Today I had the opportunity to go to lunch with my team at work. It was a company sponsored working lunch (which is a polite way of saying that I didn't have to pay for it). This was a particularly nice treat because I've been making a concerted effort to bring my own lunch to work each day. First, it allows me to eat healthier, second it wastes less time than finding someplace to eat and waiting for food, and third it undoubtedly saves us money. In fact, we've been pushing hard to eat out less overall. Interestingly, this means that quality is even more important when we do.
This goes against the conventional wisdom that saving money is all about taking the cheapest option and forgoing quality. In fact, this is what being frugal always implied to me: a choice to focus on price over quality. I find that as we become conscious of our spending however, quality is actually more important than price. Now that we're eating out less, eating out is more of a special treat, which means that we can afford to pay a bit more if we choose to but it had better be darned good!
So back to lunch today. We went to a rather tony restaurant where my small plate of pasta cost $15 for lunch... and it was terrible! Really bad. And you know I was relieved that I didn't have to pay for it, because if I had I would have been angry. In fact lately it seems that when we have made the choice to go out it hasn't been as good as we'd have liked. And the more we spend, the more disappointed we seem to be. One recent exception is a local Teriyaki place that's actually really cheap. You always get plenty of food and it's always delicious. Typical plates are $6-8 -- for dinner! But while I love that price, what's more important is that the quality is equally good. It really does feel like a treat.
I know that restaurants struggle with the slowing economy. Food and operating costs have surely increased for them just as for us. But what they have to remember is that a restaurant is a luxury. It's a treat that we choose to enjoy, not something that's required. You may have to adjust your menu or prices to cope, but you cannot get away with poor quality or service. When we were eating all the time a bad experience, while unpleasant, was only temporary. Tomorrow night we'd just eat someplace else. But when dinner out is a rare treat the quality matters even more.
It's the same with many things. If spending $9 on a movie ticket is a special event, you want the movie to be good. If you stop buying every new video game release, you're going to be more selective about the one you do buy. When clothing purchases are planned specifically for occasional wardrobe-building (as opposed to your weekend hobby) then those clothes had better last. That means quality.
The past decades of overconsumption have made quantity more important than quality. If you see every new release in the theater it's OK if some suck. If you buy every new game it doesn't matter if you never play half of them. If you come home with bags of clothing all the time who cares if some fall apart or go out of style after only two wearings? But that's changing now for many people. Because being thrifty means seeking out quality as well as value. And thrifty has come back into vogue.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Natural Cycles
It's been a difficult month. There's been a lot going on and a lot of changes. Kid starting school, visitors, returning guests, changing weather, illness, and so on. The result is that our energy levels are quite low. In recent years I've realized that the key to dealing with these times is to acknowledge them and not berate myself for all the things I'm not doing. Instead, I need to conserve my energy and put it toward those things that are most important.
This is good advice for any kind of crisis, including financial. And "financial crises" does seem to be on everyone's minds lately, doesn't it? In my two part article, Filling The Well, I talked about building up a reserve during the good times in order to have a cushion for the bad. Financial certainly, but also mental, emotional, and physical. Part two of this article has lots of practical advice and steps for starting those reserves from scratch when you're completely tapped out. However, what I didn't go into as deeply were techniques for ongoing maintenance.
Now is the time -- when I first realize that we've been too busy, stressed, rundown, and ill -- to start working on those reserves. It's easy to wait too long and run completely out of gas before thinking about mitigation. But that's a mistake. To use a financial metaphor, the earlier you realize that your checking balance is low, the more options you have to fix it. If you wait until after you start bouncing checks, things will be much more difficult. This is where the prosperity key of introspection comes in handy. Keeping an eye on yourself let's you identify problems early (just like keeping an eye on your account).
So once you realize that you're heading toward a low ebb, how do you fix it? One thing that works for me is to triage -- which is basically extreme prioritization. What's most important? What can wait and get deferred until later? What can get canceled altogether? For me that means focusing only on:
* Our family's health
* The day job and school
* The budget
And that's it. Everything else gets postponed in order to give us time to recuperate. Physically we put the focus on eating well and getting enough rest. Mentally, we take a break from worrying about the small stuff. Emotionally, we spend time together strengthening our connections. At the same time, we work on making sure that priority issues are handled. That means deadlines and homework, bills and budget will still get done if at all possible.
It's hard to put other things on hold. To make excuses for existing commitments and avoid taking on new ones. But it's worth it. Because by focusing on building reserves the rough patch goes faster, which means I can get back to working on all those other things sooner. This is better than dragging along, overallocated and exhausted until I collapse and nothing gets done. And taking off a couple of afternoons early to grab a nap is better than getting completely ill and missing a week of work -- better for me as well as the job.
It's also critical that I not kick myself for what I'm not doing. I had this experience yesterday walking home from the bus. I was thinking about all the things I wanted to accomplish this autumn that I hadn't yet -- and here we are in October already. But then I realized that September was the craziest month we'd had in a long time. It's OK that we didn't get more done. In fact, it's smart.
This is good advice for any kind of crisis, including financial. And "financial crises" does seem to be on everyone's minds lately, doesn't it? In my two part article, Filling The Well, I talked about building up a reserve during the good times in order to have a cushion for the bad. Financial certainly, but also mental, emotional, and physical. Part two of this article has lots of practical advice and steps for starting those reserves from scratch when you're completely tapped out. However, what I didn't go into as deeply were techniques for ongoing maintenance.
Now is the time -- when I first realize that we've been too busy, stressed, rundown, and ill -- to start working on those reserves. It's easy to wait too long and run completely out of gas before thinking about mitigation. But that's a mistake. To use a financial metaphor, the earlier you realize that your checking balance is low, the more options you have to fix it. If you wait until after you start bouncing checks, things will be much more difficult. This is where the prosperity key of introspection comes in handy. Keeping an eye on yourself let's you identify problems early (just like keeping an eye on your account).
So once you realize that you're heading toward a low ebb, how do you fix it? One thing that works for me is to triage -- which is basically extreme prioritization. What's most important? What can wait and get deferred until later? What can get canceled altogether? For me that means focusing only on:
* Our family's health
* The day job and school
* The budget
And that's it. Everything else gets postponed in order to give us time to recuperate. Physically we put the focus on eating well and getting enough rest. Mentally, we take a break from worrying about the small stuff. Emotionally, we spend time together strengthening our connections. At the same time, we work on making sure that priority issues are handled. That means deadlines and homework, bills and budget will still get done if at all possible.
It's hard to put other things on hold. To make excuses for existing commitments and avoid taking on new ones. But it's worth it. Because by focusing on building reserves the rough patch goes faster, which means I can get back to working on all those other things sooner. This is better than dragging along, overallocated and exhausted until I collapse and nothing gets done. And taking off a couple of afternoons early to grab a nap is better than getting completely ill and missing a week of work -- better for me as well as the job.
It's also critical that I not kick myself for what I'm not doing. I had this experience yesterday walking home from the bus. I was thinking about all the things I wanted to accomplish this autumn that I hadn't yet -- and here we are in October already. But then I realized that September was the craziest month we'd had in a long time. It's OK that we didn't get more done. In fact, it's smart.
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