Every day, I'll bet that you are noticing things that you would like to have, or like to do, that would stretch your budget. You are thinking "how can I cut down even more, when I'm not making it right now?" First of all, get over the idea that you are going to be deprived and suffer. That is the whole notion of this blog, LIVING WELL for less.
The big areas of expense for all of us are our homes, utilities, food, clothing, insurance/health care, entertainment and transportation. Now, you can bet that doctors' wives need all of these things and they can afford to get them by throwing alot of money at it. It is a shame that they throw their money at it, because they could really do it just as well for less. Part of the reason that they don't do it another way is because they don't know how to do it. Another reason, which unfortunately affects many of us, plain old laziness. These rich wives aren't motivated to hustle and figure this out because it takes a little homework. They are waiting on the gravy train. However, I would advise one to prepare and to practice living frugally. Sometimes the gravy train runs off the track and you still have a destination you need to get to.
I would like to tell you a true story. I was working alone on a contract job in Europe and needed to get to a train station in a small town in the Netherlands where the person I was replacing was waiting to pick me up. This was my first time in Europe. I had no phone number and no name to contact, just my ticket and the address of my destination for work. I had been flying all day. It was winter and very cold. I had flown into the enormous Frankfurt,Gemany airport and caught the correct train out of the airport/train station.
Along the way, I met another English speaking woman and so we rode together with our huge American size bags crammed into the small commuter car of this little train. There was no overhead compartment or seat large enough for our whopper bags, so they are wedged in our seats over our laps. The train was quite full of homeward bound workers. We had a stop where we needed to switch trains. The announcer on our new train was making many updates in French, German and Dutch, but nothing in English. I could make out a few German words and my companion could make out a little French. The Dutch was impossible. A gentleman sitting across from us had brought a little flask of whiskey to ease his trip and spoke a little bit of English. Between the three of us, we realized that the train to our destination had been cancelled due to ice on the tracks. We weren't going to get there today. Nor even anytime that night.
I studied the regional train map I had picked up at the station. I couldn't read much of it, but I could follow the train lines and make out where the town I needed was and every town in between. When we disembarked and studied the electronic schedule board at the station, we could see the incoming arrival times were getting later and later. Then some trains began to show up as cancelled. It was sleeting and snowing. Finally, there were only two or three trains still up on the board as running. We are in a small rural village with no hotels. We had little local currency and there are no English speaking people around. They didn't take credit cards. We have no way of contacting our business connection who was waiting at our destination. What would you do?
Quickly, we got onto the last train running that was headed in the approximate direction of our final stop. We road that train as far as it went until it could no longer proceed. By this time, it was well into the late evening, dark and sleeting, with at least half an inch of ice coating everything on top of some pretty messy snow. We made a plan. Cobbling together what few words we could muster between her French and my pitiful German, we asked for information from passerby. I stayed with the bags, my friend went to call for a taxi. When the lone taxi in town arrived, it was mobbed by other people looking to get out of being stranded just like us. A kindly gentleman nearby held back the mob as I struggled to run through the snow and ice with our bags. The cab driver had been awakened to come and pick us up and had his wife in the front seat. He shook his head at the size of our bags but managed to stuff them into the back of his little European taxi.
We had trained it to another small village 10-12 miles from our destination. The cab ride from that village out in the country wasn't too bad, if a little cramped. He dropped us off at the train station that we should have arrived at earlier. It didn't take me long to be spotted by my pick-up person, who had been waiting for several hours. The company that I was contracted with had sent another driver from Frankfurt to find me out in the country-side. They were shocked that I had made it in to the Netherlands without help. It didn't occur to them that I would figure out another way to get where I needed to be, relatively on time and unscathed, thankful that I didn't have to sleep in a train station that night.
Here are your take home lessons for today:
1. There is always another way to get where you need to go. Don't panic, just look for other options.
2. Never travel without emergency phone numbers for in-country contacts.
3. Don't travel on European trains and taxies with large, American size luggage. Even if you will be staying for months, you will aggravate everyone and your stuff won't fit. Ship a box ahead or buy what you need when you get there.
In fact, wouldn't be easier to travel throughout life with less to lug around?
As we work towards living-on-less, we will discover new and clever ways to get where we need to be with food, fun, travel, health, home and retirement. There is Joy in the Journey and good friends to keep us company. Trains don't run on a broken track, but there are lots of other ways to travel, even if I have to pick you up and drag your sorry bags all the way there over the ice.
FREE CYCLE
This is a wonderful organization that operates in many local communities. Green is their thing. Fortunately for you, it is also free and fabulous. Here's how it works: you sign up for your local freecycle community online. (Google it to get the correct link). In order to join, you have to "offer" something. FREE CYCLE is managed by a moderator who makes certain that all posts follow the simple rules and that people aren't putting anything innapropriate on the post. The idea is to keep your cast away junk out of the landfills of our country by reusing it. So, people who are remodeling give away their furniture, light fixtures and doorknobs. People who have dieted or outgrown their clothes give away their wardrobes. Same for babies who grow up a size. Boxes of books, new truck tires left in the yard by a nephew who moved away, working or not: freezers, microwaves and lawnmowers. Teachers needing craft items for class projects, litters of puppies and kittens (although animals are a stretch because they should not go to the dump, ever). You will see anything and everything eventually on freecycle. Plus, if you have need for anything specific, you can ask and see if it might be available. The rule is free, free, free. You bless your community, and watch: it will bless you right back. This is such a win, win, win that everyone in America should sign up for it immediately.
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