Money, Time!

You may not be aware, but for most regular people “life” is simply a battle between time and money. When you’re a kid you have lots of time – but no dinero. As an adult you generally have money but no time. You end up taking cabs when you could walk. You eat out instead of cooking at home. You travel in statutory-holiday-packed high-season instead of vacation-days-using off-season.

This was my life. With a salaried paycheque I had way more money than I had time. But a couple years ago I made the decision to reverse the situation. After leaving my job on Monday I essentially traded my income for a whole bunch of vacation days.

Right now it feels ok but I think the in-between period is going to be tough. I like eating out in restaurants every day and taking last-minute weekend trips to Europe four or five times a year. And I think it’s going to take some real effort to control my poor impulse control.

To help with the transition I plan on using this blog to provide updates and solicit feedback on my journey of cost saving and adventure. It’s been my experience that writing is an effective mechanism for helping with these sorts of things.

For example, since my last day at work I’ve only eaten in a restaurant once: this morning the GF and I met up with my aunt and uncle at the Richtree Market. I normally skip breakfast (aka: the useless meal) but this was an exception-worthy occasion if ever there was one. I had a delicious cinnamon roll but instead of ordering a five-dollar orange juice I simply had tap water. I suffered no ill effects and remained fully hydrated throughout the entire meal.

The work-around for the tiny water glasses is you just take a whole bunch of them.

Next up I had to buy toothpaste. On a regular day this is in itself a daunting task. And today was no different. In the industry we call what I experienced “analysis by paralysis”. This occurs when making decisions where there are so many variables that the only way one can move forward is to remain frozen in front of all the pertinent information until the answer pops into your mind. I tried to use my newfound free time to determine the best value for my dollar but in the end it proved impossible.

I ended up going online and purchasing several, heavily-discounted, industrial-sized tubes direct from China.

Financial tradeoffs aside, you’re all probably wondering what my increase in free time means for you, my loyal readers. What it means is that I will have more time to dedicate to my blog. You can look forward to post after post of lengthy, in-depth, detailed, technical articles on everything from how to determine if a used jigsaw puzzle has all the pieces to figuring out how many pairs of underwear one will need for the remainder of ones life.

I’m looking forward to sharing my journey with you.