Live [Simply] Free

• Home
• About
• Twitter
• Contact

09-30-10

Everyday is My Weekend

Every week as Fri­day draws near, I can peruse my Face­book and see all these sta­tuses of peo­ple say­ing how they can’t wait for the week­end because of this or that. I have to laugh and shake my head.  It’s sad that peo­ple have to wait 5 days every week for good times.

I can’t help but think­ing how since I’ve got­ten out of school, every­day feels like the start of week­end. Each day is always a new adven­ture, and there’s no rou­tine to any­thing. The clos­est thing to rou­tine is Sun­day because of church.  Yes, I do have to work, but I actu­ally look for­ward to it. I’ve got a fun job that is far from rou­tine, very excit­ing, and gives me a sense of ful­fill­ment at the end of the day.

This year I’ve met so many amaz­ing peo­ple, and had so many cool oppor­tu­ni­ties that I can’t even count them because they pretty much come up every­day. Some peo­ple don’t believe life can be this good, but I’m liv­ing proof that it can be. Granted, I don’t have a wife and kids, but I guess you’ll have to see how I keep up my adven­tures when I do.

I’m just say­ing, check your­self. Loose your inhi­bi­tions, things are not as bad they seem. Don’t live for the week­end, live for today!

Choose. To. Live. Extraordinarily.

09-27-10

Minimalist Travel for Students

As stu­dents, we tend to move quite often. For hol­i­days some of us travel hun­dreds of miles to stay at home for a few short weeks, and then we move all the way back, which can be quite a has­sle, espe­cially if you have a ton of things to take with you.

So what’s the solu­tion? It’s so sim­ple, yet so dif­fi­cult to imple­ment. Drum­roll please… just carry less.

I’ve wit­nessed a lot of my friends take giant suit­cases for a two or three week stay but when I ask them why they carry so much lug­gage, the usual reply is ‘just in case’. I have to won­der, just in case of what? A spon­ta­neous fire? In the end, they only use a small frac­tion of the stuff they brought with them, which means a lot of wasted effort, espe­cially if they took trains and coaches to get home. Here are three tips to pre­vent it from hap­pen­ing to you:

1. Plan in advance. Yes you should be pre­pared, but try to be pre­pared before you leave, not after. In other words, try to sort out every­thing you need before you move, instead of tak­ing every­thing with you and choos­ing after­wards. Think about the kind of things you’ll be doing, then pack accord­ingly. Okay, so you can’t pre­dict the weather or every­thing you might be doing, but the incon­ve­nience of car­ry­ing a huge amount of stuff prob­a­bly out­weighs the incon­ve­nience of not hav­ing that par­tic­u­lar t-​​shirt or top. Try to make sure that you have a good rea­son for tak­ing each piece of cloth­ing, if you can’t think of one, then why take it?

2. Use your things at home. Before I moved to uni­ver­sity, I left a few things of mine at home which I can use, such as paja­mas, toi­letries and a few casual pieces of cloth­ing. This turned out to be a wise deci­sion because it saved me hav­ing to take all of that stuff with me to stay back at home. I only had to take the things that I only had one of (and really needed). This just about halved the weight I had to carry.

A lot of peo­ple fear that they’ll choose to leave some­thing behind and then need it later. Don’t worry about that, be brave, pick some­thing else or else impro­vise. Don’t beat your­self up for leav­ing it behind, or let it put you off. If you planned as best you could, you can’t blame your­self for your deci­sion. It only really becomes a prob­lem if you have set your mind in par­tic­u­lar and you’re unwill­ing to adapt.

You can apply these tips for going on hol­i­day abroad too. The less you carry, the less you have to worry about being stolen or lost. Wher­ever you go, remem­ber you are there to enjoy your hol­i­day, not be con­stantly wor­ried or annoyed at hav­ing to pull tons of lug­gage around at the airport.

Min­i­mal­ism isn’t about depriv­ing your­self of the things you need. It’s about hav­ing only what is essen­tial to you, so that life is that lit­tle bit eas­ier to live. For every lit­tle bit you pack lighter, the can save your­self a lot of stress. So next time when you’re think­ing of tak­ing a pile of things you’re not sure you’ll need, how about tak­ing a pinch of min­i­mal­ism with you instead?

09-20-10

Debt is Debt

One of the best deci­sions I ever made in my life was to make a con­scious deci­sion to be finan­cially independent.

DEBT IS DEBT

To me there is no such thing as good debt, it just sounds like mar­ket­ing nonsense.

It’s sim­ply a way for banks to lull you into a false sense of secu­rity to make you think that overex­tend­ing your­self finan­cially by buy­ing a house out of your price range is a good thing. Yeah right.

