How to Save More Money for Buying Backpacks.

About a year ago I got a decent salary bump because I took on a whole lot of extra responsibility during something of a crisis time at my work. The jury is still out on whether or not I made the right choice. Anyone who is familiar with this blog or my FB or my ever-thinning hair has heard me complain about the stress of my job, however it was a Faustian bargain and one that I entered into freely. Well – believe it or not – I did one smart thing when all of that happened: I opened a savings account.

Yes, yes, I should have done that years ago. I know. Let’s get past it.

Also, around that same time, I had developed a pretty aggressive budget for myself. Not just a “budget” in the theoretical sense. I actually built my own Excel spreadsheet where I have been tracking EVERY SINGLE purchase I have made for almost the last two years. It is an exquisite spreadsheet, BTW. I am very proud of it and if any of you out there are Excel-o-philes you should let me know and I will send you a copy!

Basically I started making a little extra money at the exact moment when I was able to take real grown-up control of it. For me this was a pretty big deal. I have been chronically bad with money over the years and it feels better now to have it under control.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not rolling in dough or anything, far from it. But once I started saving and budgeting I started to get more and more wrapped up in how much MORE I could save and budget! Put it down to the addictive traits of my personality.

Lately this has all manifest itself in my nightly reading of blogs and articles about how to cut spending and manage money (ironic since I push around other people’s money all day, but I contend that personal and business finance are completely different worlds). The problem is that I already do, like, 90% of the stuff that they say to do! I don’t have any credit cards. I buy almost all my clothes at thrift stores. I am cutting down on “empty expenses” (a term I keep seeing, derived from “empty calories” and meaning money you spend that doesn’t really get you anything; think Starbucks, cigarettes, crack cocaine [regular cocaine is a whole different story, obviously, because it is so good for you!]), I plan what I am going to buy before I go to the grocery store (mostly), I research big purchases before I make them (no one alive can obsess and anguish over the buying of a backpack more thoroughly than I can), and I have cut down my purchasing of lottery tickets to only 600 a week!

The point is I am running out of new ways to cut down on spending! There are two or three things left that I still need to do; I still have cable TV (which I split with roommates) and need to get rid of that. I need to learn to make a proper salad rather than buying these pre-made bag-o-salad bags. I need to cancel my membership to that website based in the Philippines that allows me to bet on box turtle races.

I need to find ways to enjoy my life a little more without spending any extra money. This is why I go to the library so much; did you know that you can check a bunch of books out of a library FOR FREE and then just never return them! It is amazing and completely true! You should try it.

Thus far I have not taken up trolling Freecycle for fun new junk, but that is mainly because I am lazy, but I’m sure that I will get there. I have also stopped myself from constantly buying notebooks. I used to buy every notebook that I saw. I have found that one or two good Moleskins will last a good long time.

Currently I am trying to do this thing where I eat all the random food I own. Remember those cans of creamed corn in the back of the kitchen cabinet? I am trying to eat the stuff like that. I want to get to the point where I don’t have any of that stuff around. I want to be able to open the cabinet one day and be all like, “Huh, I don’t currently own any food.” (HASTAG: firstworldproblems) That way I can start over from scratch and will – from then on – only buy the stuff that I actually need.

I’m discovering that there is something freeing about needing less and using less. This isn’t to say that I’m going crazy about it. If we go out to dinner I’m not going to be all like, “Just some water and saltines for me, thanks” because I have come to realize that when I do go out to dinner or spring for some French fries or a good cup of hot chocolate (damn you Starbucks!) that those things seem to taste better. In my brain I think that they LITERALLY taste better, but perhaps I mean that those things are more satisfying. Because they are. Because they’re rarer and they’re more special. Specialer!

The moral in all this is that I’m not happier because I have some money in a savings account, I’m happier because I have taken better control of my life in this small way. I am happier because it is something I have done. It is feeling a of accomplishment. And I don’t know about you, but those are few and far between in the grown-up world.

Now having said all of that, I am going to Google this $130 backpack I’m planning on buying. One day.

P.S.

Here is an interesting article  about three people who live on less than $20k a year. 

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Nancy Reagan Hikes Good.

Last night I had a dream that I was hiking with Nancy Reagan. I have nothing funny to say about it. She was a pretty good hiking companion considering that she’s like ninety years old. Not surprisingly we didn’t have a lot to talk about, but sometimes you don’t really want to talk a lot while you’re out there in nature.

I was a little upset though because she had gotten a job as a gear-tester for Backpacker Magazine and I was jealous that she had scored such a sweet gig. She had all this cool new stuff and she was using a GoLite Jam pack (which I TOTALLY WANT but can’t justify spending the $150 bucks on). Stupid Nancy Reagan.



