The Diaries of a Fat Chick

Over the years Ben and I have often daydreamed together about the type of house we’d like to buy; although I am like a bird and easily influenced by shiny, pretty things usually we end up agreeing that we would like something small and older with a small yard (and a porch!  I’d love a porch!) and a house that has some character to it.   Currently we live in a space that has around 980 square feet (I believe… it’s 9 something anyway) but we’d be willing to go smaller if it had the right criteria -like two bathrooms; I’m all about the two bathrooms people - and possibly a cute little front porch.  

It’s interesting, simple living is a new concept to us but just the fact that we find ourselves looking at the small character type homes suggests that simple living has always been important to us; we just didn’t realize it.

At this point of our lives with all of our stuff, sometimes even the 980 square feet feels a little too crowded and we still have a long way to go before we are living the simple life we want even though in the last month or so we’ve made some huge (and sometimes difficult) changes in how we view the items we own.  And while I believe that living in a home that’s around 1200 square feet would be perfect for us I’d be willing to go as small as 800, especially in light of our new plan for simple (and sustainable) living.  I’ve never been much of an environmentalist but in recent months the thought of lessening our carbon footprint on the world fills me with a small, secret glee.  So yeah, there’s that.

 Anyway  - I stumbled on this article this morning and found it fascinating.   Check it out…

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/have-you-got-220-square-feet-to-spare/article1583018/?cmpid=rss1

How cool is that?  I love how tiny and sweet and clean it is.  Would it work for us?  Nope…(although the 2 bedroom might) but how wickedly awesome would it be to live in such a tiny place? 

I love the design of it, the concept behind it and how “Green” friendly it is.   And the fact that they’re “stackable: makes me giggle. 

Also, and this has nothing to do with simple or green living but remember my birdbath?  Yesterday morning it had bird poop in it.  POOP!!  A bird used my birdbath!  I was thrilled beyond comprehension because I am a nerd.

Also #2 - my hair is super soft and curly today, it looks fantastic.  I bought this new Frizz-Ease styling product called “Dream Curls, curl perfecter spray” by John Freida and wow…does it work.  I have some natural curl and this product enhances that curl without making my hair all stiff and grody.   I highly recommend it.

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So in an effort to beautify our yard (side bar  - we have a huge (massive) fenced in yard to the side of our trailer and a smaller front yard.  It’s the biggest lot in the trailer park and I despise it.  I hate mowing the lawn with the passion of a fiery thousand suns and the fact that our yard(s) is so big means I spend a lot of time mowing the lawn) and lessen the amount of time I spend mowing I decided to build a few garden beds.  I’m also attempting to grow some of our own food (still haven’t managed to buy that damn square foot gardening book; apparently I own absolutely nothing of value…) so not only will it beautify the yard but it’ll also tie in nicely to our simple living concept.  Not to mention that it’s getting me outside working and NOT glued to the tv set like I usually am.  Bonus?  I’m actually getting a bit of colour; normally I’m the colour of snow, regardless of the season, but a few hours of sun and I’m almost not white.  Where was I?  Right…beautifying and simplifying.

It was a long weekend for us so in between a baby shower and a Lost series finale party we spent the entire weekend doing yard work (including mowing the fucking lawn!) and housework.   Last weekend I did a bit of cheap gardening shopping (i.e. I bought perennials from a local woman who was selling them from her yard - $10 for like 20 plants.  Yay me!) and stopped at a few other places to buy some vegetables and a few annuals.   Where are the pictures you ask?  Why, right here…

First up, Ben so graciously dug up three of my five planned flower beds.

This is him digging up my strawberry patch.  How cute is he when he’s doing physical labour?  Super cute right?  Even with the goatee that never ends… (I’ll tell you about the goatee on another day).

He also dug up a rather large portion of the yard next to the trailer.  I don’t have any before pictures but it previously was home to our garbage cans and a rather large patch of weeds, gravel and various bugs.  Two hours later it was a gardening space.  I haven’t finished it completely, I’m still working on the brick border (which coincidentally I managed to score a huge amount of bricks for free from our local paper - woo!  I should have enough to make borders around my two largest garden beds) but this morning I planted all of my perennials, added a splash of annuals for colour and even threw in a few carrots.  Check it out…

My strawberry patch; I need to buy another thing of strawberry plants and finish the edging…

My bird bath lined with a brick border and filled with marigolds:

My parsley pot!

