watching the pennies

 It's happening again. Me being frugal. Not mean, just careful with money. Watching my pennies.

 

photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash

Every time that I go this way, something happens further down the line whereby I need to have money at hand for something important. This has happened over and over in my life. Sometimes one just has to trust their intuition and life patterns. 

Please don't say that I must have manifested the need to be careful with money. Or wished or chosen it. This sort of judgement is too First World Entitlement for me. Sometimes we just have predestined things in our life. And necessary care with money is one of those things for me. I am a cautious person by nature, so of course I'd be the same way with finances anyway. And I do not do the debt thing, because that's way too stressful for me. 

I feel most virtuous when I pay cash for things. 

I recently bought a notebook (small laptop computer). Plus Microsoft Office (really pleased about this), and a firewall. And paid cash. It was about half the price of the fancy one that I was first looking at. And was reduced at a Black Friday sale from a really reputable place. I've also bought cars, within my budget of course, using cash and discount sales. I want a new three seater smallish sofa, so, again, I'll wait for some sales. I'd actually be happy with a storage single bed and big cushions doubling as a sofa. Will wait and see.

I've done family life, the sharing homes thing, living in very real Ashram austerity (it actually suited me), living alone including log cabin in the hills (yep really suits me). Now I'd just like to be comfortable and have an easier life. Cheaply. Of course.

I've also realised that I do need to spend some money to make my life and home have more ease. So I'm just putting some careful thought into this. My home is small, so I have to store things quite carefully, so this is what I'm sorting out in my head. I get quite exasperated opening a cupboard or wardrobe, and having to move things, just to get what I'm after. Then having to put it all back. How much easier it would be just to pull out a box with similar things in it, grab what I need, and pop it back after. Which also means that I wouldn't be spending ages looking for things, and not buying the same thing twice. Do I get various storage containers, small and medium sized, from op shops? Or get new from a cheapish shop? At the moment I'm looking at newish. 

clearing clutter to clear my head

I'm organising an op shop biffout. Our local Salvation Army will come and pick it up, so a lot is going. Including toys that wee girl has grown out of. Not that I actually have many here. Clearing out clutter, meaning extra stuff that I don't use nor need, this really helps clear my head. Sometimes meditation doesn't work for everything regarding head clearing; sometimes we just need to do something practical. 

I'm the faeries and angels lady. yes, I am

Having said all of this, I managed to find a couple of popup fairy books for wee one to read when she's being a big girl staying overnight at Granny's. $1 each. You know that I'm a yoga teacher-clairvoyant-healer, well.... lets just say that I'm a great faerie Granny. However, only one of my other grandchildren was ever able to relate to this. With her long, dark red ringlets, she was a faerie natural. But her older sister thought that Granny was a bit weird and out-of-touch with reality (chuckle)

I also picked up a $2 wooden jigsaw with relatable pictures for a toddler. And two fantastic pencils - they are jelly lipliners, and one is in the colour that I love. $1 each. They are being used just as lippys. And a beautiful pale blue summer "tee", a good brand as well. I have a lot of blue in my aura, so I do gravitate towards it. Not my favourite colour, but because it's always been biggish in my energy field, it just makes sense to me to go with this. 

we can recycle our latest fashion accessories: masks!!

And, tests have been done on these masks that many of us are wearing: it seems that they are washable and still effective after washing. They were tested for eight washes, then the testers just stopped. For some reason. I'm quite pleased about this, as I really dislike trashing our planet with extra stuff that we put in the rubbish bins. Plus, another thing less to buy. 

the Path of the Peaceful Financial Middlewayer

Librans really do well with a "middle path" in all things. Life is more harmonious for me when I find a middle way with money. Don't be too frugal. Stop being wasteful. I can do both very easily. For now, though, yes definitely being careful with the pennies. Just because it feels that this is what I should be doing for a while.

I'm really interested in any penny-savings hints, by the way......

** I am so proud of this humble post about making money go further, food-wise, during the  pandemic. It was featured in one of my favourite blogs: the link to my post there is here and leads us of course back to my blog. It was really Big Time to be featured on the1940sexperiment.com/, here is the link to the home page. It's a fabulous and inspiring blog.

** more about budget food, so useful when we are watching our pennies, here