At one point she wanted to give me a trail name and she wanted it to be “Dandelion” and I had to ask her exactly what kind of dirty hippie she took me for. Otherwise we managed to avoid talking about politics, which is good because it means I didn’t have to scream at an old lady, which – despite appearances – I do not actually enjoy diong that much.

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Wanderlust.

I recently bought a pretty awesome backpack. You should know about me, I love bags. I love their sizes and shapes, I love the potential of them. When you have a good bag and some good stuff to put in it, you can handle anything.

So I have this really cool backpack and I haven’t gotten to use it yet. And that makes me sad. It is the perfect bag for a couple of days away from home. It is roomy; it has a lot of convenient and well-thought-out pockets. It seems durable, trustworthy. So I would like to use it.

You should come with me while I do. Let’s go somewhere. What are you doing this weekend? Or next?

I don’t have much money right now, so I can’t hop a flight to Senegal, but I do have a car and this badass backpack and more than a little bit of wanderlust (that is one of my favorite words BTW because it is made up of other words that I like yet has a distinct meaning that I also like).

So where do you want to go? We can be in Vegas in just a few hours, or San Diego, Mexico, or up the coast to anyplace that you want. I want to see the Salton Sea and lately I’ve been in the mood to hike up the side of something, or down into something. Or we can lay out a map on my kitchen table and I’ll let you stick a pin in it anywhere you want and that is where we will point the car and along the way we’ll order the chalkboard daily special at every dinner that we pass.

Or maybe we should hop a train, there are still trains you know. And I love trains. I love the world rolling by at a soothing speed and the constant low frequency rumble of the journey. And a few hours in, when you get sleepy and tired of the magazines that you brought, I will even let you lean your head on my shoulder while that train-rumble, that ever-present steel-on-steel vibration lulls you off to sleep.

So let’s go. I have this bag and the desire to use it. So let’s use it.




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Coolest Study Ever!

So the truth is that I don't actually care why these "scientists" strapped GPS beacons to birds, but I do very much find it awesome that these birds are wearing backpacks!

I like to think that instead of carrying GPS beacons the bags were full of books and the birds are on their way to a bird house somewhere that is painted up to look like a school.



Or maybe one of the birds is like the drug dealer bird and so he always has his bag. OR! Maybe they are going hiking. OR! maybe they are going mountain climbing! OR! maybe they are going camping.

What do you think that the tailor said when these "scientists" showed up and were all like, "Yeah, we need forty tiny backpacks. For birds."

Anyway.

Sorry.

I got a little excited there.




Read all about it here. At NPR. Because I'm pretentious.

And thanks to Violet for finding this particular gem. It's ironic though, because she hates pigeons. With a completely unreasonable passion. She steps on them all the time. She is a pigeon murderer. A murderer of pigeons.



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My Baggage

So my girlfriend Violet was giving me shit the other day because I was in one of my moods wherein I complain about problems caused by my own behavior. And so I was saying that I should be DOING more with my life RIGHT NOW! And she said that I would probably get more done if I didn’t spend so much time online looking at backpacks.

That’s not a euphemism.

Basically I like to do this: I assemble fun backpacks-related phrases and then Google Image them. I Google things like ‘Super Awesome Backpacks’ or ‘Backpacks that will make me look skinny’ (I have out of control body issues like you would not believe, but we will get to that at a later date, I’m sure).

Anyway, Violet is a photographer, so when we travel about in the world, we usually do it with a camera, so I am quite often on the hunt for camera bags as well as just bags that make me look skinny.

(Violet is, BTW, very talented and I have no doubt that she will be doing it professionally one day. Alas, professional photography is kind of like writing in that there really is no career path, there is just what-worked-for-the-last-guy. But, like writing, you improve by doing and maybe the sucess is in the doing. Well, Violet is shooting stuff a couple of times a month, so if you need anything done, get her while you can still afford to. Her Flickr is linked on the right. Anyway …)

Now, just so that you know, I never buy any of these bags. I don’t have the cash to afford my tastes, but I am confident that one day I will find ‘The Perfect Bag’ and when that day comes, I will buy that fucker. I will buy the fuck out of it.

Here is one of my favorite bags at the moment:



I know that this one looks kind of dorky, but wait! It is a nice small, rugged pack. It seems like the kind of thing that you can mistreat without having to worry about it (god, I wish that I hiked or something. How much would I love to get mud on a bag like this?). BUT – wait for it – it has a removable camera insert. So it can be a backpack OR a camerabag. Plus, the insert goes in through the backside, so the gear is inaccessible while you are wearing it. Good for traveling (Violet always gets nervous on the subway or in the city with our current bag).



But I guess that all this had a point once … oh yeah.

The point is that Violet is probably right, I’m probably wasting my life with this terrible, terrible addiction.

(I like backpacks, what? On my computer, under FAVORITES, I save all the links to cool bags in a folder called ‘Bag Porn’. Violet suggested the name).