My plant box of chives and a cucumber:

A close up of the cucumber plant:

Or rather a close up of where the cucumber plant used to be until Dexter the Wonder Chihuahua ate it…

Not pictured are my two pots of tomatoes.  Ben is halfway finished the front garden bed and he’s going to dig up one more side garden for me where I will plant some radishes, squash and beans.

And a pretty little bumblebee on my cornflower plant:

Lastly, I’m sure y’all remember my vow to have a perfectly clean counter; this weekend not only did we rock the yard work but we also achieved our goal of a perfectly clean counter.  Behold the giant pink (Ben: dusty rose honey, dusty rose!) counter in all it’s pink glory!

And we cleaned the kitchen table and the other counter off too.  Somebody stop us we’re out of control!

In other news, today is the lovely Jess’ birthday.  I love you my curly headed little friend, you make my life better every single day and I hope that on this, the day of your birth, your dreams and hopes and wishes all come true. 

Happy Birthday Loser.

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On Monday night I went grocery shopping.  Even before we started living frugally I tended to do my grocery shopping at Walmart.  It’s cheaper and more convenient especially since the “Super” Walmart rolled into town. 

Of course I always bought the name brand stuff, but Monday night I made a concentrated effort to buy store brand whenever I could. 

I got all of that for $79.35.  I was pretty impressed with myself; notice the plethora of store brand items?  Walmart is slowly taking over the store with their brand of “Great Value”.  I got enough food to last us until pay day and it cost less than $80.  Go me!  Mind you, I didn’t have to buy any meat and there were no extra’s like laundry soap or toilet paper but still - that’s frugal living folks.  I think… I don’t know, I’m new to this shit.

Everything we’ve tried so far tastes exactly the same as the name brand items.  I was a little leery about the quick frozen dinners (I bought the great value brand for $1.00 each compared to the $3 - $5 each for the name brand) but I was pleasantly surprised at how good they tasted (as good as a frozen macaroni and cheese can taste).

Even the mini crispies (or as Ben calls them - the flavoured cardboard) tasted like the name brand.  The one thing I didn’t go cheap on and in fact, tend to buy the most expensive brand of, were the eggs.  I refuse to buy eggs that don’t have the words “these chickens have access to natural ground cover and free range” written across them in bold letters.   I figure the chicken I eat is tortured enough; I can pay $5.36 to eat eggs whose mother had access to some sunshine and grass.  But ya gotta be careful, the advertising can be deceiving.  Just because the packaging says ”free run” doesn’t necessarily mean the chickens had access to sunshine and grass.

What I would love to have are a couple of laying hens in a small coop in my backyard.  Heaven knows my backyard is big enough to accommodate it.  Apparently however, it’s against the law and whenever I bring it up Ben just shakes his head and walks away muttering about hen pecked chihuahua’s.

Last week the organization “Big Brothers, Big Sisters” phoned and mentioned they would be in our area would we have anything to donate?  “I certainly will.” replied I and for the last few evenings I have begun collecting more items for donation. 

One thing I love about our trailer is the massive kitchen counter.  It’s huge - I’m not kidding.  We could probably sleep comfortably on one section of it alone.  It’s meant to be used as one of those little breakfast bars but considering I have a gigantic rabbit pen sitting on the floor directly where breakfast stools would go, we never use it as a breakfast bar (however, if my plan to bond all four bunnies into one pen goes as planned we will eventually have a breakfast bar).  Sure, it’s pink (Ben:  “Dusty Rose honey, Dusty Rose!”) but it’s still a pretty nice counter.  One of our goals is to have this counter completely clear.  I grew up in a home with a clutter free counter so we tend to, for the most part, keep our own counter fairly clutter free but there’s still “stuff” on it - the toaster, the coffee maker, some recipe books, the fruit dish my dad gave us for Christmas one year, a bottle of dish soap etc. 

