Frugal Babe

Thanks for all the great feedback on my last post.  I especially liked the comment from David, who said

I’ve found that the problem with comparing ourselves to others is that you’re usually comparing your strength to their weakness or vice versa. Either way, it’s not fair.

Exactly!  That is so true, and a good reminder for the times when we start to compare ourselves – either favorably or unfavorably – with other people.  Focusing on how we can make ourselves better people compared with who we were a year or a month or a day ago is probably a much more effective way to make positive changes.

I made a big step in my purging process today.  Physically it was only one box, but mentally it was a big step in terms of letting go of things that are no longer useful, regardless of how much they cost or how much we once liked them.

About seven years ago, back in the very early days of our business, my husband and I purchased a multi-media business card package.  It was supposed to be an interactive DVD that we could send to our clients, and it was packaged in a fancy case with our pictures and lots of info about our business.  It took several months to complete the process of making them, as they were custom made for our business.  Sometime during the process, the company that made them ran into serious financial problems, and nearly declared bankruptcy before our order was finished.  To make a long story short (and boy was it ever a long story at the time, complete with lots of tears on my part), the “interactive DVD” part of the package turned into a generic DVD about our industry rather than one specific to our business.  Although we were disappointed with that change, we were generally pleased with the finished product, and sent lots of them to clients and prospective clients for the first few years after we got them.

We had signed up for a payment plan to finance the project, and it took quite a while to pay them off.  Our business wasn’t making much money back then, and we were making the minimum payments each month for a long time.  Eventually we were able to pay more than the minimum due, and I think we paid them off sometime in 2004 or early 2005… Funny how I can’t even remember now, given that I was so stressed out about it at the time (a lot of the stress came from not knowing if we would even get the finished product, even though we were on the hook with the financing company to pay for them either way).  Whatever happened, that money is long gone and forgotten – the proverbial water under the bridge.

Our business has become much more successful over the years.  And it has also morphed into something that we do entirely on-line and over the phone.  We never have to drive anywhere or send anything to clients by snail mail.  We’ve basically made our office paperless; I can’t even remember the last time we bought paper or envelopes or anything like that.  Times have changed, and we’ve changed with them.

And that brings us back to the multi-media business cards.  We still had a box full of them sitting in our basement.  It’s probably been two or three years since we sent any out to clients, and the last box had just been hanging out in the crawl space of our old house and the basement of our new house.  Were we ever going to go back to sending them out?  No.  We have much more efficient ways of communicating with clients now, and our marketing strategy is much more targeted and streamlined that it was in 2003.  So what was I going to do with the box that was taking up space in our basement?

I checked to see if the cases were recyclable… they were not.  I checked to see if our information could be taken out of them so that they could possibly be used by someone else (I was thinking of putting them on Craigs List for free if I could get our info out of them).  But that wasn’t possible, as our marketing material was permanently encased in the plastic.

So I threw them away.

It felt great.  The box actually sat on the kitchen counter top for about 24 hours before I got up the nerve to toss them.  I pondered all the money we had spent on them.  But then I thought about all the ones we had sent out to clients back in those early years, and all the good feedback we got.  The money hadn’t been wasted.  We had ordered the minimum number of cards possible, but we just didn’t need all of them.  We weren’t going to start going backwards in our marketing strategy just because we had leftover multi-media business cards.  And I was tired of seeing that box every time I went down to the basement.

Now the empty box is sitting in the garage waiting to be filled with stuff to donate to the thrift store, and my life feels just a little bit lighter.  Just because something cost a lot of money doesn’t mean we should hang onto it forever.  Once it’s no longer useful, it doesn’t matter what we spent to buy it, or how useful it was in the past.  We live in the present, and we might as well make sure that the things we surround ourselves with are helping to make that present as good as it can be.

The other take-away lesson here:  don’t sweat the small stuff, and it’s all small stuff.  I wish I could go back in time and see the me who was crying over those business cards.  I’d tell her that she really doesn’t need to worry, and that seven years down the road she won’t remember how much they cost, when they arrived, or how long it took to pay them off.  Focusing and working hard to pay off debt or solve whatever problem is facing you is definitely worthwhile.  But stressing and freaking out about it are not – they don’t solve the problem any faster, and they take away from time we can be feeling happy instead.  Now I just have to focus on applying that lesson to my current life.  I’m much better about not stressing about things than I used to be, but it’s still a work in progress.

I’ve been blogging here for almost four years now – time flies! – and sometimes it’s fun to look back at posts I wrote back in the day.  It makes our debt-free (except the mortgage) life feel even better when I remember the days when I was keeping track of all of our debts on a yellow legal pad.  But I notice when I read some of my early posts that I was a bit of a self-righteous frugalista.  And I see that as a pretty common theme in the frugal blogosphere – it’s easy to start to feel superior and smarter when you’re focusing on debt reduction, saving money, living frugally, etc.  It’s easy to start thinking that you’ve got everything figured out so much better than all the people who aren’t doing whatever it is that you’re doing.  I know I was guilty of this, and I know I’m not the only one.

I mentioned recently that I’ve been making lots of small changes in my life, and one of them has been to be less judgmental in general.  I’m also feeling very grateful for all the good luck that has brought me to where I am today.  Just a few years ago I’d have scoffed at the idea of luck being a factor.  I hated the idea that I had ever been lucky – I preferred to think that it was all a result of hard work and dedication.  But that’s just not true.  Fact is, I was born to two well educated parents who wanted me and loved me from the very beginning.  That alone is a pretty lucky start.  And then I was encouraged to get a good education of my own, to eat well, to exercise, to value nature, to live without debt… and the list goes on.  Yes, I believe my husband and I have worked very hard to get where we are today, but I’d be a fool if I said that luck wasn’t involved.  I really like this quote from Barry Switzer:

“Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.”

