Today was one of those days that you remember for the rest of your life and I didn’t spend a nickel all day. Up here in the Pacific Northwest the weather has been a little abnormal. By that I mean that it snowed. It has been cold for a week and we even saw temperatures in the single digits overnight in a couple areas. With all this cold it was only a matter of time before we got a decent snow storm. Today was the day. School was canceled for our daughter (in kindergarten) so she spent a few hours at a friends of ours while we worked. I took off early today to help my wife get home from work (it continued to snow and driving was getting challenging).
To say that people freak out here when it snows is putting it very mildly. You’d think it was nuclear fallout the way the news was covering it. One of the local channels preempted all programming all day to cover the “Winter Blast”. It’s always humorous to see how everyone responds to snow here.
Anyway, I went and picked up my daughter from our friends, came home and after we warmed up, we headed over to her elementary school where they have some nice big hills on the playground. That ends up being the best place in the whole area to go sledding so we weren’t alone. There were probably about 30 other kids there but there was plenty of room for everyone. My daughter and I had a BLAST screaming down the hill over and over. She’s 5 and this was her first year of really getting crazy on a sled. She’s fearless. I was wiped out (tired) long before she was so I spent time talking to various other parents that were there. All the while the snow kept coming down. It was really amazing. The time I spent with her today was priceless (no Mastercard required). Just seeing her playing like a kid should, without a fear in the world, was something that you can’t even put a price on.
I was also fortunate to talk to a couple friends that have the same financial point of view as me. The concepts of “living within your means” and “investing for your future” were the central themes of our conversations. I can tell that we’ll have some great conversations in the future.
A bit about them:
I’d guess they’ve been married for about ten years
3 kids
1400 square foot house
Mid 90’s Dodge Caravan
86 Honda Accord
Stay at home mom who watches kids before and after school for extra income
He’s an engineer at a large company
Absolutely no debt and they live well within their means.
As Jim and I were talking the subject drifted towards the current economic events. We both discussed the overall state of things and both agreed that it isn’t the stock market that is causing the economic crisis but rather it’s the fear that everyone feels from seeing the events of the stock market and real estate market unfold (and not being very well prepared for it). The reality is that people are scared and they aren’t spending like they were. We both lamented about the fact that as people started saving some of their money instead of spending it, they were pulling us long term savers down with them. Sarcastically we came to the conclusion that rather than try to get people to save their money like we both had done for years we now needed to tell everyone to treat themselves. It’s time to tell everyone to go back to living beyond their means. Maybe if they all get back to that state of denial, us long term savers can finally start seeing some improvements all around us. </sarcasm>
Here’s a picture of our daughter playing in the snow:
How much did it snow up there? This was my 1st year of home ownership in the Boston suburbs and boy was I ready to plunk down $600 on a new snowblower after this weekend. I ran out of space to throw my snow (the snow pile was higher than my car) and I only finished half my driveway =(
It snowed about 12 inches or so here, which is about 10 inches more than it normally snows. Shoot, some years we’re lucky if it snows 2 inches all winter!!
I’ve been clearing all of the snow with a plain old plastic snow shovel. I’ve seen snow blowers advertised at Sears but wondered if anyone around here had ever purchased one. Frankly, in the Pacific Northwest, it would be a waste of money. I can see how they would be invaluable in the Northeast and other parts of the country though!
The bit made me smile. Things have changed so much since the ’50s; we want too much stuff. And everything is on credit.
Blogs such as yours show us it’s possible to actually *not* spend money and be content while doing so.
Kudos to you.