With the goal being to have it completely clear with the exception of maybe a plant and the paper towel holder, I once again went through the kitchen and boxed up anything we hadn’t used in the last six months or I knew for sure we weren’t going to use.  This has to be the third or fourth time I’ve done this and I think I finally have it to the point where everything in our kitchen is something we use on a regular basis.  I ended up with two bins and a garbage bag of stuff for donation from the kitchen alone.  This, of course, brings us even closer to having a completely clear counter and I’m super excited about it.  Just imagining how peaceful and serene it will be to come home to a completely clear counter. 

I also asked Ben to go through his clothes and cleaned out the front closet.

I’m not going to lie, the front closet was brutal.  It’s been an overstuffed mess for at least the last two years so to have it nearly completely empty is wonderful.  However, there was quite a bit of Cassie and Cuda’s “stuff” in it (Cassie’s jackets, their collars etc.) and it was difficult to go through that.  After their deaths last summer, the pain was too strong, the sorrow too keen to even think of going through their stuff so I simply shoved it into the closet and avoided looking at it.  I went through it as quickly as I could trying not to think about it too much.  A quick kiss to their worn collars before they went to the trash, and one long inhale of Cassie’s favourite pink jacket, her distinctive scent filling my nose before putting it with the other stuff to donate.

But, the end result is nice - a clean front closet and organized kitchen cupboards; just one more step to simple living.

And!  More stuff leaving my house!  Behold the Value Village pile! (yesterday when I started writing this post, it was understood that Big Brother would be picking up the stuff; however, after 24 hours of no Big Brother I called them and they had no explanation of why they didn’t pick it up when they said they would…hence I’ll be driving it to Value Village myself)

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Once again our lives have been marked by change.  After two years at my current job I accepted a position as an accounting technician for a local public accounting firm.  Apparently you can take the girl out of accounting but you can’t take the accounting out of the girl.

In all seriousness, one of the people I used to work with at my previous accounting firm took me out for coffee and offered me a job at the new smaller accounting firm she worked for.  After a few minutes of thought I accepted.  It had many benefits - working with three people who I had worked with before, more money, less hours and a much shorter drive (7 minutes to work as compared to the 3o to 40 minutes at my previous job).  The shorter drive and the working less hours ties in nicely with our Simple Living lifestyle and as an added bonus, while I’m learning some new stuff, I’ll also be doing the same work I did at the other accounting job.

The downside?  I left a job where, for the most part, I liked everyone I worked with and LOVED my job.  Doing payroll was an amazing job and I achieved a great deal of satisfaction from it.  And, here’s the truth - even with all of the above benefits to working at this new job, I would not have left my payroll job if it hadn’t been for one single person at the company.  I’ve spoken about her before and how much misery she was causing me and it only got worse.  At one point she walked off the job, insisting that she would only come back if her demands were met and she never had to work with me again.  She informed my supervisors and the president of the company that she was “done with me” and that she refused to work with me.  When, after a couple of days the higher ups refused to give in to her demands she came back to the office, apologized for her behaviour and requested her job back.  And they gave it to her.

She went back to being her usual sweet to my face/stab me in the back self however there was one small difference.  I said to my supervisor when I discovered she was coming back to work ”She says she’s done with me?  I’m done with her.” and unlike her I know how to stick to my guns.  That was over 4 months ago and from the day she came back I didn’t say a single word to her that wasn’t work related.  My supervisor watched with a combination of barely disguised horror and humour as I would walk by her in the hallway completely ignoring her numerous “Hello, how are you?” comments.  It took nearly a month of me completely refusing to acknowledge her existence outside of anything work related before she took the hint and stopped attempting to communicate socially with me.  Obviously I’m kind of a bitch but we all knew that right?

Eventually she moved to a different department but like a dog with a bone she couldn’t stop with her attempts to destroy me.  And when this new opportunity came up, the chance to finally be free of her was too strong to resist.  So I took it and last Friday was my last day.  I’ve never been so sad to leave a job before but as I said earlier the new job has enough benefits (did I mention the paid Friday afternoon’s off in the summer?) that I have no regrets.  The funnest part?  Was being bluntly honest when shocked co-workers asked me why I was leaving.   “Because of so and so,” I said, “I wouldn’t be leaving if it wasn’t for her.”  I’m kind of a bitch that way.

So, here’s to new jobs, more money and another step towards Simple Living.

