Plan for your future

Graphic from allposters.com

McMansions pffffffffffft!! It is environmentally and economically smart to live in a house that meets your needs without exceeding them. It is economically sound to save up a deposit for a home and then to pay the loan off as fast as possible. If you are being wise economically and environmentally, you’ll also have a car that suits the size of your family and not the size of your ego.

Our standard of living seems to have exceeded our means to achieve it. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that two-thirds of Australian households currently have some form of debt. For the first time since the 1960s the Household Savings Ratio is in the negative. Which means that although we have traditionally saved about 10% of our after tax income, now we Australians are spending more than we earn. A shift in our thinking is overdue. Maybe Australia is ready for a simple change. Maybe the world is too.

When I decided that enough was enough, I realised that buying more things didn’t make me feel better, in fact, it made me feel worse. I started to think about all the rubbish I’d bought over the years and how much money I’d wasted buying it. I stopped wanting to go shopping and started thinking about a more sustainable way of life. New things didn’t satisfy me anymore. What I needed was a new way of living, new values and a more self-sustaining and holistic way of being, not (more) new clothes. I didn’t want to run into the hills and live like a hippy, I wanted to live a decent and fulfilling simple life in modern Australia. Living more simply and paring down my wants gave me that life, and much more.

You would think that giving up things would make me feel miserable and powerless, but it did the opposite - it strengthened me. It showed me that I was strong and sound and appealing without all the props that I'd had in the past. I was still okay, even if I wasn't dressed in the "right" colour for this year. Who knew! LOL

Working out what I needed and what I should still spend on made me more mindful of my spending. After a while it became a game to see how little I could spend. I wasn't being cheap and I didn't feel poor, I was readjusting my life and having fun while I did it. And you know what, now that I spend very little and I rarely give purchased gifts, I feel generous; I feel I have an abundance and I give freely of myself. That's the real gift, all else is flim flam.

I wrote about connecting the dots the other day and if you want to change your life and try to live more sustainably and simply, connecting the dots on what you're already doing and what you need to do is a good way to plan for your future. You must have a plan or a map. When you write things down they become more concrete and real. Your plan could be a written point by point list of where you are now and what you're doing today to live the life you want to live. What do you want your life to be? If you want to live in your own home, be debt-free and stay home with the kids, work out a step-by-step guide to how you will start to do that today. And if you do start today, what will you have to do next week and next month to continue towards your goal? Write it all down. If you want to change jobs and move to another part of the world, write down what you have to do today, tomorrow, next week and next year to make that happen. Even if all you want to do is to change the way you shop so you can save for a family holiday, write down all your points. Map your future.

In our consumer driver society, this is uncharted territory. You need a map, and your point by point plan will be your map. There will be many temptations put in your way to try to lure you back to spending and being "normal". Don't fall for it. If you lose your way or if you get side tracked, your map will be there to help you back to your chosen path. A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. Make your first step today.