Day 17 - Slimming down on clutter

3 Lessons from a Guy with 39 Possessions

youmightfindyourself:

My good friend's response to this email...Enjoy!

1. Fewer choices are freeing.
Asked which shirt Hyde picks in the morning, he replies, “The clean one.” How much time and mental effort do you spend choosing what shoes to wear, what movie to watch, what dish to cook? Choice is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is often overvalued, especially related to things that aren’t aligned with what’s really important in our lives–things like relationships, health and recreation.
 

...I agree...that's why my children will have an outfit for each day of the week. On Sunday, we will do laundry and rearrange those 7 outfits to look like brand new outfits...pairing Monday's jeans w/Thursday's top and so on... I figure since the kid grows so quickly (up until about 19 for girls and 26 for boys) I will not WASTE any money on following trends, extra laundry detergent, time to wash, etc. All that money I saved NOT "keeping up w/the Joneses" (who are broke, by the way... see trailer...  ...a zeitgeist film)

2. If you have fewer things, make them good.
As Sarah Laskow wrote in Grist, living light doesn’t mean living cheap. Hyde’s possessions are all very high quality. Paring down means choosing stuff that holds up and looks good. If you have 3 shirts, you can’t afford to have that one shirt that doesn’t fit right.

...Hencewhy I shop thrift, craigslist, other people's houses...Rotate that which you thought you would use but did not...Buy LOW, Sell HIGH (but it's a WIN WIN because you bought SO LOW that buyers are EXCITED to buy at your asking price)

3. Sometimes you will not be prepared…and it’s okay.
You likely won’t trim your possessions to Hyde-ian proportions, but that doesn’t mean you have to everything for every occasion. Americans in particular like to be prepared for the worst-case-scenario, having separate cookie cutters for Christmas and Halloween. We seldom consider how negligible the consequences are when we run out of something or are unprepared. Nor do we consider how high the consequences are for being over-prepared: creating more money, space, upkeep and mental clutter.
 

...I don't get into the commercialism of every month's Consumeristic Exploitative Marketing Initiatives ("CEMI")...made that up....but anyway, whatever can be purchased and used for a host of things stays in house...everything else is SOLD!! to the highest bidder!

 

PS: I have Wi Fi in my home now...thanx to CL Seller Larry selling us his Belkin N750 Wireless Router for $55 (saved us $45...cuz he bought this 3 months ago at Best Buy for $100) YES!!! Another slam dunk! LOL

...I say if people like to get Financial Cavities b/c of all the so-called "sweet deals", let them! I'm like the scavenger that comes in after they no longer use what they thought they so desperately needed and get it for pennies on the dollar. I guess you could call me a Third Party Deal Buyer...Gotta know how the folk making money think so you can beat em at their own game! Here's to you Third Party Debt Collectors! LOL

 

 

Share your thoughts below...could you ever live with ONLY 15 items to your name?

Day 16 - Loans

so check this out...

calculating my loan payments over the last 9 months i paid a total of $1797.61 to my loans. this was at a rate of 199/month for 9 months. of that total amount $532.50 went towards the principal, and $1265.11 went towards the interest.

BEFORE:

$532.50 (principal) + $1265.11 (interest) = $1797.61 (total paid in 9 months at $199/mo)

in short: only 30% to principal, and 70% went to interest.

when i got the lump sum from the volunteer program i did and they paid $1174.60 to my loans, $1106.21 went to principal, and only $68.39 to interest. the ratio flipped: 94% to principal and only 6% to interest.

NOW:

$1106.21 (principal) + $68.39 (interest) = $1174.60 (total paid from volunteer program)

in short: 94% WENT TO PRINCIPAL, and only 6% went to interest!

In a matter of ONE MONTH PAYMENT I made a bigger impact on my overall loan balance than I did over NINE MONTHS of paying the minimum balance. that's crazy!

case in point: the less time you give to the loan to accrue interest, the more of your dollar will go towards decreasing your actual loan amount, instead of being wasted on interest.

the faster (in time) and the higher (in payment amounts) you pay your loans, the quicker you will pay off/down your loans. this part is obvious, right?

BUT...the longer we take to pay down, the less of our dollar that goes towards the real balance.

SO all this to say, I know most people aren't in the position to pay $1,000 bucks a month towards their loans (myself included) HOWEVER...even paying an extra $50 can add up over a year's time, or even $20 bucks. More is definitely better, but I encourage you to pay as much as you can muster this year and make loan payments a priority so you can BE DEBT-FREE. (who doesn't want to travel the world and live life without the burden of monthly payments hanging over your head?)

Don't settle for the "minimum payment," like I did. It's a joke and a scam.

Debt reduction is one of my big goals over the next 24 months and with this new information I've been really motivated to stick to the plan.

Hope you find this information helpful! Comment below if you have any advice or suggestions for others!

Thanks!

Day 14 - Lunching

Just got back from lunch. I'm realizing more and more the need to be mentally prepared for the fasting/cleansing/praying/food slash diet change I will soon be implementing.

 

 

I've been (intentionally) fasting from the last meal the night before to noon ish the next day; drinking 2 large glasses of water when I wake up and taking vitamins, then drinking tea and water throughout the day until lunch.

 

Then at lunch I stick to the (1-bowl meal idea) and eat veggies, hummus, 1 pita.

For example:

cucumber and olives mix (hand chopped the night before), baby tomatoes 2 hand fulls, some mashed avocado, small container of hummus, and 1 med size pita. Takes about 3 minutes to prepare the night before and does me pretty good so far. Sounds boring but I'm usually pretty full if I chew long enough. (more on THAT later also)

 

Then later I'll have either a fruit smoothie (Odwalla if on the run) or eat a bowl of fruit for dinner; or I'll have soup, or make a salad or whatever.

That's about it.

Still perfecting the list but I'ive learned SO much about how we overeat and overstuff and overwork our digestive systems way past capacity, less is REALLY more.

More about the 1 bowl/item meal and food combining (acidic/alkaline foods) coming soon.
 

BONUS: Newest "changed my whole food complex about life" piece of information:
 

Myth: when your stomach "growls" , this means that we are "hungry"

Our bodies, as sophisticated as they are in preserving life, are always in the business of self-preservation and finding ways to save and conserve energy. So, when an organ is not "in use" it shrinks just a bit in size so that energy can be used in other parts of the body. As a result, we often hear out stomachs "growling" when we haven't eaten for a number of hours after being awake. We believe this must mean we are "hungry" and so proceed to feed our stomachs and the "hunger pains" go away.
 

Truth: Actually what is happening when we hear our stomachs "growl" is our stomach is simply shrinking and this is the noise that it makes when doing so. The reason the stomach starts to shrink a bit is because the digestive system is now going into rest mode so the energy usually used for the digestion can be used elsewhere (more on that later), and the reason the sensations go away after eating is because now the body is back to work to attempt to digest the food you just ate.

 

Some experts suggest that as much as 80% of the bodies energy goes towards digestion. When digestion stops the body then transfers that energy for other uses, such as healing.

After digestion only 20 percent of our body's energy remains for cardiovascular, immune, neurological, reproductive, and respiratory functions. It makes sense to support the digestive process. "If you want to stay healthy or get healthy, you need to free up as much digestive energy as you can spare," explains Bohager.

 

TIP: Try mentally overcoming the sensations of "hunger" during your fast and recognize the "hunger pains" are actually your body's way of initiating self-healing. Better said: Growling hunger pains don't actually always need to be fed. lol