It's a Classical Life

Last year my son got his first job. It paid about $11/hour. He quickly learnt that the things that he bought were paid for, per hour of work. For example, lunch with friends might have cost $20, which he saw as two hours work. He didn't particularly like his job and two hours work just to pay for lunch wasn't worth it in his opinion. I was amazed at how quickly he learnt that important lesson - ie, our money is worth our time.  Henry David Thoreau said, The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. My current job is a real pay-cut from my teaching job (but I love it so much more!) and yet I found that I was spending as if I were still on a teacher's income. I was dipping into my savings to pay for things I didn't really need. For the last two months I have realised just how frivolous my spending had got. For the last couple of years I had been tracking my spending (on clothes only). L...

  Happy 2025! The New Year was welcomed quite gently this year with family visiting, dinner eaten outside, cricket, an evening stroll, movies, games and finally watching the fireworks at midnight on the television. It was relaxed and joyful and I am hoping, will set the tone for the coming year. 2024 ran away with me. I lost a lot of direction, felt overwhelmed and fell back into old habits that did not improve either my mental health or my bank balance. I stopped blogging, which saddened me and enabled me to move even further away from the intentional and slow lifestyle that I so craved. In the last couple of months of the year I decided that I needed to make a change. I began to wake early and meditate. I watched the sun rise. I tried to consistently take an evening stroll once the heat of the day had passed. And I began to research the concept of a no-buy year for 2025. There are more than a few articles, Youtube videos, blog posts and personal accounts on the internet that disc...