Our money saving plan- part 1
It is getting very cool lately to openly discuss your money saving plans.
Here is some of what we are doing to walk the earth lightly and to bring our expenses down.
The first thing is not to hire any kind of domestic help.
We have no cleaning lady, we do our lawns mowing, scrub cutting and gardening.
This became a bit more challenging when a big Tea-tree got uprooted and fell on an Avocado tree that snapped in half, in our garden.
The hill is very steep and it was hard to get a good footing.
But Jules took out the chain saw and while he sliced the trees to manageable pieces, I hauled and cleared the brunches and debris.
We shopped around and lowered our cars insurance by 50%
We canceled our cell phones service.
This was a big sacrifice. Jules used his Blackberry all the time, but since we decided to minimize travel, and since we get a very patchy cell reception while we are in CO anyway, we cut that out.
We spend almost no money on restaurants, This is because we live in remote places where there is not much offering, plus we are vegetarians and very health conscious.
We do have our favorite eating places in Colorado, but we do not frequent them too much.
We cook home out of necessity and we enjoy it.
When we go skiing, we do enjoy coffee or tea at Starbacks while we warm in-front of the fireplace.
In NZ, during the week, we brew our own soy lattes instead of going to the local cafe’.
We drive very little. In NZ we go to Kerikeri for shopping once a week and try to combine all of our errands like bank, oil change and groceries to be done on the same day.
In Colorado, we drive to the mountains to ski since we do not live on the ski bus route.
We combine our errands and visit the post office, bank, Fed-Ex (to ship art) and shop for groceries to coincide with the skiing and swimming.
We became much more aware while we buy groceries.
We buy local and seasonal fruit and vegetable.
(I no longer shop for papaya in the middle of winter when they are $7 a piece.)
We decided not to spend money in the next two years on travel. This is a flexible statement since we do live on two continents (the USA and NZ).
But beside coming and going two times a year between our homes- no air travel. This has another exemption for our pre-booked trip to Rajastan.
Well, to put it accurately, no more trips after this one.
For the business travel that Jules does to Miami, we can use frequent flyer millage and deeply discounted hotels.
We became more electric conscious. This mostly apply to NZ since in Colorado we heat the house and water with natural gas and our electric bill is miniscule.
We have no AC, only few ceiling fans.
But in NZ, we now shut lights when we are not in the room, we close the outlets (doesn’t exist in the USA). We closed off radiators or put them way down and we run the dehumidifiers less.
We make things last longer - this is the most rewarding adjustment as it really saves a fortune. In NZ we drive a car that is 10 years old. In CO we drive a car that is more than 3 years old and we hope to make it last for 10 or 15 years.
Both are great cars with almost no repairs needed and low millage consumption.
I will write more about this subject another time.
Here is some of what we are doing to walk the earth lightly and to bring our expenses down.
The first thing is not to hire any kind of domestic help.
We have no cleaning lady, we do our lawns mowing, scrub cutting and gardening.
This became a bit more challenging when a big Tea-tree got uprooted and fell on an Avocado tree that snapped in half, in our garden.
The hill is very steep and it was hard to get a good footing.
But Jules took out the chain saw and while he sliced the trees to manageable pieces, I hauled and cleared the brunches and debris.
We shopped around and lowered our cars insurance by 50%
We canceled our cell phones service.
This was a big sacrifice. Jules used his Blackberry all the time, but since we decided to minimize travel, and since we get a very patchy cell reception while we are in CO anyway, we cut that out.
We spend almost no money on restaurants, This is because we live in remote places where there is not much offering, plus we are vegetarians and very health conscious.
We do have our favorite eating places in Colorado, but we do not frequent them too much.
We cook home out of necessity and we enjoy it.
When we go skiing, we do enjoy coffee or tea at Starbacks while we warm in-front of the fireplace.
In NZ, during the week, we brew our own soy lattes instead of going to the local cafe’.
We drive very little. In NZ we go to Kerikeri for shopping once a week and try to combine all of our errands like bank, oil change and groceries to be done on the same day.
In Colorado, we drive to the mountains to ski since we do not live on the ski bus route.
We combine our errands and visit the post office, bank, Fed-Ex (to ship art) and shop for groceries to coincide with the skiing and swimming.
We became much more aware while we buy groceries.
We buy local and seasonal fruit and vegetable.
(I no longer shop for papaya in the middle of winter when they are $7 a piece.)
We decided not to spend money in the next two years on travel. This is a flexible statement since we do live on two continents (the USA and NZ).
But beside coming and going two times a year between our homes- no air travel. This has another exemption for our pre-booked trip to Rajastan.
Well, to put it accurately, no more trips after this one.
For the business travel that Jules does to Miami, we can use frequent flyer millage and deeply discounted hotels.
We became more electric conscious. This mostly apply to NZ since in Colorado we heat the house and water with natural gas and our electric bill is miniscule.
We have no AC, only few ceiling fans.
But in NZ, we now shut lights when we are not in the room, we close the outlets (doesn’t exist in the USA). We closed off radiators or put them way down and we run the dehumidifiers less.
We make things last longer - this is the most rewarding adjustment as it really saves a fortune. In NZ we drive a car that is 10 years old. In CO we drive a car that is more than 3 years old and we hope to make it last for 10 or 15 years.
Both are great cars with almost no repairs needed and low millage consumption.
I will write more about this subject another time.