Whether you owe because you went col­lege to get a bach­e­lors, or whether you maxed out your credit card for a splashy vaca­tion — it is still money you spent that you didn’t have to begin with, and you now owe it to some­one else.

JOB DEPENDENCE IS A FORM OF INDEBTNESS

If you live on the finan­cial edge, heav­ily in debt but with­out any sav­ings, you will always be a slave to your job, because you will always need the money to make it to the next month.

Liv­ing pay­cheque to pay­cheque is not a life, you are not a slave to any­one or to any com­pany unless you make your­self one.

YOU CANNOT BE FREE IF YOU ARE TIED TO FINANCIAL OBLIGATIONS

If you find your­self think­ing about your credit card bal­ance as you are try­ing to fall asleep at night, it is a sign that it is a dark cloud that is chok­ing your qual­ity of life.

Think­ing about your debt, lack of sav­ings and lack of finan­cial secu­rity for the future is not what mod­ern life is sup­posed to be all about.

5 STEPS TO FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE

1. Get out of debt
Face your num­bers, make a plan, muster up some dis­ci­pline and stick to it. This is not as dif­fi­cult as one might imag­ine, and there is a plethora of infor­ma­tion out there on how to build a bud­get. You can start here with all of my best posts on debt and saving.

2. Stop bor­row­ing
Cut your­self off from access to easy money; this means credit cards, lines of credit, bor­row­ing from fam­ily mem­bers or friends and going past your bank account limit.

If you never stop bor­row­ing, you will never be able to dig your­self out of the hole.

3. Live below your means
If you spend $2000 a month now, think cre­atively on how you can cut it down by half.

It might seem impos­si­ble to many of you: “HALF!?”, but it is a solid, quan­tifi­able goal that will push you to go far­ther than just vaguely say­ing you want to spend less money.

It is very pos­si­ble if you re-​​evaluate your mind­set of why you should spend what you spend.

Start shop­ping smarter by sav­ing at the gro­cery store, cook­ing at home rather than eat­ing out, and learn­ing how to tell your­self “No” when you are tempted.

4. Start sav­ing
Even $10 a month is bet­ter than noth­ing, and with the magic of com­pound­ing inter­est, you could have $1000 in approx­i­mately 7 years.

Imag­ine if you saved $100? Or $500 a month? Think about it. You could have a lot more, sooner.

5. Ignore naysay­ers
Peo­ple will tell you that your lifestyle is unsus­tain­able.. and it most cer­tainly it is, but not for you, for them.

If you can do it, go for it.

Peo­ple told me all the time that putting 50% of my pay­cheque towards my debt was nuts, and I would never be able to do it.

Don’t be trapped by what peo­ple think you should do or buy. There are NO lim­i­ta­tions to how far you can go because you are the only one who can judge your own com­fort level.

Another good exam­ple is my lifestyle:
I’m a min­i­mal­ist, so I don’t like to spend money on fur­ni­ture because I don’t see a point for it in my life; all I own is a Japan­ese futon for the floor, a fold­ing table and fold­ing chairs.

I save a lot of cash doing this, because I never have to pay for mov­ing costs (my mini­van is enough), I don’t actu­ally spend money on fur­ni­ture, and I don’t need to main­tain it.

How­ever when I men­tion this, peo­ple look at me askew and I hear a lot of:

“How can you live like that?”

“You should get your­self to an IKEA, because they have cheap fur­ni­ture if you can’t afford any­thing better.”

Does it hurt to hear that kind of neg­a­tiv­ity? Sometimes.

It’s hard not to feel defen­sive or attacked, when peo­ple auto­mat­i­cally assume that you’re poor just because you don’t own a couch, a flat screen TV, lots of fur­ni­ture and you would rather rent than buy a home.

You have to keep in mind that it is your life, not theirs, and you not want­ing to do or buy things you are sup­posed to, doesn’t make you weird because there are plenty of oth­ers like you.

09-16-10

The Danger of Retirement

Retire­ment is a funny thing. So many peo­ple set their hopes on the day they get to retire, kick back, and relax. But if you talk to most retired peo­ple, they’ll tell you their lives seem busier than ever. I’ve heard it said that retire­ment is just get­ting new treads on the wheels. Get it? Re-​​tire.

Ok, but in all seri­ous­ness, why are retired peo­ple some of the busiest peo­ple?  Well, here’s the con­clu­sions I’ve come to.

