Continue reading “Blood Donation”Having just completed my 25th blood donation, I wanted to write a brief article about my experiences so far.
Giving blood is one of the most self-less acts you can do, giving the chance of survival to those in critical condition, or furthering research into life-saving treatments. It’s something I will continue to do for as long as I am able and I hope you will consider doing so as well!
This post will focus on my experience of giving blood with NHS Blood and Transplant in the UK. See www.blood.co.uk for more information. The process will obviously be different in other countries so do your own research.
Mr Way
A Way to Less……. What?
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?”Thought Experiment 6 – Miss Way
Unpopular Opinion
This is the latest in the series of SavingNinja‘s Thought Experiment posts.
This is an idea to get bloggers to immediately respond to a question and all post their answers on their blogs. You have to write the first thing you think of and can’t pre-plan or do any major editing.
If you want to see previous versions see SavingNinja’s archives.
This is the first Thought Experiment I (Miss Way) have participated in so please take it easy on me!
So on to the question!
A different opinion is somewhat frowned upon in our clique based society, but some of the greatest minds of all time were outliers. They weren’t scared to go against the grain and stand up for what they believed in. So, for this Thought Experiment, I’d like you to reveal yourself: What opinion do you have that most of your peers do not share?
Continue reading “Thought Experiment 6 – Miss Way”Thought Experiment 6 – Mr Way
Unpopular Opinion
This is the latest in the series of SavingNinja‘s Thought Experiment posts.
This is an idea to get bloggers to immediately respond to a question and all post their answers on their blogs. You have to write the first thing you think of and can’t pre-plan or do any major editing.
If you want to see previous versions see SavingNinja’s archives.
So on to the question!
A different opinion is somewhat frowned upon in our clique based society, but some of the greatest minds of all time were outliers. They weren’t scared to go against the grain and stand up for what they believed in. So, for this Thought Experiment, I’d like you to reveal yourself: What opinion do you have that most of your peers do not share?
Continue reading “Thought Experiment 6 – Mr Way”Monthly Spending – May 2019
Summary
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”The Skill of Life Design
‘Life Design’ is something we’ve mentioned in a few posts now. But what do we mean?
Since we started this journey, we have hugely improved our lives in a lot of different areas. This hasn’t happened by luck. It has been a process of research, planning and execution. As we like to say, we have learnt to CHALLENGE EVERYTHING!
This whole process was kick started when Mr Way discovered the world of personal finance. The first step was reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. This started a money journey including property investment seminars, individual stock picking and (thankfully) finally discovering the FIRE world through Mr Money Mustache.
Continue reading “The Skill of Life Design”Productivity Systems
The biggest barrier to productivity is finding the motivation to get started. Motivation can often be hard to come by in a modern world, full of distractions. This is particularly relevant to those of us still working full time. Juggling hobbies, alongside a full time career, can make it seem almost impossible to keep on top of the most simple of tasks in life.
In order to ensure progress is made in all aspects, I find it important to have a productivity system in place. This allows me to keep track of my short and long term goals.
I’ve always had a relatively poor long term memory. This means I find it difficult to remember outstanding tasks and goals. This can quickly become overwhelming. Because of this, it is vital for me to have a logical and easy to use system for keeping track of this information.
Continue reading “Productivity Systems”Bodyweight Fitness
As Miss Way mentioned in Frugal Fitness, bodyweight fitness (BWF) is a form of strength training. I wanted to create this separate post to give you a bit more detail on BWF, because I love it so much!
So What Actually Is Bodyweight Fitness?!
Essentially, BWF involves using your own bodyweight to perform resistance training. This type of training can accommodate anyone – from absolute beginners to Olympic level athletes. Exercises range from simple push-ups, squats and dips to advanced movements like the planche, front lever or one arm pullup.
Continue reading “Bodyweight Fitness”Why We Keep Our Finances Separate
Society Expects
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”Monthly Spending – April 2019
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”