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Take a few MOMENTS to relax and read.
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MONEY TIP
You can turn your hobbies into money-saving opportunities. Instead of simply enjoying your favorite pastimes, use them to offset costs in your daily life. For example, if you enjoy gardening, grow your herbs and vegetables to reduce your grocery bills. If you’re a crafty person, create handmade gifts for friends instead of buying them or sell your creations at local markets. When you align your passions with frugality, you not only enrich your leisure time but also cleverly cut down on expenses without sacrificing what you love. If this ever starts to feel more like a business than a hobby, you may have gone a little overboard. Maybe tone it down if that happens.
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OPPORTUNITY
One underappreciated resource is the “Library Extension” browser add-on. It connects to your local library system and shows you if a book (or audiobook) you’re considering buying is available to borrow digitally. This promotes minimalism by reducing unnecessary purchases, saves money by avoiding retail prices, and can be used to access travel guides or language learning resources, supporting travel-related endeavors. Wow… money, minimalism, and travel! Though I’ll admit, the way it relates to travel was a stretch.
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MINIMALISM TIP
Since we’ll be moving soon and, unfortunately, leaving Japan, we’ve been going through all our things as we usually do before a big move. We use the typical boxes to sort the items we aren’t keeping: “Sell, Donate, and Trash.” But we’ve added another box. I call it the “Donate… Later” box. It’s for any item we consider donating, but aren’t sure about. We put it in this box and leave it in the garage. If we ever need the item and retrieve it, we keep it. Once we’ve gone a couple of months without looking for it, we donate the box… without looking at the items again. It takes the stress off when you can’t decide.
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ESSENTIAL READING
This week’s recommended book aligns with last week’s. It’s not entirely about codependency, but it relates. If your parents missed something when they taught you as a kid, this book is for you. So, yeah, that includes all of us, because our parents are perfectly imperfect beings… like we are. The book is Growing Yourself Back Up by John Lee. I looked at the cover of this book for a week before I got over how offended I was by the title. It ended up being a much-needed read.
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NOTION
Teach your kids the art of mindful consumption, emphasizing the difference between needs and wants. This involves critical and intentional evaluation of advertising (like we discussed last week), how and why to resist impulsive purchases (and how to spot impulse-targeted store displays), and understanding the environmental and ethical impact of their buying choices. This awareness will help your kids learn to value experiences over material possessions, naturally gravitating towards a simple lifestyle.
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TRAVEL TIP
This is a fairly common idea, but I haven’t mentioned it before, and I want to make sure I do. Consider using a VPN while booking flights and other accommodations online. By changing your IP address to different locations, you may find better deals or discounts that are not available in your current location. This can help you save money and make your travel more affordable, of course. However, it also shows you how greedy companies can be and how travel websites are designed to make you spend more than you intend.
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SCRIPTURE
“For the Lord takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with salvation.”
Psalm 149:4
Closing Question
If fear of failure wasn’t a factor, what would you do? How would you live? What would you do for work? What would your relationships look like?
