One of the best ways to enjoy your 750,000 Hours is to save enough money so you don't have to work (or work so much) and you can go out and do the things you want to do - rather than run around doing the things other people want you to do. But saving big hunks of cash can be really difficult, at times it may seem almost impossible. We learned many of our savings / thrifty habits from sailors. Actually, not sailors, sailboat liveaboards. These are people who have cast off the lines tying them to jobs and mortgages and sail about the world on their sailboats. They are sailors, but they have a very different mindset and approach than those who sail for a few weekends or weeks a year. Often their resources are quite finite and they have to be very careful about what they spend because, with no job, once they run out of money, they're REALLY out of money.
Toast, of Toast Floats, is one of those folks and has written a really interesting post about how not to spend money while sailing. Her one piece of advice, "Do not go to town." When sailing, you can anchor your boat in a lovely deserted harbor and, guess what? You could stay for weeks and not spend a dime. As soon as you hit land and towns, the spending begins. No town, no spend!
We found the exact same thing while sailing, but this approach also applies to land-based living. Steve and I are currently in England for the summer, at home in the Northwest. We can go for days, weeks even, not spending a pence. As soon as we hit town, the money just comes pouring out of the wallet. 'We need this, gotta have some of that, and oh some of those too!' It's a virtual wallet haemorrhage. So we don't go to town.
How often do you 'go to town'? Do you find it really hard not to spend money when wandering through the mall, the DIY store, the grocery store? It's nearly impossible! Try not going to town or going to town much less often and see how much less you spend!
Actually we do have to go to town (not very often though!) to apply another sailing savings approach, provisioning. Provisioning on a sailboat is to stock it up with all the food you're going to need for the next 3-6 months or so and then sail off to where there are no (or very few) grocery stores. Provision once and then DON'T go back into the store. Grocery stores are big time spending temptations, loaded with all that great stuff to try and buy. Tough to escape one of those without dropping a big chunk of change. Have you ever nipped into a grocery store for 'just a few things' and walked out a hundred dollars later wondering what the heck you spent it on? This winter, we provisioned for three months and spent $500. We then spent approximately $100 over the next three months buying fresh stuff when we could find a store, when the mailboat had delivered, when the fruit and veg on the shelf wasn't all shriveled because the mailboat was overdue. We provisioned once and then used what we had. Rather than running to the grocery store when we didn't have something, we had to make due - there was no grocery store so we didn't spend. And when we left the boat, there was still a lot of stuff left in the cupboards for us to use next year!
Now at sea, we do all kinds of things to make fruit and veg last longer (green bags in the fridge, buying things that last a really long time and canned goods). On land, we'll do a big provision at the grocery store, stock up on everything and then periodically restock fresh fruit and veg from the farmers' market. The temptations are far less at the farmers' market - what are you going to do, get more broccoli, go on a squash spending spree, get extravagant with eggs?!
We've just 'provisioned the house', spending £346 on groceries for the summer. We will need to supplement this with fresh (dairy, fruit and veg) and correct any quantities we didn't get right over the course of the summer and that will run somewhere in the £150 range. That is our food cost for the next three months and if you've read some of the earlier posts you know we are foodies who like eating delicious food all the time, this isn't a diet of beans and toast!
You might enjoy this look at weekly food expenditure in different kitchens around the world. Try staying out of town and provisioning once every three months and see how much you save!
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