Since We're Talking About Clothes...

J.D. Roth at Get Rich Slowly wrote a post this week about a little clothing experiment he did over the past year. How many of his clothes did he actually wear? Take a look, and think about your own closet.

The One-Year Wardrobe Project

Thanks to Cheap, Healthy, Good for pointing this one out.

Alterations to the Clothing Budget

Cutting back on the clothing budget can be really hard. Somehow it feels more personal than other things. But, it is often necessary, and it can make a huge difference in our overall spending. Here are a few strategies to help. Choose the ones that work for you.

1. Keep careful track of how much you spend on clothes each month. Sometimes just seeing the numbers will help you come back to reality.

2. Learn to be thrifty. Check out this article from the April Ensign. Jane McBride Choate gives great practical advice for getting everyone dressed while staying on budget.

3. Make some new rules. If you are too often finding items that are irresistible, maybe it's time to set some guidelines. The easiest rule to make this: if you don't have money left in the clothing budget you can't buy it, no matter how cute it is. You can add in some more creative rules, though. Use your imagination. My cousin-in-law used to keep herself in check by selecting one color every year. If an item wasn't available in that color, she couldn't buy it. My mom's strategy was to make me think about it for a while. If it's still irresistible tomorrow, you can always come back. Or try this: you can't buy anything new until you've worn everything in your closet at least twice!

4. Buy clothes that fit and flatter. Usually when I throw clothes out without wearing them much, it is because they never quite fit right or they emphasize my figure in awkward ways. It doesn't matter how trendy it is; only buy if it looks great on you.

5. Speaking of trends... If you don't love it, skip it.

6. Shop with cash. Somehow money is more real when you hold it in your hands. A few months ago, Jeremy and I gave each other a sorely needed clothing bonus-- in cash. It was great. I always knew how much money I had left, and I managed to make it last.

7. Learn to love the thrift store. With a little patience you can find some great stuff here (I promise). You may not find it this time, though... Thrift stores also offer a dose of perspective: You can see what things look like after they have been washed a few times. And you won't be overcome by the chic atmosphere. It's all about you and the clothes. Do they fit right? Do you enjoy wearing them? Okay.

8. Avoid marital tension. At our house, we do this by making clothing come out of our personal allowance. Electronics also come out of our allowance. I buy clothes; Jeremy buys computers. All is budgetary bliss.

9. Don't shop for recreation. (This bit of advice comes from my family finance professor, Alena Johnson ). If you have enough clothes, and you're bored, you can always make someone cookies.

p.s. I love cookies

10. Be you. Remember that old Mormonad? "Be you're own kind of beautiful." If not, here's a link. We really can't be everything. Enjoy the beauty and talents of others; be beautiful and talented yourself; but don't be the same.

What Do We Seek?

As a child of God, our deepest hunger and what we should be seeking for is what the Lord alone can provide-- His love, His sense of worth, His security, His confidence, His hope in the future.

Robert D. Hales, Becoming Provident Providers Temporally and Spiritually

Here is the latest "Mormon Messages" video from our church. Elder Hales explains beautifully how we can live within our means and live well.

Finding a Happy Money Medium

I just read a great post titled The Balance Between Splurger and Miser. It's from one of our favorite sites, Get Rich Slowly. April Dykman writes about how she has struggled with money, first spending money she didn't have, and then later almost refusing to spend at all, even though she had money to spare. Now she's finding a happy medium. Everyone should read it.

Dykman's post is a reminder that money is not just something to keep or lose. It is a way of expressing our priorities. If we truly value something, maybe we should spend more on it. (And we can always cut back on things we care less about.)

At the end of her post, she makes a list of things that are important to her, things that are worth a little extra.

My list would include eating healthy food, having supplies to build and create, helping people, and visiting family, among others.

What would you include? Does your spending reflect the things that are most important to you?

Need a bigger place?

People are always talking about needing more space. We start to feel cramped with our kids and our stuff and the messes we make. But how much will we gain with the new square footage? These photographs might change your perspective a little bit.

These photos from a series taken by Michael Wolf in a Hong Kong apartment complex. All of the rooms in the complex were 100 square feet.

The article accompanying a few of the photos in the New York Times photography blog ends with these thoughts:

Mr. Wolf finds the most interesting way to display the photographs is in a 10-by-10-foot room.

