An Experiment in Spending Less – Maternity Leave
I’ve always known that my biggest spending weakness happens during the day when I’m at work. But I never was able to test it for more than a couple of days in a row. The lure of lunches out and afternoon snacks was too strong.
After being on maternity leave these past three months, I’ve been able to see what it would be like if I nearly eliminated spending during the day. My husband and I share one car which he uses to go to work everyday. Therefore if I want to go anywhere during the day I have to walk and I have to take my son with me. Since we live in a fairly residential area, it’s a real hike to any exciting shopping options.
So waht have been the results of this unintended experiment? A big change in my spending habits. Typically, I spend into my ING Direct overdraft before my paycheck arrives. On maternity leave this doesn’t happen. It’s even more impressive when you factor in that my income has decreased 20% during my leave.
When I go back to work in June, you can bet I’ll be bringing my lunch to work and watching the snacks. I know I can do it now and have witnessed the huge impact it can have on my finances.
Trent at The Simple Dollar wrote a far more comprehensive post on Trimming the Fat from Your Work-Related Spending.
Buying a Foreclosure – An Interesting Story
In March, my husband and I purchased our first home. We live in Arlington, VA across the river from Washington, DC which means that real estate is pretty expensive in our area. As a result, almost all the homes in our price range were foreclosures or short sales.
The nicest place that we could afford was a two bedroom, two bath condo is a three year old building. It had an underground parking spot, fancy kitchen, a balcony and was next to the Metro bus stop. Pretty much everything we were looking for in a home.
So what was the problem? The previous owner had been foreclosed on and in retaliation he stripped the condo bare. He took everything and I mean everything. The kitchen was missing every appliance – fridge, stove, dishwasher, microwave, washer and dryer. He even took the four-prong outlet for the dryer out of the wall – couldn’t tell you why.
Now taking the appliances isn’t all that unusual. He also took all the doors out of the condo – closet doors, bedroom doors and bathroom doors. Most of the light fixtures also went with him. Next he took everything in the master bath – shower head, medicine cabinet, large mirror over the vanity and my personal favorite – the toilet. Why in the world would you take the toilet with you? You can get a new one at Home Depot for a little over $100 and the toilets in the condo weren’t anything special.
Lastly, he took around 25 knobs off the cabinets and drawers in the kitchen. Now this shows an impressive attention to detail. The time it would take to unscrew all those little knobs that would be so easy to replace. I thought it really made a statement.
This is the condo we ended up buying. Since there were so many things missing from the apartment, it had been on the market for months and the price had been lowered three times putting the condo squarely in our price range. Why Fannie Mae, the bank that now owned the condo, couldn’t be bothered to fix everything, I’ll never know.
But I’m grateful, we have an almost new condo and since we had to replace most items inside, we also have a chance to fix things up exactly the way we like! So in a way I should probably be thanking the previous owner – otherwise a place like this would have been too much money and already snapped up!
Do you have an entertaining foreclosure stories? If so, please share in the comments.
How not to start a new blog
Here’s how not to start a blog:
- Sign up for a domain and a Wordpress account on a whim after reading a really excellent article on blogging by Steve Pavlina.
- Start writing immediately without giving any thought to a plan for your blog.
- Not building up a stash of already written articles for when I didn’t have time to research and post.
- Have your first child a couple of months after starting your blog.
- Have the focus of your blog become completely pointless (when we decided not to make the move to London).
For an excellent description of how to start a blog properly as well as tons of other useful information, check out Chris Guillebeau’s 279 Days of Overnight Success on his Art of Non-Conformity blog.
Now that my adorable son is almost three months old and I’m getting a functional amount of sleep – I’d like to get back to blogging! I just need to decide what direction the Pond will take.
In an interesting side note, I recently started reading Pam Slim’s inspiring Escape from Cubicle Nation blog and it looks like she started blogging when her son was about the same age as my son now. This must be the time when new parents can finally come up for air!