I stumbled upon Sophie Kinsella’s Confessions of a Shopaholic when I was 17 years old and fell in love with the protagonist, Becky Bloomwood. The book follows Becky’s antics of shopping the sales around London and rationalizing her purchases by considering them necessities or investments. I laughed at her attempt to save money by cooking at home, by first buying all pots and pans, a fancy cook book, and exotic ingredients. I celebrated with her when she finds a beautiful silk scarf on sale and makes the purchase. While quirky and endearing, Becky is not the greatest role model; she lacks self control, is clearly delusional, and acts irresponsibly, but I saw past her faults because I identified with her. I understood the thrill of being at a mall and the rush of adrenaline at the sight of “sale”.
When it comes to trimming the budget, most people start with line items like food and entertainment. Line items like insurance, which can account for a sizeable percentage, can often go overlooked. Since insurance renewals only come once a year, it’s easy to be lazy and to just renew with same provider. Sticking to the status quo can be costly. Here are a few lessons learned that have helped me cut my insurance premiums down.
Since the kid came along, we’ve been relying on him to be our alarm clock. Lately he’s been waking up close to 8 AM. After months of waking up really early (5 AM) and playing with toy cars first thing in the morning, you’d think getting more shut-eye is awesome, but it also means having to rush to get to work, or worse, realizing there is a morning meeting I need to get to in less than an hour. Mornings are stressful and chaotic in our household. It’s a mad scramble to make breakfast, get ready for the day, and leave the house.
With simplifying our life as the overarching vision for the year, we hereby announce Project UrbanSimplify: a 12 month challenge to help remove clutter, whether that be abstract or material.