It's so good - we DIDN'T buy one

Even if things are wonderful, we don't have to buy them.

The pregnancy dress

In the Minimalism movie, one woman tells a story of needing a nice-looking dress to wear to an event (while very pregnant). She had pregnancy clothes and nice clothes, but nothing that was both.

Rather than buy something (for a one-time wear) she called up a few friends and borrowed a dress. She avoided a pointless purchase and hours in a shopping mall and instead spent time with her friend.

The travel pack

Amongst holiday stories, my sister-in-law mentioned her handy mesh travel bags. You can categorise and separate your items within your suitcase while still seeing what is where. No more rummaging through the whole suitcase to find one particular item.

the handy travel pack you don't need to buy

They sounded very helpful. For her next trip my wife, rather than buy another set, borrowed her sister's collection.

Triple benefits

There's three reasons this turned out to be a great move.

Shop-free - We didn't have to go to shopping to find them.
Enjoyable - The three of us caught up for a nice afternoon when my sister-in-law dropped the bags around.
Clutter-free - We returned them after the trip and don't have to store them. (We've got plenty enough items in our house already).

Reason 2 brought more joy to our day. Reasons 1 and 3 were about less. Less stress and less clutter. Even a handy travel item is clutter for the 50 weeks a year when you're not travelling.

How can we do this more?

Family members are helpful. Sharing between friends can also be great. My wife has also borrowed a friend's dresses for weddings.

It's easy to put a call out on social media. Couple friends of ours requested moving boxes. We had quite a few left over from our last move and were able to help out. I was so glad they didn't have to buy any.

When good neighbours become good friends

Taking it a step further, Streetbank is a site that helps neighbours share with each other. I've listed a tennis racquet, a basketball, DVDs, and tools. People can use these items when they need without having to buy their own.

For more about Streetbank, see my story The Keys to Happiness about our best borrowing experience. Also check out the Streetbank short films made by students to promote the idea.

Comments

Why millionaires don't "feel" rich

We're wealthier than ever - so why don't we feel like it? Australia has gone almost three decades without recession. The stock market recently hit a record high. Our wages are record highs. Home loan rates are at record lows. We live in one of the richest countries in the world at the richest point in history. So what's wrong? Comparison Wealth is relative. So what do we compare to? Where we expect to be? "When your wages growth is only 2 or 3 per cent, you don't feel as well-off as when it's going up 10 per cent. That's that nominal distortion that people often suffer from" , says economist Shane Oliver, and that "expectations have grown a lot faster than reality." We're earning more than last year, but we want even more. So compared to our imaginary situation, we see ourselves as worse off. What we see around us? Shane Oliver again. "If you think about it - Australians today are a lot wealthier. They're living far ric...

Where is the best place to live?

Where we live determines a lot about our life. So today I'm going to share a resource that can help you decide where might be a good place to live. It started with an article ranking Brisbane suburbs from 1 to 260 . That ranking was based on a set of 17 factors. Here are some of them. But all 17 may not be relevant for you. And some might matter more than others. So they developed a tool where you can rank the 5 factors most important to you and it will give you a personalised list of Brisbane suburbs that would be the best for you - based on those factors. There are also Sydney and Melbourne versions. On the results page, there's also a map that colour-codes each suburb by star rating, for each factor. For instance here's the map for public transport. Five-star suburbs are in blue. When you click on a suburb, you get the name and the star rating of that suburb - for whichever factor you select. I find this to be so enlightening. I choose not to own a car. Some...

How to waste a year's wages

A friend recently asked me why it is that so many people (on good incomes) are struggling to save. Often the big three money areas are housing, transport and food. In one sense these are necessary items. But what we spend on them is often way more than necessary. I crunched some numbers on how much extra my wife and I could spend on these things - if for some reason we wanted to burn our money. 1. Housing Our apartment is fairly nice, but also cost-effective. I've mentioned how choosing it saves us $1,800 per year , compared to a similar one we saw. The high end of 2-bedroom apartments in our suburb is $305 per week more than our apartment. Not $305 per week. $305 per week more than ours is. I cannot get over that. Sure it's new and modern-looking, but that's a lot of money. It's an extra $15,860 per year above what we pay. 2. Transport The Australian Automobile Association lists the costs of owning and running a car. It includes many often-overlooked c...

But wait... there's less!

Search This Blog