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Buying things we don't need. It makes us poorer, so we have to work more just to break even. Often we'd be better off not buying. The biggest household expense , other than our house, is health / medical costs. Is private health insurance worth it? Finance expert Scott Pape ( The Barefoot Investor ) says in many cases the answer is no. He reckons if you're under 31, or earn under $90,000 ($180,000 for couples) you're probably better off without it. Why? Australia has "one of the best public health systems on the planet" that's already paid for; so you may as well use that. (Note: This may be a different story in the USA and other countries). The exception is if you're over 30 and a high income earner. What's wage got to do with it? Health insurance is one product the government punishes you for not buying. If you're a high income earner you'll be taxed more if you don't buy some. If you decide to buy some later in life (later t...

Marie Kondo would have to be the queen of the decluttering world. Her book The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up has sold millions of copies and her KonMari method is much talked about. It wasn't long before comedian Kitty Flanagan came up with her own version - FlanMari. It's satire but also makes a good point. Kitty quotes Marie Kondo, " The purpose of a gift is to be received ", but then adds that once a gift has been received then its job is done. No need to bother with placing it anywhere. She immediately sets fire to it. It's funny because it would be so mean to set fire to a gift seconds after receiving it - and right in front of the giver. But in a way what we do is worse. We falsely pretend to like it. We stash away the gift - sometimes for years - and then it ends up as landfill. Or we re-gift it; which can be good or it can start the whole problem again for someone else. So what can we do with it? Perhaps the best option is to sell it. It ...

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. 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 sh...

Gumtree did a survey to find out how much unwanted stuff Australians have. The answer was $4,200 of per household. That's a lot of money to be tied up in items that we don't even want. Across Australia this adds up to 34 billion dollars worth of unwanted stuff. $34,000,000,000! That's a lot of stuff just sitting around. It's probably even more The survey said the average household has 25 unwanted items. So far my wife and I have sold more than 300* items, with another 60 already listed and more items still to be added. Surely 25 items per household is just the tip of the iceberg. What do you think? How many unwanted items do you have at your place? Do you reckon it would be more that 25? People are cashing in It's estimated that 100 million items were sold second-hand last year. Millenials are leading the way making almost $2000 per person. In the last year 56% of Aussies have sold something second hand, including 1.3 million people making their first o...