20 unplugged ideas

May 1-7 is Screen-Free Week. It's about spending time away from the screen and more time with each other - or doing things we love.

It's a great chance to break the work-tired-watchTV-ads-shop-work cycle.

This list of twenty alternative ideas is great for screen-free week.

It's also a great reminder of things we could enjoy if we're shopping and spending less - and maybe working less and enjoying life more.

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How much super will we have?

Will we be OK in old age? How much will we have? One of the great things about living in Australia is superannuation. Our employers are required to pay into an investment account for our retirement. In recent times, my wife and I have been in several conversations with friends who are wondering (or worried) if their balance will be enough. That's what inspired this article. Great question It's a great question to ask, especially around the age of 35 to 40. At that point, old age is less of a distant abstract concept. It's becoming a medium-term reality. At 35 the number of years of living off super is possibly more than half of your remaining years. At 40 you may consider yourself about half way through your working life. Looking at your balance, it's easy to think that twice that balance may not be enough. Read on, because I have good news for you. It's better than you might think As I've mentioned in earlier posts, compound growth means the investment grows f

Will robots take your job?

The future could be very different. It's one reason I started this blog. What will technology mean for jobs? For incomes? For society? So I was excited to find Will Robots Take Your Job? at my local library. What does the book say? There's always been technological change and we've always found jobs. As the more laborious jobs were taken by machines, we took on higher skilled jobs, moving further up the "skill ladder". The main question is whether this time is different. Will the "skill ladder" continue to have higher rungs for humans to move on to? Will these rungs appear as quickly as the current rungs disappear? Either way we're headed for significant disruption. Either large-scale re-training of our workforce or massive unemployment. The author despairs that our leaders seem not to talk about this - and worse still, not have a plan for it. Farmers or horses? In 1870 about 75% of Americans worked in agriculture and used 25 million hors

Shop less. Live more.

October is Buy Nothing New Month , and that's their slogan: Shop Less. Live More. This quote about consumption is doubly true. There's the hours we spend to earn the money to spend. Then there's the hours bustling around shopping centres and malls searching out the thing we want (or that advertising has told us we want). Of course there's also the issue of where we put all this stuff we buy. Do we just buy a bigger house (with a bigger mortgage) or do we put it in storage? "The Japanese may have tidiness but in America we have storage lockers - our only growth industry." - Marge Simpson . I found these stats about the US storage industry . I find it such a waste that after spending so much to buy all this stuff we then spend another $22 billion to store it. Shocking. Clearly we need to be less addicted to purchasing. Buy Nothing New Month is a great way to start. Are you with me?

But wait... there's less!

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