1. Plan­ning. The days that are planned out in more detail always seem to be more pro­duc­tive. Retired peo­ple let plan­ning go to the way side and as a result end up with more stuff on their plate than they were “plan­ning” on.
2. Peo­ple assume. Soci­ety looks at retired peo­ple as hav­ing loads of time. So, a retired per­son ends up with all the calls to watch grand-​​kids, help with house projects, and run­ning errands.
3. Oblig­a­tion. Retired feel some sense of oblig­a­tion to help with all the incom­ing requests because oth­er­wise they feel lazy since they have no “real” work.

So what’s my advice to all retired peo­ple? Iron­i­cally, it can be found in my last post The Rule of 3s. Cre­at­ing pri­or­i­ties and get­ting involved in some­thing that defines their life and cre­ates struc­ture will help get the mes­sage across to oth­ers that even though they’re not work­ing a 9–5, they still have a life.

Per­son­ally, I cringe at the thought of retire­ment. It goes against my whole life phi­los­o­phy. I believe you should do what you love, and if you love what you do, why would you want to stop!? Prob­lem solved.

09-13-10

Interview with Tonia from Itty Bitty Impact

Tonia is the blog­ger behind Itty Bitty Impact. Her green lifestyle jour­ney began when she and her fiancé Mike bought a home together two years ago. They started “greeni­fy­ing” every­day house­hold tasks and real­ized that their small changes were adding up and mak­ing a dif­fer­ence. As part of their process in “greeni­fy­ing” their every­day lives, Tonia and Mike decided their greeni­fi­ca­tion should include the whole of them — includ­ing their upcom­ing wed­ding.. We decided to talk to Tonia about her wed­ding plans and what’s she’s doing to make sure their spe­cial day is eco-​​friendly.

You can fol­low Tonia and Mike’s plans, along with adven­tures with their dog, Lake Supe­rior on Twit­ter at @IttyBittyImpact or on her blog, Itty Bitty Impact.

JDB: First off, con­grat­u­la­tions on the engage­ment and the pend­ing wedding!

While many brides seem to give in to the pres­sure to have the biggest, bad­dest wed­ding ever, you and your fiancé have decided to take a more sim­ple, eco-​​friendly/​green route. Was this some­thing you’ve wanted for a long time, or some­thing you decided upon after get­ting engaged?

TS: I like to think of myself as a tomboy…or, at least I’m no girly-​​girl. However…I will admit that my BFF (best friend for­ever) and I used to buy wed­ding mag­a­zines when we were 14 or 15, and we’d sip hot choco­late at the book­store and pre­tend we were brides-​​to-​​be plan­ning our wed­dings. We did that all the time. I cringe now to think of what my wed­ding would be like if I had let my 15 year old self do the real plan­ning.

It wasn’t until I owned my own home that I got really into low-​​impact liv­ing. There’s some­thing about water­ing your own lawn (and watch­ing all that water get wasted), buy­ing your own gro­ceries (and real­iz­ing a lot of the stuff you eat comes all the way from Florida or Mex­ico), and wash­ing your own laun­dry (and read­ing the ingre­di­ents list on the deter­gent bottle…yikes!), that made my fiancé and I think, “There’s gotta be a bet­ter way to do this stuff…”

Two years ago, we changed how we live at home and “got greener.” And as a result, a lot of our friends and rel­a­tives have made sim­i­lar changes in their lives and reduced their daily impact on the envi­ron­ment. We real­ized that set­ting a good exam­ple for oth­ers is prob­a­bly one of the most impor­tant results of liv­ing a greener lifestyle. We want our wed­ding to be one big green party– because it’s the right thing to do, and it’s who we are, and it sends a great mes­sage to all our loved ones.

JDB: Expound a lit­tle bit on vision for an eco-​​friendly wedding.

TS: Basi­cally, we’re going to do most of the usual “wed­dingy” stuff, but do them more sim­ply or more resource­fully. I say “most” because we are for­go­ing a few of the typ­i­cal tra­di­tions (i.e. a wed­ding cake) either because we couldn’t pull it off it in a non-​​wasteful way, or because it just wasn’t mean­ing­ful to us in the first place.

