I’m sure my husband read this subject line and went, “Heh, this won’t last as he glances at the J.Crew box I still need to return.” Well keep reading dear.

One of my inspirational reads is the Man vs. Debt blog. He writes about his world travels with under 2-year old daughter and wife in tow and how getting his finances in order has allowed him to be location independent. I read for the travel inspiration, but ocassionally some of the financial points stick too. The author Adam also writes for Untemplater and recently posted this 30-day “No Spend” Challenge.

Now my finances are probably in more order than 90% of people my age, but I like forcing myself into challenges just to see if I can do them, if the outcome of that challenge would be important to me.  Given the nice change I saw in cash-flow during my no-spend day I figure a 30-day challenge will have  a big impact in the travel fund.

My version of the challenge:

NO SPENDING on anything non-essential. Things like:

• clothes/accessories
• electronics
• lunches/dinners out
• online purchases
• “good deals”

Allowed discretionary spending

• investments
• Auto-paid items (Netflix, cellphone, Weight Watchers)
• shared non-lazy experiences

A note on shared non-lazy experiences: Just like a diet, the whole family isn’t going to suffer. I will make an exception to the challenge, for instance dining out, if my husband suggests it (he rarely does, its always me) and its because he genuinely wants to treat us and not because we are being lazy, ie. we haven’t thawed anything to cook that night.

Challenge starts now and runs until the 7 April. Anybody want to join in? What are you cutting back for?

Tea Cozy by knitstorm.com

I have been invited twice to curling watch parties where die-hard fans huddled around a screen with a Canadian cable channel playing as you apparently  can’t trust American networks to provide equal coverage to non-US (and probably better) teams. I didn’t go, as strangely tempting as it was.

Instead what have we Alaskans been doing over the last two weeks?

Carving Ice in the World Ice Art Championships, or in my case, going to look at the finished results.

With our long winters we have to keep busy indoors to so we have an active arts community. Last weekend we had a world famous cellist Zuill Bailey in town for one of our Symphony productions. This weekend we’re off to see The Tempest at the Fairbanks Shakespeare Theatre. I myself am back in piano lessons and loving the use of my right-brain again.

Alaska isn’t exactly on the triathlon or Iron Man circuits so instead we’ve invented our own alternatives. Arctic Man and Iron Dog respectively. Iron Dog is the world’s longest snow machine race and Arctic Man is one of the World’s Toughest Downhill Ski races, and an exciting snowmobile race, all in one. The skier begins at a summit elevation of 5,800 feet and drops 1,700 feet in less than two mile to the bottom of a narrow canyon where he meets up with his snowmobiling partner to finish the race. Attending the starts and finishes of both races is a communal craziness. (13,000 fellow adrenaline junkies make Summit Lake the 3rd largest city in Alaska for a weekend every year.)

If you think that is crazy and wonder whether the winter has frozen our brains, there are even crazier Alaskans who participate in the traditional “Chatanika Days Outhouse Race”. Each March five-person teams race a one-mile course, with four pushing and one riding in the specially built “racing outhouses”.

For those who prefer more sane or scenic pursuits there are also the traditional winter sports: snow shoeing, skiing, snowboarding, cross-country skiing, going to the hot springs and Aurora watching.

So what could you be doing this winter weekend instead of vegging out to the Olympic commentary?

Books of a Wannabe Mad Scientist, originally uploaded by xtacocorex is watching curling.

This post: “Selling Back Really Old Textbooks Online” is a good description of a way to make money selling old books online for money. I’m all about that right now, given that every spare penny goes in the travel fund and that I am very anti-clutter at the moment. But this method is way too labor intensive for me. I’ve been to the post office dozens of times because of “ship by” dates when selling things on Amazon and eBay and its no fun, not to mention a waste of gas.

A slightly less profitable, but far less labor intensive method would be to setup an Amazon seller account. Ship Amazon all your books and let them ship them to each buyer and deposit the profits into your account directly. Ship once and forget. You set the price you’re willing to accept. This also lets people get Super Saver Shipping on your items. Sure you’re stuck with Amazon and might not get highest price, but you’re also not stuck running to the post office.