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Last weekend and this weekend marked step one of our quest for simple living.  Seven or eight years ago we acquired a shed from a neighbour who was moving.

The shed:

Pretty huh?  Thank you, I painted it myself.  See that tree next to it?  I swear Ben has cut that tree down to the stump three or four times but it just keeps growing back.  It’s a Cherry Choke Tree that NEVER SAYS DIE!!!

Anyhoodle, this shed has become a catch all for all the shit that we didn’t really want in the house but didn’t have the guts to throw away.  Last Saturday morning I took some before pictures.  Let’s share my humiliating, possibly hoarding tendencies for all the internets to see shall we?

Wow…that’s something huh?  You can imagine my frustration whenever I had to enter the shed to find something.  But, two weekends later, a couple of trips to a local thrift store and one visit from the very cheerful and professional fellas from 1-800-Got-Junk (Dear God, it really is an episode of Hoarders!!!) and voila!  Phase one of simple living is complete.

So pretty… it was a lot of hard work by yours truly to get it looking like this.  Not just the physical work, although there was plenty of that but it was tough parting with the “sentimental” items from my childhood.  I had at least three tubs of these sentimental items and in the end I was able to part with everything but my ET stuffie and the last letter I got from my grandma before she died.  It’s a thrilling feeling to part ways with the crap that you’ve been hanging on to for no reason and even more thrilling to take things to the thrift store, knowing that it’s not filling up our landfill and someone else will get some use out of it.

Not pictured (unfortunately I forgot to take before and after pictures) is our yard.  We had a bunch of junk taking up space on our deck and in our yard (old patio furniture etc.) and that too has either been recycled to the thrift store or disposed of.  So now we have a beautiful shed, deck and yard. 

Simple living - hard work but totally worth it.

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As part of the debt reduction plan and living frugally; I’ve made two very noticeable changes to our financing budget. 

One, we use cash only - for everything.  I picked up four of the small filing folder envelope thingy’s for a dollar each at the Dollar Store and labeled them “Grocery”, “Gas”, “Pets” and “Other”.  In each of these folders I have a small notebook where I keep a running total of our expenses for that category; I also keep the receipts for everything we purchase.  A little overkill huh?  I’m okay with it being a little over-the-top though because I’m trying hard to see where we can cut costs and having an exact idea of how much money is being spent where not only helps with cutting costs but helps us to live frugally.  Once the money is gone from the folder, we’re done until payday.  I’m finding it an extremely useful tool in cutting back on the frivolous spending I tended to do on a fairly regular basis.  When I look in that folder and only see $40 and there’s still 7 days to go until payday, I’m not spending 5.00 of it on a Starbucks soy mocha (as much as I love and miss Starbucks!)

Of course, it’s not without it’s difficulties (oh Starbucks, look how pretty you glow!).  As another way of striving to live a simple and frugal life, I’ve been looking into growing some of our own food.  Not a lot, just some produce and some herbs but one of the concepts I tripped over on the internet was Square foot gardening.  This is extremely appealing to me and I’ll most likely use it on my path to growing our own food.  Yesterday I stopped to mail some parcels in the post office that is located in London Drugs and there, with a big 20% off sign was the latest and greatest version of the “Square Foot Gardening” book, retail price $24.99.  And oh how I wanted it.  I picked it up, leafed through it and squealed softly at the detailed pictures, frugality tips and step-by-step instructions on how to build your garden.  I had money in my wallet for groceries only but I was still tempted to buy it.  In the end, I walked away from it, determined to stick to my budget. 

I ran home and checked our local library for a copy, so far there are 134 requests for it which means it should be available for renting sometime in 2011.  Oye.  After some careful thought, I made the decision that buying the book will be a good investment towards living the simple life.   Only problem - $24.99 is not in the aforementioned budget, especially if I’m serious about the debt reduction plan.  I’ll take a look around the house this weekend and see what I own that I can sell.  I’ve got to have something that’s worth $25.  Hee!

