question time: what was on your frugal christmas list?

Dec31
by TFS on December 31, 2015 at 6:15 pm
Posted In: DIY, Frugality, Fun, Random Thoughts

Hope you all had a nice Christmas time readers!? 🙂

We’ve had a great one this year with lots of merriment with family and friends and I even managed to squeeze a round of golf in the sunshine on the 28th of freakin’ December of all things!!! I remember just two years ago playing in the snow so if there was any doubt climate change is not real, now there ain’t 😉

One thing struck me as I came to write up my Christmas list to Santa this year 🙂 and that was after two years of mild frugality a.k.a. “not buying shit that I don’t need” I did actually start to “need” some stuff from the jolly old white bearded one. This is a marked difference from even just a year when I was saying “I don’t want any presents!!!” to everyone, which mainly fell on deaf ears!

Going back to my old post on Xmas present system to avoid waste… which to recap was this:

Rule 1. Make a list of presents containing things you need and distribute to people who want to buy you something.

Rule 2. For the few months running up to Christmas (6 months is even better)  if you think you need to buy something… Go to rule 1

 

…I found that this year I did actually need quite a few bits.

The other strategy I had this year was that each thing I asked for had to be for a frugal type pursuit, in the realms of creating something, building or fixing something, or personal growth such as health/fitness, in a similar vein to weenie from Quietly saving getting her beer making kits for Christmas (which has been very much noted for my next birthday 😉 ). See it’s a gift but it is also an investment of a kind and not just a bit of toot! Genius!

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Home Is Where the Heart Is – Ten Things Growing Up With House Flippers Taught Me

Dec21
by TFS on December 21, 2015 at 8:41 pm
Posted In: Guest Post, Property
ID-10050069
We have a very apt guest post from Free To Pursue given all my recent DIY work! I’ll keep the introduction short and sweet and will just say thanks again to F2P for writing such a great post (the first one is here, in case you missed it!). Over to you, F2P…
I moved a lot growing up. I moved eight times by the time I was fourteen years old. In that time, I lived in everything from a 300 sq ft home to a 4,000+ sq ft home. Some homes were dumps, others castles, and others still were in some state in between. As a kid I really didn’t much care because I always had a relatively comfortable place to sleep, food to eat and loving, hard-working parents.
The reason I moved so often was that my parents decided to make additional cash flipping homes. They’d buy a home in need of some TLC, fix it up and sell it at a profit. So, like clockwork, we moved every two years or so.
House flippers know only one reality: how to live in chaos, because by the time a home is nice and liveable, it’s time to look for the next project. From an early age, I learned that we sometimes need to resort to “plan Bs” in life, such as using the local restaurant’s washroom while a bathroom’s being renovated or doing dishes in the tub. I also learned that it’s possible to create a makeshift bedroom at the end of a hallway (in fact, as a ten-year-old I thought it was pretty cool to live like that for a while).
I learned a lot living in this state of flux. By watching and helping my parents (mostly by staying out of their way, really), I learned:

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nutty november – income/expenses and other updates

Dec16
by TFS on December 16, 2015 at 5:15 pm
Posted In: Budgets, TFS Updates

november updates

We’re nearly half way through December already but here is my belated November update.

As regular readers will be aware I have been doing up the bathroom which is taking up 99% of my waking hours and thoughts right now, so it’s been tough finding the time to stare at some lovely spreadsheets.

Anyway we somehow did quite well again in November despite spending out on the bathroom and with my drop in income and hit an overall 46.82% savings rate. Intrigued on how we did that?!?! Read on for the breakdown…

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question time: would you do anything for money?

Dec10
by TFS on December 10, 2015 at 5:20 pm
Posted In: Random Thoughts

anything for money

These guys* would probably do owt for cash 🙂

I met up with a few old friends the other day, some who I haven’t seen for quite a while. Everyone seems to be doing very well for themselves which is always nice to see, however I could not help notice that my world view has started to differ quite drastically from some of them. I’m not sure whether this is a new phenomenon or it has always been baked into our own personalities, it’s been too long for me to remember if I’m perfectly honest, but now I’m into all of this FI malarkey, it was most definitely noted.

One interesting thing came up was of one of our friends who wasn’t actually present being offered a job for double the salary, who then turned down that offer. I was like… “Yea, rock on man, don’t sell out just for the money, stick with doing what you love (presuming he loves it).” 1

However the general consensus was that he was an idiot!

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Notes:

  1. Actually I think I just said “Good for him” as I am admittedly rather English and not a cool California surfer dude. ↩
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bathroom makeover – update #2

Dec05
by TFS on December 5, 2015 at 9:47 am
Posted In: DIY, TFS Updates

bathroom remodel

Hi peeps!

I am now about three quarters of the way into my two weeks off to get the bathroom done. How far am I into the bathroom makeover!? Hmm… Tough one but I would say about half way. Nonetheless I am happy with progress.

Things have been slowed down quite a bit by various factors:

  • Having to go to friends/family for showers every night (rather than working into the evening)
  • Helping a friend move house on Monday and then helping her out again on two consecutive evenings sort other bits out
  • A few other social things which took up other evenings

I think it’s fair to say that if I’d kept a completely free schedule and worked into the evenings where possible, then I’d be bang on target.

One thing I’ve learnt though is that things take so much longer than expected, and if you mess anything up it causes almost exponential time increases. One small example, I had heard that levelling the bath takes ages and is a right pain in the neck, so I was delighted when I pretty much nailed it first time with guessing the height of the legs, bar a few easy and small minor adjustments. So I took the bath back out to put a few of the fittings such as the taps and waste, and then put it back in to discover that the waste was scraping against the floor so the bath needed raising by about 1-2 cm! It then took a lot longer to re-level the bath this time round, typical! 🙂

What has changed since last time:

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