Add $409 over the last 2 months to the travel fund.

Via: Mary Ruffle, tinywhitedaisies, simple-pretty, { anna fraser }, via {frolic!}

Chocolate Walk – We tried to take the famous Paris Chocolate Walk, but our stupid Italian train conductor decided to take a 3 hr coffee break and we missed it. If you happen to be taking the ultimate romantic trip to Paris this Valentines you could sign up for the real thing or invent your own.

Take your sweetie on an adventure of your own, sampling chocolates from the local shops and seeing a little more of your home-town. In Fairbanks, Alaska we have a tiny little downtown, but even that has a smattering of coffee shops and a little chocolate shop called the Fudge Pot.

Lush Travel Shampoo – I wish I had enough of this to use all year round, it makes my hair smell wonderful and takes the place of both shampoo and conditioner liquids when I travel. (Amazon or Lush $9)

This jersey cardigan is just weighty enough to feel like its wrapping me up cozily on a flight. I have one in black which I love as an airplane cover-up, night-time wrap, and scrunchable cardigan which never wrinkles. (Anthropologie $98)

Wanting to capture memories together screams: “I Love You.” Loud and Clear. I used to think that having my phone be my camera, video camera, music player PDA, etc. etc. etc. was great until I realized that once its battery goes dead I can’t do anything. Now I’m looking for small gadgets that do things well. I’m looking at this Flip HD camera for low-tech, high quality video capture of our upcoming trips together. This one captures 120 minutes of HD goodness at a time and dumps onto any device with a USB port. (Amazon $193.94)

Constant Comment Tea Tag (Back), originally uploaded by Alien Spouse.

Ok, saving for Europe spending challenge #2 was to get through our most routine money spending event “grocery shopping” without spending unnecessarily. Results were mixed.

I love tea and usually splurge on loose leaf good stuff, but I did manage to settle for some Bigelow Tea Constant Comment this week. I also made a menu and a list and I stuck to it where food was concerned.

But then I got to the personal products aisle. My favorite shampoo/conditioner, which I can actually feel the difference after I use it was on sale. Ahem, it was $7 instead of $10 for beautiful, organic, makes my hair lay straight and smell like heaven shampoo. I could have bought Dove for $2 per bottle and been fine, but I had been so good with my food purchases and it was 30% off so it snuck its way home with me. Deduct $10 from Europe trip savings.

I find saving money to be like dieting for me, it just doesn’t work if I feel like I am depriving myself. I come up with justifications, cheats, and can turn a bad day into a bad week/month/etc and suddenly I’m having a garage sale and wondering “Where did all this stuff come from?”.

Dieting is something I have given up. I have dieted and lost the same 40 lbs twice in my life. But I have also lost 25 lbs the right way, slowly over the last two years, where it was not a diet, but truly a lifestyle change and I know how good it feels to not be lecturing myself, but to be thinking about things in the context of taking care of my body.

If I approach money with more of the attitude that I now approach food with I may be healthier overall. So I’m going to change all my self lecturing over my shampoo to a quality vs. price decision. It is just worth it to me and I’ll find another creative way to replace the $10 in the Europe fund.

via: Rolf Potts

“We all go through a similar process of being formed by the culture around us. It is something described well in Bruce Wexler’s book Brain and Culture: Neuroscience, Ideology and Social Change, in which Wexler argues that much of human conflict arises from our efforts to reconcile the world as we believe it to exist (our internal structures) with the world we live in. According to Wexler, we develop an inner world, a neuropsychological framework of values, cause and effect, expectations, and a general understanding of how things work. This inner world, which underpins our culture, forms through early adulthood, after which we strive to ensure it exists, or continues to exist, in the world outside. Those inner structures can change in adulthood, but it is more difficult given our decreased brain plasticity. That different internal structures exert different pressures on the mind (and body) should not be surprising. Every culture has its own logic, its own beliefs, its own stresses. Once one buys into its assumptions, one becomes a prisoner to the logic. For some people, that means a march toward its more tragic conclusions.”
–Frank Bures, “A mind dismembered: In search of the magical penis thieves,” Harper’s, June 2008

holdonlover:

{day-breaking}.