Money, Money, Money

I’ve been thinking a lot about money lately. How to get out of debt. How to get us into a house. All that rubbish. Since I found a few really excellent resources, I thought I’d share:

• Get Rich Slowly (the blog post)— has a great summary of the major points of the best money management and wealth-growing books.
• Pear Budget— a really great Excel worksheet that helps you put together a budget in a half hour, and stick to it in 10 minutes a week.
• How to Spend Less: Lessons from Why We Buy— nice article from the ever-interesting Get Rich Slowly (the website).
• Your Money or Your Life— a book I got a while back. Has a somewhat extreme view of tackling your finances, but if you’re pretty far gone, maybe being extreme for a while isn’t such a bad idea.
• Money, Money, Money— from ABBA Gold

I realize that I’ve become a collector, which I never really wanted to be. It shocked me, a few years ago, seeing the result of both my Grandpa’s and his brother’s pack-rat tendencies throughout their lives, and my parents taking months to clear out their basements full of crap, maybe 2-3% of which was worthwhile family memorobilia— I need to remember that, and press myself toward a life that won’t end with making work for my kids to have to clean out my useless crap, much less spending good money on said useless crap.

As we move to everything being digital, I’m also realizing maybe I don’t need to own everything I want to experience. Netflix gets me movies I want to watch faster than I can watch them. I don’t need to own every movie I’ve ever liked— ditto books and CDs. Unless I’m going to be using it a lot (e.g. something I need for reference, or just something I really love enough to listen/watch over and over again), it really doesn’t need to be in the house on a permanent basis. Being able to rent it or borrow it from the library (it’s free!) really should be enough. One less thing to spend money on, and just clutter up the house with down the road.