Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Living Without Experiment

Over the past 6 months, I've started on a little experiment on my finances. Now, being a person who doesn't have that much in the way of funds, I thought this would be a good thing for me to try to save money.

And you know it was interesting to see how I lived without spending too much money on things.

The first thing I did was really look at what I spent my pension on in the way of food. Did I buy more than I needed? Did I eat everything in the fridge and pantry? Did I use all the shampoo and conditioner to the very last drop; and did I squeeze all the toothpaste to the very last bit I could get out of the tube? 

A lot of the times the answer was no.

So, I worked on making sure I did that. 

Also, I looked at what I was doing in the way of clothes. I went through my wardrobe and gave away clothes I just didn't wear or fitted into anymore; and started wearing a good and nice wardrobe of clothes which were easy to wash, dried on the line and didn't really need ironing - just folding from the line and putting away. 

This saved me time and energy - but not that much money on my gas bill unfortunately; only around $20 in the last 6 months. My power bill is another thing though. I've made it go down by $20 by using only one light in the house at night - and that's the one I'm in the room I'm using. All the others are turned off. Also, when the new energy-saving bulbs came out on the market, I went out and bought them up and replaced my old bulbs immediately. This halved my electricity bill within 3 months! And seeing these bulbs last around 2 years, it also saved me on how many I buy of them.

But buying only what I needed in the way of food has really helped me out. I have been cooking food and only eating a quarter of it, and then putting it away for the next night... more often than not, I'll make a pizza (from scratch, the dough and all!) and it'll last me around 3 nights. This means, I'll only have a plate and a few things from the day to clean up on those following nights; instead of the huge clean-up I'd have normally. 

This has helped me greatly in how I use my food and how much food I throw out. The amount of rubbish I've thrown out has halved and so the amount of shopping I've had to do lately has been smaller and my budget has become something of a good thing for me. I have more money to put away in the bank and more time to be able to work on other things around the place instead of thinking about what to cook for dinner and taking a long time doing that. 

The best thing is that I've taken up art school and I'm able to afford the paint, brushes and other things which go with going to art school, so I'm not thinking about how much it's costing me. I have the money to do it because of how I've adjusted my spending, how I've changed my way of living as well.

However, I've also done one thing and that's to have no actual money in my purse. This worked for a little while... but it also has backfired on me in a big way. 

The good thing about not having the real dosh in the purse is that I don't feel the need to spend it. It in the bank and when I think about having to use the card, then I know there's bank fees and other fees that go along with buying something. This discourages me from buying an item unless I absolutely need it or really have had my eye on it for a long time.
But today, I wanted to give some coin to a charity at the checkouts and found not having a little bit of money on me was a bad thing. I felt horrible not having any money at all to give to a good charity. This is something of a backfire on not carrying money with me. So, I've decided it'd be a good thing to start carrying some money with me now.

So, there's my 6 month experiment to see how going without has done for me. 

The food and pantry thing has worked out really well. The results are plain to see that buying only what I needed and will use and eat is something that I'll continue to do. Also, I'll wait until I completely run out of something before restocking it.

However, not keeping a little bit of dosh in my purse? Well, I think it's a good idea if I do that. Not too much, but a little bit of small change wouldn't hurt. Until my next post, take care, stay safe and remember, I'm always here.

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