Long story short, we pay cash for everything now - groceries, pet supplies, other (meaning brow waxing for Kelly, birthday gifts for others etc.), and gas.  Once the money is gone we make do with what we have.  Granted I’ve set a small budget for us - $100/week for food (which also includes any meals we eat out), $50/week for other and $70/week for gas for both of us (this will go down by May, I’ll explain why later) so sometimes it feels like we’re really penny pinching but for the most part this seems to treat us just fine.

Which leads me to the second major change.  During grocery shopping I’ve started to purchase store brand items.  Doesn’t sound that big does it?  But for someone like me who is a complete brand name snob it’s been a huge deal to switch to no-name or “store brand” if you like.  There are some brand name items that I won’t compromise on - peanut butter and toilet paper come to mind - but in the past week and a half I’ve bought the following store brand items (Walmart, Great Value in case you’re interested):

• paper towel
• flour
• brown sugar
• canola oil
• pretzels
• tuna
• shortening
• chocolate chips

(I’m on a baking kick right now…) 

And guess what?  With the exception of the paper towel, there hasn’t been a difference in any of the items.  And really, the only difference in the paper towel is that it’s a little rougher than the Bounty brand we normally buy.

Ben:  What’s with the paper towel?

Kelly:  Nothing.  It’s perfectly fine.

Ben:  It seems a little harsh.

Kelly:  It’s called living frugally buddy - it’s a lot cheaper than the Bounty.

Ben:  Well, let’s remember I like to get multi-use out of paper towel.  For instance, in a pinch, I would have considered using our old brand of paper towel as toilet paper.

Me:  Oh for the love of…

Ben:  Of course this new paper towel could also be used as sanding paper in a pinch so we’re good!

I’ve always had a slight aversion to using store brand products.  Part of it is my (mostly mistaken) belief that it’s not as good as the brand name and part of it is my embarrassment to be buying store brand products as if it’s a big neon sign that screams “Look at them - they’re poor!!”  

I rarely get embarrassed and there are few things in my life that I keep close to my chest, in fact I’m probably too open about everything, but one thing I hate for anyone to know or even assume is that we struggle financially.  It’s probably a combination of growing up poor and my own shame at still not being able to live fiscally responsible despite my past history with money.  So yeah, it’s kind of a struggle to buy the store brand stuff but I’m easing my way into it…

I think that’s part of the reason why living simply is so appealing to me.  It has many benefits to it, less clutter, environmentally friendly, the list goes on and on but the most appealing idea to me is the living simply often means living frugally.  The reason I’m watching my budget and shopping at thrift stores and trying my damnest not to give in to consumerism and buy yet more STUFF is not because we’re struggling financially (although we kinda are cause I’m stupid) but because we’re trying to live simply.  It helps me get past the shame of money struggles and look forward to a cleaner, simpler life.  One that helps us not only get out of debt but assists us in achieving our goals in life:  live healthy, travel, spend time on our hobbies, learn different languages and own a small home.

Because at the end of the day, those goals are what’s important to us - not whether we have the latest technology, eat only brand name foods or drink Starbucks(!) every day.

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Ben and I have been talking extensively in the last two weeks or so about learning to live a simple life.   Did you know that there’s a whole world out there on the internets that talks about living simply or having a minimalist life style?  There is a vast amount of information circling the big wide web that provides folks with ideas and plans and ways of living simply.  And while I don’t think I’m quite ready to live the minimalist life style yet, I am eager to begin living simply.

Luckily for me Ben was gung-ho about the idea as well.  I approached him with the subject rather cautiously one evening while we were at the dog park with Hannah and Dexter.   Because while Ben is not one to live extravagantly or spend unwisely, the man is a collector.  He may try to deny it but I’ve got photographic evidence from his office that I’ll post if I have to.  The hundreds of records sorted carefully and lovingly on the shelves in the closet; the three large antique phonographs strategically placed in the office (well, sort of, I mean the door only opens partially because of the phonograph placed behind it and trust me, for a fat girl like me it can get annoying trying to squeeze through the opening), the two smaller phonographs placed on top of the larger ones.  And did I mention his four foot table of woodworking equipment or his extensive collection of books?

Not to say that he’s the only collector in the family; I myself have fairly large collections of things - books, dollhouse miniature supplies, cabbage patch kid dolls (shut up).  I think the difference is that I’ve always been aware of my collecting habits and up until the last year or so Ben was, shall we say, in the dark about how much of a collector he is?

