School's in and the myth of timesaving

As a relatively anxious and busy person, I have always believed that you could actually "save time"; doing things RIGHT NOW instead of LATER means that you will have EXTRA time later for better and bigger things! Holy cow, that sounds awesome!

20 years later and I'm still waiting for that extra time to show up. I have a funny feeling that it never will.

There is a significant distinction between "saving time" and "shifting tasks". I think that when we talk about "saving time" we are really talking about "shifting tasks" to make things fit our lives a little better.

Case in point - our oldest is in school now, so we are faced with the daily task of preparing lunches for him each day. My super-awesome wife is usually in charge of this operation, and she consistently makes his lunch the night before to "save time". She's not really saving time of course - the absolute time taken to make a cheese sandwich usually does not vary too much. However, I can clearly imagine the conversation in the mornings, should I personally be faced with creating said sandwich in the 7 1/2 minutes we have left before the bus comes:

Me: "What kind of sandwich do you want, buddy?"
Him: "Ham and cheese!"
Me: "We don't have any ham and cheese. Do you want just cheese?"
Him: "No. What else is there that I can have?"
Me: "Uhh...how about a snacky lunch with crackers and cheese and yogurt?"
Him: "I want it to be a hot lunch day, Daddy!" (pout)
Me: "It's not a hot lunch day, buddy, you know that. Now do you want a cheese sandwich or a snacky lunch?"
Him: "...Daddy?"
Me: "Yes?!?"
Him: "Why can my baby sister not read yet?"
Me: "Wha...? Come on, buddy, focus, do you want a cheese sandwich or not?"
Him: "But Daddy! I need to know why can my baby sister not read yet, because I could read when I was a baby and I need to know!"
Me: (head in hands at this point) "@&*! Just PLEASE tell me what you want for lunch, buddy, so that we can go!"
Him: "I want a hot lunch Daddy!!"
Me: "Oh for @&%!! sakes, you're getting a cheese sandwich!"
Bus: "VRRRROOOOOM"
Me: "...uh oh."

Thankfully we haven't had that experience yet. See, my super-awesome wife realizes that our oldest is MUCH more receptive to questions like that in the evening, after he had been fed and is acting relatively tame:

Her: "What kind of a sandwich do you want, buddy?"
Him: "Cheese sandwich!"

Yes, much shorter. I must find out what her secret is.

There are actually very few moments in life when you can really truly save time. Usually they come in the form of recognizing duplicate tasks and ganging them together. For instance, my super-awesome wife asked me to pick up garlic bread on the way home yesterday. Seizing an opportunity to "save time", I picked up not ONE loaf of garlic bread, but TWO! Ho ho, I had just saved myself an inevitable trip to the grocery store the next time we had pasta and garlic bread for supper! My clever scheme was met with a less than enthusiastic response from my super-awesome wife, however, who had done laundry, prepared and cooked supper, dealt with a clingy baby, helped our oldest with his homework, and started solving some of the world's more pressing political problems in the time it took me to procure the above two loaves of garlic bread and drive them home.

But believe me, I will feel pretty victorious next time spaghetti night rolls around and I triumphantly pull the garlic bread from the freezer...and realize that I now have to spend extra time defrosting it.

Some people are just better at it than others, I guess.


(photo credit : visualdensity)

Back on Track!

The past few months have been crazy busy around our home - babies, birthdays, holidays, and other related activities. We have only recently been able to get our wits about us and start planning our summer. One thing that we are looking to do is get back on track with our debt reduction. Recently we have done several much-needed improvements to our house - paved driveway, gravel walkway, clothesline, a shed, and other odds and sods. It all adds up financially - some of it has been paid for in cash, some of it has gone on the line of credit, some on the credit card.

Debt repayment really isn't our big problem - what tends to be our biggest problem is the "little ways" that money gets frittered away when we aren't paying attention. In the past, I have been a big fan of the cash envelope system a la Dave Ramsey, but in truth, we really aren't that good at following the cash envelope system. We find there are too many times when we are out and about and need to use the debit card, as the cash is at home, or the cash is just $1.27 short of the purchase we need to make. Keeping track of the cash and debit purchases has just turned out to be a nightmare. If it isn't easy, you're doing it wrong, I say.

So we've decided to go with a different system - the "post your sins" approach. We are very good at communicating with each other, and we are very detailed in our financial record keeping system. In fact, I think we're the only couple around who actually keeps a full ledger (not just a checkbook!) and reconciles it every two weeks. So we have decided to keep a paper record of the discretionary cash we have to spend this period. It's simple, lo-tech, and most of all, very visible to each other. So there should be no more excuses on not knowing the state of the accounts - at the end of each day we plan to mark down what was done that day, look at the remaining balance available, and make educated plans about how to spend the remaining money before the next pay period.

