Saturday, June 13, 2009

Time for Some Changes: Releasing the Fun Police’s Tight Grip

I am back! It’s not like I left town. I just didn’t blog much in the last few days because of chores. Here’s a post I prepared earlier.

I first noticed the price of groceries going up and up in the Winter of 2007. Around that time, I also began to hear stories of foreclosures in the US. Being a super worry wart, I began to think that something disastrous was heading our way. Way back in 1997, Australia was not affected by the Asian Financial Crisis but this time, I was sure that the Global Financial Crisis would hit the Land of Oz and it did. There is a photo in a Children’s Encyclopaedia that has spooked me since I first saw it. It was a photo of an American standing outside his shack taken during the Great Depression (1930’s). The shack was made of pieces of cardboard recycled from boxes and pieces of recycled wood. I just find it hard to believe that the English speaking world has been through such a terrible phase in the 20th century. With the way people (including us) have been spending in recent years, I thought that it would have been a very scary situation if an incredibly large number of Aussies suddenly lost their jobs. How would Centrelink support everyone? Would there be riots? Would people start to judge who deserves more handouts? I can’t stand those handouts. They just complicate things in the long run.

I freaked out and became our own in-house Fun Police. The first thing I did was to draw up a brand new budget to strictly control our spending. Things like going to the movies, eating out at fancier establishments, magazines and even most of our clothes and hobby allowance went out the window or drastically reduced. I thought we were set to live with only the bare necessities. The budget was like a Starvation Diet. It worked at first but by April this year, we were breaking some if not most of the rules. M was spending money behind my back and whenever he bought something openly, I was quick to want to out-do him ASAP.

We did stick to the super strict budget for a little over a year. Although we had begun to break the rules, we did gain from it as well. We certainly realised how little we needed to live quite comfortably. So, it’s not entirely a bad budget/experience. What we need now is a budget that also lets a little bit more fun back in. It’s good that Winter is here. We tend to stay home more and thus spending less. I also tend to be happier with my cooking duties on cold days and as a result of that we tend to also eat out less. Of course I wish, like a lot of people, to be able to live without any money worries but with so many uncertainties around and ahead of us, it is definitely not a task for us to strike a balance easily. Because I am not sure if M will play ball, I will have to think up some ideas to get the ball rolling.

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