Personal Note from Jill

Simplifying Our Entertainment

Being home meant more time on my hands. For me, this could lead to more spending and I (or my budget) wasn’t going to allow that.

For us, we have reduced our cable TV to basic and have one streaming service. That’s all we have and I wasn’t going to pay for any more.

We have kept ourselves entertained with free stuff. We have watched movies on the channels that we have. I was able to watch the movie Hidden Figures that I had wanted to. I highly recommend it if you haven’t watched it. We explored a variety of free services. We have always used Hoopla from the library for free movies. We’ve toured places what we haven’t been to, such as virtual tours of museums and national parks. I’ve read many books that I was planning on reading that I never got to. We broke out our board games and played for entertainment. We have explorer new locations for our daily walks. All this without spending a penny.

If we can do this, you can too.

Simplifying By Not Shopping

Being home with the Covid 19 requirements, caused me to spend more. Business was slower, minimal interaction and more time on my hands, cause me to spend more. Not a good thing.

Once I made this realization, I needed to take action. First, I had to understand that because something is a good buy, doesn’t mean I need it. This was a big step. Next, I eliminated apps on my phone and unsubscribed from emails from companies, reducing the temptation to spend.

Now before I buy something, I ask myself do I really need this? Is this something I would have bought without a sale? If the answer is “yes”, then I make the purchase.

Simplifying By Reducing

Yesterday, I told you what we did about the paper clutter. Today, let’s talk about the other clutter that was in our home.

To be honest, we have simplified and reduce a lot, but we still have more to go. We inherited many items from our families and I found that the sentimental items were the hardest to get rid of. For me this was the hardest. But I have come up with a solution that works for me and maybe you too.

We purchased our families home. And along with that came these items. What was I do with them? At first it was easily to toss many items. But then, I was left with the hard stuff. Those sentimental items that I didn’t want to keep but didn’t want to toss either. That was my dilemma.

This is what I have done to simplify the items in our house

My dad was a great athlete and had so much memorabilia. First, I decided that I wanted to remember all of this, so I took photos of all the items I wanted to remember. I have the memory and the photo now, so I was ready to get rid of the items. But what could I do with these items, it didn’t seem right to toss them. For his school memorabilia, I contact the schools and donated the items – yearbooks, sports uniforms, programs, pins, equipment, etc.
Nostalgic items was another category. I purchased a book called Trash or Treasure and contacted collectors. Here’s a couple of examples – I sold a metal toy to a collector for $500, I sold my mother’s cameras to a company in the mid-west, family china to a company that buys it for people seeking replacement items for their collections.
Boxes of newspaper clipping, from my fathers sports career. Just finished scanning all of these while at home during the pandemic.

I am down to the last few items and then I will be done. We have eliminated boxes and boxes from our basement and I am happy with where the items are now..

Simplifying By Reducing Paper

Do you find yourself swimming in paper? We did.

There are things you need to keep (tax records, purchase receipts, home expenses and more), but there are the other things that we seemed to keep as well. So much so that we had several files cabinets worth.

Over the past few years, our goal was to simplify and reduce the paper files we kept. This is what we did:

Scanned and digitized the family photos, slides and movies – this was a huge project
Scanned bank / credit card and investment statements
Eliminated manuals – we can look it up if we need to refer to this online
Scanned income tax returns
Scanned medical records
Scanned and organized recipes – this eliminated all the recipe cards from my mother and many cook books too

Now most files are scanned and backed up and the paper is eliminated. It’s such a great feeling when there is less paper. As an added bonus, we are down to one file cabinet. We sold the other file cabinets for some extra cash.

Remember to check to find out what you are required to keep and for how long before getting rid of your paper.

Simplifying By Opting Out Of Mail

This was another biggy for us. Way too much mail. This needed to be simplified.

I do want all my bills in a paper format. Personally, I keep them to see what’ happening – so I want this mail.

But I didn’t want a lot of the other mail – catalogues and magazines. It seemed to me that if I made a purchase from a company then I would not only get that company’s catalogue list but on other’s too. I am not going to kid you, this was a lot of effort to get off mailing lists. You can visit my resources page to find that companies that you can opt out from. But I took it s step further and called all of the catalogues and requested that I be removed from there list. Yes, it’s time consuming but it has worked. We simplified by eliminating these catalogues thus reducing that amount of mail that comes, reducing the temptation to make a unwanted purchase and saving trees.

