Money saving mindset for your dream sabbatical!
As I’ve mentioned a few times before, if you aren’t careful, saving money can become quite a taxing and overbearing ordeal. It can work its way into the forefront of your every waking thought and decision. You end up saying “no” to parties, weekend trips, or days out. Then, when you finally do give in and go for a meal with friends, you meticulously scan the menu for the cheapest item and skip dessert. Or, perhaps even worse, you may opt to wash it down with a pint of Carling rather than a drink that is actually fit for human consumption…
The worst part about all this is that if you search online for how to save money, this is the main kind of advice you will find! Most articles and videos talk about ‘cutting costs,’ ‘budgeting,’ ‘meal planning,’ ‘stopping going out,’ ‘setting up ISA’s,’ ‘invest in a fund that tracks the market,’ etc. And although a lot of that is true – in fact, I have done some of it myself – I don’t think it is the real way to save money.
At the risk of sounding like an arrogant prat, I think that being able to save money properly requires a shift in mindset. But, that isn’t to say that you have to shift your mind into a painfully frugal and tight-fisted knot, only loosened by the prospect of your dream sabbatical! To my mind, it is a bit more of a fundamental shift, and to be frank, some of it goes beyond money saving!
So, I’ll give it a whirl. Here are my opinions about how to do it!
1. If you ever find yourself drinking Carling, you have gone wrong
Put the pint in the bin, leave the establishment, and look at yourself in the reflection of the closest non-vomit-covered window. You have messed up.
It was a proper ale too, from the Burbrit brewery.
(They get serious from this point, apologies. I just hate pi*s-beer.)
2. REDUCE stuff in your life
And I don’t just mean materialistic stuff. I mean reducing everything you need to the point where you find something close to homeostasis. By that, I mean you aren’t slowly filling or emptying your shelves and cupboards, accruing subscriptions to more and more streaming services, losing or gaining weight (unless you want to), and, crucially, you are definitely not losing your health in general! To put it in some dorky engineering terms; I’m talking about rationalising your inputs to match your required outputs.
A good example of this, and one I use myself quite regularly, is looking into your fridge at the end of each week and seeing how much stuff has started to grow fluff, gunk, or foster a microsociety of bacterial mutants. In this case, obviously the goal is to consume everything you buy before it starts becoming sentient and smelly. Although I must admit that I have tried my luck with a few questionable food-based choices in the past… It’s a learning curve!
Anyway, I think you get my point. Only have enough stuff to maintain equilibrium, which I think goes beyond just saving. But once you are done saving, you can allow as much cheddar to turn into stilton in your fridge as you like.
3. IGNORE what other people are doing
This is a little bit fluffy and definitely not a practical tip. But it is all part of the mindset shift that I am trying to get at. Basically, it boils down to not comparing yourself or your plan to what is happening around you. Once you have dialled in your saving or travel plans, make sure you stick to them unless you have obviously done a whoopsie. I think that nine times out of ten, if you change your plan during the process without an undeniably good reason, it will only serve to destabilise you and make you more likely to change something again later.
Without trying to teach you to suck eggs, we all know that everything is a balance of pros and cons. So when you see someone online opening an Etsy site to sell cheap tat, suddenly deciding to renovate a camper van, or just dropping everything to go early because they can’t cope with the nine-to-five anymore, just remember that they’ve made compromises too. As great as they look from the outside, running an Etsy site is a risky faff, camper vans are expensive, time-consuming, and geographically a bit restrictive, and ‘quitting everything and going’ is probably not going to be good in the long run. The grass is always greener – keep that at the forefront of your mind!
4. FILL your time with stuff to do – ideally cheap or free stuff
It sounds a bit weird and backwards to fill your time with things to do, I know. You would think that the best way to save money would be to meditate in an empty room, burning as few calories as possible and using only your mind to provide entertainment and sustain body heat. But actually, from my experience, not many of us are Buddhist monks, so this doesn’t generally work. Instead, when faced with sitting still and doing nothing for hours on end, we do things like buy stuff on Amazon, order takeout food, or resort to going to the pub or cinema with friends. For no other reason than to fill the gap in time… By the way, I’m not saying that you should never do those things, but they can’t be the default while trying to save!
So, what do you do instead?
Well, as I said, we aren’t often meditation gurus, so we do need to keep our minds busy! But I am suggesting that we skew our ideas towards cheap or free activities, often described as ‘hobbies.’ Remember those things? Before the dawn of doom-scrolling and Uber Eats? The great thing about hobbies is that they come in all shapes and sizes. Personally, I tend towards guitar and hunting for mushrooms, while Mary-Ann is more into drawing, and we both enjoy exercise! Trust me, once you have done all of that in one day, especially on a workday, you suddenly find your time has been well and truly filled. It’s also a good thing generally to put time aside to practice a skill, whatever it may be. I mean, I will be properly equipped when the inevitable apocalypse washes over us; it’ll be mushroom on toast, morning, day, and night – I can’t wait.
