Soo…we have exciting news! We got engaged!!!!
After just less than 6 years of being together, Mr Way asked me to marry him and I said yes!
So I’ll be asking for lots of frugal wedding advice from like minded FI enthusiasts!!
Continue reading “All Change!”This month was slightly over our ‘normal’ spending of ~£2,000. We had an annual membership fee to pay, as well as a couple of big outlays for our Africa trip added to the total. See below for more detail!
We break our main expenses down into broad categories starting with the big 3; housing, food and transport. Everything else falls into the entertainment category, with any large inclusions explained in detail.
Continue reading “Monthly Spending – June 2019”Our name means a lot of different things to us.
In our quest for a simpler way of living we’re reducing lots of aspects of our lives. We wanted to create this post to give you an idea of what ‘A Way to Less’ means to us and how we are striving to improve our lives throughout this journey.
When people first think of financial independence, they often think you need MORE. More money, to be able to buy more things, to live a happier life. But throughout our journey so far, we have actually found that most of our happiness is generated through LESS.
An easy example of this is going out to restaurants. For some, this is a weekly occurrence (or more!). When something is done so often, it can quickly lose that ‘special’ feeling. It may sound obvious that going out to eat less will improve your financial position. What may not be so obvious is that it is actually likely to make you HAPPIER too.
We only eat out around once per month or two now. Because it is such a treat, we really look forward to each outing and plan it in great detail. When you apply this to various different activities, you soon end up much better off AND happier. A double win!
So without further delay, here are some examples of what our name means to us.
Continue reading “A Way to Less……. What?”This month’s spending is a little different because the balance for our Africa trip was due. As you can see, this meant we shelled out over £6,000 on this alone! We’ll go into more detail on this below.
Continue reading “Monthly Spending – May 2019”This is another one of those aspects of life where we have challenged the ‘norms’ of society. We decided to forge our own way of doing things by keeping our finances separate.
The accepted norm for couples is to merge finances, particularly when you own a house together as we do. In our opinion this would have led to unnecessary conflicts between us. We are both naturally frugal and would have resented any spending by the other which we felt wasn’t necessary!
Continue reading “Why We Keep Our Finances Separate”In March we produced our first ever monthly spending report. Here is our second!
Despite going away this month we have managed to stay very close to our March spending amount. We’re really happy with this and hope we can keep up the £2000 per month average!
Continue reading “Monthly Spending – April 2019”Continue reading “What a Difference the Sun Makes”Ode to Sunshine
S.A.D vanisher
Negativity banisher
Energy creator and motivation shaker
Reinvigorates smiles and unused miles
Of muscles that wake as you shine
The slate is wiped clean
As faces beam at rays that rain down from the
Blue, cloudless sky, bringing twinkles to eyes
As collectively spirits are raised!
Miss Way
In What is FIRE? we described the process of achieving financial independence and having the freedom to retire early from work. That’s great, but what are you going to do with all that spare time? You need to have a goal!
“One can find time for everything if one is never in a hurry.”
Mikhail Bulgakov, Heart of a Dog
It’s vital that you understand what you’re retiring TO rather than focussing on what you’re retiring FROM. This is what we mean by ‘have a goal’!
Continue reading “The Importance of Having a Goal”While developing ‘our way’ and learning about financial independence, we found reviewing other people’s spending really helpful. We can all learn something from each other because there’s so many ways of doing things!
To this end, we aim to regularly summarise our spending for comparison. It will also act as an accountability test for us, meaning we have to justify every purchase!
We will break our main expenses down into categories, starting with the big 3; housing, food and transport. Everything else falls broadly into the entertainment/miscellaneous category, with any large inclusions explained in detail.
So here it is – our March 2019 spending!
Continue reading “Monthly Spending – March 2019”Frugality is a term that gets thrown around quite a lot. But in our experience it can mean very different things to different people! Typing the word into Google generates this definition and example:
The quality of being economical with money or food; thriftiness.
“He scorned the finer things in life and valued frugality and simplicity”
We actually think that’s a pretty good summary, especially the example!
Essentially, frugality boils down to optimising every spending decision, so that you get maximum benefit from every pound spent.
Continue reading “A Way to Less……. Spending! (Frugality)”