3 productive or frugal things i’m doing this week

Jun24
by TFS on June 24, 2015 at 6:05 pm
Posted In: Frugality, TFS Updates

frugal things 1

 

You can either spend your free time doing unproductive or even wasteful things such as watching TV, shopping, and using £10 notes as toilet paper or you can spend them doing things that will either save or make you money. Maybe this isn’t for everyone but I find myself drawn to things that are more productive anyway (not just in financial terms) as they make me feel happier, like I have accomplished something and am not just frittering my life away. Obviously there is need for downtime in everyone’s lives but for the most part I think people waste far too much time on activities that add little to their lives.

Here are some “productive” things I’ve been up to (or am planning to do) this week.

 

brewing beer

It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago, and it makes me feel bad when I receive gifts that are a waste of peoples money! So this time I really thought hard and remembered that I had been wanting to brew some of my own beer for aaaaages 1. And, well, it costs at least a bit of money to get the specialised kit to do this. I decided to ask for the following kit from various friends and family:

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Notes:

  1. I asked for a few charity donations last Christmas which actually went down surprisingly well, but instead of doing that again I just ramped up my personal donations this month to compensate somewhat. ↩
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free to pursue guest post: financially independent despite herself

Jun22
by TFS on June 22, 2015 at 7:12 pm
Posted In: Financial Independence, Guest Post

Free To Pursue

Happy Monday campers!

Today you are getting served up a lovely dish of “eye opening guest post” by none other than the gourmet word-chef that is Free To Pursue. F2P, as she is otherwise known, is a Canadian lady who managed to escape the rat race and is now living a happier, contented life with her husband. I won’t give any more details as it will spoil the story! It’s worth underlining before we start though that F2P’s new found time to read and write is clearly paying dividends, as her blog is a mine of wisdom and actionable advice on how to live the good life. There are also frequent and highly relevant quotes from various FI themed books and hence many suggestions for your reading list, which is great, except if you aren’t FI yet you probably won’t have time to read them all 🙂

I’ll be back with a postscript of my favourite Free To Pursue posts to give new readers an idea where to start but for now it’s over to F2P….

 

Financially Independent, Despite Herself

The pull of the marketers’ call is strong. We’re bombarded with messages every day about who we need to be and what products and services will help us get there. No matter what we’ve acquired though, the feeling of finally having what will make life better just doesn’t last and we start looking for the next item that will be the key to feeling we have it “together”.

“As the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered.” p. 179, Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton

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i’m back!!!

Jun18
by TFS on June 18, 2015 at 8:20 am
Posted In: Blogging, TFS Updates
im back4

Agro indeed!!!

 

Just a quick post to say sorry about the downtime and the blog is now back online! Yea… you can’t get rid of me that easily I’m afraid 😉

 

what happened?

This won’t be much of interests to most without their own blog I would imagine but here’s the lowdown:

  • I had an email from my hosts compliance team saying some files got compromised, and they’d taken the site down due to security risks etc…
  • As it was my birthday weekend I didn’t bother looking at it properly until Sunday evening
  • I downloaded my whole site using free Filezilla software (I think I should have been doing this at least every month or so as back up… I wonder how many people actually do this though?) to check out the scanlog.txt file that told me what files I needed to delete
  • I then procrastinated over what to do with the offending files for about a day
  • I then realised that all of the naughty files were actually just total bollocks so it wouldn’t matter at all if I just deleted them.
  • So I deleted them
  • It then took 3 days of me pestering iPage to get them to rerun the file scan and get all web services reinstated
  • Once back online change all passwords etc…

The final 3 days were a bit frustrating but overall it wasn’t the end of the world, and glad to be finally be back online. Whoop! 🙂

I follow with some random ramblings of what I’ve been up to and some other loose ends that are probably worth mentioning.

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mixed bag may – goals progress + wot we’ve been up to

Jun10
by TFS on June 10, 2015 at 4:43 pm
Posted In: TFS Updates
may goals updates

The beautiful town square and church in Benissa

As mentioned in my previous financial update, we’ve just got back from our Spanish holiday part II. So following Mr 1500’s lead I’ve decided to spam you with some holiday pics (don’t worry I’ve put most right at the bottom so you don’t have to go through them all if you don’t want!)

As usual time has been tight but I’ve made some progress with certain goals this month so overall I am happy. Read on to find out what went down and what went up!

I’m continuing with a Win/Lose/Draw to denotation how well I think I’ve done on each goal, should be fairly self explanatory!

I will only comment on any goals that have had or should have had some updates on to save on repetition – If you want to read the full list of goals though go here.

Let’s get stuck in shall we?

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dos vacays in may – income/expenses, net worth and savings rate report

Jun08
by TFS on June 8, 2015 at 8:13 am
Posted In: Budgets, TFS Updates
Mayyyyyy Expenses!!!!

A lovely view over the hills of Spain!

Hola amigos!!!!

We got back from our second holiday in Espana last week but it’s taken me a while to shake off the holiday mode and get back into normal life and find some time to blog. Apologies for anyone who’s been wondering where I’ve been! 🙂

As mentioned above with two holidays it was always going to be a tough month but I’m pretty happy that we kept both trips on the fairly frugal side and on the second week long trip with my family we actually came home with €200!!

Let’s have a look at how the rest of the month went down…

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