Should We All Be More Frugal ?

Recently I have been thinking more and more about the instability of our lifestyles and the way that we are set up as a modern society to live.

If you tune in to television or magazine advertising they will have you believe that everything is wonderful. It has never been better! 'Live for today', you hear them say....'go ahead, your deserve it'.......'you only live once'....... Pay tomorrow.... interest free...

I look around and see a very different story. I see people wondering why 'everyone else' seems to have it so easy when they are doing it tough. I see people who just completely block their financial circumstances and live from credit card to credit card and keep refinancing their blues away.

I have really started to sit up and take notice because I see more and more people whose lives have been turned around by such a simple event that pulls the rug out from underneath them.

I have seen friends go through a separation and divorce, the death of a spouse who was way too young, a job loss for the only income earner in the family, serious illness which turns a family upside down and people wiped out through once in 150 year floods.

We all subconsciously believe that it will 'never happen to us', but I am sure people who have been through a change like this have thought exactly that.

Do you think it is prudent to tighten our belts in the name of securing a solid emergency fund ? How many of us could truly survive for six months if our current income source dried up ? If your income stopped tomorrow, how prepared would you feel ?

As you know, I am always using 'times gone by' as a reference point when it comes to being frugal, living green or living more simply. Perhaps because of the instability of the times, people from older generations always put money from good times away for times when they may not be as good. They stood by the traditional wisdom of saving for a rainy day.

Are our times today any more stable today than what they were back then ? Does easy credit disguise society's true position ? I am not sure, I can only judge it by what I see, hear and read around the community and in the blogosphere.

Why suspicion is.....yes.

Capturing The Life That Was

Last week I purchased an external hard drive to make a double back up of my digital photo collection. Gee it was easy! I had lots of photos ( I mean LOTS) on CDs all carefully labelled and categorised and I even had proof sheets printed of what was on each disk.

It was so easy to just whip them into iphoto ( I am a Mac girl) and there they all are - in chronological order and able to be sorted in keyword categories at the click of a mouse!

I skim through all the photos they really reveal just how much I have a love affair with days gone by. There are so many photos capturing aspects of a life that was.

I am always intrigued by the lifestyle that people led in the past. The days of hard work and little reward, an instilled work ethic that is rare to come by these days, a complete life of self sacrifice to others with no chance of any recognition.

My Grandmother told me once that the girls of today just don't have the stamina to be able to do all the things they did.....and I would have to agree!

Although, I have been quoted as saying that I could do without electricity and running water, grow my food and still get by quite okay ......as long as I had wi-fi and a solar powered lap top to blog about it! LOL

Look at this tired old truck - can't you see the expression on his face ? Years of hard work can be seen across his brow!

I don't have to walk four miles to school barefoot in the snow. I haven't birthed 13 children all 9 months apart and I will never have to fight for women to get the vote..... but I really do think that there are some traditions and principles that we should not let go of in our modern world.

We should not shy away from hard work. We should only eat our fill. We should show respect to our elders. We should live within our means and we  should raise our children with values that we want to see reflected in our society.

......and then we should blog about it to share the message !

Panning for Gold

When we were away we took the opportunity to go panning for gold at Nundle. Even though it was the middle of winter in an area that often gets snow, it was really quite a beautiful day.

As I sat there, the children off doing their own panning and happily exploring all the river had to offer, I suddenly realised that I had found treasure !

No, it wasn't a gold nugget sitting in the bottom of my pan, it was uninterrupted time, seated in nature where I could hear nothing but the babbling noises of the creek.

It was delightful and the time spent there was worth it's weight in gold!

Practice Random Acts of Kindness

When we were in Sydney we were walking along in Darling Harbour when the boys found an SD card on the ground. A few weeks later when we got home, we decided that we would make it our quest to look through the photos and try and locate the owner. I had heard of someone loosing a camera once and some kind stranger viewed the photos and tracked down the owner. We knew it would be a difficult job, but thought it would be such a triumph if we could track the owner of this SD card down.


We looked all through the photos as a family, gathering clues about our mystery people - who, realistically could have lived anywhere in the world. We were so excited when we realised they were more than likely Australian. That narrowed it down to about 22 million people!

Although we could work out where they went on their holidays ( and what costumers they wore to a Halloween party! lol) We couldn't work out any way of contacting them.

Just when we were about to give up, I remembered seeing a photo of some school children and was able to zoom right in on the badge of the school uniform. We then googled the name of the school and sent the school an email with a couple of pictures attached asking them if they recognised the family.

You can imagine our delight when we were contacted by the school and the family to say the card was theirs! They lived all the way over in Western Australia.

Our boys were delighted and we thought it was hilarious that we could actually do this. Although I guess it was a little invasive for the owner, I am sure they are extremely grateful to get all their precious photos back.

The joy you get from performing an act of random kindness is fabulous....... why not give it a try sometime, you never know when the favour might be returned to you!