So simple it just might work. I'll keep people posted on how well (or poorly!) it fares.

-Crispy

(photo credit : ap.)

Eating with chopsticks

Lately I've been focusing on slowing down a little, especially while I eat. It's supposed to be good for my figure, they tell me. One of the ways that I help myself slow down while eating is to use chopsticks. It's an art, to be sure, but once you get the hang of it, it's as easy as using a fork and knife. It's really a more mindful way to eat: you need to focus on the food in front of you so that you pick up the piece you want, you concentrate as the food is picked up, you watch it as you carry the food to your mouth so that it doesn't fall off, and you slide the food carefully in your mouth and enjoy the hard-won morsel. Phew!

It occurred to me while eating my bowl of rice that the chopstick model can help us simplify our approach to life. When faced with a taxing situation, analyze it bit by bit. Don't get overwhelmed by the whole thing. Dissect things, break then down into their components. Deal with each part on its own.

When faced with a happy, fantastic situation, look and appreciate each individual part of the event or object. Analyze why it brings you joy. Reflect on the pleasure that each part brings you, and think about how you can share it with others. Don't shovel it all in so fast that you miss the chance to contemplate how small things come together to create something that is bigger than the sum of its parts.

What can you "chopstick" in your life? Your relationship with your spouse? A bad day with the kids? Financial challenges? Pull out the chopsticks and start breaking it down into pieces.

-Crispy

(photo credit: JourneyToNoWhere)

Quietly waiting

We are still anxiously awaiting Baby #2; we are not yet to the due date, but I think that we're all ready for the baby to make its grand entrance. We had a practice run the other night (well, actually, two practice runs to the hospital), but the nurses and doctors assured us that this was not the real thing and encouraged us to go home and rest. How 15 hours of contractions two minutes apart is "false labour" I'll never know, but things did return to normal eventually. The human body can be miraculous and frustrating all at the same time.

That's the problem with being ready so early for the baby - it makes the wait seem so much longer. The room has been ready for months; clothes are sorted, folded and stacked neatly in the drawers; suitcases are packed and waiting patiently in the car for our eventual trip to the hospital; toys are sitting silently in the closet until the day that little hands will make them shake and dance.

I laugh sometimes and wonder if we are being taught the real meaning of patience - the ability to quietly accept that something huge and impending is not in your hands, and that you are at the mercy of time and nature. But then again, sometimes you are rewarded for your patience with quiet perfect moments like these - I'm up, showered and dressed, my son and wife are still in bed, and the sun is shining outside on a crisp fall day. "Everything in its own time", my mother says.

Everything in life follows its own secret plan; sometimes waiting quietly is the reward, whether we recognize it or not.

(photo credit : creative_mindseye)

Catching up!

Haven't posted in a while, getting ready for baby #2 has consumed a lot of our time lately! A lot of our time has been spent going through all of the clothes, toys, etc, we saved from our first child, and determining what we have and what we need. Our first was born in May, and our second will be born around November, which makes a HUGE difference in what clothes are required. Sunsuits, T-shirts, and onesies will NOT cut it in a Canadian winter!

One of the fun parts of going through the clothes was bringing all of the baby memories back to the surface - my wife found the sleepers our son started crawling in; I found the socks that I refused to put on my son as I thought they were too "girly". (They still are.) We also remembered the sleepless nights, the frustration of trying to make your kids grow up too fast, and the battles we fought with each other during the trying times of parenthood. But you know what? We got through it all.

When you are in the middle of something, down and dirty in the trenches, it is easy to lose sight of the long term. Our son is now four years old, he is loving preschool, toilet trained since he was 2, and is a smart-mouthed but smart-brained kid. What seemed like insurmountable challenges back then in the baby years, have eventually worked themselves out. In retrospect, the big hurdles we faced now are now memories of our strength and tenacity together as a family.

Progress is important, not perfection, and we are allowed to fail as long as we get back up and try again.

(photo credit : mirandajordan)

The envelope please

Okay, we are back on our envelope budgeting system a la Dave Ramsey. Although I am sure that people have been doing this since cash (or its equivalent) was invented, Ramsey popularized this method in his various books and radio shows. The excellent show "Till Debt do us Part" also uses the same method, but with jam jars.

So how does it work?