What I’m trying to say people is that we both like to collect, we both like our toys and while neither of us are at hoarding levels, we do find our house to be cluttered and full of “stuff” and that irritates the shit out of both of us.  So I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised when Ben was immediately on board with the idea of living a simple life but as the last five years of marriage have proven I can be remarkably dense about Ben and his thoughts (that’s what he gets for marrying someone so selfish, hee!).

Ben and I sat down and made a short list of things that we wanted from life.  What would make us happy?

1.  Living a healthy life.

2.  Travelling.

3.  Photography

4.  Miniatures

5.  Learning different languages

6.   Owning a small home.

What’s really interesting about this list is that we created it in under five minutes flat.  I had actually written them down before we talked and Ben basically looked it over and agreed with all of them.  Well, except for Number 6 and it’s not that he doesn’t disagree with it but more that he’s content to live in the trailer indefinitely while I’m tired of being trailer trash.  I want a very small house or a town house and Ben is cool with that too.  

Over the last week or so I’ve thought carefully about what we need to do to accomplish these six goals and have come up with three basic solutions that will help us achieve our goals.

1.  Get rid of “Stuff”

2.  Learn to live with less (or “How to Live Frugally”)

3.  Debt Reduction Plan

Getting Rid of “Stuff”

Out of the three solutions above, I picture this one as being the easiest and yet most difficult one to achieve; at least in the beginning anyway.  Confusing right?  I guess it’s because while I yearn to have a simple, clutter free home I know I’ll have a hard time letting go of my “Stuff” and I know Ben will too.  It’s easy to talk about getting rid of things but once it actually gets down to the actual “doing”?  Completely different story right?  We’re starting slow though and at the moment just doing a lot of talking about what we want to keep and what we don’t want to keep.  Some of it’s easy because it’s based on our six goals listed above.  Some of it’s more difficult; like the cabbage patch kids (shut up).  But as Ben reminded me, I don’t have to get rid of all of them; I’ll keep the ones that are most important to me (my original ones from when I was a child, ones from my family) and as an added bonus, with less of them I’ll be able to display them in my craft room, rather than store them in plastic tubs in the shed.

One of the common themes I’ve run into is that getting rid of your Stuff doesn’t have to mean feeling like you’re missing out or tossing something you really love - it’s about making decisions on what’s important enough to you to keep.  Once you’ve made that decision; you can pare down even further by asking yourself another question.  Is it necessary to have that particular item to live a simple, happy life?  If the honest answer is yes, then keep it.  If it isn’t, find a new home for it and move on to enjoying your life, not your Stuff.

Learn to Live With Less (or “How to Live Frugally”)

As a child my family was rather poor.  I don’t remember it affecting me all that negatively other than that I tended to worry about money from a young age and that’s tough on a kid I think.  However, for the most part I don’t remember feeling like we had less and most of the toys I really wanted I got.  Sometimes they weren’t the exact toy I asked for - I requested a barbie dream house for Christmas when I was 5 or 6, I didn’t get the dream house but a friend gave mom an old plastic doll house that she no longer needed and that was my Christmas present and I loved the stupid thing - but other times despite the lack of money my mom found a way to get us the gifts we wanted, like the cabbage patch kid (shut up) I was begging and pleading for.  It did shape how I felt about money though and even as a child I knew I never wanted to worry about money as an adult.  I got my first job at 14 (I needed new clothes for school and my mum suggested I would be wise to get a job if I wanted new clothes) working for McDonalds.  I made a grand total of $4.01 per hour and blew each paycheque with purchases of new clothes and whatever else caught my fancy.

As I grew older I taught myself how to create a budget but never really stuck to it.  There was always something I wanted or needed to buy right AT THAT VERY MOMENT(!) and I just knew I would collapse into a thousand pieces if I didn’t buy it right then.  Who cares if I didn’t have money, I had a credit card (or two) didn’t I?

Y’all see where this is headed; years of reckless spending, little understanding about credit and how money works, and nearly 2 months of unemployment after moving to BC culminated in me declaring bankruptcy when I was in my late 20’s.  Humiliating.

