A few years ago, when I had a large amount of consumer debt, I read every personal finance book I could get my hands on in order to educate myself about money and paying off debt.
Nearly every book I read told you to sell your stuff, make snowballs and achieve debt freedom faster. Good advice, it works. However selling your stuff does not get to the root of the problem; the root of the problem is the buying of stuff in the first place, and speaking from my personal point of view, the buy and sell mentality can become addictive.
Here’s the thing: I’ve been debt free for nine months and yet I’m still buying and selling, admittedly not on the same scale as before, but I’m still doing it to a certain extent, and it has to stop. Enough.
I’ve been re reading Your Money or Your Life because I needed reminding of its message as this last round of de-cluttering has been enough for me. It’s not just the cost of the items in the first place, it’s the thought of just how much waste there is on this planet and I want to do my bit, however small.
Ten ways to save money and the planet {from Your Money or Your Life}
Now to put this into practise.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Great message!! Good luck x
p.s.
and thanks for the link love earlier! xxx
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Laura Reply:
September 8th, 2010 at 8:41 am
thanks Kat!
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I think that many people who are trying to cut back have one or two ‘sticking points’ where the habit has become difficult to break completely or just takes another form. Identifying these is the first step to overcoming them. I don’t even know what my sticking points are!
Perhaps I should read my copy of Your Money or Your Life which has been on my reading pile for months.
Teresa x
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Laura Reply:
September 8th, 2010 at 8:42 am
Hi teresa: I think my sticking point may be books!
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I hear you Laura – my solution to this years ago was to stop shopping period. My “gazingus pin” was books in particular. So years ago, I resolved not to buy a book until I had taken it out of the library and loved it enough that I knew I’d want to refer to it again and again.
I’ve never re-sold anything that I’ve bought (apart from houses and cars) and have given everything away that I’m decluttering on freecycle / goodwill etc. That’s only because I hope / feel that the pain of receiving NOTHING for something that I spent $100 on a few years ago and would get $10 for today (and take an hour of my time to sell) is great enough to reaffirm that it’s best to not buy at all.
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Laura Reply:
September 8th, 2010 at 8:46 am
Jacq: I don’t really go shopping it’s online Amazon that’s my problem! That’s a good way to deal with ‘book love’ if only my library was a little bigger – part of the problem is the books I like to read – US pf books which are hard to get hold of at the library here – this is just an excuse though I just need to keep off of Amazon
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Your Money or Your Life is one of the books which was a turning point for me. I refer to it every now and again when I start to stray back to old ways of thinking.
My “gazingus pins” are clothes and books.
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Laura Reply:
September 8th, 2010 at 8:48 am
littlegreenvillage – I’ve put my copy next to my pc [now] as a constant reminder of it’s message – let’s hope it helps
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Hey Laura – don’t you have an inter-library loan system there? I can order anything through our system that is somewhere in our entire province. The same thing used to be true when we lived in TX but most people didn’t realize it and it was more of a pain. Maybe the UK is different. One thing I kind of realized too a number of years ago was that there was so little “new” written and I didn’t really need to read the same thing regurgitated over and over again in different forms. Take the one plan that resonates and just work with that more deeply. It’s like personal finance (or diets lol) – it’s really so simple but by taking in so much information, we feel like we’re making progress when maybe that’s not the best thing to do. It’s like people who are time management junkies, trying different systems all the time. If they’d stick to one and just work on it rather than looking for the magic pill, they’d make a lot more progress.
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