Pulling Sources, Having Breakthroughs

Pulling together more resources this weekend. I have been working from “Your Money or your Life, but I need more. Just ordered the following (USED!) Be Thrifty: How To Live Better With Less , The Simple Living Guide: A Sourcebook for Less Stressful, More Joyful Living by Janet Luhrs , and Shed Your Stuff, Change Your Life: A Four-step Guide to Getting Unstuck by Julie Morgenstern. I realized that I need to connect more with Thoreau again and re-visit Walden, although it isn’t isolation I seek so much as freedom from need of things. I also started to remember studies I’ve read about happiness and rates of happiness as correlated to income/acquisition. If reality TV has taught us anything, having money and having things doesn’t make for an easy or better life. I will have to research the happiness studies so I have some data to back up what I think I remember reading.


On a personal level, I’ve taken several very basic, but really life changing steps in the past weeks to start on the road to buying less. One of the first things I did was unsubscribe from every coupon, discount, and bargain email list that I was on. I was spending money on things I didn’t need because of the great deals. I even bought some coupons that ended up expiring before I got to use them, money thrown down the toilet! I also unsubbed from all the regular online merchant emails I was getting, even Amazon and Zappos, my two favorites. It’s not that I won’t use the sites ever again, it’s that their daily or even weekly emails were enticing me to make purchases that were unnecessary. They triggered needs in me that I didn’t actually have until I saw the images. I have also made it a point to purchase coffee to make at home, rather than support my daily latte habit, which was costing me over $700 a year. Finally, I have made a point of bringing my breakfast and lunch from home, something I have always been too “lazy” or “bored” to do. I recognize now that I use the promise of the latte as motivation to get up. I also use a $12-$15 lunch out as a “reward” for making it through at least half of the day at a job I don’t enjoy. The job is costing me money! This is exactly the point made in step 2 of Your Money or Your Life.