As for magazines, we didn’t renew our subscriptions and let them run out. I wasn’t finding the time to read them, so they were piling up creating clutter (not a good feeling). Now, if I want to read a magazine I can check out the magazine through my local library and read it online. RB Digital from the library works for us. Again, we reduced that amount of mail that was coming in, reducing the clutter from the unread issues and saving money by not paying for the subscriptions and savings the paper.

We receive less mail now. In fact, there are days with no mail at all.

Simplifying By Opting Out Of Emails

Are you overwhelmed by all your emails in your inbox? I was!

Having several email addresses and tons of emails was too much for me.

I took the time to opt out of many emails. First, I eliminated emails that I never subscribed to. There was a lot of those.

Next, I made some conscious choices about others. There were some that were no longer relevant to me. Some that I never got around to reading. Some that I subscribed to because I made a purchase(s).

Less in my inbox is a relaxing feeling for me. I don’t feel pressured by another to-do in my life.

I also eliminated so email accounts to have less to go through each and every day. For me less is better and saves me time and money.

Simplified My Exercise Routine

Along with a healthy eating, for us comes exercise. Since the stay-at-home orders in early March, we changed our exercise to walking in the neighborhood. We walk difference ways, sometimes along the water, sometimes in the area, sometimes on a trail all within walking distance from our home – no car / gas needed.

It’s been almost four months of daily walking, regardless of the weather we walk and walk. One thing we have done is to combine exercise with errands. We are fortunate to live close enough to town and we do errands on some walks. It could be to the Post Office or the bank or the drug store and many more. But about once a week, our walk includes errands. It’s fun, gets things done and no need to use the car or pay for a gym membership. And as a bonus, we have met people along the way that we never knew before.

We get our exercise in and save money. I wouldn’t trade this for the world.

Simplifying By Saying No

It’s such a small word, but packs so much into it. Is the word “no” causing you problems? The word “no” is something that I had so much trouble with for many years. Now I am embrace the word and am loving it.

So what do I mean? Are you doing things you don’t want to do? Are others making problems for you? Let me explain. Are you at the check out and are asked would you like to save an additional 15% of your purchase today. You think why wouldn’t I want to save money, so you say “yes”. Now you have another credit card and the possiblity of more debt and hurting your credit. Did you really want that? Another example is when you are asked to do something, do you automatically say “yes”. Maybe you really can’t afford to do that at this point, but you said “yes” so you won’t disappoint others. This happened so many times for me.

For me to break the routine of always saying “yes” and pleasing others, I now take a step back and think about it before answering. I consider my options. Do I really want that? How would I benefit from that? What are the long term repercussions? Stop and take the time to think about what’s right for you. You can easily do this by saying – I’ll let you know, not at this time, I have to check my schedule etc. That gives you the time to make the choices that is right for you. You can be true to yourself and give an honest answer with some thought. Sometimes the answer is “yes” and sometimes the answer is “no”. You made the choice you want and that is best for you.

Simplifying Long Term Goals

Did you set up your automated saving deposits from your paycheck?

The next step is to automated your other savings goal. What do you want to accomplish / have in your life? Maybe your are saving for a home, car, saving to pay for college, retirement. The choice is yours. You need a plan to achieve your goals.

Set up a smart goal – specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely. For example, I want to save $20,000 for the down payment of a new home by 2025. Breaking that down, that’s $20K in 4 years or $5K a year or $96.15 per week. Break it down into small manageable steps so it’s not overwhelming. Set up a automatic transfer for the amount you need. Then sit back and watch your savings grow to realize your goal.

Just like you automated your savings yesterday, automate the finance part of your long term goals. I would suggest that you have a separate savings account for each of your goal, that way you can measure your progress and know exactly where you stand at all times.

It’s that simple to start on a path to achieve your goals.

Simplifying By Automating

Another way we simplified our finances was to automate our savings.

Each pay period (after the direct deposit), we contribute to our emergency savings. We have done this through an automatic transfer from our checking (where the direct deposit occurs) to our savings. A specific amount of money is moved from the checking to the saving each and every payday. No more I’ll save after I pay my bills. You know this story, there is never anything leftover to save. So get in the habit of paying yourself first and then you will start to see you saving grow. This was great with the pandemic and less income coming in, we had our savings to fall back on.

You can do this too. You can set it up through you bank and set up an automated transfer or you can have your paycheck split between two accounts (checking and savings). Either way works. Bottom line, you need to have a savings account for whatever life throws at you. Start your automated savings today. You won’t be sorry.