I was definitely born on third base, but I don’t want to go through life thinking I hit a triple.  I want to be grateful for what I have, and to not judge other people who see things in a different way than I do.  I truly believe that living within one’s means is a pretty important aspect of happiness, but it’s up to each of us to decide how to do that.  For my own family, saving a good chunk of our income is very important.  But that isn’t better or worse than another family who spends a bigger chunk of their income – as long as they are happy and content with their life, and living within their means (and hopefully doing the best they can to take good care of this little planet that we all share).

Personal finance is just that – personal.  Don’t let things you read on blogs make you feel guilty about the way you spend your money – it’s your own money after all.  If something about your life – financial or otherwise – is making you feel bad, then change it.  But don’t change it just because it’s what someone else is doing.  We’re all different, and we all want different things.  Just keep your focus on what you want most, and you’ll be fine.   There will always be people who are smarter, richer, happier, more frugal, etc.  Be inspired, but don’t feel guilty.  I’ve found that the less I judge others, the happier I am.  Hopefully it works for you too.

Over the last several months, I’ve made numerous small changes in my life, and I am thrilled with the results.  It all started last fall when I began making the bed every morning.  I had never done that before (I used to make the bed about once a week, at best), but now I can’t imagine leaving the bedroom in the morning without making the bed.  It was a small change, but my success with it was the catalyst for a lot of other small changes.

The most recent change I’ve made was to start appreciating the idea of living with less stuff.  We have a 1320 square foot house (plus a full unfinished basement).  Three people, a cat, and a dog, and somehow we had managed to fill not only the house but the basement as well.  Just about everything we own was purchased used, so we didn’t have a huge financial investment in any of it, but our stuff was taking up way too much time and space.  So I started purging.  I’ve taken three full car-loads to the thrift store recently (I have a station wagon, so that’s a lot of stuff) and have avoided going into the store when I dropped stuff off.

I just checked out credit card statement, and so far this month, all that we’ve bought is food and irrigation supplies for our garden (my husband got the irrigation set up last week, and so far it’s working great).  No toys, clothes, shoes, etc.  Financially, skipping the thrift stores doesn’t make much of a difference.  I would say that in an average month I used to spend somewhere between $20 and $30 at the thrift stores.  I never shop at the mall, really the only place I shopped other than thrift stores was the grocery store.  But while there’s not much of an impact on our budget, I can already see the impact in our house.  Rooms are starting to look emptier, and take less time to clean (bare surfaces are a lot easier to clean than surfaces with a bunch of stuff on them).  My craft area in the basement is much neater, as I cleared out about five boxes of material and supplies that I didn’t really need.  It’s easier in general to find things in the basement now, as there’s a lot less stuff down there.  Nothing is safe from my purging right now… if it hasn’t been used in the last year or so, it’s out.  Decorative items are mostly out, except for a few things that we truly love.  I’m finding that it’s much easier to get rid of things now than it was when I started.  Things that I debated about a month ago are easy to toss now.  I have empty space in the linen closet and our clothes closet.  My sock drawer closes easily, and even the kitchen cupboards are emptier.

I used to go to the thrift stores just for fun.  I would call my sister or my parents and ask if they wanted to meet me at Goodwill, and we’d just wander around for a while.  Now I can call them and see if they want to meet us for a walk on the trail instead.

Somewhere recently I came across a quote that went something like this:

Never sacrifice what you want most for what you want right now.

This really resonated with me, as I think it can be applied to just about anything in life… money, exercise, diet, personal relationships, jobs, etc.  We all have things that are on our list of what we want most.  But we often let what we want now get in the way.  For myself, my own list of what I want most looks something like this (in no particular order):

• To always have a strong relationship with my husband and son and with our extended family and friends
• To still be active and healthy when I’m 100
• To own our home free and clear as soon as possible
• To be able to weather whatever financial storms life might send our way

Since these are my priorities, I try to make them a part of my life every day.  I spend time with my husband and son, and make sure that I keep in close contact with the rest of my family and friends.  I exercise every day, and make sure that pretty much every bite of food that passes my lips is increasing my chances of reaching that 100 year mark.  We put extra money towards our mortgage every month.  We set aside a good chunk of our income each month into various savings accounts, continuing to keep our lifestyle pretty much the way it was when we were earning very little money.  By doing these things, we’re keeping our focus on what we want most, rather than on what we might want at the moment.

Over the years, I’ve found that focusing on what we want most has become a habit.  So much so that what we want right now and what we want most are almost always the same thing.  I derive much more satisfaction from sending extra money towards our mortgage than I would from spending that money on a pair of shoes, for example.  And I much prefer an apple to a piece of cake – seriously! (that took a while… I used to have a raging sweet tooth)

The thing I love most about the little piece of wisdom at the top of the post is how it applies to anyone, no matter how different our goals might be.  One person’s strongest wish might be to become president of her company, while another person’s greatest desire might be to climb Mount Everest.  It doesn’t matter what we want… what matters is that we each know what we want, and focus on it, without letting day to day distractions and fleeting desires get in the way.

I found this quote inspiring, and I hope some of you do too.  If it inspires you to write down the things that you want most, and figure out strategies for getting them, even better!