But not nearly as humiliating as knowing that nearly 10 years later, long after the bankruptcy embarrassment has come and gone (both in my personal life and on my credit rating) I still haven’t figured out how to budget or not spend more than I earn.

Fortunately, part of living a simple life means living frugally and after reading as much information from online and from books purchased at a 2nd hand bookstore I feel prepared to finally take on and conquer my personal finances.  I’ll explain more about what I’m doing in regards to personal finances and living frugally in a later post.

Debt Reduction Plan

Like a lot of other people, Ben and I have debt.  More than we should have unfortunately.  And despite the fact that we both make good wages we often find ourselves with very little in our savings account and even worse, living paycheque to paycheque.  I hate that feeling.  

Have any of you heard of the debt snowball theory?  Let me s’plain…

You have two credit cards.  One is low interest at 4% and has $2,000 on it.  The other is high interest at 19% and has $10,000 on it.  What do you do?  You pay the larger, high interest one first of course.  Because it’s high interest.   You’re paying $100 minimum payment each month and you set aside an extra $200 each month to pay down the balance of the $10,000.   And for the first three or four months you’re on fire to pay this credit card down; however that turns into six months, then eight months and you realize that after 8 months of paying $200 extra you still have nearly $8,000 to pay on this credit card.  Discouragement sets in and it’s no fun trying to pay off this card when you’re not even close to seeing a light at the end of the debt tunnel.

The debt snowball goes against the acceptable normality of paying your high interest cards first and suggests that you sort your debt from lowest amount to highest amount, ignoring the interest rates, and start paying the lowest one first.  Once that one is paid off you take the money you were putting towards that card and add it to the payment for the next lowest card.  Creating, if you will, a snowball effect.  The reasoning behind the debt snowball is that you ignore the monetary part of it and concentrate on the psychological part of it in order to keep yourself motivated and excited about paying off your bills.  Obviously this doesn’t and won’t work for everyone but it definitely appeals to me.  So, the debt reduction plan begins using the debt snowball method.  The really interesting thing is that I calculated out the total interest on our debt using both the debt snowball method and the more traditional high-interest method and the difference is only around $200 in interest.

I have plenty of ideas and thoughts on how Ben and I will live frugally (not only while we’re doing the debt reduction plan, but turning it into a lifestyle) and how we will fare in throwing away our Stuff and I’ll be sharing the ideas that work and the ones that fail over the next few months.

In the meantime I encourage you to check out living the simple life; it can have so many benefits. 

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(Yes, my dogs hate me…)

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Four of my favourite pictures from the dog park today.  I’m attempting to take better portrait pictures; I enjoy photographing people and am trying to learn how to use my digital SLR to improve my portraits.  These people are not related but I realized when I was reviewing the pictures later that they were a perfect example of different generations.  The photograph’s aren’t as sharp as I would like but I’m still learning about shutter speed etc.  Hopefully this will improve with practice.

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Nearly every weekend we take Dexter to the dog park (and now that it’s lighter longer in the evenings, we often take him during the week as well) and let him run around like a maniac and play with the other dogs.  Dexter loves the dog park and truth be told, so do I.   I love watching Dexter run full speed and it’s so interesting to see all of the different dogs.  And eventually you get to know certain people and dogs who are there a lot.

On Friday Ben and I took Dexter to the dog park and Ben brought his camera. 

Dexter - running full tilt. 

Playing with London the bassett hound:

One problem with Dexter is that he’s a horrible ball/toy thief.  Any ball or toy that another dog is playing with, Dexter waits like a hawk for the dog to be distracted and then swoops in and steals it.  And then the chase is on.  Here’s a golden retriever with his toy:

And Dexter after he stole it:

We bought a cheap little frisbee at the pet store on Thursday and brought it with us. 

Dexter got a taste of his own medicince when Deacon the Doberman stole his frisbee and wouldn’t give it back:

A couple of regulars at the dog park - Teko and Junior, the Great Danes:

Teko:

Junior with the frisbee and Dexter and Trigger the boxer puppy:

Teko and Dexter waiting for treats:

Dexter chasing Junior away from his frisbee:

And one of our favourites, Stella.  She was the baby lab in Dexter’s puppy class that used to bat him around the floor; she’s all grown up now and a total sweetheart.

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