have the kids in are limited. Cheap cell phones, no cable, and heavy use of the library too! I would like more cushion in our budget, with lots more set aside for savings, but it would mean cutting back our rather modest lifestyle even more, and we’re not prepared to do that.
Splurge for us is travel (a proper summer holiday to escape the rainy Irish summer has become more of a need for me than a want after 3 years of not being home to Canada during summertime). Pretty much everything else falls in the scrimp category!
I’m in your neck of the woods and yes, real summer at least once a year is at the top of my splurge list. It just doesn’t get hot here! I wore shorts a handful of times last summer for the first time since we moved here almost three years ago.
I bought a pair of dark denim jean shorts when I moved here over 10 years ago and they still look new they’ve seen that little use. I should really get rid of them but they seem to come in handy the day of summer we get each year in Dublin….
We’ve been on our mission to simplicity for 6 years now as I am the one making changes with other family members quite a bit behind on each step. But, I am persistent and they are coming around in time. We hit the most significant milestone this Christmas when we cut toy gifts in half, more than doubled toy donations to where they are finally easily manageable and opted for giving events. We will enjoy a children’s theater production of Rapunzel next week, making the enjoyment last. In addition, after two weeks of the whole house being sick, it only took me about an hour to clean up and to attend to things that were pushed to the side because of a lack of energy. In the past, that same scenario led to a massive, torturous 10 hour ordeal (embarrassingly, this is not an exaggeration) split by my husband and I and we never felt completely organized or clean even then. I was so energized by this, my energy to continue this effort with gusto was ignited once again and we are fine tuning and making choices for things that make all flow even better. Most importantly, with this noticeable result, the rest of the house, is finally considering the idea that “we can’t have it all” and there are a list of reasons why that is ok and preferable. They aren’t completely on board but I feel that coming sooner than later now. It is a wonderful feeling when my kids come up with thrifty solutions on their own! Rachel, you have been much of my inspiration through a lot of this process. Many thanks!
My husband and I have similar priorities when it comes to our money which is a good thing. This blog has given me much food for thought as to how I could make our lifestyle more simple but I still struggle with this. We spend a lot of money on private school for our children. The school is a 45 minute drive away so this is also a strain on our time. I do feel that the sacrifice is worth it for the excellent education our children are receiving. However, it does cause stress on our family. Another area we spend money on is vacations to someplace warm once a year. I wish we could just move someplace with a warmer climate but jobs, family obligations etc. prevent that right now. Looking forward to a warm vacation saves my sanity during the long cold winter and spring. We do not spend much money on clothes, books (library), eating out or entertainment.
I think I have few bad habits, e.g. I only watch some carefully chosen TV and fulfil my magazine-love with a couple of e-mags that don’t leave clutter or paper to be recycled – but I really notice that nothing that is advertised is ever a “need”.
If they make an ad for something, they’re trying to sell you something YOU DON’T NEED… anyone else notice that?! I do point it out to my children (and they to theirs!). It takes soul to get what you really need.
I spend less than average on clothing (I like thrift stores and classic styles), food (I cook at home a lot), transportation (I like my “new” cars to be ten years old and I take a bus to work), housing (1000 square feet), and entertainment so I can spend more than average in travel and early retirement savings. Also I don’t have to work a high-stress, high-hours, high-paying job like most of my friends have, just an average job. (I also don’t have any dependents, but I don’t think of that as a financial decision though it has financial consequences).
Children’s items is one area that we do not spend a lot of money on. We use the same bath products and laundry products. They get toys and clothes for Christmas and on birthdays and we just top up their wardrobe with whatever else they need from thrift shops.
We also spend very little on entertainment. No cable, no netflix, no movies etc. When we people ask us what we would like for Christmas we tell them movie tickets or tickets to a show. With two kids we rarely have a chance for this sort of thing anyway!
Love the title! It’s great to accept early on that you can’t have everything and you won’t, to accept it as it is. I like being able to eliminate the excess and keeping what is really needed in life. I won’t say I’ll ever go down to the bare bones, but close to it!
I do not buy any furniture any more except for mattresses. I take care of my stuff; it returns the favor by not looking worn at all. I do not buy dishes, pots& pans, silverware, etc. because again, I take care of my stuff.
Books are my downfall, but I will buy a Kindle or Nook book soon. I also do not buy knicknacks or collect anything.
Works for me!
I really love your finance posts. I am really working to spend more on activities and experiences and a lot less on clothing. I am starting a one year clothing fast on February 1st. It is a long time coming and I am very mentally prepared. I have a small wardrobe because I get rid of a lot, whenever I being in more. This cycle has to stop. I have already started not really liking shopping and my saving account is growing. Sad to think of all the money wasted on clothes for the family that were just given away after a few months of use.
I think about this whenever someone tells me, “You’re so lucky you get to stay home with your kids.” I am. I am very very lucky, but also, we make sacrifices to live off of one (and a quarter – I work part time at home) income. Some little things – we teach our kids to swim & ski ourselves, instead of paying for lessons; we don’t like shopping or care much about clothes, so we don’t spend money on new clothing (we live in Portland, Oregon, where there are great thrift stores); we don’t have cable or buy books or movies (just use the library) and some big things – we don’t go on elaborate vacations; we have one car that we rarely use. But we do spend way more money on bikes (4 commuting bikes – one for each of us- one cargo bike for long trips or grocery/errand runs, 3 mountain bikes for my husband and sons each) than our neighbors who have two cars. It’s definitely all about priorities. I have a girlfriend who loves music and has no problem spending $100+ (US dollars) on a concert, but she drives an old, beat up car and never goes to movies.
I like to spend money on good quality food, and things like horse riding lessons, yoga and massage- things which are enjoyable but stuff-free! I am also trying to put saving for the future higher up the list!
I do still find myself looking for things to buy- but so few fit my criteria for ‘worth losing the space’/worth cleaning’ these days!
This is such a great post, Rachel! “You can’t have it all” is a philosophy that seems foreign in our society, but “you wouldn’t want it all anyways” is even more out there in our trend-crazed world. Yet it’s so true, because possessions never bring more than fleeting satisfaction. I think it would be exhausting — not to mention expensive — to keep up with trends, especially considering how many different kinds there are (electronics, fashion, home decor, etc.).
This has inspired me to pay more attention to where our money goes, and what we really want to be spending it on. Thanks for the thought-provoking article!
Blessings,
Shannon