"If you’re standing inside a room which is exactly the same size as the room you’re looking at, then you realize how small that space actually is," he said. "And then you realize that people have been living there for 40 years. And then you realize that they are happy! That something like that can be, I think that’s the amazing thing. That people can be happy that they have 100 square feet to live in and nice neighbors. That’s basically all you need."

Photography and Money

I'm just starting out, but I love photography. This is one area where I would be tempted to spend thousands of dollars on equipment. Occasionally, I need a dose of perspective. I read a great blog post today that gives 10 suggestions for becoming a better photographer. It isn't about what you buy. Check out

10 Ways to Improve Your Photography Without Buying Gear

Most of these suggestions can be applied to any hobby. Sometimes we get the idea that if we are committed to something, we should be spending a lot of money on it. For photography, we need six lenses. For running we need the latest technology clothing. For scrapbooking we need every stamp and scissor known to man. The truth is, all of these hobbies are more about the time, love and effort we put in than anything else. We show our real commitment by what we do with what we already have.

Developing Sales Resistance 101: Sales Technique #2

Marketers have a lot of tricks to get us to buy (see Sales Resistance 101: Introduction). One of the most essential is

Sales Technique #2: Play off of our sense of identity

They give us messages, both subtle and overt, that tell us if we want to be a certain way we need their product. As a mom, I see ads pointed at me all the time. In these ads there are a million suggestions, things like:

Moms who care about their kids safety/health/learning buy this product.
Quality time with your kids looks like this (insert heart-warming visual with the product).
Your kids will know you love them if you use this product.
Savvy parents use this product to handle their crazy lives.
Moms deserve a break; see how everything else goes away when you use this product.

Of course I care about my kids. I want to spend time with them and show them I love them. I wish my crazy life was a little easier sometimes, and I value the times when I get to take a break. Does that really have anything to do with buying a particular safety product, toy, or food?

Some products make sense. Others are all about image, fear, or guilt. Before you buy, ask whether you are trying to prove anything with the contents of your cart.

How Many Cars do You Need?

OK, those of you who don't own a car, go pat yourselves on the back and read a different article.
For the rest of us, imagine with me. Now, imagine owning one less car than you currently do.

We own one car, and it was built in 1995. It's been running really well lately. Even though we only have one car, we don't need it most of the time. Here's what we do:

1. We walk everywhere that's within a couple of miles.
2. I bike or jog to work (2 miles the short way, 5 miles the scenic way).
3. I bike to school (5 miles).
4. Julianne walks when she can do her grocery shopping close (she has to drive when going to Costco).

We don't end up needing the car very often, and have been putting fewer and fewer miles on it. Really though, it would be really easy to find a way justify having two cars in our situation (it's really easy to justify about anything if you want it badly enough), but we have saved a lot of money by only having one car.

When we were in Seattle, this was a bit harder - since it rained often enough that I couldn't always bike. So I got a bus pass instead for the rainy days.

OK, I know what some of you are thinking: "Jeremy you're cheating - you're supposed to imagine yourself with one less car."

Here goes:

• We would still need a car to visit family a couple of times a year, as they live about 10 hours away. We could rent one for these occasions. This would actually be nice, since we could rent a small SUV to make it through the sometimes treacherous pass between here and there during the winter, instead of having to take a roundabout trip that adds 4 hours.
• For occasions when we would need a car, we could use ZipCar!
• Julianne can use the bike trailer when she needs to go shopping at Costco.
• We can just plan better - half of our car usage is when we didn't plan well enough in advance.
• Julianne would still need to find a bus or something - she often takes night courses at a college. Since they are night courses, it would be too late to bike back afterward.
• There are lots of good public transit options around, so we'd probably be able to get wherever we needed just fine.
• We'd save lots of money on repairs, car insurance etc.
  

We added everything up, looked at the probable costs for each option, and decided that not having a car probably wouldn't actually save us any cash - primarily just because of the high cost of renting a car to get back to see our families, which is where the car gets the majority of its miles anyway. In addition, ZipCar doesn't yet have any locations within four miles, which would make it difficult to use.

Add it up yourself - as we've decreased our own car usage, we've quickly discovered that we don't miss driving everywhere. And if you have two, three or four cars, the savings from getting rid of one or two of them can be substantial. There are many websites that can help to estimate the true cost of owning a vehicle.

Getting rid of an extra vehicle is one of the ideas suggested in this Ensign article for getting out of debt or avoiding bankruptcy: Before You Lose It All …