5. RETAIN stuff longer
Although this could slightly contradict the earlier point about reducing stuff, I think there is a difference to highlight! Sticking with the food example from earlier, I am not suggesting you keep a pack of out-of-date minced beef in an effort to retain things longer (only do that if it doesn’t smell like feet yet, duh!). What I mean is more about maximising the lifetime of the things you own. One way to think about it is making damn sure that you are getting your money’s worth out of everything you own.
A good example for me is clothing, which I know won’t be applicable for everyone because not everyone can pull off the ‘Hobo-sexual-chic’ that I can… Basically, I continue to wear my clothes and shoes until they are falling off me and no longer fit for purpose, i.e. their lifetime has been fully used!
Perhaps a better, more relevant example, would be phones or electrical devices in general. Unless you have managed to break your phone before your two-year contract is up, why change it? If it still does phone-things and doesn’t electrocute you when you plug it in to charge, keep using it. Keep using it until it is dead, which could be three, four, or however many years. The same thing can be said for cars, TVs, houses, etc. It’ll save you money and, better yet, it’s what the world needs right now!
Retain. Stuff. Longer.
6. AIM for an amount of money to save each month
I realise that this point is awfully similar to many of the ‘how to save’ guides online, which irks me because even though it’s good advice, I don’t like those lists. I think they’re too prescriptive while somehow also being good ammunition for people to use when giving up on saving. It goes something like, “I did everything it said on the list. I cancelled my Netflix, I stopped buying takeout, and I sold my sh*t… But I still can’t save!” Familiar, right? I think that’s because they haven’t changed their mindset, so the list is doomed to failure… I digress.
So, with that in mind, the amount you save each month doesn’t need to be absolutely rigid and inflexible, but do try and ensure that on average, over the course of your saving period, you hit your monthly target. I say this because, as I have mentioned in a previous blog, you need to make the process sustainable. If you need or want to take a mini-trip at some point, then obviously that month’s saving is going to be low or non-existent! But, you may look to amortise that over the following months to recoup, or even better, have it contained within the ‘wider’ savings plan!
What should that target be? That’s down to you, how much money you think you need, how long you want to save for, and how much wine you intend on drinking in the meantime.
7. FOCUS on your day-job
I know, I know… Groan! But, give me a minute to explain… First, in the interest of completeness, here is the usual spiel about what your job can offer: oodles of fulfilment, a nice work environment, a good team with whom you can connect and trust, endless banter-filled camaraderie, and after all that, you get to skip out of the office each day with a warm fuzzy feeling of reward and accomplishment. Although somewhat utopian, I can’t deny that sounds like some mighty good stuff… But, it’s not really important for saving!
The bit about your day job that some narratives will actively tell you not to pay too much attention to is how much fresh, juicy moolah it deposits into your bank account each month… It’s a bit of a mind bender, but try to stay with me – I theorise that if you earn more money, you will actually be able to save… more money!
It’s just a hypothesis at the moment, of course, but I think it has some legs. I just can’t quite prove out the maths yet… I dunno.
Jokes aside, if you want to save money, maximise your earnings! Go the extra mile for that promotion, earn the best bonuses you can, take the available overtime (within reason!). The hard work will quickly fade away into a distant memory once you are on your tropical island, and it will repay itself once you are back too because you will probably be able to access better wages/jobs on your return.
You’ll be pleased to know, that’s all there is to it!
Reduce – Ignore – Fill – Retain – Aim – Focus
I did attempt to distil this rambling nonsense into a clever acronym or slogan, but alas, I could not…
I considered ‘RIARFF!’, which happens to sound suspiciously like the mating call of an average Carling drinker… Probably just a coincidence. Aside from that, the best alternative I could muster was ‘RIF-RAF,’ which reminds me of the bald guy from ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show.’ Which is good, because it saves me from going a whole blog without mentioning baldness! Phew! But let’s face it, neither of those will make the cut for a book cover or billboard!
If nothing else, writing this has given me a newfound respect for those who craft those annoyingly memorable bits of marketing material you get on leaflets and in radio ads. Good job, you guys – it’s no easy feat!
Anyway, I hope amidst all this rambling, I have managed to drive home my point. Saving money isn’t just about cutting costs and managing savings accounts. It’s about aligning your perspective, lifestyle, and thought processes in a way that naturally promotes saving. Plus, I reckon many of these principles are beneficial beyond just financial savings, particularly in today’s world.
I’ll leave it there, I think.
Stay bald folks.
Toodles,
Jack