Here are some of the main things we are doing to keep the wed­ding low-​​impact:

• Rings: Our rings are cus­tom made by Tamara McFar­land, a vegan hobby-​​farmer in Cal­i­for­nia. She uses 100% recy­cled met­als and fair trade stones in her jew­elry. The stone in my ring is man-​​made, which means it was not mined and did not impact the envi­ron­ment or soci­ety in a neg­a­tive way.
• Glass­ware: We are pro­vid­ing mason jars for guests to drink water/​beer out of instead of using the dis­pos­able plas­tic cups that the bar provides.
• Caterer: We asked every caterer in town whether they use dis­pos­able plates/​flatware or not. Only one said that they do not use dis­pos­able. We went with them.
• Décor: Our decorations/​favors are almost com­pletely thrift-​​store finds, and we’re mak­ing every­thing else our­selves, so we’re not buy­ing any plas­tic crap that will promptly enter a land­fill afterwards.
• Reg­istry: We are care­fully choos­ing high-​​quality items that will last us a long time. My par­ents are still using many house­hold items they received as gifts for their wed­ding. When some­thing is made to last, there’s no need to ever replace it.
• Save the Dates: We emailed our Save the Date announce­ments, expect for five of them because the recip­i­ents don’t use email.
• Invites: Guests will receive a snail-​​mail invi­ta­tion, but they will RSVP by going to our web­site. This reduces the paper we use, and is more con­ve­nient for most peo­ple. Our grand­par­ents, and a few other guests who don’t use the Inter­net, will RSVP over the phone.
• Rehearsal din­ner: We wanted a BBQ, so my fiancé’s par­ents tracked down a local WI guy who does pig-​​roasts. All his pigs are raised right there in town, free-​​range. He’ll also be grilling some fresh veg­gies for us from his garden.

JDB: Has this been an easy jour­ney for the two of you or are you find­ing it harder than expected?

TS: Harder than expected! The thing is, we have other pri­or­i­ties besides keep­ing things green (gasp!). It’s really impor­tant to us that our guests feel appre­ci­ated and com­fort­able the whole week­end, so we had to really con­sider things like, “If we make every­one drink out of the same glass (mason jar) all night, will they get annoyed/​want to rinse it out if they switch from, say, beer to lemon­ade?” With every deci­sion we make, we have to weigh our dif­fer­ent pri­or­i­ties against each other.

JDB: What’s the response been like from your close friends and family?

TS: Our imme­di­ate fam­i­lies have been really sup­port­ive and they totally believe in our vision. Our extended fam­ily and friends…well, most of them are from the Twin Cities or Chicago, and they have NO idea what they’re in for! The Min­nesota rel­a­tives will prob­a­bly say some­thing neu­tral, like “Well this is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent…” and the Chicago rel­a­tives will just tell us we’re hip­pies and then drink all our beer.

JDB: Have you had to make con­ces­sions along the way, or have you been able meet all your expec­ta­tions and vision for an eco-​​friendly wedding?

TS: Yes, con­ces­sions have been made. One of my obses­sions from the early days of plan­ning was to have every­one sit­ting on hand­made benches dur­ing the cer­e­mony, which is tak­ing place out­side. I strongly dis­like the look of fold­ing chairs, and they’re super expen­sive to rent! But my fam­ily finally talked me into rent­ing chairs after explain­ing to me that Nonna and Nonno just really won’t be com­fort­able on a wooded bench for an hour. And now look­ing back I think I must have been crazy to expect my dad and brother to hand-​​craft 50 benches, out of reclaimed wood no less!! Yeah…I’m over it.

The recep­tion food was another con­ces­sion. Our caterer wasn’t OK with the idea of us bring­ing in our own chicken (we wanted to pro­vide locally raised, free-​​range chicken for the entrée), but see­ing as they’re the only caterer in town that doesn’t use dis­pos­able plates for their food, we decided we had to just go with what­ever chicken they have, which is most likely not local or organic. =\

JDB: What are some sim­ple things brides and grooms can do in plan­ning their own wed­dings to keep it sim­ple and eco-​​friendly?

TS: 1. Cut out the fat: Don’t do every sin­gle “wed­dingy” thing just for the sake of it. If it doesn’t mean some­thing to you, then why do it? Your plan­ning process will be instantly sim­pli­fied if you stick to what really mat­ters and lose the rest.
2. Eco-​​friendly is also bud­get friendly, so stick to your bud­get and you’ll nat­u­rally make greener deci­sions. For exam­ple, we saved tons of money because we didn’t mail out save-​​the-​​date cards. It was such an easy deci­sion because it was good for our pocket as well as the Earth.
3. Explore alter­na­tives. Your wed­ding will be more per­sonal, and greener, if you don’t go with the first florist, the first caterer, or the first venue you find. Leave time for research…the really cool lady who grows organic peonies in her back­yard and makes gor­geous bou­quets might not pop up on the first page of Google, but she’s out there if you look for her.
4. Elbow grease! Why buy stuff that was made in China when you could make it your­self? And if you’re not crafty, I have one word for you: www​.etsy​.com

JDB: Thanks so much Tonia for shar­ing a bit of your expe­ri­ence with us. Best wishes on your upcom­ing wed­ding! May you and Mike be blessed for years to come.