In our household, we have four red envelopes (mostly so they don't get thrown in the blue bin...that would pose a different budgeting challenge!) They are labeled:

• Groceries
• Gas
• Entertainment
• Incidentals

Each payday, we take out our two-week allotment of cash for those "variable" spending categories. (We are paid on a biweekly basis. Check in for a later post to see why we budget biweekly, not monthly, and how you can too.) We then split the cash among the four categories based on pre-set amounts that are based on our past spending, and that are amounts that we think are reasonable.

Once that's done - the debit and credit cards go into hiding. All the rest of the spending is done in cash, plain and simple. Some of the categories have grey areas dividing them (was picking up a U-bake pizza and salad last night Groceries or Incidentals?) so we shuffle amounts between the categories as required. Also, if there is a shortfall in one area (have you seen the price of gas lately?) then we can borrow from other areas to make up for the shortfall.

The real advantage of the envelope system

The envelope system gives us a predictable amount to budget for. When you don't start out the week with a target amount to spend, it is far too easy to go over that amount and leave yourself at the end of the month looking at your bank account saying "oops". Although it can be constraining (especially with rising fuel and food prices) it transforms those "variable expenses" into a "fixed expense" that is much easier to budget for.

When the cash is at home and you are not

Once in a while, you will find yourself in a situation where you are out and about -- and the cash is not. What we do in these situations is to temporarily put the purchase on the credit card, and as soon as we get home, take the representative amount of cash from the envelopes and stick it somewhere secure. Then when the next payday rolls around, we just subtract the "stashed" amount from the cash we withdraw, and use the "leftover" amount in the account to pay the credit card. In a perfect world, you would run to the bank, deposit the cash, and immediately pay the credit card off. However, when you live out of town, that's not necessarily the best option (the time and gas cost would really negate the small amount of interest on the credit card). It works for us and that's all that matters.

Tentative steps to doing this (gasp) with the credit card

My wife and I have been discussing doing this on the credit card, to increase the amount of rewards points that we can collect (and in turn, cash them in for grocery certificates, which has been the norm for us for several years now). I am not confident that we yet have the discipline to do this - but I suppose we won't know until we try. Like all things in marriage or life, it will be an experiment, and we'll learn something about ourselves.

I have some thoughts in my head about money and relationships that I think would make a few good pieces of writing. Perhaps I'll turn them into a post in the near future.

-Crispy

(photo credit chinaredpack)

Home for a rest

I have a surprise. No, not for you. For my wife. This weekend will find us removed from the city, and removed from the kid, for a night. What with all of the goings-on this summer, we have not had much of a chance to get away. So we're heading off to an as-of-yet undisclosed event and staying at an as-of-yet undisclosed lodging establishment -- for just one night, but if things work out as hoped, it will feel like we have been away for a good rest.

What constitutes "rest"? Sleep can provide physical rest, but I'm not certain that sleep alone can provide sufficient opportunity for rejuvenation of the mind. Dreams are a good example of this - when left alone to their own devices and starved of input, our minds conjure up crazy situations in vivid, living colour and full surround sound. The human mind needs to be shaken up and stirred once in a while, or the synaptic connections start to go stagnant. Once we have experienced a person, place or situation enough times, it is set down as a pattern in our minds. This "pattern-forming" that our minds perform is the reason that people fly to exotic locales, take year-long sabbaticals to pursue their interests, and have obscure and detailed hobbies. We need to feed the mind with novel experiences in order to give those pattern-forming cells a chance to do something else.

The popularity of "staycations" has bloomed in this era of rising (but not yet unreasonable) fuel costs. However, I am not yet convinced that an at-home-vacation is what the tired mind needs to be rejuvenated. The city can be full of life and vibrancy, but when you live and work in the city it is hard to shake that feeling of familiarity that makes you feel like you are still at home. The general area we will be going to this weekend is less than an hour away, but is still far enough away so that we have the true feeling of unfamiliarity.

This mini-getaway has been designed to give our minds the rest they need in several ways:

• The town is a place we have both been to, but is still mostly unfamiliar to us as we have not been there for a few years and much has likely changed in terms of establishments and activities.
• We are going to partake in an activity that is fairly uncommon for us, yet is something we both have enjoyed in the past. (No, you dirty-minded readers, not that.)
• The trip is loosely organized, so can be creative with our free time (the only exception is the activity above for which I have tickets.)
• We are going to stay in a type of lodging that neither of us have been to before.

With some careful planning, you can orchestrate a mini-getaway that refreshes the mind and spirit in a day or two, where traditional vacations would require a week or more. Don't forget that novelty can be numbing - you need just enough of it, or else novelty becomes the norm and fails to give you that rest your mind is seeking.

-Crispy

(photo credit: Nick Today)