An exercise in not spending
Sep. 21st, 2009 08:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousmeWith one exception, I have declared October to be Buy Nothing Month. (The exception is the first Friday, when ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fearsclave has generously agreed to take me shopping for a fishing rod and other equipment. Yay!)
So for the next couple of weeks I'm going to be doing some advance preparations for food and the like, so that I have enough to carry me through the month, as well as cat litter and the like. That's not a huge difference, since I try as a rule to have a month's worth of litter and food in the house anyway.
What ought to make a difference, however, is not buying books, a luxury to which I've become altogether too accustomed since I got this latest job. I have a reading list a mile long already, so this will force me to read the stuff I bought on a whim a few months ago and then never got around to reading, without succumbing to current whims.
I'm also going to not use my Communauto car except for one weekend, since I find I have begun relying on it for "frivolous" things that I could as easily do using public transport.
I'm thinking of turning 2010 into an exercise in frugality. After doing some careful math, and figuring out which luxuries I'm not willing to forgo right now (like my gym membership) and what obligations I have to meet no matter what (paying off my RRSP loan), I am going to try to live on 2/3 of my current salary. It would be tight, but I think I can do it. Some of the "savings" will go almost right away to a nifty toy from Lee Valley that I think will be very useful for the garden, as my house is too cold and doesn't get enough sun to start seeds with any success, but all the rest of it is going to go into a "house fund" for the near-ish future.
The house plan is still mostly on track, which means I can reasonably start looking at houses in 2012. With the extra "house fund" in place, this ought to make things even more accessible for me, no matter what other contingencies may arise in the meantime.
By 2012 my RRSP loan will be paid off, and that black mark on my credit report which is ruining my financial life forever ought to be gone as well. Yes, I am still bitter that that *one* mistake is screwing me over even now. I still can't get my credit card company to raise my limit, no matter that my credit history has been impeccable for three years, that I make *twice* the amount of money that I was making then, and have no obligations the way I did then (the car). For all the good that trying to fix all of it did, I may as well have declared bankruptcy. GAH!
*pant pant*
Okay, anyway. By 2012 it should all be gone. *crosses fingers* Then the banks might not point and laugh when I ask for money, and I'll have the added "advantage" of having topped out at the maximum salary I'll ever make in my current post at the RCMP, which ought to make a bit of a financial difference by then as well.
I'm going to have to get a car before I move into a house anyway, so 2012 may end up being about getting a car and paying it off, and 2013 will be the house-buying year, in spite of my qualms about waiting "so late" to get a house. It has occurred to me lately that many of my friends have been in their late thirties and early forties when they acquired their houses, so I don't feel quite as bad or behind the game as I did before.
I know that 2012 is right around the corner. Two and a half years. It still *feels* like forever.
fearsclave has generously agreed to take me shopping for a fishing rod and other equipment. Yay!)So for the next couple of weeks I'm going to be doing some advance preparations for food and the like, so that I have enough to carry me through the month, as well as cat litter and the like. That's not a huge difference, since I try as a rule to have a month's worth of litter and food in the house anyway.
What ought to make a difference, however, is not buying books, a luxury to which I've become altogether too accustomed since I got this latest job. I have a reading list a mile long already, so this will force me to read the stuff I bought on a whim a few months ago and then never got around to reading, without succumbing to current whims.
I'm also going to not use my Communauto car except for one weekend, since I find I have begun relying on it for "frivolous" things that I could as easily do using public transport.
I'm thinking of turning 2010 into an exercise in frugality. After doing some careful math, and figuring out which luxuries I'm not willing to forgo right now (like my gym membership) and what obligations I have to meet no matter what (paying off my RRSP loan), I am going to try to live on 2/3 of my current salary. It would be tight, but I think I can do it. Some of the "savings" will go almost right away to a nifty toy from Lee Valley that I think will be very useful for the garden, as my house is too cold and doesn't get enough sun to start seeds with any success, but all the rest of it is going to go into a "house fund" for the near-ish future.
The house plan is still mostly on track, which means I can reasonably start looking at houses in 2012. With the extra "house fund" in place, this ought to make things even more accessible for me, no matter what other contingencies may arise in the meantime.
By 2012 my RRSP loan will be paid off, and that black mark on my credit report which is ruining my financial life forever ought to be gone as well. Yes, I am still bitter that that *one* mistake is screwing me over even now. I still can't get my credit card company to raise my limit, no matter that my credit history has been impeccable for three years, that I make *twice* the amount of money that I was making then, and have no obligations the way I did then (the car). For all the good that trying to fix all of it did, I may as well have declared bankruptcy. GAH!
*pant pant*
Okay, anyway. By 2012 it should all be gone. *crosses fingers* Then the banks might not point and laugh when I ask for money, and I'll have the added "advantage" of having topped out at the maximum salary I'll ever make in my current post at the RCMP, which ought to make a bit of a financial difference by then as well.
I'm going to have to get a car before I move into a house anyway, so 2012 may end up being about getting a car and paying it off, and 2013 will be the house-buying year, in spite of my qualms about waiting "so late" to get a house. It has occurred to me lately that many of my friends have been in their late thirties and early forties when they acquired their houses, so I don't feel quite as bad or behind the game as I did before.
I know that 2012 is right around the corner. Two and a half years. It still *feels* like forever.
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Date: 2009-09-23 02:37 am (UTC)And to think that when my postdoc ran out a year and a half ago, I was free of institutional debt (though still had a balance at the bank of mom and dad). Graduating into a recession (apart from the detail that a postdoc doesn't end in a graduation) sucks. Clearly the universe is punishing me for snickering at the dotcom crash because I was going to grad school anyhow, and didn't have to worry about graduating into it.